I respect the difference of opinion but it's hard not to think Mearsheimer has been proven wrong about Putin's motivations by this invasion. It's basically inconceivable that the full-scale invasion of Ukraine is really in Russia's best interests. At this point it's liable to destroy their economy and encourage the remaining non-NATO states that border them to join NATO. It has solidified and reinvigorated opposition to Russian interests in the West. As of now it looks like a blunder.
edit: to say nothing as well of the anti-war protests that are happening in the streets of Moscow and across Russia. If they continue and grow they will pose a risk to regime stability.
Everything that Mearsheimer stated would happen to Ukraine has now come to pass. He predicted it perfectly 7 years ago. He was not wrong. Neocons and Liberal Imperialists, as he calls the "war party", have now sacrificed Ukraine and left them to be massacred by advancing Russians. If you want to debate any of his arguments, please do so.
I think one of the central theses of his argument is that NATO is actively expanding to antagonize Russia, rather than a passive expansion due to the Baltic states falling out of the post-Soviet sphere of influence taking advantage of NATO's open door policy: this is not a far-fetched assumption, given the relative prosperity of Western European countries compared to their Eastern European counterparts.
If you accept the latter rather than the former, I think it's hard to lay the blame on the West for simply having a defense alliance that sovereign states chose to join -- unless you would argue that NATO should simply not exist.
NATO is a defensive alliance against Russia. What the invasion of Ukraine has done is proved that the states that chose to join NATO in the decades since the end of the Cold War made the right decision.
NATO was founded as a defensive alliance against the Soviet Union, and the Russian Federation is recognised as the Soviet Union’s legal successor.
That doesn’t justify Russia’s action - you aren’t justified in invading your neighbour over the mere inchoate possibility they might join a potentially hostile military alliance. (Ukraine still hasn’t joined NATO, and there is no evidence they were likely to be accepted as a NATO member in the near future.)
This is technically true and also 100% bullshit. It is phrased that way, but I have never heard anyone actually believe that NATO is anything except the US promising to use its military and its nuclear weapons to defend weaker European states that didn't have the ability to credibly defend themselves from the USSR.
You have your parties mixed up I think. You probably meant to write 'UN'. NATO does not 'authorize wars'. Even so, in fact the 'alliance' contained many nations not in NATO:
The really bad part is that they were acting during the 'first installment' against people that weren't part of the attack on the United States to begin with (it was essentially a pretext), and the second time they outright lied about the intelligence regarding the WMDs (of which there already was conflicting data collected by the UN weapons inspectors).
NATO does “authorize” military operations - the NATO ambassadors meet and agree to take military action, which means that NATO assets and staff can be used to help plan and support the action. NATO never authorised the invasion of Iraq, so NATO’s own assets and facilities could not be used. By contrast, Libya and Kosovo were NATO authorised operations, so NATO resources could be used.
NATO’s own resources are essentially office buildings, computer and communication systems, bureaucrats, and seconded military planners. The US didn’t need them for the Iraq War, although it would have liked to have had them involved, because of what that would have meant politically/diplomatically/symbolically.
Despite claiming a broad “coalition”, only three countries actually contributed fighting assets to the initial US invasion - the UK, Poland, and Australia - only the first two are NATO members, and Poland at the time had only recently joined (only 4 years prior). 3 more NATO members (Netherlands, Italy and Spain) provided non-combatant support. I don’t see in what meaningful sense it could be said to be something NATO did.
More NATO members joined in the occupation forces after the initial invasion. But that was never an official NATO operation because those require unanimous approval, and certain member states (most notably France) were always opposed to that.
NATO eventually did become involved in Iraq - training the new Iraqi government’s military. But no fighting ever happened in NATO’s name.
NATO has never said they have to get UN approval to engage in non-defensive military operations. Consider the NATO intervention in Kosovo: NATO member states sought UN Security Council approval for the intervention; when it became clear China and Russia would veto it, NATO went ahead and intervened anyway in the absence of any UN authorisation. NATO still reserves the right to engage in non-defensive military operations without UN authorisation, whenever its member states can unanimously agree that is appropriate.
Yes, and for your and my sake I hope they won't ever have to act upon that reserved right. Because when and if they do I give the world as we know it another 20 minutes or so.
Given Rusdia’s attack on Ukraine, I can easily imagine circumstances in which not acting on that reserved right might lead to the end of the world as we know it.
Yes, unfortunately there are no easy solutions to all this. It will most probably get a lot worse before it will get better again, how much worse I shudder to contemplate.
Oh yes, I almost forgot the "Coalition of the Willing" against the "Axis of Evil". Still sounds like straight of a Marvel movie. Including the Mission Accomplished speak on a carrier, also that part is more like Michael Bay.
I suggest that you read about the history of NATO in detail. It was originally created as a way to defend Western Europe from a possible future aggression from the Soviet Union. Wikipedia even says [1]:
"The treaty was created with an armed attack by the Soviet Union against Western Europe in mind, but the mutual self-defense clause was never invoked during the Cold War."
After WW2, it became clear that a new world order had emerged around what would be called "First World" (US-led countries members of NATO) and "Second World" (Soviet Union-led communist countries members of the Warsaw Pact). The "Third World" were non-aligned countries, often confused with "poor countries".
The roots of the current crisis trace back to these power structures. The fall of the Soviet Union and the rise of China could be seen as the beginning of new alignment, but so far, we haven't seen it fully taking shape (China is certainly working on it). Russia, while nowhere near its Soviet Union peak, remains a military superpower and the owner of vast natural resources.
Russia's current role in the world is unstable - there is a dissonance between its hard power and its actual influence in world matters. It doesn't accept being relegated to a weak geopolitical player, and the invasion of Ukraine is part of an attempt to assert its position in the world.
jacquesm is repeatedly being annoyingly coy, but his point is that the NATO institution itself (not just members) has acted in many non-Russia conflicts and crises, under its own banner. http://nato.int
This is a hard argument to make. "Strictly speaking"--based on only the arguments and references made here--"NATO is a defensive alliance against Russia" seems to only be false in that the USSR is not Russia (though I wonder if Putin even believes that?)... that it can do other things seems irrelevant, and origin stories matter deeply.
> the USSR is not Russia (though I wonder if Putin even believes that?)
Putin believes that the "Soviet Union" is simply another name for Russia, the name of a particular phase of Russian history.
In his mind, the ex-Soviet states were all part of Russia, and their people were Russian–Ukrainians and Lithuanians and Georgians are not neighbouring foreign nationalities, they are Russians, traditional Russian ethnic minorities just like Chechens or Tatars or Tuvans. He views their independence in the breakup of the USSR as a historical mistake, for which he blames the Communist leadership.
He wishes the Communists had never introduced the idea of a "Union of Soviet Socialist Republics" because he believes it planted the seeds for the breakup of Russia–yes, Russia, since to him the Soviet Union was just another name for Russia–in 1991, and his current invasion of Ukraine is an attempt to partially reverse that breakup – even though he probably doesn't plan to annex the whole of Ukraine in the near-to-medium term, installing a puppet government in Ukraine which will promote Russophilia and Russification would bring Ukraine back into the Russian fold, and might even eventually lead to full annexation further down the line.
Thanks: this is along the lines of what I was thinking and the clarification on the mental model of "Russia" vs. the origin and issue with "USSR" was very valuable!
> Since then, however, NATO has revived admirably. Under President Joe Biden America sounded the alarm about Russia’s build-up and co-ordinated the Western response. “Putin has single-handedly given NATO a vitamin injection,” says Wolfgang Ischinger, chairman of the Munich Security Conference, an annual transatlantic talkfest that begins on February 18th. NATO’s three decades of angst about its role after the end of the cold war has been dispelled. Having performed “out of area” operations in the Balkans and counter-insurgency in Afghanistan, it is going back to basics: the territorial defence of allies. The theological rivalry between institutions in Brussels over whether the EU should have an autonomous defence capability has for the moment been stilled.
Russia currently occupies the USSR’s seat on the UN Security Council and concerns about Russian aggression have persisted have persisted since the collapse of the Soviet Union. It’s not literally true that it’s a defense against the legal entity known as the Russian Federation but insofar as Russia has failed to shed its image as an aggressor it’s true.
Russia did not even attempt to build a coalition for defending the separatist regions of Ukraine because, as this article clearly lays out, his justification is bullshit that no country has bought. (At best, China is looking the other way.) It's a clear case of invasion.
It’s a matter of the level of provocation. The first Iraq war was unambiguously a response to blatant Iraqi aggression. The second war is more arguable, depending on whether you see it as a continuation of the first. The invasion of Afghanistan was a response to its complicity in the 9/11 attacks. So in those cases there were clear direct assaults on the US or it’s allies it was responding to. There are examples, sure, but the US is rarely the side that starts the shooting.
> The invasion of Afghanistan was a response to its complicity in the 9/11 attacks.
This kinda borders on the radio station justification - a rogue terrorist attack does not justify an invasion, and most of the attackers were Saudi, so its not even consistent.
You seem to be under the misapprehension that because they were Saudi, that the operated from Saudi Arabia. If you look into it, you will find that their organisation, which planned and coordinated the attacks, was actually based in Afghanistan. It was supported, trained and sponsored by the Taliban in Afghanistan and their associates, and was a multi national group. It was this hosting, support and sponsorship in Afghanistan that lead to the invasion.
No the organisation they belonged to, Al Qaeda, was supported trained and sponsored by the Taliban. In reality personnel, resources and information flowed freely between the two groups.
I am aware that the Taliban provided safe harbor for al-Qaeda in the late 90's early 00's, but they are very different groups with different ideologies. For instance, the Taliban did not finance, nor carry out 9/11.
I don't think I was clear in my question. I'm not excusing it, and perfectly willing to call it aggression since that is how I see it. I'm just asking if the standard we apply to foreign aggression is consistent.
In other words, I feel like some people have a consistent standard on what constitutes acceptable aggression depending on who the aggressor is.
> What the invasion of Ukraine has done is proved that the states that chose to join NATO in the decades since the end of the Cold War made the right decision.
Honestly, that is going to be tested when Russia attacks one of them. How eager the rest of NATO will be to support or abandon them.
I may be wrong, but if I understand correctly what you just wrote, you believe that Ukraine is part of NATO. To clarify: it isn't. Putin claims that it might some day join NATO, and that this somehow justifies a pre-emptive invasion, but that's very different.
Country that has unregulated territorial dispute cannot be a member of NATO by it's rules. So to give up on Crimea was the only way for Ukraine to join. It was unfeasible, any politician discussing this would be a political dead.
No, it was left in an ambiguous position after the Bucharest Summit in 2008 as Germany and France opposed its membership. As of now it can’t join because of the territorial dispute in Crimea, which is probably one of the reasons Russia invaded Crimea back in 2014. It’s not hard to imagine a similar fate awaits Finland if it continues to remain neutral.
NATO has shown at least some willingness to fight wars of aggression. It's hard to paint the intervention in Yugoslavia in the 1990s as defence of an alliance member, however justified it might have been by humanitarian concerns.
I can’t tell if you’re being pedantic here or if you actually substantially disagree with the characterization that it is primarily about the security of Europe against Russian aggression.
That may have been what it was about a long time ago, and I think in light of the current developments that probably will be what it is about again in the present, but in the intermediary that was less strongly a factor than that it was 'The affluent West' against 'the rest'.
Even the Yugoslavian war did not - though it almost happened - ended up pitting NATO against Russia, and I believe that if Russia had followed through on the reforms instead of turning into a Dictatorship/kleptocracy that they just might have joined NATO at some point.
That's completely fair, as well as intervention in Libya in 2011. I think though, for the intents of the states wanting to accede to it now, it serves as a form of defense for them.
He does not say that NATO expands to antagonize Russia, just that Russia will inevitably see it that way, and if the situation was reversed, where China has a military alliance at US border it would be seen the same way from the United States too.
Moreover he explicitly says that NATO/US does not want to expand to Ukraine as it is not a vital strategic interest to the United States, instead US will have to focus on Asian alliances to counter China.
Ukraine as a sovereign state has to build a relation with its neighbor. To join a defensive pact with most of former enemies of Russia is a provocation. That does in no circumstance justify an invasion, but it does serve as an excuse. Nato did show signs of expansion by giving (false) hope to Georgia and Ukraine.
On the other hand, around 20 years ago Putin said he could imagine joining Nato one day...
Of course the west is ultimately not to blame for Russia to invade. There were bad choices...
Whether or not NATOs expension is to antagonise Russia is less important than the question how Russian leadership sees it. And Putin's answer was pretty clear.
You can blame the US all you want, at the end of the day they invaded Ukraine for no discernible reason (it's been nearly eight years since Crimea, with no moves towards NATO from Ukraine and no moves towards Ukraine from NATO) and it's costing them dearly. If you see that as a vindication of his position, so be it, but it clearly makes no sense.
I don't think the parent wanted to justify the invasion or blame it completely on the US. I myself despise the invasion, but the responsibility that the US bears on this conflict cannot be underestimated, and it is totally absent (or at least severely under-reported) from Western sources.
> the responsibility that the US bears on this conflict cannot be underestimated, and it is totally absent (or at least severely under-reported) from Western sources.
Either we agree that countries have sovereignty and can enter whatever pacts they so please or we do not. You can't have it both ways. NATO is an alliance that Baltic nations joined of their own accord. The US doesn't even enter the picture here.
> Either we agree that countries have sovereignty and can enter whatever pacts they so please or we do not.
I completely agree. The problem is that for the past 70 years or more, this has not been like the US has behaved. They set the historical precedent that it's ok to respect other countries sovereignty if and only if said country aligns with your own interests. When that's not the case, it's fine to overthrow the government to make it more "democratic".
So there is no Munroe doctrine in place? Cuba has the right to station nuclear weapons? The hypocrisy of any great power is mind boggling and it’s sad to see individuals buy into that.
Do countries have sovereignty to develop Nuclear weapon? No, because big boys club sees it as a threat and it is understandable. If some power sees actions of another country as a threat, sovereignty becomes more nuanced.
Nuclear weapons are a special case because they threaten the survival of the human race (you can probably throw certain chemical/biological weapons in here too). Joining NATO--not that the Ukraine was even doing that--does not. There's a material difference here.
Smallish country developing nuclear warhead wont threaten survival of the human race. It wont have neither enough warheads nor sufficient delivery capabilities, yet no country is allowed to enter nuclear club, because existing members sees it as threat and have means to enforce their will. Ukraine joining NATO is same in principle: a threat to someone who is willing to act on it.
> Joining NATO--not that the Ukraine was even doing that
The US clearly enters the picture here if they are willing to supply weapons to the Ukrainians. That is a justified security concern from Russia's perspective
Mearsheimer points the finger at an enthusiastic expansion of NATO here and draws a line from it to the West being at fault, but I don't think it was really the case.
Not a single one of the Warsaw Pact countries wanted to be in it (except Russia, maybe Cuba - no idea). As soon as Russia’s occupation of half of Europe was over, all these countries couldn’t run away from Russia and WP fast enough, and joined NATO.
So it wasn’t independent peoples joining a defensive pact, but Russia dislocating its arms onto stolen territory.
Only exceptions are Belarus, which effectively remains under Russian thumb, and Ukraine which didn’t make it (and had, now dead, significant pro Russian sentiment).
> but the responsibility that the US bears on this conflict cannot be underestimated, and it is totally absent (or at least severely under-reported) from Western sources.
I find it completely overestimated. The makes it US responsibility to prevent Ukraine from considering to enter defensive act. And when US does not shut it, somehow US is responsible for Russia invading Ukraine.
US is not responsible for making sure Russia can take over Ukraine whenever they please. US is not responsible for making Russian emprire to happen.
That was not an unpopular position at the time, with predictable backlash now made manifest. Also on topic US should also not have made NATO an offensive alliance with Kosovo... a "humanitarian" invasion outside UN security council authorization. Or set precedence of unilateral secession to balkanize countries for US interests, which RU rationalized for Abkhazia / South Ossetia in Georgian war. This is exactly the same playbook/justification RU is using to "rescue" Ukraine, for much more valid security considerations. Everything RU is doing has been normalized by previous US interventions, of which there has been too many, with a host of lawyers trying to legitimize them under the liberal international order.
Yeah except the difference is that loads of innocent people were being raped and murdered and ethnically cleansed in Kosovo whereas Russia made their reasons for this invasion quite clear Monday and it’s a desire to reconstitute the Russian Empire.
It’s fine to have a principle of non-intervention but the situations are not really comparable outside of both being interventions. The Iraq War is a better comparison, and the US should have been sanctioned for it.
>raped and murdered and ethnically cleansed in Kosovo
And that has exactly nothing to do with defensive NATO core mission.
Sectarian violence happens all around the world, except NATO chose to invade Kosovo under the pretext of ethnic cleansing / "genocide", again current RU excuse, which later investigation pointed out to be unfounded. The real cynical reason was for NATO to rationalize its existence post USSR collapses by reinventing itself as an offensive alliance for LIO/US geopolitical interests, which is how it has been wielded since causing untold deaths in various interventions. NATO is a hegemonic instrument disguised as a humanitarian one. RU sees through the "defensive" narrative. Ultimately, the point is US opened pandora box of bad norms in terms of prosecuting wars and upsetting balance of power. It won't get sanctioned for it, instead wielding sanctions to deter geopolitical adversaries from pursuing more pertinent self interests. Until the sanctions stop working, and US adversaries use US playbook for their own interventions.
> US should also not have made NATO an offensive alliance with Kosovo... a "humanitarian" invasion outside UN security council authorization.
UN security council is how things like Srebrenica happen. In my eyes, disregarding it is justifiable if there is a high enough likelihood of something like that repeating.
Setting aside the USA for a second, can you acknowledge that Putin spent the last several months building up almost 200k troops on 3 sides of Ukraine and then invaded despite claiming he had no such intentions even days before his invasion.
Setting aside other countries for a moment, the actions of a country is ultimately decided by its leader and the leader of Russia went to war. We can debate how other countries influenced the leader, but before that, are you in agreement that Putin premeditated a troop build up around ukraine and then invaded despite no immediate threat to russian soil?
Can you please state that ultimately the buck stops with putin russia freely chose to do this war, and then we can get into the debate of how other countries may have pushed him that way only once that clear acknowledgment has been made without any digressions that may come off as unintentional prevarications.
He’s acting rationally in his own interests. Not those of Russia. He intends this war to consolidate his control and that of his faction over Russia.
Did you know Navalny’s court case has started? It should be front page news, but now it’s barely mentioned. That’s not directly why the invasion happened, the court case is probably timed by the invasion not the other way around, but there is a connection. Now anyone protesting against Putin will be anti war and therefore traitors. Sanctions will also consolidate his factions grip over the domestic economy, and provide an excuse to do away with the already flimsy rule of law in the economic arena.
Putin will install a pro Russian client government, like that in Belarus, and make allowing Ukraine to become ‘independent’ in name alone conditional on easing sanctions on Russia. The west will play along because there are no votes in not doing so.
May just be he's getting bad advice. He wouldn't be the first leader to end up surrounded by yes-men nodding in vehement agreement with everything he proposes. The usefulness of rationality depends a lot on your ability to see things as they are.
If he believes he will win this war, he may either do so on grounds of something we do not know, possibly bad intel.
If he does not believe he will win this war, he may think he must on grounds of something we do not know, possibly bad intel. It could also be he doesn't want to win the war, for some reason we do not know.
That’s one of the main tenets of the realist school of IR theory that Mearsheimer is a major proponent of. States act in their own rational self-interest.
He’s also said that America shouldn’t have gotten involved in as many wars as they have. So clearly both the US and Russia have acted irrationally according to him.
Maybe he was overconfident. Surely he is more risk prone than his western counterparts which are extremely risk averse but that does not make A less rational than B, it's a different dimension
With the information we have at hand this invasion is nonsensical and a fiasco but Russia and China are information black boxes. The world is slowly opening eyes to China and Russia tyranny and now that the US left Iraq/Afghanistan and the West defeated Covid, the future is not so favorably for those that are cultural antagonists (democracy enemies). US economy is facing high inflation but there are rumors of China economy collapsing. It might be that Putin and Xi decided to escalate and show hands sooner than later.
I wouldn't be surprised by China invading Taiwan in the next weeks. Specially after NATO committing assets to deal with an ongoing humanitarian crisis far from the Pacific. As the Fallout franchise summarize: war never changes.
Putin is unlikely to be trying to occupy all of Ukraine. The sheer cost of getting bogged down in an insurgency he couldnt possibly win suggests he's going to take an option which plays to his strengths instead.
More likely he will try to cleave off strategically important territory with Russian majorities (forming a land bridge to crimea, maybe all the way to transnistria) and leave Kyiv having extracted a promise to remain unarmed, "neutral" and providing no aid to insurgencies or face another bloody assault.
Leverage, I think. He can extract a lot of concessions in exchange for Kiev. I suspect Russia would trade it happily for the Ukrainian coast, which is strategically more valuable and has a plurality of ethnic Russians.
Also they probably want to destroy/capture military central command.
I think he thinks he has nothing to lose at this point. The EU is looking for alternate suppliers for gas, and when that's in place the sanctions noose will be fully tightened.
The only thing he can do to the EU is triggering a huge refugee crisis by terrorising the local population. Excluding Crimea/Luhansk/Donetsk 38 million people live in Ukraine. The cost to the EU would be huge.
I'm not sure why you would think they would leave Kyiv alone when they're fighting there right at this very moment. It's pretty clear Putin aims to replace the government in Ukraine with his own puppet regime and then go along his way similar to how Belarus is, it remains unclear what will happen with western Ukraine, whether they invade "pacify" it and or just split Ukraine into two.
Well what would happen when they leave? I doubt the Ukrainians there (who are very much pro western) are just going to sit on their hands and twiddle their thumbs.
They can negotiate deals all they want but the moment the Russians leave the insurgency will start again, and given that aside from eastern Ukraine most of the population is pro-west, I can imagine it will have plenty of popular support.
What this is doing is permanently aligning Russia with China. This is Putin’s guarantee to China that they’re their forever trading partner and will never look West, at least any time soon.
No amount of winter Olympics are going to tear label of warmonger of Russia for years to come.
Putin is not a moron, he is not impulsive. If anything he is ruthless in his cold calculations. The only logical reason for this is desperation. Putin's popularity is dwindling and more and more people are vocal about it.
Invasion of Ukraine is last ditch attempt to rally support from ussr sentiment of global power people. But this is quickly backfiring, in terms of PR it a disaster. Common people in Europe support Ukraine and the politicians probably will have easier time imposing restrictions as their own people will be ok paying the price. Remember that Putin's hope is that divided europe will not come together and will fail to react.
It would have been not viable for Russia if it could expect further economic sanctions, but most of those were already in place and there was less incentive to not invade. They might install a new government and will be in a more influential position. Dependency on Russia will cause other states to continue cooperation.
I think we are getting to a place where the use of nukes is so unthinkable that the deterrent effect is reduced. At which point maybe conventional war becomes more possible.
I'm entering my middle age, and I now expect a nuclear bombing to occur in my lifetime. I don't expect that it will evoke a scorched earth response, I expect it will happen to a country like Ukraine that nobody will stick up for. Politicians will tut and prevaricate and keep doomscrolling along with the rest of us. Unlike Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there will be no great reckoning. Economists will continue to play their chips to favorable positions, the Bad Boys League will continue to support eachothers' dictatorships, and trade will continue to diffuse through whatever palatable sanctions are instituted.
he argues that constant confrontation with west would push Putin to embrace alliance with China. this seems to be happening now. and since China became big customer for russian gas, he can be more agressive with Ukraine, without risking all of his revenues. And, btw, all the announced sanctions, even personal against Putin, did not dare to touch gas pipe from Russia to Germany. It is also telling, that this gaspipe is kept working despite all military activity surrounding it.
I think it lays too much of the blame on the US and the West and ignores the fact that Ukraine itself is an entity with its own autonomy and not as simple as just being a US pawn. Mearsheimer's analysis seems to dismiss it completely and assume that basically everything that occurs in Ukraine are just machinations of the US political machine, but very reasonably, since the annexation of Crimea in 2014, it is rational for Ukraine to seek closer ties with NATO.
That said, I do appreciate his perspective on why Putin might act like he does, but "Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault" is... interesting framing.
Imagine this [1] scene playing out during one of the various protest come riot movements in the US over the past years. That is John McCain giving a speech to the protesters in the capitol of Ukraine, telling them that America is with them and that Europe will make Ukraine better. And to be clear he was doing this while the democratically elected [pro-Russian] president was still securely in office and would be for months to come.
I feel like we largely lack any perspective because so many of things that are happening are something so completely foreign to us that it's difficult to even realistically imagine it. Imagine if Russia formed a 'defensive' military alliance whose primary mission was to contain the US. And they then gave speeches, such as McCain's, in Mexico City shortly before a pro-US Mexican government was overthrown by an insurrection and replaced with a pro-Russian one. And then they now moved to integrate the new Mexico into their military alliance which would undoubtedly result in 'defensive' weapons, arms, soldiers, etc being placed right along the US border - possibly to the point of imperiling our credible nuclear deterrent.
I would certainly agree that Ukraine is not just a US pawn and wants to decide it's own fate, and deserves that. But there's also no doubt that it's political present and future is instead repeatedly decided by outside actors.
I don't really buy into this argument because NATO has done no such integration and has actually pretty much made a policy of leaving Ukraine out to dry, even with its extremely pro-West government right now (there is no way Putin doesn't know this as well): yet here we are, with an invasion into Ukraine by Russia.
> And then they now moved to integrate the new Mexico into their military alliance
But this didn’t happen! Ukraine did not join NATO.
As for the John McCain bits, you ask whether it would be in the US’s interests to invade Mexico if Putin went and gave a pro-authoritarian speech there? Of course not! We would be fucking insane to do that.
The problem with this argument is that the NATO does not accepts members that do have territorial conflicts.
How long would it have taken to resolve the krimea and donbas conflicts against the background of an antagonistic russia.
1 decade?
A few more are more likely if history is any guide.
It is somewhat ludicrous to suggest that russia would invade ukraine because ukraine might join NATO decades after putin leaves power.
Especially since putin has explained himself that he does not see ukraine as a souvereign nation on historical grounds and wants to correct that mistake.
NATO can change the rules anytime, from the russian perspective you can't trust them. That is why russia wanted an official stance of not admitting them. If they were not going to admit them then why not say so out loud. Clearly their was a way to solve this matter peacefully but the west choose to ignore any demands for neutrality
Memberstates might be amenable to vow to block certain admissions, or maybe not.
There is zero chance of an unanimous vote to admit a country that has open territorial conflicts with russia.
Its not within the power or responsibility of NATO to decide about ukraines neutrality. The charter of Paris, Budapest memorandum, https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/official_texts_25468.htm .. (russia signed all those) all guarantee ukraine a free choice of military alliance.
I'm terrified of such simplistic narratives (in any domain, not only politics) and I believe they are very dangerous, especially in the modern societies which are very prone to accept easy explanations... Mearsheimer's narrative is internally consistent and seemingly explains the reality in a simple manner. It will definitely seduce many readers into a false feeling of understanding.
In my humble opinion, his story lacks lots of context, both cultural and historical. Russia has never belonged to the Western culture, not even in the XIX century. Its mindset is radically different and not reducible to analysis based on the assumptions common in the Western societies. Treating it as a "partner one can civilize" has been a mistake made repeatedly in Europe and resulted in many tragedies in the last ages. I hope the current conflict will open eyes of many naive idealists looking for the rational outlook on the modern world.
Let's assume Mearsheimer is a putin sympathizer (that's even a stronger speculative assessment than apologist); does that render the information the professor stated less true?
I value the diversity on HN.
I mostly value when my view are reputed by facts and reasoning.
[Before downvoting, please consider whether you prefer debate or an echo chamber]
Let us please not be so passive aggressive and dismissive. Serious diplomats have been warning about this for decades.
Just because what's happening is evil and revisionist does not mean we should sweep all of that under the rug and buy into the mainstream a la the 2003 WMD hysteria.
Pointing at one person and yelling "he's a bad man" has not been helpful and yet we can't help but do the same thing every single time.
The situation is not that complicated. Ukraine is an independent country and can decide what alliances to join or not. It’s not Russia’s business and it surely does not give it the permission to invade it.
Anything else is highly irrelevant.
Russia is a repressive dictatorship and has a combination of a brainwashed and scared population. We don’t need unnecessary nuance there.
You have your heart in the right place regarding Ukraine's "rights", however it's a shallow analysis of the historical complexities of this situation. In a free country (pick your favorite), there is a system in place, hopefully mutually agreed by its citizens, and its rules are enforced by a government.
In the world sphere, there is no de facto government. The UN is an attempt to create some sort of world governance, but as we know it's quite imperfect and it doesn't have the stick (i.e., the equivalent of a police force) to enforce its resolutions. Thus, the world works in a fragile equilibrium of military and economic power, with multiple countries forging alliances and pacts to try to put in place some form of civility.
So, while Ukraine "can decide" what alliances to join, there is nobody to ensure that it "can decide". Ukraine was relying on the West/US/Nato to get some say in its future, but we are seeing how that's unfolding. Ukraine unfortunately has to "earn" this right by forging alliances or building a stick big enough to ensure that others respect it.
Ukraine doesn't have a stick (it gave it up after the fall of the Soviet Union) but Russia does. Thus, Russia gets away with enforcing its own view of the world.
Unless other countries use their own sticks to enforce their point of view about what should happen with Ukraine, Russia will simply get away with it. "Rights" have very little to do with will happen.
I cannot think of a time in human history when things didn't work like this.
You don't need to analyzer a situation to see that Russia is just wrong about this. More importantly Russia is a dysfunctional country where you cannot even make the point that anything is remotely "mutually agreed by its citizens". Historic context is not relevant to the discussion about an invasion.
I'm sorry it didn't add anything to you, and your statement "Historic context is not relevant to the discussion about an invasion" suggests that we might not have much to gain from each other as our points of view are too far apart.
Nonetheless, I'll try again to not leave you empty handed... What I'm saying is that "right" and "wrong" have little to do with the situation. I suggest you read Wikipedia on Realpolitik: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realpolitik
There is no chance of NATO acceptance while there are still ongoing territorial disputes like crimea and donbas. Solving those could take decades if not longer.
Putin himself has said that the ukrainian state is a historical mistake and has no claim to statehood.
He just wants some juicy bits of strategical importance like a land connection to crimea and a broken country as a buffer zone that he can show to other aspirants what happens if you misbehave.
> The situation is not that complicated. Ukraine is an independent country and can decide what alliances to join or not. It’s not Russia’s business and it surely does not give it the permission to invade it.
It's funny how many people here constantly repeat that it's a crime to attach and split an independent country, but I could not hear such voices anywhere in any western country when NATO bombed civilian targets in Serbia for months to support Kosovo independence.
As a remainder, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Iraq, Vietnam, Korea, Cambodia, Laos, Panama, Cuba, Guatemala, Mali, Yemen ... all independent countries attacked by NATO and its allies. Sorry if I added a few extra or missed a few, the number is just too big to remember correctly, since the number of independent countries worldwide attacked by NATO and its allies is bigger than list of countries attacked by Nazi Germany in WW2.
That's true. Behaviour of one side doesn't excuse anyone else's sins, but it also doesn't give a moral right to criticize the others for the same thing they did and are still doing themselves. It's a hypocrisy all the way down, on both sides.
You may not have voted but did u condemn those actions just like as you are doing now or were u silent because the people killed were not White European people
This is ignorance at it's best. There were antiprotesters in Moscow and St. Petersburg. The nuance here is if the US could invade other faraway sovereign countries, why Russia couldn't against a neighbour, over what it sees as security concern?
US is a misinformed bipartisan country and has a combination of brainwashed and scared population
This is ignorance at it's best. The nuance here is if the US could nuke other faraway sovereign countries, why Ukraine couldn't against a neighbour, over what it sees as security concern?
Great to know. Thank you for sanitizing this discussion and shutting out trolls and apologists (like myself).
I'm sure that if Cuba or Venezuela entered a pact with Moscow that placed ICBMs on their territory, we would respect their sovereignty the same way.
There are a few things I'd like to respond to below but the rate-limit hammer has dropped.
What I will ask is that we refrain from calling the brave people who stood against the grain apologists or naive. They warned of the dangers decades ago.
We owe them better than that; they were prescient.
You do realize that the issue in both cases is Russia right? Russia is not a democracy. If an insane dictator puts up nukes near you it’s a very different situation. Not at all the same thing.
Hate Putin and what he's doing in Ukraine right now, but,
- How is Ukraine joining NATO different from Cuba or Mexico joining a military alliance with Russia?
- Dictatorship argument is moot since US actively supports many evil dictator and provides them with financial and military support.
- Any country is right to be scared of the US as it has invaded/destabilized many countries in the last two decades including Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Libya.
That's exactly what I had in mind. It's not as if the US didn't have other options. Bay of pigs was US supported but it wasn't the US doing the invasion, though without US support it would have never happened.
Cuba may be one of the few examples that might have a parallel in Mearsheimer's realism model: it would be a reasonable explanation of the foreign policy position the US has towards it even today.
That said, despite how shitty the US is towards it in terms of sanctions etc., there's certainly no boots on the ground invasion by the US.
So, Guantanamo Bay became a US military base by vote? Just because the Bay of Pigs disaster didn't involve regular US troops it was a CIA operation. Nobody in his right mind would call those "unmarked" troops in Eastern Ukraine anything else than a Russian invasion force.
I would complain just as much if the USA decides to invade Cuba or Mexico. I also think that Cuba or Mexico should be free to join a military alliance with Russia.
I have been following this closely and I have not seen anything in news reports or other OSINT that show U.S. ICBMs in Ukraine. Can you provide a source to support your comparison?
So are you now saying "a pact with Moscow that placed ICBMs" on the U.S. border is an inapt comparison?
The distinction isn't meaningless. You can't reach the conclusion that "we don't care about sovereignty" if we only violate it in the face of perceived imminent threats.
It baffles me how some people can completely disregard the Russian aggressive foreign policy. Like in their argument they completely ignore it.
But then when push comes to shove and we are shown clear evidence, the only arguments they can find to justify real aggression against a sovereign state is whataboutism.
Whether we have a dictatorship or a democracy, there is an apparatus that IGNORES the legitimate concerns of others, and for whom it is a net positive for their country to impose its will on others through violence.
Eisenhower gave it a name in the US: the Military-Industrial-Congressional complex. And we can add the mainstream Media to that as well.
To put it in perspective, what Russia was doing supporting the Donbass separatists against the Ukrainian government is what the US has been doing in Syria…
What is currently being done by Russia is analogous to the bombing of Yugoslavia by NATO forces despite UN opposition, combined with a recognition of Kosovo’s independence, something that shocked Russians at the time…
If Russia continues with a full scale invasion, occupation and regime change in Ukraine, that would be analogous to what USA did in Iraq and Afghanistan in the last few years.
So the US has done it all, and other things too:
propped up friendly rulers against rebels in Yemen, leading huge humanitarian crises
trained guerillas against the government in Nicaragua and elsewhere
trained dictators like Manuel Norriega in the School of the Americas
installing friendly regimes around the world
carved off and annexed large parts of Mexico in the Spanish American war
Russia at least does it in its own back yard and to protect its interests. USA goes all around the world and for some reason sees fit to be a “world police”. But both are incredibly imperialistic. And of course, Russia’s freedom of speech internally is far worse than in USA.
But when USA does it, it never gets any sanctions. So there is no threat of escalation to nuclear mutually assured destruction. When Russia does it, the same actions are criticized badly by the world, but everyone is afraid to escalate further because of the nuclear consequences.
Russia is twice the size of the US. Their direct "sphere of influence" was three times the size of the US.
Romania, for example, never wanted to have anything to do with Russia, yet here we are 2500+ kms away from the Russian heartland, stressing out about this stuff, because apparently it's "Russia's backyard". We've been here 2000+ years, it's <<our>> backyard. The same goes for many of the countries next to Russia.
And modern Russia, just like the USSR, is highly interventionist. Who do you think is propping up the Assads? Or was propping up Marxist militias in Latin America and in Africa?
I hear you, and I share severe criticism of USSR and USA imperialism. I condemn Russia’s imperialism, too. I am just saying that all of this is also true of the USA.
The entire Caribbean is in USA’s sphere of influence. We toppled Hawaii’s kingdom and annexed that, too.
Actually, the entire hemisphere, going back as early as President Monroe (200 years earlier)
USA seized territory during the Spanish-American war, which is now Texas / Arizona etc.
In short, as angry as you are, I am sure many South American countries were and are angry at the USA as well, for propping up fascist dictators (Pinochet), or toppling regimes for fruit companies (Guatemala), or arming rebels (Nigaragua) in violation of our own laws (Iran-Contra affair) or training terrorists and dictators (School of the Americas). Whether or not we are “a dictatorship” is beside the point.
I was simply pointing out that Donbas has ethnic Russians so it is more their business than Iraq was ours, Iraq has no credible threat to us at all. Neither do the dozens of other countries that USA effected regime change in.
I see, I guess Matthew 7:5 can be brushed off as “whataboutism”.
Pointing out total hypocrisy and asking both sides to stop doing bad things is somehow hitting below the belt eh
It’s a sad state of affairs when being evenhanded and keeping a sense of proportion is considered extreme bias.
When you say that a member of group X is bad, then you have to have a baseline. When it comes to superpowers we have Russia, China, USA. They all do terrible imperialistic things and we the people living in them should maybe try to get them to let up. “Whataboutism” is a stupid non-rebuttal that just says “let me just be biased and keep navel gazing at one specific country while ignoring even worse things by other countries because I care not about the actual humanitarian issues but about proving how bad a particular country is, and you’re making me care about the actual issues”.
I’m not talking about whether Russia did not invade Ukraine. I’m saying I hope you and the world can be JUST as vocal when US does similar things. For example when it invades or bombs a country or does regime change. Or when China does it. Evenhanded means that USA should get sanctions after doing it.
"Whataboutism" has long been used as a term for "how dare you not focus on the thing I'm outraged about by telling me that something I supported/condoned/was quiet about was pretty much the same thing. Traitor. Now repeat my narrative or be persecuted!"
> That’s why you usually hear “whataboutism” used by people who are punching down, not punching up. The nation that is more powerful, or more assured of their moral superiority, tells a Bad Nation it is Bad.
At this exact moment, the US isn't punching anyone, neither up or down.
The US ousted Allende in 1973, almost 50 years ago. During a Cold War with an enemy that large groups of people - including their allies! - truly considered a pox upon humanity.
The US withdrew from Afghanistan and Iraq, ending mistakes made almost 20 years ago.
Russia attacked Ukraine 2 days ago.
So we should follow the model of the current day aggressor, not of the country that's at least trying to change its ways?
Which country is trying to change its ways? In the last 20 years we have destroyed or severely impacted Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, contributed to the rise of ISIS and Boko Haram and Muslim Brotherhood, having an effect countless small tribes like Yezidis, and that’s just the middle east, 3000 miles away
Extremely relevant. Because Russia, China and USA are the three "regional powers" in the world (USA being a "superpower" meddling everywhere) so we need to avoid double standards in order for our discussion to convince anyone or come to a productive result. If we ignore when one country does it, while decrying when another country does it, to me that's just empty rhetoric and not really trying to solve the actual issues.
Some call this the Chomsky principle: "My own concern is primarily the terror and violence carried out by my own state, for two reasons. For one thing, because it happens to be the larger component of international violence. But also for a much more important reason than that; namely, I can do something about it. So even if the U.S. was responsible for 2 percent of the violence in the world instead of the majority of it, it would be that 2 percent I would be primarily responsible for. And that is a simple ethical judgment. That is, the ethical value of one’s actions depends on their anticipated and predictable consequences. It is very easy to denounce the atrocities of someone else. That has about as much ethical value as denouncing atrocities that took place in the 18th century." - Noam Chomsky
It’s important to keep pointing these things out. I’m not quite as pessimistic as some who believe that the US will continue to do these things forever; I believe the US populace is slowly waking up to what has been done in their names. While people may quibble with the motivations and morality of individual incidents that you’ve mentioned, overall I haven’t heard convincing arguments that they’ve made the world safer overall. The Yugoslavia situation, for example, was pretty complex and I could debate the differences with Ukraine all day, without disagreeing with your overall point.
But I also feel that it’s important to acknowledge that if it was wrong for the US, it is wrong for Russia. There are too many people out there who aren’t really being sincere with their arguments and are using US crimes to justify Russian ones.
A problem is that the US often intervened when things were in free fall like in Libya, Yugoslawia or were already horrible like in Afghanistan, Somalia. But by their intervention they are now responsible for everything that happened afterwards. Its like comparing the patient mortality rate of dermatologists with those of emergency doctors. Can you really compare Zelensky to Saddam Hussein, Assad or the Taliban?
For example counterfactually i am pretty sure that Ruanda would have fared better with an intervention.
Russia's interests aren't threatened by Ukraine in any way. Putin's interests are; every successful democracy on his border is a model that threatens his rule.
The USA is far from perfect, but nearly all the interventions you listed were much more justified than what Putin is offering: the explicit aim of securing Ukraine as part of a new Russian empire, regardless of their will. (E.g. Afghanistan was a base for an attack on the USA; there was ethnic cleansing in Kosovo that needed to be stopped; populations in Syria do need to be protected. On the other hand as Devereaux points out, there isn't even a plurality of people in Donetsk and Luhansk in favour of secession, and Ukraine hadn't gone on the offensive against the separatists.)
The argument "the USA has done bad things; therefore we should turn a blind eye when anyone does any bad thing" is total nonsense.
Rather the opposite: neither Russia nor USA should attack others who do not pose a threat to them. Stronger nations should listen to the concerns of others and meet to address them.
Zelensky should have listened to Donbas separatists and met to address them (Minsk agreements)
Russia should have listened to the Ukrainian democratically elected government and met to address them
And yes, NATO should have listened to Putin and other Russian officials saying over and for years about the bright lines, and should have listened to internal voices including the architects of the USSR containment strategy WARNING about NATO expansion, and realized they should invite Russia into NATO.
No one listens because of the apparatus within their country, and the idea that cities do not have self-determination, only countries do. People believe in their flag so much because of mass media and government schools, they are willing to kill and be killed for it.
But if you look at a time-lapse of most places on the globe, you’ll see flags changing so quickly that you wonder what is the big deal. Most people if left alone would just earn money and raise their families.
I wish nothing but peace and prosperity to the people of Ukraine.
Every city should be able to choose what country it belongs to, periodically. These nationalities are making people go crazy killing each other for a flag to fly over a specific territory. Most of the local populations are radicalized using mass media or government schools. It’s sad to see.
My developers are in Ukraine and Russia and I attended one of their weddings in Chernovtsy a few years ago. We all work together and we don’t want to kill each other. I’m in the USA. The vast majority regular people would not want their country killing anyone in their name. They’re just fed propaganda about how benign their country’s actions are, and how bad the “other guys” are.
Take Crimea for example. It is majority Russian because Stalin deported the vast majority of Crimean Tatars because many of their men fought against USSR in WW2. Ethnic cleansing. Then Khustchev just gifted Crimea to Ukraine for no apparent reason. But when they had a referendum they voted to rejoin Russia. In an ideal world, no one would give a shit what flag flies over Crimea. They could vote every 4 years to be 80% Russian and 20% Ukranian. By removing the need to choose a discrete variable, you’d eliminate almost all conflicts between separatists and imperialists. Catalonia vs Spain. Basques vs France. Kurds vs Turkey. But no. People need to fight for what flag flies over that territory…
> It is majority Russian because Stalin deported the vast majority of Crimean Tatars because many of their men fought against USSR in WW2.
IMHO, you are talking about Crimean Goths. They are speaking German dialect, so they were used by Germans as translators. Ukrainians, Crimean Tatars, Greeks, Italians, are killed or deported just because their land was promised to soviet officers.
Anyway, number of Crimean Goths participated with Germans (140) is minuscule in comparison to Russian Liberation Army (ROA) AKA Vlasov Army (3 millions). By your logic, all Russians must be punished for ROA crimes. BTW, they wear ROA flag even today.
USSR was brutal. World War 2 was extremely brutal - they lost 30 million people
Anyway it is all war crimes, I totally agree !
I don’t know if it is “just” because Russian officers wanted their land. They already could get land through crooked courts easily.
USSR was pissed at how rabidly some Ukrainians and others killed people when they sided with the Nazis. I am Jewish and two sisters of my grandma were brutally killed by Ukrainians (not Germans) while being under 10 years old. One German wanted to quietly save them but the Ukrainians wouldn’t let him.
People want independence and appeal to have their rights, but during war time they can often abuse weaker people too a lot.
Yes, but most Russians are still not punished for their crimes like Crimean Goths. Moreover, they openly wear fascists symbol: ROA flag, and Russian Eagle is surprisingly similar to German Eagle.
> USSR was brutal. World War 2 was extremely brutal - they lost 30 million people
USSR lost 12 millions in WWWII, fighting Poland with Germany (1939), Finnish, and Germany with England and US. Losses are raised to 42 millions to hide 30 millions Ukrainians killed during Holodomor (7 million adults and 23 million children). RF accepted number (02.04.2008) is 7 millions only, but they are still hiding them in WWWII losses.
> USSR was pissed at how rabidly some Ukrainians and others killed people when they sided with the Nazis.
Guess what? If you kill millions of Ukrainians, they remember that for a long time.
Anyway, Berlin was taken by First Ukrainian front and Second Ukrainian front. No Russian army was involved in the taking of Berlin, because Russian Liberation Army (ROA) was on Nazi side.
The dissolution of the Soviet Union brought up a question of headquarters relocation to Novorossiysk. In September 1994 Novorossiysk Naval area was reestablished, three years later it was officially reorganised into Novorossiysk Naval Base.[62] To ensure its modernisation and development the government initiated special federal programme 'On Black Sea Navy Fleet Base at the Territory of Russian Federation in 2005—2020'. [...] The naval base is equipped with 5 berths (including floating dock) capable to receive up to 100 vessels from 1500 to 30,000 DWT. The submarine base shelters all 7 diesel-powered submarines of Russian Black Sea Navy.[citation needed]
But Ukraine hasn't joined NATO and until recently Ukrainian opinion was against it. Of course they very much want to join now, but that is a situation of Putin's own making.
But anyway, I'm confused, because you're saying not only countries but cities should have self-determination, but ALSO Putin gets a veto over Ukrainian policy?
And the same frequencies that were dominant in 2003 are now shutting out the other voices. The Bill Kristols and David Frums are going to awaken from their hibernation.
It's pointless to argue really--there's 0 hope that we'll do anything differently.
To be clear, there are limited options now wrt to Ukraine. Nobody wants to go to war with Russia. But being hardline and not pragmatic means we'll set ourselves up for similar issues in the next few years and decades.
We strung Ukraine along knowing we wouldn't come to their six when it counted. Honesty has to be the preferable approach.
It's not really an easy situation. There were many complications even with states like Greece, Turkey, and (North) Macedonia. I cannot imagine what Poland and the other formerly occupied states would do if Russia were invited.
At the end of the day, NATO was created to counter the USSR. When the USSR collapsed, we had an opening to integrate Russia, and we squandered it. That was the real opportunity.
Would you be willing to risk nuclear armaggeddon for pedantic principles of NATO membership? I’d gladly violate them to literally eliminate a whole host of terrible scenarios once and for all.
George W Bush wasn’t a “dictator” but he and his inner circle got us into the war in Iraq which destroyed huge swaths of the middle east. Perhaps in practice, the US President can wreak just as much if not more havoc than a Russian one?
None. Just invite Russia into NATO. Why not? Pride? Cant sell as many weapons anymore?
I think many war hawks in the West just want to cut Russia down to size, one less “superpower” to worry about. If it is invited into NATO them the whole raison d’etre of NATO kind of disappears: the big bad enemy is only Russia.
It looks to me like Russia has interest in that. Russia has been bringing up its geopolitical security concerns and bright lines consistently for years and no one in NATO cared enough to “appease” them in any lasting way. It called on Ukraine for years to continue talks w the separatists based on the Minsk agreements but they didn’t. What peaceful means does Russia have available to them? They had a referendum in Crimea where no one was killed — seems far more peaceful than USA or China, the other two “superpowers”. What if USA agrees to settle disputes using peaceful means but then, ya know, just goes and bullies people? It is a founding member of NATO.
What should Russia do if Georgia is massacring separatists in Ossetia? (Similar situation to Ukraine.) Just stand by and watch? Should Georgia be inducted into NATO but Russia not?
What should anyone do if Pakistan is massacring separtists in Bangladesh?
Just curious what is the standard really for when a country should intervene.
I have developers in Kharkiv and other areas of southeast Ukraine so I speak to them
They tell me Kiev’s attitude towards the Russian speaking population there. You can ask them yourself. Where do you live?
The situation is exactly as you’d expect … some guerilla fighters shoot rockets and then Kiev shoots back and civilians have to sit in basements… so there is escalation and the local residents feel that Kiev is bombing them… just like in any other separatist situation.
Hardly a “genocide” as Putin characterized it but also not exactly welcomed by Kiev. They say they offered Kiev to be an autonomous region with its own Russian language etc. and not bother anyone but Kiev sends troops.
I just listen, I am trying to piece together what the situation was like on the ground from people who are there.
Yes, that’s what many people want. To just break up the Russian federation, they hate that it’s so big.
Personally, I don’t care too much for imperialism. But we all know how well USA or China would react to secession. USA’s bloodiest was began to “preserve the union”. EU and USSR was actually kind of nice to have a way to let some members secede.
Russia in NATO would by no means "literally eliminate a whole host of terrible scenarios". Putin would still be in power, in fact he'd probably have swallowed up more territory by now using his ability to paralyze NATO, and he'd be no less likely to use nukes than he is today.
I have not seen Russia post-USSR be interested in expanding and swallowing territory. Rather, I have seen them try to hold on to what they have, as more and more republics want to secede. We all know how USA dealt with secession…
I honestly think Russia is motivated only by NATO being a long term geopolitical existential threat. And what it sees as the wresting of its allies by “the West”. Honestly, seeing how nations fare after trusting the USA (eg Kurds) I can’t really blame them for that.
What I do blame them for is sucking at public dialogue and messaging and then lashing out militarily. I blame the USA and others for that last part too. But at least the USA is good at meesaging so people know what we are concerned about.
South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Donetsk, and Luhansk weren't part of Russia post-USSR.
> And what it sees as the wresting of its allies by “the West”. Honestly, seeing how nations fare after trusting the USA (eg Kurds) I can’t really blame them for that.
I think the USA treated the Kurds poorly, but how is that relevant to this? The Baltics were eager to join NATO and are very happy they did. Are you arguing that Russia invaded Ukraine so that they wouldn't join NATO and be treated badly by America in the future?
Honestly I think it’s basically a combination of four things at once:
Separatists overreacting to news of civil war in Odessa and moving to declare independence from Ukraine
Kyiv blowing the separatists out of proportion and sending its army in a protracted siege war against them instead of sitting down based on Minsk agreements
Putin blowing the “fascist Kyiv government genociding Russians” thing out of proportion and sending his army in a blitzkrieg to destroy Ukrainian capabilities instead of sitting down with Zelenskiy’s government at the highest levels
NATO ignoring Russia’s repeated concerns over the years about expansion and surrounding it with the same kind of thing that made JFK ready to go to war during the Cuban missile crisis
Basically on every level, sending an army backfires. Better to just not react with violence and use diplomacy. But seems that cooler heads do NOT prevail
Is that your only example? So the last 30 years Russia didn’t expand and now it finally took over Ukraine temporarily and will probably let them keep their government and stay relatively independent (but demilitarized) proves they love annexing things?
That is like saying Israel took Golan Heights because of its ambitions to expand and take over as much Arab land as it can. Rather than limited strategic control for security guarantees.
Every country wants to have a buffer against enemy troops so they can’t shoot as far into its main population centees. In my opinion this is not going to be a thing in the 21st century but it was a thing all throughout history before.
USA is just “lucky” to be surrounded by two oceans because frankly they managed to either exterminate or ethnically cleanse and demilitarize all the previous inhabitants on the continent through war or disease. Otherwise it would act the same way. (The Monroe doctrine kind of declares the whole hemisphere to be under USA protectorate btw.)
the moment somebody attacks Europe with missiles diplomacy is over. I think we should call out all the Putin apologists in our own ranks and make sure they recuse themselves. Next we need to hit them where it hurts. Not with "a strongly worded letter" or "a frown" as we usually do in the EU but right in their money. Let's make it impossible for Russians to visit their money in Cyprus, Malta or London. Make it impossible for Russian oligarchs to strut around European capitals flashing their dirty money, anchor their yachts in the Mediterranean, or spend winters in the Swiss Alps.
Also anyone calling for diplomacy, while Russia is bombing civilian infrastructure in Europe, should have their ass handed to them and be called out for what they are: at best useful idiots, at worst propagandists.
This includes whataboutist statements like:
> a la the 2003 WMD hysteria
What we see right now is exactly the opposite. It's the effect of that fallout when we listened to the IC too much and realized the damage it caused to our credibility & foreign affairs.
What we _actually_ have now is the effect of what happens when we ignore the warnings of the IC for a whole year, a bit like the late 98/99 when we should have known that 9/11 was coming.
None of this is a surprise for anyone who has half-assedly been following Russian politics in the past 2 years, the murdering of journalists, the disappearance of an opposition media, the attempted murder and imprisonment of Navalny, the assassination attempts on people in UK and Europe.
In fact if you're Russian and not waiving an UA flag and a sign opposing these actions outside a RU embassy right now you should also be considered sus.
Of course. First, we should not underestimate a terrible financial situation, and a feeling of injustice after losing the war and being forced to pay enormous retributions that were draining the economy. So it was natural than a new strong leader was needed that would unite the nation against a common enemy and finally launch a military operation.
It's a video from 2015, Ukraine has been in a war since then. I would say it's not relevant that much now. A lot of people reconsidered their relation to Russia.
I'm Ukrainian. I lived in Kiev, Dnipro, Odessa and Kharkiv.
On 14 September 2020, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy approved Ukraine's new National Security Strategy, "which provides for the development of the distinctive partnership with NATO with the aim of membership in NATO." On 24 March 2021, Zelenskyy signed the Decree No. 117/2021 approving the "strategy of de-occupation and reintegration of the temporarily occupied territory of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol."
Zelenskyy can think a lot of things, doesn't have to be true. Most recent example was him thinking that diplomacy would prevail and Russian wouldn't invade, and we all see how that turned out. As for reasons why it wouldn't happen, Ukraine joining NATO goes against German energy interests, and joining NATO requires you to not be in any conflicts, which Ukraine has been in with Russia since 2014 on the eastern border.
This whole thing stated as a result of talks of NATO expansion to Ukraine and Georgia in 2008, when the US military industry was looking to find ways to start new wars.
NATO expansion was not driven by NATO's 21st century power aspirations, but rather driven by Baltic nations that suffered tremendously under Soviet rule. No one in Eastern Europe seriously believes Russia is only aggressive and bellicose due to Putin. It has a long and sordid history of abuse dating back at least a century. So it makes sense that Poland is terrified, along with Romania, Latvia, Estonia, etc.
It's a very "US-centric" video, and the comparison to the Monroe Doctine is imo a false equivalency. Russia is not even the Soviet Union, let alone the US. Russia isn't a match militarily to NATO, and it's not even a match economically to the EU. It has nukes and oil, so it's a thug and a bully. If it was any other nation, it would be wiped off the face of the planet.
The 90s born generation like myself, mostly see Russia as neutral, from the neutral-positive way we saw them in the 90s, when we were still relying heavily on their bootleg electronics.
Romania joined NATO way back as it saw it as a way to get closer to the west and ultimately into EU. Not because of Russia but because the bad state of the local economy (and associated poverty) lead by incompetent, post revolution, ex-communist party, people. That couldn't be improved without outside investment, guidance, and trade partners.
> The 90s born generation like myself, mostly see Russia as neutral
Yeah, people who didn't live through the cold war and didn't suffer aggression or witness it being used against a nearby country are prone to being blue-eyed in that way.
I guarantee that a lot of the 90s kids are now having second thoughts and start to think more like the older population.
FWIW, as a Polish twenty-something, I rather expected Russia to mellow out as it becomes more democratic over time. As of approximately the time of the Crimean invasion, that opinion has shifted a great deal.
It should have, but the west still kept NATO. They could have simply been more diplomatic with Russia when it was at its weakest in the 90's after the fall of the Soviet Union, but the cynicism was still there
No doubt Russia wasn't treated how it should have been, post Cold War. But staying that's a justification of their behaviour is like saying that Germany was justified in their 1930s behaviour just because it was mistreated post WW 1.
Overall, I'm happy that Poland is a NATO member. At least it adds another deterrent (or failing that, a speed bump) in the way of a Russian invasion. Were NATO not to exist, and Russia to re-awaken it's conqueror instincts at some point, we'd be screwed yet again.
I don't think the Romanian population of the 80s cared about the cold war. In a time when leader worship propaganda was at its peak (thanks North Korea for inspiring Ceausescu), food scarcity, decaying state services/infrastructure, and dissent suppression in full force.
> or witness it being used against a nearby country are prone to being blue-eyed in that way.
I agree, awareness and proximity to direct effects give you a different perspective.
Based on my experience, I can tell you that those 90s kids are having second thoughts on the EU&West this time around. Might be Russian propaganda derived, but EU skepticism is on the rise in that same age group, especially for those that live in the country.
> those 90s kids are having second thoughts on the EU&West
Only the ones unable to succeed in modern times. Which is a quite incredible feat considering the astonishing wealth of opportunities the EU opening offered the Eastern Block.
How can you not succeed when you can move and work anywhere in the EU?! The only way I know is by being a child of ex-communist politicians, a child of Nomenklatura parents. The pain they feel is quite like the nostalgy Putin feels when remembering good old Soviet Union.
I take issue with the word "Russophobia". There is no reason to think that fearing Russia(n government's actions) is irrational, given its track record.
> Romania isn't terrified of Russia. Russophobia is a relatively recent fear in the general population caused by years of media propaganda.
Absolutely not true[1]. Soviet Russian-Romanian friction dates as back as early as the 70s, and let's not even talk about WW2. Soviets raping and pillaging Transylvania is well documented.
And you're forgetting the whole Bessarabia thing - Russia forced Romania to cede Bessarabia, them had to return it, then the Soviets did the same, and after the Soviet Union fell leftover Russians separated and blocked any discussion on the resulting country of Moldova from trying to merge back into Romania ( not saying everyone wants this, but Transistria blocked even the possibility of that).
Romania had friction with many states for many reasons. I'm sure there was raping and pillaging during war in Romania, by the Russian army, just like I hear about rape happening in all wars. My grandparents stories around WW2 depicted Russia in a good light, thus experience might vary.
Where we were taught to have beef with Russia, was on the large amount of gold/valuables we shipped there during WW2 for "safe keeping" and which were never returned back to us.
The 90s romanian propaganda was against the west in general, and Hungary in particular. You see, even if Hungarians were the first to bring large convoys of humanitarian help in our country after our revolution, the politicians made sure to make Hungary a boogeyman that is trying to steal Transylvania from us and support separatist movement in majority ethnic hungarian regions.
It's not a black and white kind of thing, and it seems that trade relationships also shape up the perception of those trading partners.
Don't get me wrong, people's perception of Putin and his actions are mostly negative (we have our fair share of people that cling to the extremes).
Maybe go and have a chat with your grandparents of what life was like as a vassal state of the Russians, the Ceaușescu years are something that Romania is effectively still recovering from.
You tell me what life was like as a vassal state of Russia.
Opinion on life during communism is very much a mixed bag. Depends who you ask. I don't know why people keep painting Romanian communism as a black&white kind of issue.
> Opinion on life during communism is very much a mixed bag. Depends who you ask. I don't know why people keep painting Romanian communism as a black&white kind of issue.
Unless you were in the Communist Party, everyone hated the Ceausescu regime and it's absolutely NOT a mixed bag. I was born in 86, my sister in 90, and both of my parents fought in the Romanian revolution in Timisoara. I still remember yelling "Jos cu Ceausescu" and my parents telling me to be quiet; I also remember having to hide in our tiny apartment, and bullets flying outside; I was around 4 or 5.
We're Christian, and my dad was interrogated by the Romanian Communist Secret Police many times (he was trafficking Bibles), and was also threatened with my murder and my (at the time pregnant) mom's murder.
Putin is an extension of that same old Communist cancer that the Russian people need to excise. I have dual citizenship, and if the Russians stepped foot on Romanian soil, I would gladly pick up arms.
And stop with the revisionist garbage, people literally died.
I think you're not taking into account certain kind of citizens. Those that are just happy to live their life, not to maximize individual freedom and liberty, but to have security and a close family relationships.
During communism they had the safety of a job, and housing. The basic premise of a living condition. Just like some might one day hope adoption of something like UBI could do.
Now we have village life slowly "going extinct". Back then you could continue to live in villages because of mandatory cooperatives, there was always work available. There was stability.
When communism fell, those citizens were left to their own devices. It gave them maximal individual freedom, but no the same state-level safety nets.
The population that just wants to live their family life regardless of politics, and those that lost their safety is reflective in voting preference, and also in the low parliamentary vote turnout (31.02% of voters).
I was born in the late 80s like you, but we're still 90s kids. My father had his own run-ins with the state security police, and everyone was happy for the fell of communism for a very brief moment of time. Maybe you were well of in the 90s but most of the population really struggled with economical change and poverty. It was less about communism-era scarcity and more about the month to month livelihood.
Instead of just stating things unilaterally in a certain light, I would ask you to allow yourself the time to listen to the ordinary people that are living worse of now than during communism.
This mixed feeling about the fall of communism is very well illustrated in Recorder's documentary (30 years of democracy). Documentary that also touches upon my original point where Romania joined NATO with the ultimate goal of joining EU due to disastrous economy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUbN6DXJwFg (english subs are also available for anyone else interested)
Respect to your parents actively fighting during the revolution.
Communism in civilised countries results in their criminalisation and collapse of the rule of law. To such an extent that even long after the communists are gone, the state of criminalisation persists. A poor undeveloped state like
Pakistan or India may also not have much by the way of rule of law, but at least the rulers don’t have the sophisticated bureaucratic tools in place to enact widespread oppression of people either. Some anarchy is desirable when most of your leaders are selfish despots.
Imagine your friends informing on you to the secret police either because of ideological reasons, or simply because they want to get ahead in life and you're a convenient stepping stone.
Imagine empty stores.
Imagine family members taken in for 'questioning' never to be heard from again.
Imagine winters without fuel.
And so on...
Really, the life in the countries that were plundered to power the failing economy of the USSR was pretty harsh, especially if you were smart and not part of the party.
FWIW I love Romania, have lived in Bucharest for two years and have friends and family there. Enjoy your freedom, it was paid for in blood.
Professor Mearsheimer's arguments here don't make any sense once you put an ounce of thought into them.
The idea that Putin is invading to counter a possible extension of NATO into Ukraine is beyond silly. NATO members have been directly bordering Russia through the Baltics for almost two decades at this point.
And any observer can see that there is zero interest in any sort of NATO aggression against Russia.
The only threat to Putin is internally, either too many Russians thinking he is weak (causing Putin to invade other countries to maintain a mirage of strength) or too many Russians seeing successful neighboring democracies.
This is exactly it. Putin and most Russians consider Ukrainians to be Russians (and in particular, lower class Russians they can step on). If Ukraine is allowed to increase trade with the EU, which will lead to lessening corruption and potentially eventually joining the EU, its economy will develop quickly, and Russians will start to ask why the same can't happen for them. This is bad for Putin, who relies on corruption. Putin will keep them in poverty to make Russia the best place for Russians by comparison.
Mearsheimer is kidding himself if he believes an unaligned Ukraine (remember, Ukraine is unaligned right now, and several NATO member states are on the record unambiguously opposing Ukrainian membership, which requires unanimous approval) would be allowed to prosper. Any NATO justification for Putin's actions holds no water. Pretetending that the goal is to demilitarize Ukraine as Putin is doing now is also nonsense because Ukraine's military was never threatening Russia. Putin doesn't care if his puppet government lasts or not as long as Ukraine remains poor.
What surprised me about this video,
was that it popped up as a youtube-recommendation,
on an unrelated video, – and I hadn't viewed / showed
any kind of interest in the Ukraine at all there.
This just shows you have bad listening skills. No one in their right mind would justify Russian aggression right now. I can’t even imagine Russians would given the possibility that they have to live in a country that will be isolated from the rest of the world. But Americans and EU ‘s incapability to analyse their own mistakes is pathological and hopeless.
That's why you can't have a reasonable conversation about this topic. If you dare bring forth an alternative view, or just a different view, which doesn't align with US/Western interests, you immediately get called a "Putin apologist" without the need to even prove wrong any evidence you provided.
So now I ask, can you provide any evidence that prof. Mearsheimer has ties with Russia/Putin that influence his opinions?
That is the joke here. People pointing fingers at Russia for not being a democratic country with free speech and for censoring the media. But here we are, nobody is censoring us. And yet we cannot tolerate somebody with an alternative view (or even just somebody who shows a mere openness for alternative views).
I have always wondered- how exactly getting rid of Putin help us? More specifically, what is the guarantee that thwart they will be replacing with will not be ISIS or Taliban? Frankly after Iraq US has lost all credibility, the track record of replacing the status quo with “western style democracy” for all intents and purposes have proven disastrous for the local people and the US.
It's not a guarantee that the new one will be better - it's the guarantee that the new one will be not the old one :) . As an example, Boris Yeltsin was a different kind of a leader.
Of course, the idea is to prevent people from the same circle - with similar or worse ideas - to have the power. Robustly that's to be solved by the people of the country - who apparently suffer from lack of learning on the previous mistakes. Also, getting best solution takes longer time... to the initial results.
Are you seriously bringing up education of girls wrt to Afghanistan? It was an excuse to appease some Europeans to stay longer ( specifically the Dutch ).
No leader or country will ever start a war because of some diversity concerns.
The bigger point is that life for everyday Afghanis was better under the American occupation than it is now. (Partly because the Taliban can't feed them.) Too bad the warlords didn't agree.
Afghanis are starving now and Afghan girls can't go to school. (Yes, the Taliban are saying girls will be able to go to school again in March. We shall see.) Western allies spend huge amounts of money building roads and other infrastructure in Afghanistan, much of which the Taliban destroyed. Do you need links? Because you can probably google it as well as I can.
You can't, on the one hand, claim that the Western allies were a malign influence in Afghanistan and also claim that Western aid is the only thing that can keep Afghans from starvation.
It's called having an objective view. The large part of the reason for the mess is the existence of NATO is post-Soviet world. What Mearsheimer basically is saying is Putin's motivations - you don't necessarily have to be an apologist to explain that
> As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever-renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other.
Wow. Powerful.
Ukraine, keep fighting. You are fighting for the ascendency of justice over injustice in the affairs of mankind.
Thats why we left them without any real support, the west could have given them real antiair systems at least - a couple batteries of patriots would have made a world of difference. Or at least support them with a fat bank account. We had 8 years.
If ukraine falls, border with russia will be our headache, and it will cost more than helping ukraine would.
So you're worried about Russia (already a strong ally of China) will ally with China? You're worried that Russia (having spent the last decade trying to decouple itself from the dollar) will try and decouple itself from the dollar?
Russia is marauding about Ukraine and people are arguing against doing the bare minimum because they're worried Russia will change payment systems. Russia has already built their own alternative to SWIFT and will eventually switch to it regardless.
Russia is embarking on a war of territorial aggression against its weaker neighbour in an effort to establish its own regional hegemony (see: Eurasian Economic Union and Commonwealth of Independent States). But no, you’re right, the real injustice here is locking Russia out of SWIFT.
You don't have to worry about that. They have been reducing their reliance on USD for everything over the past couple of years[1][2]. The West has been asleep and drunk on its ignorance for a while now.
China has been selling services to Iran for oil for years now. Instead of actually paying for it in currency.
You can only threaten sanctions so many times when the other side is a world power. Trumps America showed that the US a bit of a toothless tiger when they didn't retaliate after Iran shot rockets at their Iraq military base.
The US assassinated a key Iranian leader, while Iran did property damage to an empty US military base in order to save face. It sure looks like we got the better end of that deal.
Trump assassinated basically Iran’s Vice President and they “retaliated” with a missile attack on a US base. That didn’t kill any soldiers. If anything it showed that Iran was powerless in the face of US aggression.
Trump had a top Iranian general missiled. And Iran sat there and took it with laudable stoicism because they aren't stupid and could see they had nothing to do. America was anything but toothless in those years and Iran wasn't about to call any bluffs.
And funny you should bring up Iraq in these troubled times, because I think the recent conflict Russia->Ukraine is most comparable to - outside of Russia->Other Neighbours - is US->Iraq. Assuming the situation calms down rather than escalating.
I think US/Iraq is not a good analogy. The USA got rid of a really bad dictator and the majority of Iraqs were happy about that --- but social divisions crippled the aftermath. OTOH Ukraine has a democratically elected government and is pretty unified against Russia right now.
Partner? No, they don't have equal weight. Russia is economically and technologically insignificant in global sense. Russia would become China's puppet and the speed of China's economic and demographic takeover of Russia's Far East would only increase.
China would have to decide whether to risk their relationships with the rest of the world though. Russia's economy isn't that strong, so it wouldn't really be a big financial benefit compared to, say, all of Europe and the US.
What might be a compelling argument is that China gets a lot more influence in Russia, e.g. the space to move in there and exploit Russia's natural resources. But they need to make the tradeoff whether that's worth it.
China may get sanctioned, taxed, and generally lose reputation if they help Russia mitigate the effects of international sanctions.
If the US cuts off Russia from SWIFT, Putin has stated that it would mean war. I'm no military expert but my older brother who's an officer told me that he worries that Russia would immediately start cutting undersea cables that carry data across the Atlantic Ocean and basically cut off the US from Europe. That would cause billions of dollars worth of damage to Western economies every single day.
SWIFT doesn't mean much. Bank transactions can be done by other means, which happened recently. It's speed and convenience, but not qualitative difference.
I think you mean SEPA (Single Euro Payments Area) not IBAN (IBAN is an account number - International Bank Account Number, also used in SWIFT transfers)
I was contesting the definition of NATO being a "purely defensive alliance", as is often described also here on HN. For example, NATO intervention in Serbia can hardly considered defensive.
But it wasn't a NATO intervention. NATO nations had the choice of not participating. The default action was to not participate. NATO is a defensive alliance; not an offensive alliance.
Please tell me how I should take your comment seriously. Every reliable source in the world agrees on defining it a "NATO intervention". This is not even debatable and it is exactly the kind of behaviour that would get one instantly labeled as a "Russian propagandist" if one were to make similar (non-sensical) claims regarding Russia actions (and in this case rightly so).
I completely disagree. If sovereign nation A invades sovereign nation B, while under no threat from sovereign nation B, that by itself is enough to qualify as offensive IMO. You could argue (and I'd maybe agree) that it's a justified offensive action, maybe even morally necessary, but it's not defensive.
The claim that NATO cannot attack Russia is often justified by the fact that "NATO is a defensive alliance". Previous events show that actions by NATO in the recent past do not reflect this definition, so this line of reasoning is invalid.
The other line of reasoning on why NATO would not attack Russia is that it would trigger MAD. And while this is a really sad state of affairs, I believe this to be more credible rather than lies about NATO being "purely defensive".
Article 5 requires all NATO members to defend if one nation is attacked. It doesn't obligate any NATO member to participate if one NATO nation decides to fight an optional war (like in Iraq). Thus the structure of the alliance is defensive even if the members themselves don't always act defensively.
Or he does, but he considers it understood that the logic of mutually assured destruction rules out "pre-emptive strikes" on nuclear nations like Russia.
And if you realize this, it doesn't make sense to view NATO's expansion in Eastern Europe as "creeping closer, preparing for an attack on Russia", as Putin seems to see it, but rather it is happening because existing NATO countries want to afford peace of mind that they are safe from Russian aggression to those European countries that most need it, namely Russia's neighbors.
Putin doesn't realize this because he's paranoid - and by acting on his paranoia he has precisely proven that his neighbors need the guarantee that NATO affords.
Yeah this part disappointed me too, as NATO done things in the past that I struggle to explain as "purely defense" (eg Serbia, Libya). I still think the article holds true, but I think the author should've been more nuanced here because Putin apologists are going to use this mistake to undermine the whole article.
Question: war comes down to us vs them. Even the most racist, xenophobic Canadian will consider Ukraine to be "us". But Canada houses 1 million people who have Ukrainian roots and many of those have been here long enough that they are considered "Canadian". A good analogy would be the Italians in the US. At one time they weren't considered real Americans, but that time is long past.
Yet xenophobic Canadians would not consider Georgia or Moldova or Chechnya to be on our team.
Is this a uniquely Canadian thing, or would it be common to the rest of the West?
Not an expert, but I think the real motivation is intolerance of anything looking like a democracy adjacent to Russia.
If Ukraine can develop a functioning economy in communication with the West, and a functioning government more or less accountable to the electorate, that is a huge embarrassment for Putin's regime. The Russian economy is basically oil and gas extraction, the Russian polity is basically "support Putin or go to jail". If Ukraine were to begin to prosper in other activities, and well they might given decent governance, the Russian model would be exposed as an authoritarian sham.
Additionally, Putin gains politically by Great Power rhetoric. We are simply protecting our interests, everyone is against us, we must be strong and united! It's nonsense, no one in the West gives a damn what happens within Russian borders so long as they don't bother anyone else, but it unites the country behind Putin.
The Putin regime is a nasty mix of oligarchy, corruption, propaganda, media control and intelligence and police services. It's sadly enabled by modern information technology, which can be used for ill as well as good. The Chinese Communist Party is a similar contraption. The question is, how long can regimes like this perpetuate themselves? It would be great if these ugly contrivance were contained within their own borders, but current events show us they are everyone's problem.
It isn't for us to tell the Russians, or the Chinese, how to govern themselves. But we shouldn't be enabling these regimes by our trade or technology. The hope that trade and communication would make them more democratic and accountable and law-abiding has been tried, and failed. If anything, those connections are making us less democratic, as we see Chinese censorship filtering into American entertainment and marketing. It's time to decouple from these countries. Economically that's very painful, but over the long term it is much less painful than feeding these cancers.
I think the article was pretty well-informed and sourced analysis. Yes, as you point out, NATO has undertaken offensive campaigns. I think the author made a mistake of saying "alliance" here when they meant to say "treaty".
AFAIK, none of the NATO articles were invoked as part of the operation in Yugoslavia. That is to say, though it was a NATO operation, members were not bound by treaty to participate.
This fact muddles some of the points the author made, but the author speaks broadly of the ramifications of invoking Article 5, so I would say their analysis is well-reasoned.
Let’s make an agreement called YCTO - such that I promise if someone attacks you in comments, I will defend you by attacking your aggressor, and if someone attacks me in comments, you’ll do the same.
… that agreement is purely defensive.
If you and I see some vile rhetoric that is directed at someone else, we can both decide to attack it, even though it’s arguable our actions are offensive.
That action is independent and not bound by the YCTO.
We just both agree, independent of the YCTO, to act.
It’s a function of like-minded values that made the decision.
German here. I am fairly pro-US. Had a discussion yesterday with my neighbor. He argues that Russia invading Ukraine (and putting a pro-Russian government in its place), it is the same as USA invading Iraq. In his view, both of these invasions where motivated by own interests: Russia is motivated by their own interest to unite old Soviet Union again and USA was motivated to secure their resource interests (oil). How do you defend against this?
I argued that both conflicts cannot be compared. USA was reactive (against the threat of 9-11), whereas Russia is proactive, invading an independent country with shallow arguments (Nato is a defense alliance that would never invade Russia, yet Putin calls Nato a threat).
Mostly it's a belief of the propaganda of Russian supporters (there's a few here too). Here's how to spot them.
The strongest argument they can make is one based on the hypocrisy of the west. (But there is a lot of truth there that's why it's strong and they use it)
It boils down to "they did it, so we should too".
It doesn't have any morality and say it's good or has any claim to noble acts. There's no positive arguments in support only negative against their enemies.
The west has the freedom mythos for people outside to believe in. Russia only had an internal facing fatherland idea. Russia does not appeal to freedom for all in its propaganda, indeed they will attack the idea of freedom as false through examples of western hypocrisy.
It's also defended, for example, by the claim that the entire world except Russia, is lying via media, corporations etc.
If you think that USA's invasion of Iraq was reactive, then go read up about the thinktank "Project for the New American Century", and compare their goals and their list of members against that of the GWB administration.
This may look like a made-up conspiracy theory, but everything was public, in the open on their official web site at the time (link at the bottom to copy on archive.org).
(Oh boy, am I going to get downvoted for this ...)
The worst thing about the US invasion of Iraq is the civilian casualties of the war, occupation and political instability that followed. But the 2nd worst thing about the US invasion of Iraq is that it is indefensible. This weakens the US position on other conflicts, where the US position is just.
Anyway, any German that is in favor of the Russian border moving closer to Germany is an idiot, and possibly too stupid and ignorant to be helped.
I basically agree, except the US invasion of Iraq is far more defensible than the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The USA got rid of a really bad dictator in Iraq. Ukraine's government was democratically elected and much better.
The USA did not annex Iraq (directly or by proxy), take Iraq's oil or establish permanent military bases in Iraq. Putin has explicitly said he sees Ukraine as part of a new Russian empire.
Let's assume the US had better intentions toward Iraq than Putin has towards Ukraine. But the people of Iraq are not thankful for the results of the US invasion. It did not bring peace and prosperity to Iraq.
They are both imperialist moves, and I do think they are comparable, so there's no need to sugarcoat it. But there's empires and empires: I'd much rather live in a US democracy rather than a Russian dictatorship.
Also, you can't really compare Saddam to Zelenskyy.
I don't think there's a need to defend against it. You can acknowledge that the US has done some fucked up shit. The invasion of Iraq was, as far as I understand it, based on outright lies from the Bush administration about evidence of nuclear weapons in Iraq. Just say, yeah, the invasion of Iraq was fucked up. This invasion of Ukraine is also fucked up. We should condemn both.
There are probably nuanced arguments to be made about which is worse. You could maybe argue that attacking a NATO-aligned country is more dangerous for world peace than attacking Iraq was (at least from a western perspective). You could point to the fact that there's no reason to believe Putin will stop after Ukraine if that attack goes well; his "excuse" for invading Ukraine applies to most former Soviet countries. But you don't have to defend US invasions, you can accept that at least some US invasions are bad even if you generally prefer US hegemony to Russian or Chinese hegemony (which I also do, FWIW).
That is pretty good summary of the sentiment of most people (US and Europe) and I cannot say my sentiments are very far off from this (we speak about high level outlook, not the details of war crimes perpetrated in Iraq, and elsewhere under US aggressive wars).
However, objectively, one cannot with the same breath claim and act as if there are no other world views and values and interests (China, Russia, Middle East, etc), which is dismissed apriori or even vilified.
I wonder whether my own leanings are not just a results of the easy life (materially) which is an end result of wealth extraction by US and EU from the poorer countries (assured by policies of economic or military). When I talk to friends from the Middle East or Africa who live or lived on the other side which is used to extract wealth for the west, have very different opinion/view. One might be surprised to learn what ME average person think about a westerner (as an abstraction).
In summary, living under hegemony in prosperity (and a future assurance of it) it is easy position to defend and take security in it (and its values). However, being or living on the other side of this equation one is confronted with different view.
Kenya's representative to the UN made a very strong statement against Russia invading Ukraine.
Non-Western non-superpowers are no more excited about being kicked around by Russia and China than Western ones. Western hegemony hasn't been all good for them, but it beats the amoral free-for-all that self-loathing Westerners wish for.
It is important to remember that there were two Iraq wars, that the first was aiming at the wrong party (Iraq had no hand in 9/11), and that the second was based on either faulty or fabricated intelligence.
Thanks, yes, this seems like a good stance. I am pro-US because I believe in the values communicated - these values apply globally, if you want to believe in it (and I want), even if you're not US citizen. I don't see any values for outsiders in Russia's system.
> He argues that Russia invading Ukraine (and putting a pro-Russian government in its place), it is the same as USA invading Iraq.
Typical Putinist deflection. Watch some talk shows on Russian TV involving him from the past decade. Whenever people question or criticize his actions, he does not answer and instead start raving on about the US this and the west that. Even if the action has nothing to do with the US or the west. It's a simple tactic to try move focus from whatever he's doing to whatever evil he thinks the west has done. He's always doing everything to paint the west in bad light; he wants people to think the west is evil, and in doing so, he's supposed to get a free pass.
I used to watch (English) Russian propaganda channels on youtube. They're all full of this. Obviously a lot of people buy it.
The reality is that whether the war in Iraq was justified or not is a completely separate discussion, and the US going to war with Iraq (whether justified or not) is not a justification for Russia going to war with Ukraine.
You can draw parallels, but that is no justification. And vague "self-interests" is no justification. Anyone who thinks USA waged war for oil is probably also condemning that war.
For another example of self-interest, Finland (together with Nazi Germany) attacked the Soviets in Continuation War in order to regain lost territory and to annex East Karelia. You can argue that's self-interest but it does not justify invasion, and I think most people condemn that offensive.
> The reality is that whether the war in Iraq was justified or not is a completely separate discussion, and the US going to war with Iraq (whether justified or not) is not a justification for Russia going to war with Ukraine.
This. If all we do is justify our current actions with the past, then every country can find some historic argument for invading another country. So yes, US in Iraq means nothing for Russia attacking Ukraine, it is a red herring by Putin propaganda. It is just hard or impossible to convince those who believe in it.
> Objectively speaking, it's justified from Russia's point of view
That is such absurd wording. It almost sounds like you're trying to make an argument but you aren't really.
You can always put it like that. "I see Russia as a security concern. Objectively speaking from my point of view Russia is a threat and we should pre-emptively nuke Moscow. It's justified from my point of view."
You can ask how effective the US's invasion was; they spent two TRILLION in various wars in the middle east, I don't believe for a second the oil was worth it, and (from a distant armchair observation) the US had no lasting effects in their favor in the middle east; they've instead made a generation of people growing up under the Americans pissed off. To the point where I wouldn't be surprised if Russia makes a move south again.
I saw this on reddit too, it is true that a lot of main countries lied their ways into wars in the past. Here were my few points:
Hussein was actually a dictator (zelensky is .. so far .. not)
US underlying reason was more access to oil than increasing territory, it stays at the economical layer.
US freedom narrative was easier to swallow than Putin's (less poisoning of opponents, less nuclear threats)
Russia feels more corrupted and dictatorial than US ? (a bit like the point above)
Hard to get any objective evaluations, but yes - anyone who would argue against your points is too far in for conspiracy theories to argue with at all.
They were both part of a larger struggle between democracy, human rights and the like and murderous dictatorships. The US wanted to overthrow the murderous dictator in Iraq and bring democracy, even if that didn't go totally smoothly. Putin wants to overthrow democracy in Ukraine and install an extension of his own murderous dictatorship. So they have similarities though as a human rights fan I think one was more well intentioned.
Even if that _was_ true: From your neighbor's point of view, why can't the USA and Russia both be "the bad guys"? This argument can in no way be used to justify Putin's actions. And it's bullshit, but I wouldn't discuss this with an anti-american person.
So killing Russians for 8 years by openly Neo-nazi forces is pro-active. Glad to know it. 15000 civilians have already died in the conflict. I condemn that Putin has supported Donbass military ambitions because for me speaking Ukrainian is better than being dead and shelled every day. But if we consider culture of significance, the argument is not shallow.
I also condemn him for not doing it earlier because this indecisiveness has been the main cause of people deaths. You either go to war or don't.
The whole fighting Neo-nazis argument seems false when they are currently using it to overthow a democratically elected jewish former comedian.
Also some documentary makers went to interview the oppressed russian speaking 'freedom fighters' in Donbass and the main guy was a Russian coronel from Moscow who theoretically had quit the Moscow millitary before becoming a 'rebel' but seemed still pretty much loyal to and funded by Moscow.
I am not sure if the civillians that get currently killed by Putin's invasion would agree to your Neo-nazi argument. How can killing other civilians rectify the killing of another 15000 civilians (if your number is to be believed)?
Another what-if option that I wish had been discussed here: What if the EU had placed a peacekeeping force in white uniforms in Ukraine? (in theory a week ago, but that might just have prompted an even faster Russian attack, so it probably needed to have been done last year).
I realize that many EU countries are also NATO countries. But still, if it was done under an EU banner, and the soldiers were not there to fight Russians, but to act as a neutral peacekeeping force. I know many of us did not expect Putin to be crazy enough to launch a full scale invasion, but is he also crazy enough that he would have attacked an EU peacekeeping force?
I realize that it's way too late to do anything about this - going in now would be seen as an attack - but still, knowing what we know now, what would have been the best possible way to try to prevent this? It might also inform what to do later, if after the dust has settled, there is still a democratic Ukraine to help.
The EU doesn't have a military or any mandate to put one together under an EU flag. Probably it will happen eventually, but previous attempts to establish one have been rebuffed by the citizens of smaller countries with a policy of neutrality, who still get a veto on questions like this.
Maybe there could have been a combined French/German (or whatever EU countries you'd like...I imagine there'd be no shortage of volunteers in the Baltic) peacekeeping force.
I mean, a UN peacekeeping force would have worked too. A neutral banner instead of NATO, that Putin sees as a direct threat. We don't even need the force to be able to actually fight off a Russian invasion, we just need them to be there to force Russia to declare war on everyone in order to be able invade.
Thought this too. And I believe that without the recent years dissolution of EU (brexit, nationalist tensions) there may have been a EU protection force in place to do what you described. But countries are slow (covid didn't help) and unprepared. And actually I hold the belief that what is gonna happen from EU this week will influence this episode a lot. No clear answer => decades of tensions and problems, clear answer => shutting the lid on the fire.
Send in people, give them Ukrainian passports, deny everything. Not only Russia can perform false flag operations, deny responsibility and not get flak.
(The only problem being sidestepped above is that when there is a madman with nukes there is no semblance of fairness and all bets are off.)
What should they peacekeep? The Russians are not butchering civilians, their goal is to demilitarize the country and replace the government. There will be no attack on peaceful civilians, hopefully. Civil unrest will be solved the way how Russia is solving that. But that could NEVER be prevented by peacekeepers.
Imagine China would send peacekeepers to Canada to peacekeep the policing against the truckers.
And how would peacekeeping ground troops help exactly against very sad and bad such civilian accidents? The Russians are not fucking dumb to kill civilians in purpose.
The causalities you mention are happening due to accidents or sad and bad collateral damage.
His answer to "why is the war happening" is "Putin wanted it to." I won't claim to have greater insight but can't help but think that if this is the best we can do to explain Putin's actions, it's no wonder things have devolved this far.
The analysis of how the war could have been avoided also seems lacking, in the sense that sure, there was probably nothing that could realistically have been done in the last few months. But the post itself says: "the conditions which would have resulted in a Russian invasion of Ukraine were likely decided on weeks or months ago." What could have been done differently in the last few years, even decades? I find the implied answer of "nothing" suspect.
Welcome to dictatorship 101. This is exactly how it goes in countries like that, there may be some showpiece meeting or even legislation but in practice the ruler determines what happens next.
Dictators are people, they have goals and motivations and fears like anyone else. Imo saying it was an unavoidable act of Putin's madness is a cop-out. There's nothing for international relations to learn from this situation? I sure hope that's not the case, Putin won't be the last dictator with military power in human history.
Unfortunately, dictators trend to paranoid and have a habit of murdering any remotely plausible opposition. And they have a coterie of yes men/enablers around them.
If not for that no dictator would ever live longer then 30 minutes.
For a long time, I really thought Putin to be a smart man with motives beyond his own gain. That he really tries to make Russia better and works for the common person.
But after he renounced Ukraine's status as country and after I saw that many people protest in Russia and even part of his army is abandoning him, I'm not so sure anymore.
They were sent to Ukraine under false pretenses to gather information, later they found out a invasion was starting and they didn't want to attack Ukrainen people.
That's good - I was wondering if we were going to see some of that, or them just being half hearted and camping out more than fighting. I get the impression most Russians are not very keen on this venture.
This might be a weird question, but if you are American, do you think Biden is a smart man with motives beyond his own gain? Does he really try to make USA better and works for the common person?
I'm not the person you asked, but: I think Biden is in a very different situation to Putin. I think Putin's personality and personal intelligence and rationality is much more important than Biden's, since Putin personally has a whole lot more power. Putin is the dictator of a country; Biden is an elected figure head who's mostly beholden to the US's (relatively) strong institutions. As such, I think the US's actions are largely driven by somewhat rational self-interest, while Russia's actions are much more beholden to Putin personally.
Note: The US's interests are not necessarily aligned with the interest of the people in the US. Also, note: I don't necessarily think this applies to Trump; I think it applies to Biden because he probably largely plays along with the institutions which exist to preserve the US's interests, while Trump didn't.
I'm not educated on the matter, all this might be wrong. I'm just some guy on the internet who pays some attention to politics. I'm also not American, I look at both the US and Russia from the outside.
> First, Putin is likely to carry this war to its conclusion. The reputational cost of turning back now, with blood already shed, would be catastrophic. Putin’s only way out is through, unfortunately.
I don't totally agree, Putin called this a "special operation": this is vague enough so he can claim "mission accomplished" cherry picking any "war accomplishment" he wants. To people claiming he failed his invasion, he can just say "you called it an invasion, it was never an invasion, I said it wasn't an invasion from the beginning."
He can also easily lie, Trump style, manufacture facts etc. Doesn't have much of restraints. And that's in the case he wants to talk to you at all - usually that's reserved for political appearances for the people, via TV.
Putin turning back now, saying "actually I never intended to take Kiev", would be a clear admission of defeat. Everyone outside Russia would understand that, which matters because fear of Russia is an important goal for him.
It is quite simple and dont require a long winded blog article: war is required so putin stay in power.
He is out of moves. Putin is old but can not retire - he will lose power and will be jailed or executed for his crimes. Only one move left have a war that will keep him in control, and have population distracted. - that’s why he is so unreasonable in negotiations and ready to throw Russia’s economy under the sanctions bus. There’s no deal he will accept because any deal would mean end of war.
Likely this happens next: russians priority number 1 is to change government. They will either capture Zelensky or he will be able to escape and hide. They install puppet government. But all Ukrainians furiously hate everything about this situation. Unlike Russia where population is divided into police and brainwashed mass, in Ukraine he can not recruit police enforcers from population. So the army will stay to control the population. Indefinitely, that is until putin dies. That’s his goal right there.
If this is the goal/expected outcome, this would support the stories that this is the FSB's war and not the army's, as this sounds like an impossible task.
Infosperber is an independent Swiss online news platform where I can read about strange things (in German). To be clear, I don't know whether the things they tell are true, but often I find these things interesting and plausible.
One of them is that Gorbachev has been promised that the NATO doesn't expand in Eastern Europe. So perhaps this is one of the causes Putin invaded Ukraine. He is afraid of the NATO and deems the EU and the USA untrustworthy partners. I don't know. Seems plausible.
> He is afraid of the NATO and deems the EU and the USA untrustworthy partners.
Think about this a bit more and you will realize that this explanation makes less than zero sense.
NATO members in the Baltics have bordered Russia for almost two decades with zero sign of interest in invading Russia. Even right now, in the aftermath of Russia performing imperialist conquest not seen since WW2, there is zero interest in military intervention against Russia.
Stable democracies are simply not going to go to war with a nuclear power.
> The major variable here is political will; consequently if you are a citizen of one of those Western countries, one thing you can do here is signal to your representatives that you, in fact, are willing to accept a degree of economic pain in order to send the message to Russia that wars of conquest will not be tolerated.
I know armchair generals are peeved about what's going on right now, but suggestions like this are psychotic. I urge anybody on HN who might be entertaining this idea to look at some of the numbers in this article.
Following your logic sanctions are useless.
I think this is ok because nothing will affect Putin. Russian people should eventually not reelect him or somehow remove this government. And for others I think its very reasonable to not do business with such an unpredictable/hostile country.
Has a brutally sanctioned populace ever overthrown its government?
This is an honest question; I don't have enough samples to draw upon. In the case of Iraq, North Korea, Venezuela, it seems like the misery just trickles down.
Thank you. Do you honestly expect them to have a similar effect on Russia? I imagine there's key geographic, cultural, and temporal differences at play.
Czechoslovakia isn't even a country any more, which says something.
Do I expect that masses of people getting fed up with autocracies that pick fights they suffer from will react like masses of people getting fed up with autocracies that pick fights they suffer from? Yes.
"You only have power over people as long as you don't take everything away from them. But when you've robbed a man of everything, he's no longer in your power—he's free again." -Solzhenitsyn
Czechoslovakia is two countries. They not only gained independence, they did it twice.
Why do you think sanctions will have this stimulating effect among the Russian people when they've done the opposite in Iraq and North Korea? Practically speaking, is there something the Western world should do differently this time around? I'm keen to hear the implementation details, because without them, we're actually just speaking out of bloodlust here.
Russians have access to the broader Internet. North Koreans and most Iranians don't.
Russians have become accustomed to developed Western standards of living. North Koreans and most Iranians haven't.
And in line with Solzhenitsyn... Putin isn't a Grand Ayatollah or a flawless all-benevolent Juche godhead. Iran and North Korea still have something they can take away from their people.
Nobody chooses economic sanctions over armed conflict out of bloodlust.
I think the reasons for Russian invasion is somewhat simpler:
- Ukraine military equipement is aging and of Russian origin. It is mostly useless to defend oneself against Russia. One day or another an independant Ukraine would have bought military equiment to the west or China. This is inacceptable to Russia for the next reason.
- traditionnel defense paradigm of Russia is "defense in depth". Refer to Napoléon Wars or WW2 for applications of this paradigm. Since Putin seems to stick to it, Ukraine is merely a buffer for Russia, so long it is an ally. Hence the urge to replace the Ukrenian government with dummies as in Belarus.
And I would had "defense in depth" still applies as of today. The further your ennemies are, the more difficult it is for them to eavedrop communications, spy on military exercices, train their radars on your planes.
It's been difficult to find the operational objectives[1] of the war laid out plainly, which ACOUP once again does expertly (as best as any expert can do at this stage, anyway).
The Siege of Gondor writeup[1] is worth reading by itself, but I think rereading it with Putin juxtaposed to Sauron would retroactively give LotR that much more relevance and gravitas.
As the author correctly noted the role of Preemptive Sanctions is not as a deterrent but his argumentation agains it is based on a nof far-sighted enough analysis of the consequences of sanctions.
(1) Russia is a state on brink of bancrupcy. Deplatforming Russia from SWIFT, Visa, Mastercard, stopping gas pipelines, etc etc. cutting any trade swhatsover would degrade Russia's finances enough to prevernt them from being able to finance a prolongued military offensive operations. Helicopters, tanks, planes are very expensive.
(2) Russia is a also a very oligarchical state with regular people having zero power or assets. Therefore preemptive sanction should have been imposed on Russia's oligarchs in order to "motivate" them into questioning their support of Putin himself.
Again degrading his ability to order risky military missions, degrading his ability for prolongued war and perhaps the oligarchs would overthrow Putin altogether. With perhaps the war itseelf already being Putin's preemptive tactic to escape being overthrown.
Forthermore, again, preemprively NATO should have supplied Ukraine with vast amounts of defensive antitank and antihelicopter weapons which wold inflict very costly damage and perhaps stop the invasion altogether - there were ideas to supply these weapons but Germany opposed.
NATO could also have ordered massive militaty training in Ukraine and again did have this idea but again Germany was against.
They are a petrolstate with no real economy going and producing virtually no tradeale goods other than raw resources[a] [b]
70% of their trade is with Western countries [c] so if cut them off, their deficit quickly pushes them hard into debt and with no external financing they will go into internal debt. With no credibile ways to pay off debt they have hyperinflation and people on the streets demanding Putin out.
I can't say anything on whether NATO attacked Libya but it's members certainly dabble in the various conflicts trying to extract advantage. I had a conversation with a "systems thinker" of British origin who straight out said that he was involved in a group that were distributing cell phones to members of the population of Libya so they could call in air strikes against government forces. Apart from the obvious problem of getting NATO to do the dirty work to remove your enemies no matter that faction they belonged to the most striking thing was the arrogance and ease with which this person justified their position. It was a reflection of the thinking from 100 years ago where the British assumed everything they did was with God's blessing and Johnny Foreigner needed to do what they were told or suffer the consequences.
Sure but that still means NATO is not exclusively a defensive alliance. Libya was not attacking any NATO member and got attacked by NATO. It seems silly to pretend it's a defensive alliance just because you can justify all of the times it was the aggressor?
I'm a little confused. The article argues that Ukraine is not a Nazi country (for clarity: I agree with it) and the argument is "the president of Ukraine is Jew". But it does't contradict to Putin. I'm not sure where my confusion comes from, but it seems to me it is because of different ideas named by the same word.
It seems to me that the author defines Nazi as anti-Jewish, while Putin has in mind more broad definition "anti-ethnos, for any ethnos". Being Russian I'm sure that my understanding of Putin is correct. Putin talks that Ukraine supposedly anti-Russian, prosecutes and kills Russians living in Ukraine, dreams of genocide of Russians and so on.
So the argument of the article seems to be a non-sequitur. But if we defined Nazi as anti-Jewish that the argument would cease to be a non sequitur, it would be completely logical and conviencing.
But maybe I do not understand something else?
I'd like to clarify one more time, because it is a hot political topic. I do not think that Ukraine is anti-Russian-ethnos. I'm sure it is now strongly anti-Putin and even anti-Russian Federation, and rightly so. So regardless of what definition of Nazism we used, Putin declaration is a lie.
Yes, it is about playing on historical sentiments. Putin always do it. And I'm ashamed and sorry to hear that it is not confined to a Russian-speaking world but spills to neighbours.
On our (West's) side there were definitely lots os mistakes that were made during the last few years.
The most important one is the promise given to Ukraine that it will enter NATO and the EU if only given enough time for implementation details, totally ignoring the needs and apprehensions of Russia next door. Which might be ok in an ideal world, but fact of the matter is that international relations are as far from an "ideal world" as one can imagine, they're one of the last, true bastions of open hobbes-ianism when it comes to politics and human relations. We needed more realists, more people willing to see things as they really were, and less idealists, less people saying things like "how can Putin not accept the sovereignty of other countries? Doesn't he know that breaks international law?"
Also, one must have the feeling that Ukraine has been a little let down by the EU and NATO in all this, especially by the EU. I can understand at this point why NATO won't get involved more than it has (I think they now see the possibility of Putin starting WW3 on the flimsiest of pretences), but imo the EU could have done so much more, at least when it comes to direct economic assistance given to Ukraine and to real economic sanctions imposed on Russia. Just two days ago the Belgians and Italians were still bickering [1] over not imposing sanctions on Russian oligarchs related to the diamond market (very strong in Belgium) and the luxury market (very strong in Italy). When you put in the balance the selling of luxury bags to some Russian oligarchs' wives vs the fate of a nation to whom you had promised the world then something is wrong, really wrong (hopefully, once the war really started a day after that those petty negotiations were put on hold)
Source: me, living in a NATO and EU member country bordering Ukraine
> the promise given to Ukraine that it will enter NATO and the EU
Your comment history approaches deliberate misinformation. This is an example. NATO admission was never promised. The consultation process was all but abandoned over a decade ago, before Putin rolled into Crimea.
This was revised by NATO in 2021 and more substantial commitments were made.
NATO reaffirmed that “Ukraine will become a member of the Alliance with the Membership Action Plan (MAP)", which is the most traction on the topic since 2008.
In 2016, Ukraine was granted the Comprehensive Assistance Package (CAP), comprising the advisory mission at the NATO Representation to Ukraine as well as 16 capacity-building programmes and Trust Funds. And in 2018, Ukraine was officially given an aspiring member status.
That article continues the pattern of your earlier comment, which falsely claimed NATO membership was promised to Ukraine. I also have zero ability to confirm the source, whose domain was created about a month after Crimea was illegally annexed by Putin.
My question is, why are we even seriously discussing Putin's claim that Ukraine is ruled by Nazis? If there ever was clear propaganda BS, there it is. I get it so why he's using it. But why on Earth is anyone buying into it?
I agree that it is irrelevant. It is more like a linguistic research from my part. If the author understand Nazism in a different manner then I was taught in school, then I'd better pick it up, or I would misunderstand all such arguments.
> But why on Earth is anyone buying into it?
Russians buy it, because their propaganda shows them enough "facts" of Ukrainians attack Russians. Outside of Russia it seems to me no one buys it.
I'm German, so I do have obviously a view on Nazism. I was never taught the USSRs perspective on WW2 so. I think mainly because of the Cold War propaganda, we skipped ( and I had a really great history teacher at that time) over the Russian effort.
Turns out now, that this lack of education, for lack of a better term, might be an issue. So, sincere question, what is the Russian understanding of Nazism?
I think Putin's understanding of a "Nazi" is deeply connected to the Russian trauma of WWII that the West still doesn't get. Russians believe that due to the sheer number of lives lost, the USSR (and so Russia as its successor state) played _the_ central role in WWII. I encourage you to watch this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwKPFT-RioU (the relevant parts start at about 4:40 and 9:40)
I personally think that it makes no sense to talk about "who made the victory" because it was an allied effort and none of the allies could have done it alone. But at the same time, I think that westerners just don't get how personal and traumatic this was for the people of Russia.
So, Putin is very sensitive to any view on WWII that differs from his. Things like "this was just two dictators (Stalin and Hitler) fighting". Or the view of some Ukrainian nationalists that the communists and the nazis were just both occupants (same view exists in Poland), or even that the nazis were liberators from communism. There's history of collaborationism in the Ukraine, as is everywhere, but not everywhere the collaborationists are viewed by a lot of people as national heroes, not as traitors who joined the aggressor (the nazis). I personally understand why this view exists, but for Putin and most Russians it's just outrageous.
So, for Putin a nazi is mostly someone who disagrees with the Russian view on the role of the USSR in WWII. That includes nationalists from countries that Putin views as satellites/buffers (ex-USSR and socialist block), but Western countries that don't get how it looks from the Russian side, even those that were allies in WWII, are also tinted with this "nazi" color.
Thanks for the answer. And it makes sense. It's not that lkng ago that I came to realize how much of what I know about WW2 is in fact heavily influenced by post-War propaganda. Being West-German, that propaganda is obviously anti-Communist.
I think there is truth to the saying that WW2 was won by English intelligence (I wpuld add stuborness), Soviet blood and American bullets (as a synonym for industrial power).
Russian Empire was called «Jail of Nations», because of many nations captured. To unite the Empire, all nations are erased into «Russian Nation», by prohibiting speaking, writing, signing using people own languages, i.e. every nation is bad. In RF, every nation, which is not Russian, are called «Nazi», because «Nazi» is very bad word. German Nazi, American Nazi, Polish Nazi, Latvian Nazi, Estonian Nazi, Finlandize Nazi, Israeli Nazi, etc., except «Russian Internationalists».
I wouldn't agree. Of course there's a push for homogenisation because everyone has to speak Russian, which is the official language of the state, but nobody is stopping people in the "national republics" from using their corresponding languages. Chechens speak Chechen at home, Tatars speak their language (if they want to). Modern Russia inherited this from the USSR's policies towards ethnic minorities. National languages are taught in schools.
I'm not a fan of Putin's policies here, but inside Russia it's certainly not oppressive in the linguistic sense. If you agree on the unity of the state (don't want actual political independence), you're free to use your language.
I think it is close to a modern understanding of rasism, though an extreme variant: one race to rule them all. To rule or to genocide.
Hitler was not so much against Jews he was against non-Aryan people, the group that included Jews and Russians and African, and Asian, and almost everyone.
I'm not sure is it a good definition or not, but it is how it is. I vaguely suspect that this definition even may be offensive to Jews (judging by a recent Ruby Goldberg blooper), but honestly I have no intention to be offensive, just describing how it is. And trying to understand the other point of view.
Of course it's just a dishonest pretext by Putin, he has no problem with neo-nazis as long as they're on his side, but there's a grain of truth in it. Look up Azov battalion.
When you have a bunch of football hooligans wearing nazi insignia, having nazi tattoos, waving nazi flags and talking about a historic mission to lead the white races of the world in a final crusade against the Semite-led untermenschen... does it really matter what "race" they are?
Of course it's a rotten excuse for an invasion. But I think it answer OP's question, "why on earth anyone is buying into it". People are buying into it because there's a grain of truth to it.
The NAZI bit was a lie by Putin, the fact that their president is a Jew should dispel any doubt about that, so it does contradict Putin.
> while Putin has in mind more broad definition "anti-ethnos, for any ethnos"
But: the Ukrainian government never was against any ethnic group. That is what Putin would like you to believe, but it simply isn't true. Just like the Latvian government isn't against the ethnic Russians living in Latvia (a very large fraction of the people in Latvia have Russian roots).
There are photos of them doing the Nazi salute [1] and videos of them flying the Nazi flag on the front lines. Even human rights groups have complained about the arms sales to neo-Nazis [2].
It's such a pointless metric too; there are neo-Nazis in just about every country. I wouldn't even be surprised if Djibouti had a couple of weirdos regularly dressing up in SS-uniforms in the weekend.
>Both Russia, Ukraine and Serbia have a Neo Nazi problem
So does the US. But in the US, neo-Nazis are not in our government, the Congress and in top military positions. They are extremely powerful in the Ukraine and are dictating policy.
> They are extremely powerful in the Ukraine and are dictating policy.
No, they aren't, that's pure propaganda from Russia, which, ironically, uses international neonazis as a means of undermining other states around the world.
Ironically, in the case of Ukraine, it's the US who turns a blind eye to the neonazis. As they kind of do in Brazil, having helped Bolsonaro to reach the presidency, BTW.
> Ironically, in the case of Ukraine, it's the US who turns a blind eye to the neonazis.
No, it doesn't. There simply aren't any in positions of significant policy influence. (The US has—although that has changed a little bit since Jan. 6, 2021 for...reasons—historically largely turned a blind eye to the much more extensive influence of neonazis in the US, where they have, among other things, deep and extensive peentration of the internal and external security services, which is one reason the US has been especially vulnerable to their use as international agents of influence by Russia under Putin.)
> There simply aren't any in positions of significant policy influence.
They wouldn't, because it wouldn't solve any problem for them. The current Ukraine government is friendly towards the US and the neonazi militias were doing the job of suppressing insurgents, largely with support from said government. The US had more than a little influence in the replacement of the previous, Russia-friendly government.
There are also neo-nazis in Russia, USA, Germany, Sweden and basically every country with a white majority population. This doesn't mean they're nazi countries, and it certainly doesn't mean they need to be invaded and liberated.
You can find small far-right groups in virtually every country, including the US and many European countries. Talk about them is mere distraction, they are not running the country.
And there's little doubt that if a country goes through a violent clash against corrupt government (see euromaidan), such groups would take the opportunity to gain standing. You can draw parallels to capitol hill events, or imagine what groups like Soldiers of Odin (the nordics) would have done had there been protests with bullets.
And when your country is invaded by a foreign nation, your army generals are not going to ask about the political opinions of those who are willing to fight for their country. A small group of nazis defending Ukraine from Russian invasion? So what. There will be nationalists standing in any country's army if they get invaded.
Talk about nazism is a mere distraction and something Putin's trolls would do. Please don't.
> Talk about nazism is a mere distraction and something Putin's trolls would do. Please don't.
It's a bit more complicated than that. Ukraine has neonazi militias that enjoy some level of government support and that have been involved in violent incidents in the past. This, of course, does not justify an invasion by a foreign power. Ukraine currently ranks very low as a functional democracy (we can give them some slack on that, since they've been essentially invaded since 2014). I'm still not sure what's the upside of this for Russia, or for Putin. As the article points out, invasions take months, if not years, of planning. While the decision to stand down can be made at any point, the decision to invade has to wait for all the pieces to be in place. Whatever the end-goal is, it's not Ukraine.
> Ukraine has neonazi militias that enjoy some level of government support and that have been involved in violent incidents in the past.
I'm trying to say that this would likely happen in any country where political unrest and corruption leads to a violent change of regime. That militia formed during Euromaidan, and they are useful to the government in so far as they are against occupation by Russia. Just as Nazi Germany was useful to my country (Finland) in the second world war.
Nazi bad, but a small group with nationalistic ideals fighting for the nation doesn't mean the nation is nazi, and it would be irrational to reject the aid of such a group in the fight against occupation. It'd be good for virtue signalling at most but you don't fight a country the size of Russia or China by thoughts and prayer and virtue signalling. And I'm pretty sure Putin would have some excuse for attacking Ukraine with or without a minuscle amount of neo-nazis in the soup.
If Ireland is invaded by a giant neighbor, the government isn't going to ask their infantry whether they're nationalists before letting them fight for your country.
If Putin thinks nazis are the reason to invade a country, he ought to invade Finland too. I'd still hope our nationalist party takes up arms and goes to the front lines to defend Finland. And they should have the Government's full support in doing so.
> I'd still hope our nationalist party takes up arms and goes to the front lines to defend Finland. And they should have the Government's full support in doing so.
As usual, the problem is how you deal with them later, after they got access to weapons and military training and, perhaps more dangerous, some political legitimacy as war heroes.
> On 11 August, Azov battalion, backed by Ukrainian paratroopers, captured Marinka from pro-Russian rebels and entered the suburbs of Donetsk clashing with Donetsk People's Republic fighters.
So, I assume, the Ukraininan Nazi are killing Donetsk People's Republic fighters? This is THE crime you are talking about?
Say what you will about Putin but he's not wrong about that. Ukrainian government is one of the the most hostile governments towards ethnic minorities. You can argue that other countries are racist, but the racism is mostly at ground level. In Ukraine, it is from the policy level itself.
Did they not ban Russian language media saying "it belongs to Russian(-speaking) oligarchs"? As if their own media doesn't belong to Ukrainian-speaking oligarchs.
What percentage of budget goes into Russian-majority areas? Let's say even before the whole NATO thing started in 2008.
The article in general completely ignores the US role in all of this. The entire saga happened with the US interference in the last ukranian revolution.
I’m not sure if this is the best source to read about the situation? The “Facts” listed are backed up by links to Russia Today videos on YouTube, or nothing at all.
I disagree with the article you posted in almost its entirely.
> president, Viktor Yanukovich, was forced to flee for his life.
What Ukraine experienced in 2014 was not a coup. The Ukrainian parliament deposed him after he left the country and after the parliament had order the security forces to stand down and leave the capital. I could go on how factually and biased that article is.
What's next? You're gonna claim Cuba is the fault of the Soviet union?
To me Putin attacked Ukraine because from Russian government point of view they can't afford to have a western democracy (aka US) in that world zone. I feel that they fear that if they don't conquer Ukraine with bombs now US will conquer it with Secret Services later. Probably it was already happening.
No one said the US has never interfered in an election.
But in this case, the commenter suggests that the US was already attempting to overthrow the Ukrainian government?? That’s complete conspiracy and certainly deserves a downvote. Not only is there no evidence to support the claim, it doesn’t even fit anyone’s narratives (except perhaps Russia’s) about US/Ukrainian relationships. It just doesn’t make any sense in relation to US politics, especially considering the current leadership was elected in a landslide and is already relatively pro-EU/pro-NATO.
Compare to, say, Iraq, and you can see how that would fit into US politics much better.
Is it outside of the realm of possibilities? Of course not, but at least provide some kind of theory or narrative and phrase it as conjecture instead of just tossing it out as a conspiracy.
I'm just saying that Russian can't afford to have NATO at 2000km from Mosca. If Ukraine joins NATO Ukraine becomes US territory, that's not conspiracy, that's reality.
I'm Italian, Italy is a NATO country, we have US military bases, so I wrote that from a military point of view. Of course Italy is not US territory, but if NATO says to intervene Italian forces must intervene. That's what I mean.
I mean, I understand it's a hot topic, but interpreting every sentence literally just to say "you're wrong" isn't very fair.
No, seriously: you are wrong, and that's fine, but you already start out with 'To me' which makes what you wrote your opinion. And you're entirely entitled to your wrong opinion.
My comment is not sided, the Secret Services part is prepended by "will", so it's not something that already happened, it's something that may happen if Ukraine joins NATO.
"Meanwhile, it is not entirely clear that Putin’s war has widespread popular support in Russia"
Russian living in Russia here.
I don't know anyone around me who supports this.
Many people in Russia have friends or relatives in Ukraine and we are horrified about what is happening right now.
You'll find it mostly in strawmen created by the war-mongering corporate media to try to make it seem that their political opponent is in bed with Russia. In reality, nobody supports it.
Not just in the US. There's a very real possiblity that Jeremy Corbin could've been Prime Minister of the UK when this happened, and he's quite openly siding with Putin over this invasion and arguing the UK is actually to blame for it - as is the Stop the War Coalition and the broader left which he represents, much like their equivalents in the US are.
Direct quote from Trump: "I said, 'This is genius.' Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine of Ukraine. Putin declares it as independent. Oh, that's wonderful. So Putin is now saying it's independent, a large section of Ukraine. I said, 'How smart is that?' And he's going to go in and be a peacekeeper."
I’m sorry but you’re swirling separate concepts together as well as misunderstanding Trump’s persona. I have uncles who talk exactly like this because it makes them sound worldly. Like it’s what they would have done if they had the motive, because they’re smart too. Admiration is not support. Mature people can admire their opponents. Support would be saying or suggesting that Putin is justified in some higher sense than avarice, that his motive is admirable, since you asked.
Trump is obviously detached and breezy here. Irreverently honest, like a comedian doing a bit. Better it make you think, than make you mad at the messenger.
If they had the motive? We don't really need to guess because Trump plainly suggests that America should do the same thing on its border with Mexico with the implied motive of solving the immigration crisis. The Trump quote that was posted is slightly incomplete:
> And he’s gonna go in and be a peacekeeper…We could use that on our southern border
Oh, I can believe that Trump is being irreverently honest, just like your uncles, but I doubt your uncles are vying to be re-elected into a position that gives them the power to do such a thing.
>If admiration, cheerleading, and calling an invader "smart" - isn't support... What is?
It was sarcasm. Here's what he said:
Speaking with conservative podcaster Buck Sexton, the former president said: 'I went in yesterday and there was a television screen, and I said, "This is genius,"' Trump recalled. 'Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine — of Ukraine -- Putin declares it as independent. Oh, that's wonderful.'
'I said, "How smart is that?'" the former U.S. president continued. 'And he’s gonna go in and be a peacekeeper. That’s the strongest peace force… We could use that on our southern border. That’s the strongest peace force I’ve ever seen. There were more army tanks than I’ve ever seen. They’re gonna keep peace all right.'
The overall analysis is very good, but the matter of Putin's motivation is still underexplained.
I get why so many people find Mearsheimer's reasoning to be correct - it really fits Russia and the wordviews of Russian ruling class (Post WWII upbringing in a totalitarian state + professional deformation of intelligence officers). However, it's limiting in the same way the whole Offensive Realism theory is. Let me try to explain. I'll use "Putin" as a substitute for "Russian government and ruling class" below.
Yes, Putin sees NATO as an existential threat, even though he understands there's no real risk of any military action coming from NATO unless provoked. Yes, Putin wants "regional hegemony" and thus wants to get to control Ukraine, probably indirectly, by almost any means.
But the war in the Ukraine only makes NATO stronger? Yes, however, the threat from NATO, as Putin sees it, is not only military, it's also cultural. Even though his actions will probably lead to Finland and Sweden, for example, to join NATO in the nearest future, those countries are already classified as "the West" so their military status is of lesser concern. Ukraine, on the other hand, has extremely strong (probably, the strongest of all other countries, Belarus being the second contender) cultural ties with Russia, this includes family ties, language, traditions of policy practice, etc.
Why does Putin care about cultural changes in neighbouring sovereign countries? This is where offensive realism falls short. The answer is internal politics. The main motivation for Putin is self-preservation. Ukraine "choosing West" is unacceptable for Putin, as if it works out even slightly net-positive for Ukraine it will be almost impossible to maintain the illusion it can't ever work in Russia.
If it's so important for Putin, why didn't he do it 8 years ago? You can take only so much risk and economic damage. Annexing Crimea was a guaranteed easy and swift operation and it didn't look like a military intervention for the Russian people, which is good for the ratings. As the consequences hit Russian economy pretty hard, it took whole last 8 years to hammer down to the population it's all "our enemy's fault". It also took 8 years to explain to the business elites "the confrontation with the West is for real, prepare".
But the economic damage? Putin's well off regardless. Prosperity of Russians is of no concern - Venezuela shows how low you can go and still keep your seat. Poor people and non-existent middle-class means less political activity, which is a bonus.
Speaking of elites, there were some rumours of a considerable dissatisfaction with the economic situation and the lack of the development momentum brewing up lately. Making all the top officials and close businesses complicit in War and some of them receiving direct losses from the sanctions leaves them no choice but to double down on supporting Putin's regime, as there's no alternative for them. This could also additionally explain the timing for the decision to break the status quo, but we have no info on this.
So, to sum up:
- No NATO in the Ukraine means you fully control the region. This is a good feeling for the paranoid character.
- War means mobilization and mutual responsibility of the elites, which is essential to maintaining the mafia state.
- Economic damage to Russia will totally obscure the poor management of the Russian economy by Putin's government and total incompatibility of the policies with economic growth for most of the citizens.
- Preventing the sovereignty of culturally close countries means Russia looks the strongest and the most successful of the bunch and this is good for the general support.
- Putin personally is a violent bully, his close company are mostly the same. You need to demonstrate the decisiveness for violence to be on top.
- Putin might be additionally stimulated by his messianic delusions of restoring USSR being the prime directive of old-school KGB officers. Although, it's impossible to know the truth here.
The only serious risk Putin took is with his own people: did he manage to dumb and oppress us all down to accept and offensive War and still maintain the required level of support? Only time will tell.
I personally despise it all. I saw the writing on the wall but couldn't believe it, a fool. Now I can only hope. Peace.
Since I've written it, Putin threatened with nukes to Finland and Sweden in case they join NATO. I don’t believe in my predicting ability anymore, so I can only hope it's a bluff.
Actually, we did. NATO – and especially US intelligence – was remarkably effective at predicting what Putin had planned before he did it, down to predicting the day the assault would begin.<
After Iraq, Afghanistan, etc, there was no reason to trust western intelligence just for 1 second.
Actually, there was, but like with any other intelligence source you'd want some independent verification.
What was special about Iraq was that there was conflicting intelligence, the WMD inspectors had it right, and Colin Powell lost the respect of the rest of the world when it turned out that he'd effectively lied.
As for Afghanistan, that was/is an outright failure, but still not enough to automatically disbelieve everything that comes out of the intelligence services.
The important thing is to realize that intelligence can be wrong.
The good analogy on Ukraine crisis. Imaging if Mexico joined Russian military alliance (created specifically against US) and decided to put Russian troops and bases on their territory. What would happened to Mexico? Would US allowed that?
Well that will never happen because the US seems to care about Mexico (and has a substantial population of Mexican heritage people in the US) unlike Russia with Ukraine so it's a moot point. It's like saying imagine if Ireland joined Russia and decided to put Russian troops on their territory, it's ridiculous and has little meaning just like making up any other geopolitical fantasy. I can understand how thought experiments might be useful in physics but in geopolitics we have realpolitik not wild fantasies. If you want to go in that direction then I assume Nazi Germany concerns at the beginning of WW2 about the spread of globalist capitalism and communism would become legitimate concerns too then and justify invading Europe over?
Mexico was used in that analogy just because it's on US borders.
If this analogy seems unrealistic to you, try replace Mexico with Cuba. Could two independent countries (USSR and Cuba) agreed to place nukes close to US borders in the 60's? Legally, sure they can. Does US agree with it? Even if WW3 was the case they will never allowed it.
Same thing now with Ukraine. If Ukraine joins NATO, their troops will be on russia south border, which is unacceptable for Russia. And russian government thinks about it as an existential threat. Invasion is the direct result of failed negotiations between Russia and NATO about Ukraine neutrality.
All the countries Nazi Germany first invaded were on their borders too. The Cuba situation is a bit different but in the modern day I would say the US should allow it, but either way it's also a moot point because Russia can loiter their nuclear subs around the US anyway.
Ukraine has no chance of joining NATO too (and never did while the conflict in eastern Ukraine continued). NATO troops are already on their borders in the Baltics. Invasion is the result of Putin's delusional idea of wanting to make Russia great again USSR style because if he wanted them to never join NATO all he had to do was continue the conflict in eastern Ukraine.
> Gorbachev himself admitted there was no such formal agreement.
"There would be no extension of NATO’s jurisdiction for forces of NATO one inch to the east," Secretary of State James A. Baker told Mr. Gorbachev in 1989
The National Defense archives of George Washington University declassified this discussion on 12 December 2017. You can look it up.
I highlight the words "formal agreement". Either way, those words were said when the Soviet Union still existed and was assumed to continue existing for the future.
It leaves out a crucial question: what would the US have to do for Mexico to isolate itself from the US as much as possible? What has Russia done in the past 100 years to all other countries in Eastern Europe?
If you extend your analogy with the US behaving like Russia towards its neighbors, perhaps Russian forces on Mexican borders would sound perfectly fair.
After the US invaded Mexico, killed off political and cultural elite, and started colonizing it with american resettlers to eradicate Mexican culture, but Mexico somehow regained independence, would it really sound so strange if Mexico started seeking alliance with China to prevent it from happening again?
> but Mexico somehow regained independence, would it really sound so strange if Mexico started seeking alliance with China to prevent it from happening again?
Absolutely not, and Ukraine has all the legal rights to do it. But that changes nothing to Russian perspective. Russia just will not allowed it. Same as US not allowed Cuba to place soviet nukes no matter what.
Russia continues to deny Holodomor to this day, and in the recent speech Putin called the whole idea of Ukrainian independence a fiction, and now he has declared a war on Ukraine. I don't see how this has any similarities to US-Mexico relations. Does the US deny that Mexico has the right to exist and is it preparing to wage a war on Mexico to replace its government and absorb the country?
I was thinking you mentioned some fake "genocide" happened during the last 10 years. Both Russia and Ukraine blame this on each other sometime.
Yes, Holodomore did happened, and like it mentioned in the article it was only a part of a huge Soviet famine of 1932–1933 which affected not only ukranians but almost all nations in the south part of USSR including russians.
It's a shame that modern Russia not recognized this as a genocide, and not only ukranian genocide. Because it really happened. 100 years ago. Under USSR and Joseph Stalin.
So, if that is a valid point for Ukraine to join NATO now, would it be fair to Mexico to join Russia Military Alliance, because they will tell the world, they suddenly afraid of USA expansion and following culture suppression? I mean, what USA did to native americans.
I watched it. It's a talk at Yale university, followed by a discussion. Many students in the audience actually are from former Soviet Union states. It's three years old and yet warns of exactly the kind of situation we're in now.
Really an excellent talk, and one of the most insightful things I have heard so far about this whole Ukraine situation. Thank you for sharing this.
> Thus, the war happened because Vladimir Putin wanted it to happen and he wanted it to happen to overthrow the democratically elected government of Ukraine; it is as yet unclear if he then intends to annex the country or place a puppet government in charge of it (which given the diminished independence of Belarus, might amount to the same thing in the end).
This is a little bit of a let down. "It happened because Putin wanted it to happen".
Looking at the way Putin talks and behaves, his actions are like actions of a child who has a tantrum. He's very emotional, probably someone pissed him off very much on an inner child level. Maybe someone threatened taking his toys away. The man seems to be very irrational, he says words that to him are reasonable, but they're so shallow that someone with half a brain can read through it in a split-second.
I think this is all personal. There could be things happening within a very small circle of people causing his childish reaction. We have to remember that those at the top of world politics know each other for decades. Putin ain't a superhuman, he's simply like a 12 year old bully but unfortunately he has 850k active military personnel, a fuck-ton of tanks, artillery and air force.
Without justifying anything Putin has done, let's consider an alternative narrative. Let's accept that what American intelligence is saying, that he was preparing this for 15 or 20 years. Putin once before the invasion said something along the lines that "Americans (rest of the world?) have done similar things". Maybe his actions are as simple as "look, they've done it so many times and THEY won't let ME do X, they profited here and there and they forbid me from doing the same, I will show them" where that X maybe even wasn't about Ukraine in the first place? Although, it probably was. He watched USSR collapse under drunk Yeltsin.
But from Putin's perspective: Iraq and Afghanistan under Bush and co. Unjustified war backed by totally falsified evidence, no idea how a regular person in the USA benefits from those but I'm sure military industry made a killing on it. Iraq alone was, depending on the source, from 460k to over 1m "excessive casualties".
Libya? What was the point? Proxy war in Syria? What's the point? Are the alternatives we have now better?
I'm not saying "but look what the other side did", whataboutism isn't what I'm doing here. I'm saying: this is how Putin maybe sees it.
As Putin was getting more and more isolated, he felt ignored, frustrated, angry. That he cannot finish his plan because the guard has changed and those who did similar things alongside him are no longer in power. And like an ignored and frustrated bully, he waited around the bush and smacked the victim right in the nose. Unfortunately, this victim is the people of Ukraine and the smack is tanks and bombs.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to downplay how severe this situation is. Innocent people suffer and die. Putin is a criminal and he will be remembered for all the wrong reasons. He will stand in the same line as Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, and the rest from this list: https://www.scaruffi.com/politics/dictat.html.
I found this a very helpful article to make sense of the current situation.
What it does seem to leave out is that Cuban Missle Crisis argument:
Wouldn't the U.S., too, consider military intervention if a direct neighbor country of the U.S. was preparing to essentially become a base for Russian missiles?
This article here [1] makes that point. And some commenters here have also made similar comparisons.
The question here is not if Putin's actions can be "excused". Let's not make the mistake of thinking that to explain someone's behavior was equal to approving of it.
On the contrary. No amount of disapproval will have any effect unless one first has a good handle on what is truly causing that behavior. And telling yourself stories like that the other party is just "a bad person" or is just "acting irrationally" are really just a band-aid on one's own helplessness. They can comfort, but they distract from defusing the actual problem.
One can say that Putin is just following a kind of salami tactic. Taking one small slice after another, making sure that each individual slice is small enough for him to get away with it. Just like Hitler did in 1938 (and before, internally, in 1933).
But I do find that the counter-point also "computes". Namely that Putin's main goal is to stay in power. And that he feels threatened in this regard by an ever-encroaching NATO at his borders. And that he isn't acting much different than Kennedy acted in 1962, when nuclear war became a possibility because the U.S. could not tolerate Russian missiles at their doorstep, in Cuba.
The blog I linked to also points out another curious similarity. The crisis in 1962 was defused by Kennedy agreeing to withdraw U.S. missiles from Turkey. But this concession had to be made in secret, without the public's knowledge. Because any concessions to Russia would have been political suicide.
And I do find that a little odd. I mean, take marriage counseling. That you have to compromise, and take at least part of the responsibility for the problem, that is the only thing that can save a relationship. That other strategy, where you claim you are right and the other person is wrong, that is called stonewalling. And if you do that, the relationship is fucked.
It is one thing to say "What you're doing inside of your country is not democratic, and we don't like it". But to translate this into "We're not going to make any concessions, ever, because doing that would mean that we become like you" - that's irrational. Making concessions to a dictator doesn't necessarily mean giving up democratic values. But a refusal to even discuss ways of compromise does.
When everybody seems to agree that Putin is "just another Hitler", and opinions that do try to make sense of the situation do not get discussed, but flagged and ousted instead, that does make me concerned.
When a question becomes taboo, we're no longer being that free and democratic society that we're claiming to protect.
I do not know what the right answer is. But I do think that this one question should not be brushed aside, but openly discussed. Which is: What merit, if any, is there to the claim that the actions of NATO and the U.S. are putting Putin in a position where what we're seeing now becomes inevitable when you factor in his need for self-preservation?
And sure, I get it: Dictators shouldn't want to preserve their power. Just as thieves shouldn't steal. But they do. This is the real world. That Putin will act in ways that preserve his power is a known fact which any rational actor cannot leave out of his calculations.
I admit, there's a fine line between not pushing a dictator into a corner and provoking an escalation on the one hand, and drawing clear boundaries without falling prey to salami tactics on the other. Everyone who is a parent here knows what I'm talking about.
> Wouldn't the U.S., too, consider military intervention if a direct neighbor country of the U.S. was preparing to essentially become a base for Russian missiles?
Not comparable examples, because no-one's parking missiles in Ukraine. The goal of Ukraine's NATO membership is to obtain a political deterrence against Russian invasion.
Eastern European countries so far have no missiles, and not even any meaningful presence of foreign troops after 20 years of membership.
Russian propaganda has sidetracked everyone into talking about Russian security when Russia has been the main agressor in the region for the longest time. What about everyone else, don't they deserve the same considerations? Why must we accept Russian wars on peaceful countries in Europe and yet defense cooperation with their victims is frowned upon? Isn't it a bit insane?
I don't see "everyone talking about Russian security". Or that defense cooperation with Ukraine was "being frowned upon". At all.
On the contrary. What I'm seeing is that it is politically incorrect to even mention the idea that Putin might be not just crazy, or that someone else in his shoes might be tempted to do the same thing.
Make no mistake. I don't like what Russia is doing one bit. My investments are down by several hundred thousand dollars. And I consider myself lucky that this is the only impact that situation is having on me, so far. The idea of war in Europe scares me. I wish none of that craziness was happening.
> though the majority in both regions oppose secession.
They held a referendum.[1]
> Over the weekend, citizens in two east Ukrainian regions overwhelmingly voted to become independent in a referendum that only the Kremlin seems to be on board with. Separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk report that 89 percent and 96 percent, respectively, said they wanted to break free of Kiev's authority.
You may not like the results and might have issues with the process, but to claim that the majority oppose secession is a joke.
No country in the world will tolerate secessionist sentiment in any part of it and will prevent it with all its might. If it has the ability. In this case, Ukraine doesn't.
> You may not like the results and might have issues with the process
The issues with the process include (among many other issues) the fact that the borders that the separatists claim and to which they claim these referenda apply (and whose borders have been recognized by Russia, though given the decapitation strike Russia is making on Ukraine, that’s less important than it would otherwise be) are much larger than the areas they actually controlled at the time and conducted them in.
How does this show anything? Yeah, if after years and years of low level war and displacement of political enemies and being de facto controlled by Russian troops you hold a referendum that is boycotted by all but the separatists, of course the separatists will win! But that is so far from any valid referendum that accepting it as such seems dubious at best.
No point talking about that. You, Westerners, have too many MBA types in positions of powers, where they shouldn't be. Listening to an investor relations specialist for a military analysis is not what you should do.
You need to stop trying to understand it, and take it for what it is. A long staged military invasion of a country Russia been attacking for 8 years.
Act accordingly.
Analysis paralysis is what Russian KGB actively tries to cause in the West, and no wonder they fund tons of garbage think tanks to pump what is called "фуфло" https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Fuflo . It's jamming basically, but for the brains of people in power. Mental warfare.
This might be an unpopular opinion obviously being part of the l'occident world but NATO/US alignment of conflicting regional interests of EU members dependant on Russia's energy goods might be to blame.
Eastern portion of Ukraine is heavily in favor of joining Russia as most speak Russian while he central and western parts want to join the EU but this is largely a one sided love affair. EU has repeatedly stalled and delayed Ukraine's membership seeing that it would be the second poorest member state after Greece, and thus would be against the interest of Germany, who stand to gain a lot by using Russia's gas pipeline.
Enter Maidan revolution, while not outright instigated by the US, one does raise questions about the role of Facebook in previous revolutions namely the Arab Spring movement, Syrian rebellion, etc, and how quickly they were able to spread a the Maidan propaganda that EU/NATO membership was imminent when it couldn't be further from the truth.
The 2014 invasion was relatively well restrained campaign at reminding who the master of Ukraine is which was promptly ignored by the following administrations. Rather than choose peace with Russia by remaining neutral, they chose to go down the impossibly difficult act of trying to gain NATO membership with a border dispute in Donetsk/Lukansk region.
It might very well be said that Putin planned to take Ukraine anyways and 2014 was a test run and a good platform to encircle and hook into Moldova, another potential hotspot. The fact remains that leaving the Ukraine flatlands to NATO troops would open up Moscow to an indefensible flank, the upkeep cost of maintaining a wide frontline the size of Ukraine-Russia border would bankrupt Russia.
Simply put the cost of inaction was calculated to be far greater than the risk of action.
Imagine if you will, Mexico wanted to join China's security umbrella and it was receiving Chinese troops, tanks, hardware right across the US-Mexico border. Next Canada joins the party.
How quickly do you think the US would put down such strategic positioning?
You are repeating Russian propaganda, several points of which were repeatedly refuted (for example the polls about eastern Ukraine wanting to join Russia).
Absolutely fascinating to see brand new accounts (all made within the last ~2 months) repeating the same propaganda here on HN, of all places. And not just one, but several -- exactly the same language, too: "Mexico ICBMs," "Azov Battalion," etc. I don't want to accuse anyone of disinfo ops, but spending literally all my day on social media today (reddit/Twitter/FB/HN/etc.), I've started to notice patterns.
You don’t have to understand these “patterns” as just disinfo though, there’s plenty of reasons why people would make new accounts just to start political debates, other than being “hired by Russia/China” as both the mainstream liberals/conservatives of the US often default to. It’s just that some people want to post their political opinions separate from their main accounts; when they really have some arguments they want to say about current events, they simply create throwaway accounts. And if you’ve ever done even a modicum of Twitter, you’ll know that some people are just very enthusiastic about their political opinions even without any financial incentives (even when what they’re spouting can be very polemic and seem like state propaganda).
I’m totally fine for criticizing the OP in factual, political, or ideological terms, but think that shrugging these comments off as “disinfo” actually deter any civil debate and actively increase the amount of hysteria among people and make things worse (you’ve said you’ve been all day on social media… maybe this is why you’re currently overtly hysterical about paid state actors on the Internet?)
And you are simply refusing to see reality as it is because you have biases going in, I'm simply trying to see why this is happening and who really started it but if you keep trying to reduce this to an us-vs-them juvenility then knock yourself out. I have no interest in this region other than figuring out what got us here.
Also I have no intention of backing a country like Russia but I also don't feel any sort of ideological camaraderie just because I am from the West. This coldness is largely how I deal with human attrocities, I take the emotion out of it and reduce biases to accurately gauge reality.
Can't do that when you let somebody tell you what is propaganda or an entire country are the baddies and we are the goodies....I mean that was fun in high school but surely you realize the duality and hypocritical nature of our modern reality....or at least might have been too much to ask during the war itself.
Perhaps when Ukraine becomes part of Russia which it inevitably will be through a forced federalization, will it strike just how badly the Ukranian leadership screwed up in misjudging Ukraine's geopolitical importance—if not obvious from the West's lack of military reaction.
I'm sorry but Ukraine does not produce any derivative goods like Taiwan's semiconductor industry which is of critical strategic importance to the West and one which US signaled military action against China in the event Xi tries to take it.
> I'm simply trying to see why this is happening and who really started it
Great. Do you see the missiles sent in from the territory of Russia to blow stuff up in Ukrain? Or the Russian tanks moving about in Ukraine? Or the Russian attack helicopters delivering troops to Ukraine?
It is happening because someone controlling the Russian military ordered it to happen.
If you have to twist your mind into pretzels to explain that this all happened because Russia felt so threatened that they had no other choice then have at it. There is no rational basis for that.
> entire country are the baddies and we are the goodies
That is ridiculous and nobody said anything like that in the whole thread.
"In recent months, Russia has once again been in the headlines for all the wrong reasons, with the US and Western media loudly proclaiming (since November) that Russia is planning an imminent invasion of the Ukraine, though Russia has repeatedly denied that fact and it's not exactly clear what Russia is waiting for, or what advantage it could expect to derive from lying about its intentions at this point (the whole Western world expects an invasion and the US has pulled embassy staff from Kiev)."
Given that it's now obvious that Russia in fact has been planning an invasion of the Ukraine, for months, which furthermore undermines the author's later claim that there was some peaceful concession that Putin would've accepted... I'm not sure why I should take this author's argument seriously. They seem naive and under informed.
Well, here’s a talk at Yale that makes the same points. I don’t know if everything in there is factually correct. But it does very clearly why Putin is acting the way he is.
No, that's not a strawman at all. International relations are a mess, trying to figure the interests of both parties out isn't a propaganda campaign to justify anything. Actually, not trying to that and painting one side as universally evil seems to be propaganda.
I do understand why this is necessary so, because without unity those conflicts tend to be so much easier to loose. Again, as always, I don't justify Putin's actions here. I try understand hos motivation so, and political leadership around the globe should too, because if it works he won't stop. And Ukraine isn't the only region with disputed borders and conflicting territorial interests involving nuclear powers. If we want to find peaceful solutions for those conflicts, we need to understand them first. Just saying "other side evil and crazy, we good" is too shallow.
Thanks for explaining this much better than me. I totally get why people are upset, watching Twitter feeds and videos can get to some people, perhaps I should've been more sensitive that my opinions might be construed as defending Russia's action which I am certainly not since I have no horse in this fight.
I simply understand geopolitics as a game of power and its easier for me to characterize nations as weaker vs stronger in terms of geopolitical capital when I'm describing my ideas, and some people might have been off put at my description of Ukraine as slave caught between two masters.
You can't have your cake and eat it too. The same security concerns that America would face under similar circumstances as described, any rational individual would be cognizant that such logical deduction would be intensely rejected by an emotionally charged why-would-mainstream-media-lie-to-the-ppl types that largely act as amplifiers of pre-packaged ideological responses aimed at producing more fear and miscalculations aka war mongering.
> But please tell me again how bombing Kyiv has anything to do with "liberating" the eastern regions
This is a gross extrapolation based on your own conjectures at this point. I did not justify the bombing of Kyiv, more simply pointing out that your own emotional response towards Russia is creating blindspots in your ability to rationally figure out why a conflict is happening now suddenly.
> The same security concerns that America would face under similar circumstances as described
The fact that Russia cannot "make friends" without stepping on their throat explain how they think Mexico could entertain something as having a Chinese base on it and their corresponding reaction. It's how bullies justify their behaviour.
> This is a gross extrapolation
It is what is happening right now. In the same way the discourse last week was "Russia would not invade" and "they are mere military exercises in Belarus"
Eeh, you could say the same about the US. Please just have an objective view of these, and not taking sides when it doesn't really concern your individual self
> Imagine if you will, Mexico wanted to join China's security umbrella and it was receiving Chinese troops, tanks, hardware right across the US-Mexico border. Next Canada joins the party.
Imagine how much raping, murdering and pillaging the US would have to do beforehand to force Canada seek isolation from the US at all cost.
Whataboutists always seem to forget Russia's past actions. EE countries seeking security guarantees is not something that happened in vacuum.
> The 2014 invasion was relatively well restrained campaign at reminding who the master of Ukraine is which was promptly ignored by the following administrations.
WTF? Ukraine is a sovereign nation.
> Eastern portion of Ukraine is heavily in favor of joining Russia
This is factually incorrect, even today, and it was always so.
There is plenty of disinformation around this subject but the whole idea that one day the Donbas region decided that it wanted to join Russia and that those pesky Ukrainians in the Western part of the country wouldn't let them is bogus.
Demographically, Russian speakers in this part were reliant on Ukraine for much of its access to natural resources and capital, there is a sense of being poor and looked down upon by the Ukranians in the West and its exactly this class divide that fuels ethno-nationalism.
To simply whip out a PDF and scream disinformation seem awfully short sighted way to influence people's opinions especially because it is condescending to the average HN user who has access to a plethora of fact finding search engines and social media to judge what the truth is.
It's up to the readers to gather information themselves and find the truths, not have it shoved down their throat in some emotional mania state of us vs them primal instincts.
Ukraine was never part of the West and it can never be if you understand the military strategic value of its flatlands.
> Demographically, Russian speakers in this part were reliant on Ukraine for much of its access to natural resources and capital, there is a sense of being poor and looked down upon by the Ukranians in the West and its exactly this class divide that fuels ethno-nationalism.
Half of Ukraine speaks Russian, including most of Kyiv. It wasn't looked down until Russia started the aggression. If anything western Ukraine (being less wealthy) was stereotypized as less developed and Ukrainian language was associated with that.
It became fashionable for Russian speaking Ukrainians to switch to speak Ukrainian after 2014 which is understandable.
In short you're wrong about almost everything.
> Ukraine was never part of the West and it can never be if you understand the military strategic value of its flatlands.
Ukraine was part of the west for over 300 years and why should it matter anyway? Ukrainians have the right to decide what they want to do.
> Demographically, Russian speakers in this part were reliant on Ukraine for much of its access to natural resources and capital, there is a sense of being poor and looked down upon by the Ukranians in the West and its exactly this class divide that fuels ethno-nationalism.
You mean: like Latvia. Where it works just fine.
> To simply whip out a PDF and scream disinformation seem awfully short sighted way to influence people's opinions especially because it is condescending to the average HN user who has access to a plethora of fact finding search engines and social media to judge what the truth is.
Yes, the truth is: the Eastern part of Ukraine was the poorest, mostly because of the flow of capital going West-to-East, like in most countries that border even poorer countries to their East and richer countries to their West.
> It's up to the readers to gather information themselves and find the truths, not have it shoved down their throat in some emotional mania state of us vs them primal instincts.
Ah, the 'do your own research' bit. Yes, I remember that from some other context.
> Ukraine was never part of the West and it can never be if you understand the military strategic value of its flatlands.
Latvia is, at least for now, a sovereign nation. Not part of one, bigger nation. We have similar issues in Europe, Belgium, Spain, England and Scotland. It seems mankind still didn't figure a way around people's self determination that doesn't regularly end in open warfare since the end of WW1.
Ukraine is also not part of a bigger nation, it is a nation.
As for self determination: as long as it isn't financed and pushed by a foreign adversary I say have at it. But in the case of Ukraine it is pretty clear who was pulling those strings.
Ukraine is a nation, parts that might prefer not to be are no nation. Everybody is pulling strings in Ukraine, the Maidan revolution was supported by the West, the separatists are supported by Russia, organized crime is supporting corruption. And now?
The problem is that NATO and the West lost so much credibility in the last decades that we stand on shaky ground when we oppose moves such as Putin's. The West invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, especially the latter one was totally unjustified. We happily deal with Saudi Arabia and support their war in Yemen. Spain can crack down on their Catalonian independence movement as much as they want, including blocking voting access with police. The EU lets, literally, drown poor people in the Mediterranean. I could go on. Thing is, Russia has no right whatsoever to invade Ukraine. The question is, what is the world going to do about it?
> Ukraine is a nation, parts that might prefer not to be are no nation.
Might is pretty thin ice, here, they didn't and they don't.
> Everybody is pulling strings in Ukraine, the Maidan revolution was supported by the West, the separatists are supported by Russia, organized crime is supporting corruption. And now?
The separatists are a small fraction (best estimates around 23%) in the East and without Russian support they would have been overrun long ago.
> The problem is that NATO and the West lost so much credibility in the last decades that we stand on shaky ground when we oppose moves such as Putin's.
No, the problem is that NATO is a very blunt weapon that doesn't really work well against nuclear armed dictators.
> The West invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, especially the latter one was totally unjustified.
Agreed.
> We happily deal with Saudi Arabia and support their war in Yemen.
Again, agreed.
> Spain can crack down on their Catalonian independence movement as much as they want, including blocking voting access with police.
Agreed again.
> The EU lets, literally, drown poor people in the Mediterranean. I could go on.
And again. But: even if you could go on, you shouldn't because none of these have anything to do with Russia invading Ukraine.
> The question is, what is the world going to do about it?
Apparently, not a whole lot and it bothers me quite a bit.
> The question is, what is the world going to do about it?
>> Apparently, not a whole lot and it bothers me quite a bit.
Me too.
> And again. But: even if you could go on, you shouldn't because none of these have anything to do with Russia invading Ukraine.
Well, I think it does. Because doing the same (TM) thing all over the world, although for different (official) reasons, limits your credibility when you criticize others. And it makes it so much easier for, in this case Putin, to pain the West as the true aggressor (which, in this case, is wrong). In the war of disinformation it doesn't matter so. And it opens up venues within Western society to create, as limited as it might be, support for Russia's actions. There have already been the first demonstrations in Germany with people carrying pro-Putin slogans.
Actually a good write down, I think it's not to far from the mark as far as Putin's perspective is concerned.
Since more than one thing can be, and usually is, true at the same time, I think one part is exactly as you described. The other is that Putin simply really wants Ukraine back in the fold, among other countries that used to be part if the USSR.
Again, all of that is just a, potential, explanation. It is not, by any means, an excuse or justification.
Here's where I differ and as much as I detest Russia's actions and Putins kleptocracy, he is a chess player, highly rational and calculating.
The idea that Putin wants to reclaim the former USSR border is ludicrous to me because it would mean raiding his own coffers.
He comes across as an opportunistic and a highly adventurous individual focused on wealth building.
I don't know if you read Alex Litvenenko's book but Putin's roots, his associates and friends, wealth was his end goal from the start. Why someone like him would be considered to be capable of empire building (when he could barely contain Chechnya) is beyond me.
Putin is a thug and he cares more about his wealth than the interest of his own country, and the #1 threat to him isn't sanctions but Hague trials.
There is overwhelming evidence that Putin was responsible for the apartment bombings (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_apartment_bombings), and if the truth came out, it wouldn't be his own people that take him down alone but the combined threat of NATO military action and an emboldened local populace.
Again I am not a psychologist but someone this selfish and material focused (his stupid Versailles 2.0 project that went to crap) is simply NOT interested in restoring USSR glory or anything like that but rather like any good capitalist, obsessed with maintaining his wealth.
> the idea that Ukraine has a Nazi government is a farce; for all of its considerable problems with corruption, Ukraine’s current government was democratically elected...
So were the Nazis, though.
I'm not arguing that Ukraine's government are "Nazis", just that despots and extremists can be elected too...
That is not an actual full truth there. First, there was considerable threat of violence and violence in an attempts to prevent wrong people from voting in those elections.
Second, the actual takeover of power after election did not respected German constitution at the time. And that vote was done with brownshirts lining up around the room, ready to physically attack.
Well, the first election was as legit as any other election before when measured by Weimar Republic standards. As was the process of forming a coalition government. The second election so was a total power grab and the opposite of legitimate.
When you visit the Reichstag in Berlin you can see all the postboxes of past members of parliament, including people like Göring and Hitler. Because the first time they were elected legitimately. After that, and until the formation of the BRD, those boxes show a gap for obvious reasons.
We would all do ourselves a favor by acknowledging the fact that the Nazis were, at one point, a legitimate political party in a legitimate democracy. Because there are a lot of lessons to be drawn from that very fact.
They were legal political party that got to parlament. They got 30% votes roughly.
One of their tactics was considerable amount of street violence, both during elections to prevent wrong people from voting and to make them afraid of voting for wrong party. And also considerable violence to create chaose that would need order. People like to pretend those were normal elections to make a point about fragility of democracy. But, the real point is maybe that parties that are violent before getting power continue to be violent after.
And maybe that another point is that threats and violence around election day and toward voters matter - and makes those elections not really free.
Afaik, there was no similar violence and threats in Ukraine. Their elections and Nazi elections were not comparable. Weinmar with all its political violence for years (and not just from nazi) is not comparable to Ukraine before Russian invasion either.
Sure, they used violence. As I said, the first time the elections wasn't any special compared to others in the Weimar republic. And sure, violent people and organizations only become more violent the power they have and the more shit they get away with.
The true violence campaign happened during the second election so. Which is the reason this election isn't considered legitimate anymore. And 30 % would make them a contender to form a coalition government in modern day Germany, just for perspective.
This argument can only be made in good faith if you completely ignore the events of the past 5 years, where anyone who was outspoken but didn’t tow the CNN/neolib line on just about any of the big issues was either directly or indirectly called a fascist or a neo-Nazi. Regularly.
There is nationalist party in Ukraine and they got 1% in elections. The elections were free and every term somebody else is in the government. Surprisingly never the nationalists tho.
Also they want to join EU (as all nazis do of course).
Meanwhile actually nationalist and imperialist Putin invaded 3 different countries during his 22 years of governing Russia. And he hasn't held fair elections there for a long time.
Understanding it is easy. A war-mongering murderous autocrat decided he can take Ukraine and so he did.
Don't fall for the Russian divide and conquer strategy and look for imaginary complexity when the reasons are simple. Putin has stolen what he can from the Russian people and now he tries to steal what he can from Ukraine just as Hitler and Stalin did before him. And every Russian that is not on the streets protesting this war, either out of cowardice or because they support it (and don't be fooled, a lot of them do) is guilty of waging an expansionist, criminal war.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrMiSQAGOS4