I dont think that the argument that the west might be a hypocritical imperialist power but it isnt quite as bad as Russia is the rallying cry the Economist seems to think it is.
The west is fighting for a unipolar world but the rest of the world would probably rather have a multipolar world. It gives them more options.
We already have a multipolar world. Effectively there are now two superpowers left, the US and China, each with their own approach to politics and leadership.
What this war has mostly done is laid bare the illusion that if we interconnect the world strongly by trade that we can avoid war. This is what will cause a massive re-drawing of the lines in the near future and that is what was at stake in Ukraine. Putin pulled away the curtain in a way that leaves no doubt about this and the aftereffects of that are far larger than Ukraine itself.
To me that whole thing seems to polarize even more.
I don't know how good Russia will come out of this. But at least in Europe it seems to weld countries together a bit more and moving focus away from US help to being more self-sustained in many different aspects.
In the best case it can lead the Europe to become a real global contender besides China and USA again.
Putin has done more for European unity and (public and political) support for NATO in five weeks than the rest of the countries in Europe and NATO combined could do in the last three decades.
Maybe this is true but there is also huge division in Europe. You can see many countries blaming Germany. Fidesz keeping power. Le Pen rising again in France. Pro-Russian parties likely to win in 2 years in Slovakia... and so on.
USA and China actually, contrary to most common beliefs, are on the same social design line, their élites both consider citizens as sheep to be treated like any farming animals, following classic Gustave Le Bon, Eduard Bernays considerations on general population. Both are really deeply neoliberist [1] with just marginal differences in appearances, not in substance: USA try to appear a Democracy while is a corporatocracy led by few historically rich and influential families not much different than Chinese élites, they both want a mean poor population that need to live paycheck to paycheck to obey, they both have a narrative apparatus and media control to makes people imaging a mock reality. Yes they are competing for third party resources and they booth need them with no choices...
[1] some might consider this word an error, it's not. It's an old scam liberist have done to be called "liberals" for masking better their real nature
“élites both consider citizens as sheep to be treated like any farming animals,”
That’s pretty much the natural state of human society. It sometimes gets shaken up by wars or revolutions and slowly goes back to that state during peacetime.
Well, effectively looking at human history that's seems to be a common pattern, but since we have evolved from caves to the stars... I hope things might be different now that we can have far more wealthy people and far more people of culture than before.
Surely a certain cohort of citizens will always be unable to improve much, that's part of natural selection, but the size and nature of such cohort vary, actual regimes, both westerns formal (not substantial) democracies and classic eastern/southern dictatorships seems to consider 99% of humans as farming animals...
I have encountered various kind of people, some really hopeless by nature, and NOT necessary poor (just yesterday a friend, reasonably middle class, with a comfortable life and a nice job asked me what I think about a "revolutionary investment scheme", a classic Ponzi's one so badly presented even a little child smell the stench miles away) but others are just trapped in social organization while having a formal potential the society fails to let them develop. Nothing is perfect, of course, but from perfection to the actual state of things...........
I don’t think it’s about peoples ability. It’s more that leadership roles select for psychopathic and greedy traits so you almost never get leaders with empathy. Most normal people would never run for president or do what Musk does. They are happy to live a peaceful life. So you pretty much inevitably end up with crazy people on top.
That's an interesting point: my view is not much abut "the bad vs the good élite" or how much percentage of bad/good élites incorporate or "who are the élite" but about why we have a certain pyramidal setup.
In my view we all have different kind of people in a society, the bad, the good, the ugly and any intermix of them in between, the point is that nature can self-regulate the percentage of those toward stability so a Democratic society in the classic demos sense (demos does not means the working class/the poor but the People in the sense of those who are, feel to be Citizens, active in their community, participating etc) we do not need a pyramidal structure.
The French Revolution divide a bit the power from all-into-one in few separated and that can't touch/interfere each others, we need perhaps just more subdivisions. Any of those surely have a kind of hierarchy but not with single subjects at the top nor with a very little oligarchy that rules on many others. Something much more like Renaissance society of the municipalities where there are competing powers, good and bag guys etc but a sufficiently subdivided power and crossed/contrasted interests that no one power can rule the others and the society keep changing at a certain peace, not issueless, for sure, but still in a turbulent but flourishing society.
Those systems in the history have worked in many different times and societies but they never last long, pushing toward too much resource usages and polarization, culture IMVO can compensate. In the past culture, basic ones eh, not all PhDs, was expensive, now can be cheap and easy to be accessed enough for nearly all. The quid I miss is how in the past when those kind of society start can start out of an age of darkness?
Yes. Large powerblocks will eventually go to war in very horrible and extremely large wars, but smaller powerblocks will go to war almost constantly in small but no less horrible wars.
Both are bad, the one is bad every 50 years or so and then millions of people die the other kills millions of people over the same period. We need better ways to govern or we'll end up killing the species one day.
Both are bad and when some crisis happen, some endogenous (economy devastated by few profiteers, for instance), some exogenous (like depletion of natural resources) they are the most classic response to save ruling class in position and sometimes in skin, but at least a small scale war provoke small scale damage for humanity at a whole, people who can/who anticipate the war can flee on time etc, to a certain extent they might even be a means of evolutionary selection of humanity. Large wars consume and pollute too much, with nukes that means potentially species-killing destruction etc
Even more dangerous things happen when the war is not a ruling class means to survive BUT just a business or mostly a business, that's why IMVHO private A/N&D companies should just exists for small weapons for civilians and nothing more. The rest should be a State-only production always kept but so expensive that a war is chosen only as extrema ratio. Private companies can only participate aside like providing steel etc to the State, BUT that at a fixed and low price high enough to avoid making companies failing but low enough that's not a profit even in a deep bear market case.
Also don’t forget that a well run dictatorship produces superior outcomes vs a bottom up democracy. The dictatorship will be much faster and agile in its decision making. The problem with dictatorships that they often stop being well run after a while.
What outcome? In innovation, thanks to public research for military reasons yes, most common modern tech was born from nazi research in WWII but I doubt some consider even initial phase of nazism a good thing.
We do not live to be efficient, to innovate, to produce goods etc: we live to live, we work because it's needed to live well and in various cases is also a pleasure to a certain extent, but definitively not the contrary. Quality of life on any individual is the outcome IMVHO not the rest.
Even if nazi research pushed infrared, new way to survive in cold waters, rockets, many various maritime, aviation and generic mechanical innovation who now and not only from now have produced good things for us those who have build them do not have any pleasure from them, so the outcome is still negative. Working to left something good behind is good, but not at the price of ruining or dedicate a life for that purpose.
I'm sure that is part of the motivation, but it definitely isn't the main motivation, besides that the situation around Taiwan and China is not comparable in many ways to the one between Russia and Ukraine.
Was Russia's invasion of Ukraine provoked? Like, has there been evidence of the claimed nazis (which AFAIK isn't grounds for invasion) or whatever? Did Ukraine strike first?
The Azov brigades are pretty openly nazi and were explicitly and openly used by the non nazi Ukrainian government to cling on to the ethnically russian bits of ukraine as they were trying to declare independence from kyiv.
If western ukraine were trying to break away and kyiv used nazi soldiers to cling on to lviv im pretty sure that the western propaganda organs (and by extension, you) wouldnt feel so ambivalent about the swastika tattoos and their war crimes and yea, it probably would be used as grounds for an intervention.
This may be what the West is fighting for, in a cynical fashion. And it’s not exactly wrong: “the West” is a lot of people and some have motivations that are less than noble. But an alternative argument is that the West is fighting for liberal democracy as an alternative to authoritarian governance (or “democracy in name only” authoritarianism.)
It's become fashionable recently to claim that liberal democracy is on the ropes, and to argue that the future will be full of effective authoritarian governments (despite over a century of such governments being out-competed by modern democracies.) The Ukraine war is a hell of a showcase for the weakness of that strategy. At the end of the day, the real lesson the world should take from this war is that democracy (and particularly liberal democracy) simply works better than authoritarian systems: not because it’s perfect, but because it gives societies a way to course-correct and recover from corruption and stupid mistakes. During peaceful times it's really easy to forget this and get frustrated by democracy: there’s a lot of appeal to the idea of handing governance over to an effective strongman. But even if you somehow luck into a brilliant strongman, dictators eventually age and make mistakes. When that inevitably happens your government won't have the structures necessary to correct them. The performance of the Russian military in Ukraine is an extreme example that shows how naturally self-limiting this strategy can be.
>an alternative argument is that the West is fighting for liberal democracy
Trying to reverse the results of a referendum where 80% voted and 90% voted yes and multiple western polls confirm the result doesnt exactly show a resounding commitment to democracy.
Nor does being besties with Saudi Arabia.
From an imperialistic perspective both make perfect sense though. Saudi is a global energy chokepoint and Crimea is a regional strategic chokepoint for a rival empire.
I choose not to give much weight to a referendum held under military occupation.
More generally, "the West is a lot of different people." Many of them are lousy and have made lousy decisions, such as the support for Saudi Arabia.
Democracy doesn't mean perfection, and I'm hugely in favor of making it better. I don't think supporting the current basket of authoritarian regimes on offer is "better". We can agree to disagree.
How do you square your belief in democracy with your belief that 90% of Crimeans who want the referendum result respected should be totally ignored?
(90% was also the result of a German run poll 2 years later without tanks present... the poll was consistent with the referendum)
It's worth bearing in mind that Kyiv has no intention of rerunning the poll if Russia leaves likely coz they know what the result would be. It will simply reincorporate the territory. The only vote that was ever going to happen after Maidan was with Russian tanks present.
I dont think this is about agreeing to disagree or about accepting imperfections in democracy. This is about an overarching willingness of our society to discard democracy when it conflicts with western imperialist objectives.
Not only are we willing to do it we are willing to engage in orwellian doublethink about it.
What a strange article and what a bunch of unrelated factoids thrown in to reach conclusions that aren't really supported by the data.
It would take something about as long as the article posted here to write a proper refutation but if there was a point to be made then it could not doubt have been made much better.
For instance:
"Most of the emerging world either backs Russia over its invasion or is neutral. Some countries depend on Russian arms, others feel a misplaced nostalgia for Soviet largesse, but many see the West as decadent, self-serving and hypocritical. And many more, even if they do not welcome the invasion, see it as somebody else’s problem."
Where to even start? The two large players that matter in the 'developing world' are China and India, both have their own very unique reasons to be either supportive of or ambivalent towards Russia, not because they depend on arms but because Russia and/or Russian connected territories serve their interests or because they have similar political systems and have similar designs on their immediate surroundings. That's already by population almost 3 billion people and yet it is only two countries.
"As America and the rest of NATO rally support for action against Russia, that is a stunning rebuke."
So that 'stunning rebuke' is not nearly as stunning as the author makes it out to be.
Then:
"It is also taking the world down a dangerous path."
Correction: Russia is taking the world, and especially Europe down a dangerous path. If anything it has destabilized the European continent in a way that nothing has since WWII, not even the war around former Yugoslavia, where - it needs to be said - Russia again played a major role.
"On March 2nd, 141 countries voted in the UN to deplore Russia’s invasion. Just five voted against and 35 abstained. "
The ones that abstained have their reasons to walk a very fine line, in part because they depend on Russia and in part because they have ambitions to be more like Russia.
The ones that voted against are: North Korea, Eritrea, Syria, Belarus and Russia itself.
I don't think anybody is going to be surprised by four of those, the one that remains is Eritrea. Russian veto power in the security council has repeatedly protected Eritrean leadership.
"But the real pattern is more complex. Our sister organisation, the Economist Intelligence Unit, has noted that only a third of the world’s people live in countries that have not only condemned Russia but also imposed sanctions on it."
Yes, that's also the part of the world that either aligns with the West because they are closely tied economically and/or because they have the ability to do so without entirely ruining their own economy. If Upper Volta decides to boycott or sanction Russia it won't move the needle much because they aren't really the most active trading partners, but if the US, UK, the remainder of Europe or Japan does so it definitely does move that needle.
There is a whole debate possible about whether or not sanctions are effective and then another one about whether or not these particular sanctions are effective. But it is pretty easy to see why those countries that are most directly affected by Russia invading Ukraine would be the ones to support the sanctions and leave the rest of the world less likely to do so.
Proximity + economic ties + feeling threatened by Russia is enough explanation for me.
"Most of them are Western. Another third are in neutral countries. This group includes giants like India and tricky American allies, such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The final third are in countries that are echoing Russia’s rationale for the invasion. The biggest, China, has repeated propaganda claiming that Ukraine has hosted American-backed bioweapons laboratories."
I don't really see what this paragraph adds to the previous one, it is pretty clear that China has its own agenda with Taiwan, a wo...
As living in a country neighbouring Russia (Finland) I find very little at fault with the article.
I don't think your critique opposes the article as such - you provide the background information that generally Economist excpects it's readers to already have.
I think this quote from the article is very correct.
"the world Mr Putin desires would be far more decadent, self-serving and amoral than the one that exists today."
The concepts in the article are complex, and yes, it's more of a statement of sentiment than deep policy analysis (those take hundreds of pages).
this whole article looks to me as though it started out from a conclusion, then pulled together a bunch of unrelated facts to paint a completely incoherent picture.
Generally that's the whole point of Economist - their authors strive to digest a complex event and at least attempt to condense it to a brief article. I would love if they would cite all of the references used in an article but alas it is not so.
Economist is also declared itself politically very partial to the liberal world view, so it's not something that they hide. You go to the Economist to get the liberal take on things - you don't need to like it, but you are not deceived by the authors motivation as it is very clear.
> "the world Mr Putin desires would be far more decadent, self-serving and amoral than the one that exists today."
That's true but that's just a pretty basic observation, the thing that the article seems to want to say most of all is that the rest of the world outside of a relatively small minority portion in the 'West' is either supportive of Russia or ambivalent and I don't see the support for that thesis.
See the part that starts with:
"In Mr Putin’s world, where might makes right, today’s lack of support is proof of Western decline."
I take it as a more of "liberal call to arms for western values" rather than as an objective quantitative conclusion - but yes, Economist is a bit of a mixed bag on this way. It's the best news media today (IMO) but it's not perfect.
Overall, I've been pleased with the coverage in The Economist, but the occasional article, like this one, lacks an authentic through line even if it has a litany of facts. China was never, ever going to go against Russia in this war. It's not even worth talking about the number of people there because Putin literally went to China to discuss the war with Xi before it kicked off. The number of people barely matter when it's not a democracy, since the power structures are decided by a much smaller percent of the population and the press isn't free.
India, I actually do take issue with. Their self-serving actions I hold against them and I've been disappointed with Indian leadership and alignment as of late.
But all of this misses the point. The unaligned movement is acceptable to my western eyes, but I never for a second forget that they need us for their stability and security. Small, poor, neutral states rarely change the course of world politics. So out of the countries that actually matter there is NATO (and friends like Australia and Japan), India, Brazil, Russia, and China.
India and Brazil both disappointingly went neutral, Russia started the war, and China is softly backing their junior partner. So my take away is simple: The countries that are willing to sacrifice at their own cost for others are the ones that have internal politics that mirror their values. The more populist or fascist or communist the country the more likely they are to put their own national interests ahead of others.
Or do you think Canadian-Ukrainian trade is so vital to Trudeau that he's willing to frost relations with Russia, outlay hundreds of millions in direct aid and munitions donations, and spend political capital garnering support for Ukrainian defence?
Is this really an ideological divide. Cause I remember Iraqi war where there where phrases about freedom fries, the willing and evil where thrown around
I bet there are people that see this as ideological, fair and good vs evil
I also bet there are some for whom this is a strategic and precedent setting
As a long-time reader of The Economist I have to say that their latest issues (especially those related to the war) were pure propaganda, I think the issue that came up just after the war started had a mention of Russia every two articles (yes, even in their Arts&Culture section).
The thing that really got to me (and which made me actually write them an email, the first in 10+ years) was their latest Charlemagne column [1], the one where they were comparing Orban and his political party/government to a virus (to Covid, as it happens). I tried to explain to that poor fellow/lady writing the column that making that comparison in these parts of the world (I live in neighbouring Romania) is extremely, extremely problematic, given past history. We were supposed to be the "good guys", the ones that are fighting against Orban the anti-semite, but we can't be the good guys anymore when we're borrowing well-known anti-semite tactics from the past.
To say nothing that half-way through the article I was saying to myself: "maybe I'm imagining things, maybe painting your political enemies as a virus/disease is how it's done these day", until I saw one of the column's sub-titles that was just this text: Buda-pest . Absolutely horrendous.
I started reading it around 2005-2006, so just (relatively speaking) after the Iraq War had started (at that time, on paper, it still looked like a success), and I don't remember them being as partial to it as they are now when it comes to the West vs Russia. Granted, I wasn't reading them in the spring of 2003 when the invasion had indeed took place.
Also, there was a despicable "interview" with Blair a few years ago out of which he got pretty much clean as a whistle when it came to the Iraq war, no ruffling the feathers or anything like that.
You say that some issues of The Economist are propagandist. I am inclined to take this opinion seriously. This said I wonder how you got to this conclusion. What exactly ticked you off?
I am asking this because I myself fell for some propaganda and this has shaken me up. I want to learn how to recognize propaganda better.
Can't pinpoint to an exact thing, because good propaganda is always diffuse, it kind of encircles you. Were it to be more "straightforward" it would be way easier for the target subject to just reject it, thus denying the propagandist's objective. It is easier for said target subject to say "no" (let's say) to one big thing that is presented to him than to say "no" to lots of smaller things addressed/presented to him, but which smaller things, taken together, have the same "effect" as the one big thing.
Back to The Economist, and after that long digression, the signs were in a sort always there. For example when it comes to the China section that it's included in every issue there was always that feeling that nothing that the Chinese government/authorities did was right. If something good was happening in China it was because of individual people, if something bad was happening, it was, of course, the government's fault. And maybe the "government" is the wrong word, because there are lots of people in the West itself who think that the Government is always wrong, too, it was more like "it was the fault of the Chinese regime taken as a whole, of the way it was set up, of its ideological system".
But when it came to the US the bad things were never the fault of the government, or if some government-related person was doing something wrong (think the previous US president) then it was the fault of that particular person, not of the entire system per se. Also, said US system, even with its minor faults, was always presented as being capable of self-correction, there was always an intrinsic belief that "things will get better, by definition". No such hope was attached to the Chinese-based system, which was always presented as an ideological dead-end (maybe not in this direct words, but that was the idea).
And then there are even smaller things. One that stood up to me was when the previous president was accused of lying, a thing that lots of other US president had done in the past (and will probably do in the future, too) but which I hadn't seen presented as such by this magazine, I mean, not with those words. And not only that, but that lye accusation was written down in one of their columns with a capital L, something like "the big Lye", which is a basic propaganda technique: one is not a mere "traitor", but a big, dangerous, "Traitor", one just cannot think and reason about a nondescript "people", one instead dreams big nationalistic things while thinking about the "People" etc.
The war/Russia issue I was talking about had all of the above dialed up to 100.
The Economist wears its prejudice on its sleeve and acknowledges them.
It was literally founded as a propaganda organ for the liberals in England. In opposition to the "Corn Laws"
It is also "where the Queen goes, go we". So if England (not Britain, England) declares war they are in, boots and all. They cheer lead the Iraqi debacle then years later talked of "those mistaken supporteds of the Iraqi invasion including this magazine".
It is what I like about them. Most media does not admit it bias, the Economist admits it every day.
"FROM A CYNICAL European perspective, Viktor Orban’s election triumphs are like covid-19 wave" it says. Because it has always been anti Orban. Always called on the Hungarian voters to rejected him.
I disagree with many of their priors (I find the emphasis on individual rights as opposed to collective rights unbalanced. Collective rights exist an often conflict with individual rights and I put the balance in a different place) But I have huge respect for the honesty.
You can label it "propaganda". It is not incorrect. But it is unsubtle and very honest.
Compare that to Fox News or the Guardian both of which do not recognise that their views are prejudice at all.
So biolab conspiracy nonsense (the US was funding the dismantment the old Soviet biological weapon program) + nonsense about GE (US went max pressure and GE left too). Kremlin probably can't pay even for a decent bot program?
> trove of e-mails on Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop — the existence of which was exclusively reported by The Post in October 2020 — found that he played a role in helping a California defense contractor analyze killer diseases and bioweapons in Ukraine.
> In April 2014, Metabiota vice president Mary Guttieri wrote a memo to Hunter outlining how they could 'assert Ukraine's cultural and economic independence from Russia'. 'Thanks so much for taking time out of your intense schedule to meet with Kathy [Dimeo, Metabiota executive] and I on Tuesday. We very much enjoyed our discussion,' Guttieri wrote
> I don't really see what this paragraph adds to the previous one, it is pretty clear that China has its own agenda with Taiwan, a word that isn't even present in the article, and that India has its own dependencies on Russia.
Actually the same argument about China's expansionist agenda can also be made for India. In the case of India it intends to at some point go to war with Pakistan over the Kashmir region.
Interestingly I find some of your points to have the same issue you raised of the article
Categorizing the other side, their supporters and their size as vested, threatened, agenda, opinion don’t count and proximity related
Surely those apply to both sides
You are discarding the views of countries because you think they have vested interest
Another set of countries because of proximity another set because of reliance o Russia another set because they have similar design/intent
Leaving the one true view as what matters
The one true view that matters also lean on countries, have proximity to other countries and have designs and interests so why should their views be right and pure ?
I suspect we have a language issue, I quite literally do not understand what it is that you are trying to convey.
The one part that I understand is that you think that I have the 'one true view' which is clearly not the case, all I have is my opinion. I'm not 'discarding' any country because they are still there, all I'm trying to do is to figure out their reasoning for positioning themselves as they do in contrast to what the article claims, which I think is simply not supported by the facts.
The rest of your comment I can either not parse, make sense of or reply to, sorry. If English is not your first language then it must be frustrating not to be able to communicate your ideas clearly, it isn't my first language either but I would definitely encourage you to keep trying because that is the only way to improve. Thanks!
I have no idea in what goes on in Putin's mind, and I put little credence in what he says, but if I look at what outcomes would benefit a resurgently-belligerent Russia, the one that most concerns me is that public opinion in the USA turns against NATO, from an impression that Europe is unwilling to make anything but a token stand here, on account of its economic dependency on Russia. (Aside: I wonder how much of the initial planning for this invasion was done under the assumption that Trump would win a second term?)
In comparison to this, these other issues from the article seem to be secondary at most.
Europe and NATO have drawn a lot closer over this than I though possible two months ago, and they are likely to continue to do for a while longer.
A lot of the USA anti NATO sentiment is still a leftover from the Trump administration which was all but preaching isolationism (and which of course very much played into the hands of Putin who would love to reacquire not just Ukraine but also the Baltics and maybe even other former USSR states).
I'm with you on the premise that they probably thought Trump would win a second term and I think if not for COVID that this would have all happened two years earlier.
Public opinion in the United States with respect to NATO will be put to the test: for the first time in a long time it looks as though other nations in NATO may have to lean on it when in the past it was the USA that asked other countries to stand with it when it was attacked. What the outcome of that will be I do not know but I agree with you that it is of primary importance compared to the points raised in the article.
>(Aside: I wonder how much of the initial planning for this invasion was done under the assumption that Trump would win a second term?)
Got to love the mental acrobatics required to think that an invasion 13 months after Trump's departure from the White House must have been planned assuming a second Trump term (since, y'know, Trump was a Russian agent!!!!!!1!11!!!). Anything, everything, to avoid the more obvious conclusion that Russia was more afraid of the US/NATO with Trump as president than Biden.
You probably are. Everyone wants to spin things for there own benefit. However I think it's mostly in the interest of the aggressor to keep people lost in arm-chair debating about global powers by manufacturing suspicion of critical voices and fueling competing narratives, as it leaves them free to reshape the world through violence. As a European who campaigned against the Iraq and other wars, whatever the propoganda we are being sold is, for me it doesn't change the reality that millions of Ukraines are now refugees fleeing to my country and 10,000s have been murdered in cold blood.
> Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine to force it to renounce the West and to submit to the Kremlin
I wonder what's their source, based on Putin's declarations this should be:
> Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine to force it to renounce the West and to remain neutral because it's located between the west and russia and because the west promised it
When you read about local episodes, like a single bombing event, there is not much to filter: such small scale details are unknowable by the public, you can only know a bit if you were there or have someone you trust in place.
Large scale things on contrary are far easier to spot, at least at a certain scale and at a certain extent. For instance when we keep reading "the Russian bombing hospitals, theaters and schools" it's evidently propaganda not because "Russians are good" vs "Russians are bad" but because missiles&co are not that cheap nor that abundant so an error can always happen, but normally no one army in the world waste ammo for nothing and as a result if those bombing are true then means Ukrainian army choose to violate Geneva conventions recycling hospitals, theaters, schools etc for military purposes and than as a result for the other side they became legit targets. But as always people at scale do not like to reason, prefer being fed with emotions.
With similar simple reasoning following the classic Latin cui prodest we can easy conclude that this war is needed by USA and UK élites against the EU, Ukraine and Russian interest. Unfortunately for those élites that move means pushing Russia toward China witch is less weak alone than Russia and far more important with Russian natural resources and a far augmented military tech transfer from Russia China will arrive in few years to have enough military capacity to counter USA and UK together. Those élites play the same game they have played with nazi Germany, counting on similar outcome, of course as back then against their own citizens interests. On the other side Russia need safety at their western borders, for them nazis are ok-ish if on their side, not ok if on NATO side, so they haven't really choice but go to war. China needs stability to keep growing, as any dictatorship that need to grow, but also to sustain it's population. There is no morale on all sides, just mix of interests, some legit some criminal, and different school of thoughts confronting.
>because missiles&co are not that cheap nor that abundant
Russia is mostly using in Ukraine (like before in Syria) dirt cheap unguided WWII style bombs, like FAB-250 (550lb) and FAB-500 (1100lb).
> if those bombing are true then means Ukrainian army choose to violate Geneva conventions recycling hospitals, theaters, schools etc for military purposes and than as a result for the other side they became legit targets.
You forgot to update your Russian propaganda version to spread. For example Russia hitting the Mariupol hospital because there supposedly was an Ukrainian army command center is the old version of their propaganda. Now they tell that they didn't hit the hospital, and that there were no Ukrainian military there, and it was just a real hospital which Ukrainians intentionally blown up.
> Large scale things on contrary are far easier to spot, at least at a certain scale and at a certain extent. For instance when we keep reading "the Russian bombing hospitals, theaters and schools" it's evidently propaganda not because "Russians are good" vs "Russians are bad" but because missiles&co are not that cheap nor that abundant so an error can always happen, but normally no one army in the world waste ammo for nothing and as a result if those bombing are true then means Ukrainian army choose to violate Geneva conventions recycling hospitals, theaters, schools etc for military purposes and than as a result for the other side they became legit targets.
This is disingenuous. Russia has a long history of bombing civilians as a psychological weapon. Both Grozny and Aleppo are well documented. Your arguments “the Russians are not stupid, so if they seem to be doing stupid, then it’s propaganda” rests on very faulty premises. They are not stupid, and are deliberately targeting civilian populations. We know their doctrine and we have seen their playbook. You are only carrying water here and your rhetorics are obvious.
> With similar simple reasoning following the classic Latin cui prodest we can easy conclude that this war is needed by USA and UK élites against the EU, Ukraine and Russian interest.
This is an interesting conspiracy theory.
> On the other side Russia need safety at their western borders, for them nazis are ok-ish if on their side, not ok if on NATO side, so they haven't really choice but go to war.
Come off it. NATO is an existential threat to Russia only if Russia’s existence depends on being able to invade its neighbours. The fact that its former satellites ran to the West at the moment they got the chance is telling. If they wanted stability, they’d have increased cooperation instead of rattling their metaphorical sabre for 20 years. NATO was not more menacing 2 months ago than it was 20 years ago, quite the contrary. It was desegregating before being reinvigorated by this stupid, pointless agression. Finland and Sweden applying was unimaginable just a couple of weeks ago. If stability was the point, a hot war was the absolute last thing to do.
Also, is there any evidence, even circumstantial, that Ukraine has a significantly larger nazi relative population compared to any surrounding country? Its government is just as incompetent and corrupt as you’d expect given the context. Where are their nazi policies?
You seem to be making a lot of effort to sound reasonable, but ultimately
All countries have attacked civilians, did you remember WWII USA in Europe mass bombing even on ally countries? Iraqi ones? French ones in Libya and Siria? NATO Belgrade siege? But their purpose is evident: WWII mass bombing were used to force rich European countries to reconstruct under the Marshall plan agreements a thing would not happen if those countries were not so badly treated, modern bombing in Iraq &c was done for similar reasons, less ample now, but equally in principles: making room for western private companies big earnings. Russia do not have such targets, they are meaningless for them, they do not have the western military-industrial complex, most of their activities are still public in military and health domains, private activities suffer more from sanctions and war than the outcome [1], they advance slowly and methodically clearly to minimize damages in area they want operational under their control.
[1] to a point I suspect some western sanctions are negotiated with Putin gov. to hit some oligarchs he dislike...
You need to understand that there at least tens of thousands of Ukrainians here, on HN, who have a firsthand experience on how “Russian army advances “.
Major cities like Chernihiv, Kharkiv, Mariupol are shelled with dumb, indiscriminate weapons - Soviet free fall bombs from the 60’s, MLRS with unguided rockets. This stuff is cheap and plenty.
There residential areas where hundreds of thousands lived, now completely destroyed. There are videos, photos, everything. Yet you succumb to nice Russians narrative.
I do not see any difference from Russian-speaking Ukrainians with first hand experience in Azov, C14, Svoboda, Pravy Sektor and various western mercenaries against them, that's happen in wars. The point is the military reason behind the action.
WWII bombing was mass bombing, with no precision target, '60s missiles are far more precise and absolutely not that cheap nor abundant and there is no military reason to mass using them even if you have a significant stockpile to bomb a residential area if this area is not filled by enemy forces. A practice mercenaries always use in war, regardless of their nationality, because that's the classic asymmetric war.
If I succumb to Russian narrative (curious, since I've cited western governmental sources to sustain my claims not TASS or Ria Novosti) you equally succumb to Bernaysian western propaganda. Being from EU BTW my own interest in on the Russian side, our major supplier, fellow European till the Urals (so Moscow included), not on the USA/UK side since those two equally do their best to pick our tech&talentsm put us one against each other (a thing we do remarkably well, shame on us for that) and do countless more or less discrete criminal and not criminal actions against us. The USA after WWII have transformed my home country (Italy) into the Mafiastan just to stop CLN Alta Italia (the major Resistence body of the country) to really becoming a democratic government, the UK help very well fueling corruption (a significant local weakness) by all means and imposing a redesign of public school to form a new kind of citizens unable to reason and act as Citizens. That after the UK itself have funded mussolini to became a dictator, that after Wall Street have founded hitler till the first year of WWII at least. Saying USA an UK obviously I'm talking about their ruling class, not their citizens that equally pay the price of their ruler business against their own interests.
Just consider a thing: EU countries can only blame themselves for their status from world superpower to a disaster, BUT Russians never invade US, while we try invading Russia few times, USA and UK and the world their ruling class represent have do so, few times. Even from history we are on opposite sides. And that's history not russian propaganda.
> For instance when we keep reading "the Russian bombing hospitals, theaters and schools" it's evidently propaganda
Or it's just a fact... I guess some people may think Ukrainian's are blowing up those palces themselves, or making it up. But this is not really the first time in history of indiscriminate bombings have been happening to terrorize the population of some place into submission/demoralization out of spite. (And I guess it will not be the first time, where it may strenghten such population's resolve, looking at you London...)
> but normally no one army in the world waste ammo for nothing
You seem to just explain away the fact that these places are being bombed/shelled with some reasoning amounting to "makes no sense to me, therefore it must be propaganda", without knowing about current leadership's real decision making, or taking into account results of any fact finding missions, like OSCE's.
All I can agree on is that we don't know for sure if it's a policy. But it sure looked like it was a policy in Syria, in addition to an apparent campaign to demonize the civil service and health care workers, so it's not really out of question. Especially not because of some flimsy reasoning about "I don't know who would benefit". Qucks like a duck, looks like a duck, etc.
Ukrainian forces have been shelling civilian areas in the Donbass since 2014. How much of a stretch is it to believe they would use them as human shields as well? We don't know for sure what is happening on the ground but speculation can go both ways.
Well, I dislike reasoning about this without facts, so maybe you can add some statistics from monitoring missions, like how many shells hit civilian areas each year since 2014. How many civilian victims there were each year, etc.
I guess to understand the scale of the issue... to see if it's more like an active terror campaign with a city/village being shelled every single day (like the joint Russian/Assad terror campaigns in the northwest of Syria), or more like something else.
If it looks more like a former, then yes, I'll accept that UA gov doesn't care about civilians there.
I mean few weeks ago Italian main TV channel have passed "the bombing of Kiev" witch was recognized quickly as a cut-scene of the game War Thunder. Then various westerns media have publish a news about a correspondent killed on duty, the same one declared killed an year or so in Kabul. Other medias show pictures of crying women saying they are Ukrainian in tears for the Russian bombing, actually those photos came from AFP/2014 and were really Ukrainian women in tears, only they were Russian-speaking ones in tear for Euromaidan massacres.
Since I'm not there, not I know in person anyone there I can't say who bombed who nor if there war really such bombing at all. While I can reason at the macro level, because at micro level anyone can say no matter what it's next to impossible prove that true or false if not done so badly like actual propaganda, but at larger scale is equally next to impossible hiding things and reasoning about their real reasons is far easier.
Of course the fact that me, myself and I fails to see a sense in something does not disprove that something, but connecting dots help and the actual propaganda, on both sides, reached a level that's very easy to spot it.
You can't reason on the macro level either, because you know neither the real decision making of high level persons in control, nor sufficient scope of individual facts (as you say). How can you reason on macro level if your input is either news you don't trust, or hearsay you can't verify?
As to the document you posted... That document is not from OSCE. OSCE just added a header to it. It's entirey written by https://democracyfund.ru/ . So it can hardly be described as created by a "western body". Also OSCE is not a purely western body anyway. It includes Russia, Azerbaijan, Turkey, and many other eastern european countries.
Most importantly, it's not a report from an official fact finding mission (which is a specialist endeavor to send observers to a location to gather facts regardless of the meaning of such facts, like movements and activities of armed forces, shots being fired, destroyed property, documenting casualties, etc.) with summary statistics, etc. The document you posted is composed of random interviews with released prisoners from UA prisons. I guess it has some value, torture by UA security apparatus may have been happening as described, but it's not relevant to what I asked for in my reply to you. (which was to take into account results from actual fact finding missions, which is about documented facts, not about interviews or hearsay)
And yes, news outlets are about clicks and speed and some about shock value, as we know. I agree with you that they sometimes report complete crap. Everyone needs to take individual news reports with a grain of salt. Game footage was reported as actual war footage by a Russian embassy on twitter during Syria war. There's stupidity on both sides, you know. ;)
It depends on where you re reading from. For americans, it seems the war is becoming more of a partisan issue, but for europeans it's much more clear cut, as many of them have memories of the same things happening a few decades ago.
Not participating / letting it just go past you until the smoke clears is, in your case, an option as well; you don't HAVE to pick a side if you don't feel like you're adequately informed, or you don't trust the media or the 'side' said media mostly reports on.
One example; A Russian warship has sunk. This has been confirmed by the Russians, so that part is a fact. However, while the Ukranian side claims it was done by Ukranian anti-ship cruise missiles, the Russians claim it was "just" a fire / incident on board.
I mean personally am more likely to believe the side that isn't the aggressor and isn't run by an authoritarian person / government, but the news I follow didn't make any calls themselves; they just reported what the one AND the other side claimed, plus the facts (yesterday of a Russian warship being on fire, today of it having sank).
Good example. The part where it gets interesting: the Ukrainians claimed the hit before the Russians reluctantly admitted to 'the fire' and the vessel was well over the horizon.
If you had told me two months ago that the Russian navy would be so incompetent as to lose their flagship to the bottom of the Black Sea, I would not have believed you. Now it seems that further humiliations are not only possible, but probable.
They lost a nuclear sub during a training exercise due to a faulty weld on a torpedo, I'm not sure why this would be so out of the realm of possibility.
Man, when are these supposedly reputable publications going to get editors for their online material? (Or hire writers who know and practice basic grammar?) The total lack of any proofreading is just ridiculous.
Proper grammar and spelling in online news is a thing of the past...
(or translation for that matter - if I didn't know english, I'd think kids in UKR are making mine laying drones instead of mine sweeping ones, and lot of other nonsense I don't remember anymore)
The way I look at it: in 2014 an otherwise peaceful Ukraine was invaded by its far larger and far stronger neighbor who entrenched themselves after robbing a bunch of territory on a pretext. Ukraine learned the hard way that they were underprepared, changed tactics and dramatically improved their military, while at the same time due to internal issues (mostly corruption) their larger neighbors saw the quality of their army decline.
Then, in recent times Russia decided that just having the Eastern part of Ukraine wasn't enough because those pesky Ukrainians were showing other countries in their sphere of influence (notably: Belarus, Georgia) that it was possible for a country to lift itself out of poverty by aligning with the West.
A complete lack of realistic estimates of operational readiness, underestimation of the Ukrainian resolve and a significant propaganda effort later the larger neighbor decided to finish what they started in 2014, which is roughly where we are today.
The West obviously stands a lot to gain from Ukraine not ending up in the same way as Belarus and so has a strong motivation to ensure that the new Russian imperialist effort fails. This, plus the fact that housing another 40 million refugees is not an option suffices to explain why the West is fairly eager to support Ukraine in its defense against Russia.
Sorry, but after checking through your comment history I can no longer take your participation in this forum serious. If we had an 'ignore' feature I'd use it right about now, not because I disagree with you but because I don't think you are arguing in good faith.
FWIW: Big bad Russia against small peaceful Ukraine is the reality far more than any alternative that you might want to supply.
You should actually watch that video rather than just posting it. Mearsheimer's whole thesis, that Russia is trying to "wreck" Ukraine in order to keep it out of NATO and wasn't motivated by territorial expansion has been falsified by the most recent invasion. Mearcheimer actually claimed in the video that you are linking that Russia wouldn't launch a full scale invasion because that would go against it's geo-strategic interests and yet here we are.
Russia tried to avoid involving in Donbass for 8 years meddling with Minsk-2.
It's still not sure if it will take Donbass. All the new captured parts of Ukraine are becoming new or join existing "People's Republics".
I won't be surprised if after the end of campaign, there still will be independent republics and some shaky agreement that will be broken by Ukraine in the first week.
Even first plan was apparently to overthrow government, not to gain some land.
On other hand, the tactics of West/Zelensky is to destroy the East as much as possible, killing as many people as possible, destroying as much infrastructure as possible.
Nobody knows for sure, but I think it was Neptune missile guided by US RQ-4B Global Hawk, that is flying over Black Sea after false attack by Turkish(also NATO member) Bayraktar TB2.
>NATO provides weapons, reconnaissance, mercenaries and political support to Ukraine, not to mention full scale economic war on Russia.
Not standing idle while Russian Nazist regime genocides Ukrainians speaks great of NATO.
>Ukrainian Army was trained by NATO instructors.
and it shows. There is a reason people try to get to best schools. At the same time it is obvious from its performance that Russia hasn't gone to school at least for the last several decades.
Btw, the video of the mightiest Black Sea missile cruiser whose main purpose was to provide air-defense to the naval group being hit by Ukrainian missile https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uXT3kOZGNE&t=73s
Except that most of that started only after Russia's invasion plans became apparent. Ukraine been asking for support ever since 2014, received only a little of it.
Also, "cannon fodder"?
Ukrainian army defends its people and its country. Russian soldiers are truly cannon fodder for Russian imperialists.
Direct quotes from the US state department website:
Ukraine is a key regional strategic partner that has undertaken significant efforts to reform its military and increase its interoperability with NATO.
Since 2014, the United States has committed more than $5.6 billion in total assistance to Ukraine, including security and non-security assistance. In 2021 alone we committed over $300 million in assistance to support Ukraine’s democratic and economic development, and over $650 million in security assistance.
Hah, the equipment doesn't matter if your military are a bunch of untrained dumbfucks.
But yeah, NATO is helping a lot.
There's no shortage of volunteers in Ukraine (and abroad), the forces are full, they're not accepting people even in support positions anymore. It's Russia who's providing the cannon fodder.
Ukraine was attacked by Russia against international law. Do you believe Russia should get away with it?
And before there's a whataboutism reply, I also do not agree with a lot of the US' aggression, and they and their leaders should be tried for war crimes.
The law should be consistent, clear and applied to everyone.
If US leaders were not tried for Iraq, French weren't tried for Lybia, Saudis weren't tried for Yemen, Israel weren't tried for Palestine, but suddenly Russia should be destroyed for Ukraine, it's not the law.
> but suddenly Russia should be destroyed for Ukraine
I must have missed the bit where people started calling for Russia's destruction.
TBH it has surprised me that Ukraine hasn't carried out a lot more behind-the-lines attacks on Russian supply convoys; I'm aware of just one attack on a Russian fuel dump inside Russia. It's as if they are fearful that an attack on Russian territory might lead to retaliation. But isn't Russia already 'retaliating' as much as it can?
>Ukraine hasn't carried out a lot more behind-the-lines attacks on Russian supply convoys
It's hard to do on Russian territory because of closed borders and anti-air. It's hard to do on captured eastern territories because there are too many ethnic Russian and Russian-speaking people live here, who are quite sympathetic to Russia. And there are rumors that FSB acquired the lists of all pro-ukrainian activists on these territories from SBU.
Ukraine is providing leadership, initiative, and massive amounts of weaponry on their own. Zelensky is asking western governments for more every week.
As for cannon fodder, civilian casualties are most likely much greater than military casualties at this point, and will likely get worse. Add to that the all the material destruction.
The cost in human lives would be far greater without western aid.
Um.. the comment is ridiculously dismissive. While I do not support Russian invasion, from a purely strategic POV, Ukraine under western control is a national security issue for Russia. I am not sure how that is a controversial statement.
If not being able to set a government of a neighboring country and completely controlling it is a security issue for Russia then maybe they should be the ones to rethink their security policy and ask themselves why so many neighboring countries want to align towards the west. That is a different ballpark than being under the control of west which implies that the west has somehow taken over Ukraine.
Your comment is ridiculously cynical and dehumanizing. It's disgusting to me how many people act like Ukrainian people have no agency by themselves and act like Russia was forced to do an invasion because they feel threatened by the west.
<< Your comment is ridiculously cynical and dehumanizing. It's disgusting to me how many people act like Ukrainian people have no agency by themselves and act like Russia was forced to do an invasion because they feel threatened by the west.
I disagree on several points. I do not think it is cynical at all. It is factual. It approaches reality for what it is and explains existing circumstances. Frankly, I do not think it is dehumanizing either. For better or worse, war and struggle is an integral part of human condition. If anything, what is happening makes average person realize what is real.
<< If not being able to set a government of a neighboring country and completely controlling it is a security issue for Russia then maybe they should be the ones to rethink their security policy.
Russia's leadership did and decided that since their personal figurehead was deposed in aftermath of Maidan eventually resulting in West-oriented leader, they might as well get directly involved. You may not like their decision, but they did exactly what you suggested.
<< That is a different ballpark than being under the control of west which implies that the west has somehow taken over Ukraine.
You are right. It is. Being under US umbrella ( or sphere of influence ) is, to me at least, better than being under Russia's. Prentending big powers don't 'influence' small players seems naive to me though. It is not being cynical. It is just recognizing pattern in human history of the past few thousand years.
West did not take Ukraine. Yet. In fact, part of the reason of the war is whose sphere of influence Ukraine will belong to.
<< It's disgusting to me how many people act like Ukrainian people have no agency by themselves and act like Russia was forced to do an invasion because they feel threatened by the west.
They absolutely do. However, right now that agency was limited to choosing who to align with. I am not sure what is disgusting about it. Can you elaborate? It is possible I am misunderstanding your argument.
> Ukraine under western control is a national security issue for Russia
It is. But this is a straw man. It’s always been. Ukraine hasn’t been seriously considered for NATO membership since 2008. Even its path to the EU was muddled at best.
Some effects of the war, e.g. Ukraine being flooded with Western weapons where it wasn’t before or Germany pivoting away from Russia, were unpredictable. But some, like the response in Finland and Sweden, or the Baltics’ remilitarisation, were.
Ukraine was and is falling under the control of the Ukrainians, and that remains the problem for Putin—not Russia.
Putin isn't acting in a manner that furthers Russia's interest. Just his own, personally.
Russia has been totally screwed by this invasion. Strategically, economically and geopolitically. Putin, however, has consolidated his personal power. He has also opened up east Ukraine's mineral resources to himself and his cronies.
> Could not the same be easily claimed about Iraq and Bush?
Yes, to an extent. The harm to America was far less than what Russia's facing. And the benefits to Bush et al less than what Putin hopes to reap.
Bush could retire in peace. Putin can't. Risking his country's destruction for a few more years in power wouldn't make sense for an American President; it does for Putin.
I.. wish I could share your faith in people. Not to search very far, I can name at least one candidate, who would be willing to sacrifice a lot just for a few more years.
As for Bush, Cheney, Obama, Pompeo et al.. I don't know if they can retire in peace exactly. US taxpayers fund their security detail; some more so than others if you read some recent reports, but the point remains.
I am willing to agree with you on that there is a difference of degree, but Iraq war did a lot of damage.. not to just US standing, but to US population's perception of how things are really done. The main difference is that some of that damage is not as... easily translated into viral imagery.
I don't understand your perspective. Perhaps you could share some elaborating resources?
So far as I can tell, Russia now controls some 40% of the worlds grain production which feeds much of Europe and North Africa, 70+% of neon production needed for semiconductors, the main source of nuclear material for French energy, the main source of fuel for German energy, and a great deal of raw materials and commodities besides, such as timber, palladium, etc.
They now also have avenues to trade in energy in means other than the dollar, something which was not possible before, and have experience against modern NATO weapons. They are, so far as I can tell, far from screwed.
Russia is not controlling 40% of the world grain production. Many countries produce most of their grain on their own. I think you mixed your figures up with the share of the export market.
> While I do not support Russian invasion, from a purely strategic POV, Ukraine under western control is a national security issue for Russia.
Does the west threaten Russia's security? Do they have plans to invade Russia? Because that would be news to me.
It seems awfully defensive to me, especially coming from a country (Russia) that has been an aggressor for a long time, testing European defenses and readiness for a long time now. How often has the Russian air force intercepted European war planes?
<<Does the west threaten Russia's security? Do they have plans to invade Russia?
Um.. I will respond in line with HN policy ( assume good faith ), but contingency plans do exist for various scenarios. Countries that do not have those are likely not going to be countries for long.
What we call "with western freedoms", you call "under western control". But you are wrong.
The west will mostly ally itself (as best it can) with champions of its values, whether they be Ukrainians, Russians, or any other ethnicity. This is the actual threat to the regime in Moscow.
People in the west, generally, choose to view the regime in Moscow as bearing most of the responsibility for the high level of inequality and poverty in Russia, through corruption and abuse.
The beginnings of democracy in Ukraine demonstrates a roadmap for a potential Russian future. Democracy is a threat to the current regime in Moscow, but is not a threat to the Russian people.
It is a reasonable interpretation though I will admit I disagree with it. I have no problem separating people from their government. That said, I am not sure the regime in Moscow - come to think of it, any regime - feels the same way.
I guess what I am saying is that you might be missing a forest for the trees. Democracy is a threat to Putin only in a sense that his control over Ukraine weakened with ouster of Yanukovych. He was fine with democracy as long as 'his' candidate won. Now, we can argue over whether Ukraine was a democracy, but I am not sure that is a good or even worthwhile argument to have.
I addressed the other two points in other posts and I don't really want to repeat it. Still, this one caught my attention:
<< Even if a country is a concern to another, it just isn't acceptable to go on a genocidal war and take all civilian casualties as collateral damage.
Yes? And yet it is seems to be happening all the time. In a very practical sense, it is kinda hard to enforce the kind of protections needed not to offend certain sensibilities. There is a reason war is not something one should haphazardly go into. Don't get me wrong. I don't really want to discourage your moral outrage over how the world should be and how it apparently is.
You are saying it is not acceptable, but the world is on the verge of accepting it. It is only US pressure that might, and I am stressing might, change the outcome here.
Decided to edit after all:
<< Ukraine isn't under Western control
Qualified yes. What do you think this war is about? Freedom? Democracy? It is not a trick question. There are a lot of players, power centers and interested parties and they all have their agendas. For Poland, it is about having a buffer zone. For US, it is about who controls Ukraine. Up until recently it was controlled by Russia. That control slipped with ouster of Yanukovych ( and we can spend some time discussing to what extent western powers influenced that ouster ). I don't want to spend too much time on this though, because I am worried we do not share the same background when it comes to the region.
<< Ukraine wasn't a security concern for Russia (didn't pursue NATO, was shunned by the west regarding military aid)
Um.. citation and some dates may be needed to back up that claim. Still, for the sake of argument let us assume, none of the previous administrations did; not just US, but EU as well. Details are kind of messy.
Still, why would Ukraine be a security concern while their personal puppet was governing Ukraine? I am being serious here. It was the orange revolution and Georgia that changed the calculus. NATO membership became an issue after a west-looking leadership was elected.
I don't think an analogy can be a lie and I find it rather fitting. Ukraine has been molested by Russia since 2014. Ukraine wasn't focussed on threatening Russia (far from it) but Ukraine was focussed on bettering their lives and keeping Russia away from escalating in the Donbass.
Russia willfully engaged in a war of aggression to make Ukraine a vassal state in line with Belarus.
You sound like a propaganda apparatchik. Nato's expansion is only war in the eyes of dipshits like Putin that see it as a foil to their imperialist ambitions.
The Chinese are mostly being neutral business people with regard to fentanyl, Americans are the ones seeking it out and importing it for resale. If China stopped selling fentanyl, the same dirtbags would still be importing it from a different supplier. If nobody sold fentanyl, they'd go back to importing Heroin from Mexico and SE Asia, though at least that'd be easier to target in customs and cause fewer OD deaths.
I thought I wrote it rather well… was feeling stylish at the keyboard. Might delete later, idk. But hell, if I sound like a propaganda apparatchik I could probably get a job at the Economist, huh?
Re: the substance of your post.
>the Chinese are mostly neutral business people
This is naive. They remember what was done to them in the opium war, and there is a reason they manufacture the stuff.
>the same dirtbags…
When one person falls into folly, that person is a fool. When an entire society falls into folly, can you blame each man as a fool? We have an opium problem. It was fueled by large pharamceutical companies, but in 2022 there is also a geopolitical component.
Re: Russia
I have no doubt Russia would like to see America knocked on its rear. However my biggest qualm with the support of Ukraine is not “Russia right, America wrong,” but that this is a self-own. What we’ve done is force the world to make a decision, in which neutrality, once a holding pattern for the sake of good business, is now a knife’s edge slicing through one’s slipper. Moreover, the so-called “smartest people in the room,” by confiscating a substantial portion of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, have forced a realignment in which a great portion of the world is now trading oil in terms of rubles instead of dollars, which removes the base from under our own currency. I’m sorry, our involvement in Ukraine was an overextension, and our measures in support of it were foolish and self-destructive. If I sound sympathetic to Russia, it is because I am frustrated with America and how this country is being run. The people who knew how to handle situations like this, such as the now oft-mention John Mearsheimer were ignored, in favor of weak-minded flag-wavers with complementary Lockheed caps in their closet.
They're also a major supplier of other "illicit" chems like steroids, as well as things that are borderline illicit such as research chemicals (recreational drug analogs), and have been since forever. It mostly comes down to they don't really care about western law unless it impacts their business, and they'll make whatever they can sell.
Russian energy sanctions are definitely coming, so your second point is moot.
It’s not just the manufacture but the money laundering for the cartels. Maybe “It’s just business” but so is knocking America down a peg.
>Russian energy sanctions
This is the core problem. We in the west are under the parochial impression that most of the world will follow along with this, and that impression is incorrect. Russia has too many resources, that too much of the world is reliant upon. That is the crux of the decision that is being forced, and IMHO it is not going to be forced in our favor.
If we wanted to force such a decision, it should have been from a far stronger position, with ready alternatives for the rest of the world in place. Of course, it was the Russians who took the initiative on when that would or would not be possible.
> Contrast this with Russia, who invaded a state in which many Russians live, for concrete matters of national security.
You mean for concrete matters of national chauvanism? It's amazing to still see people spreading this misinformation even after Russia accidentally broadcast its real motives to the world:
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-60562240
> Mr Akopov justifies the "virtual civil war" as "Russia restoring its historical fullness, gathering the Russian world, the Russian people together".
Imagine if Russia started supplying weapons to Mexicans "to support their revolution against their $BAD government" or whatever. The USA would go nuts.
> US were on the brink of a full-scale invasion when they discovered rockets on Cuba
But we didn’t. We made specific threats with specific remedies. And there were nukes.
Russia has invaded. It never made reasonable demands. (Asking for your puppet back in power isn’t reasonable. And there was zero pretext for Crimea.) The last time there were nukes in Ukraine, Kyiv gave them in exchange for Russian security guarantees.
last time I checked it was RU ill-prepared, and poorly informed by its own IC about the state of their neighbor invading a sovereign European nation. I guess it must be horribly embarrassing when your celebrated army is taken down by a collective of farmers. There is no need for NATO proxy-war because if Ukraine continues its brave defense at this rate then NATO will beg to join Ukraine.
I do hope they capture and kill each and every Russian on Ukraine soil who even vaguely looks like their alliance is not clear, or who are found to carry condoms in their uniforms.
Considering the brazenness and utter dumbfuckery of Russia's brainwashed middle class populace cheering for Putin it is our duty in the West to defend Ukraine and preemptively strike them not only outside Russia (ME/Africa, etc) but to also go after them at home in Moscow. We should also take a close look at any Russian overseas who isn't loudly denouncing the Putler regime.
I don't think people realize how shit Russians' lives are. They've got like 5 cities that are modern, anywhere outside those is literally water well and outhouse poor.
Supporting this retarded regime is spitting in everyone's faces, including the Russians.
I’ve never thought I would be ambivalent towards a war.
But here we are.
Living in Asia there is definitely not the staunch apposition to the war that you might expect to see.
People here don’t like it but are not lockstep on Ukraines side.
And as a so called and derided “red pilled” guy I’m not going to jump to any conclusions for the next year or so.
We’ve all been seen the ultimate truth and aims and outcomes of the last half dozen wars involving the USA.
Once you live abroad for a significant amount of time you tend to take off the rah rah USA rose colored glasses and see the world from the point of view of other peoples.
A very annoying thing about the news and SJW social media is everyone jumping on the Ukraine bandwagon with nary a thought as to why what is happening… is happening.
This is an entirely self-serving claim for which you have presented no evidence. Furthermore, it is quite possible to see that the stated reasons are nonsense without having to know precisely what the real motives are.
Well, you don't need to ask or dig too deep. Putin doesn't believe in Ukraine's sovereignty. The annexation happened when Ukrainians decided Putin doesn't get an unofficial veto on their EU candidacy.
Do you think the invasion and annexation of Crimea, had anything to do with the coup (ahem...pro-US/NATO revolution) that had just occurred in Ukraine[1]?
Keep in mind Putin rolled his tanks into Crimea the day after the new pro-US/NATO regime in Ukraine had thrown out the democratically elected (albeit pro-Russia) government, and rewritten the Ukrainian Constitution[2] to then make it possible to drop neutrality[3] so that they could begin the process of joining NATO. A rule to join NATO is that a nation must be in control of its borders and not in active conflict, so by annexing Crimea, Russia ensured the moves to join NATO would be halted with that action.
Understanding cause and effect is not the same as excusing it. If I poke a bear with a stick, and the bear eats me, it's my fault. Just because the bear went a little overboard doesn't change the fact that it's a bear and I should know not to poke it with a stick.
If you'd like to challenge the facts, do so. Pointing out that facts have been posted before in response to the same questions, doesn't change the facts.
Unless you think we can't trust BBC and Reuters...?
And neither do the talking points change. Replying in good faith is pointless, they can and have been debunked multiple times already, it makes no odds to the effort to push this.
As I said:
> this kind of disinformation does not need to even be self-consistent or even that believable. But it does need to be relentlessly sent out.
Democratically elected guy killed a hundred of protesters with snipers, and fled the country for the fear of retribution by his own security forces. Yet you call it a coup.
I don’t see how changes to Constitution which limit the power of President could be related to whether or not Ukraine could be neutral.
We're discussing what the trigger was for the 2014 invasion. It's also worth discussing whether the response was justified, but it's a separate discussion as to what caused Russia to invade & annex Crimea in 2014. That was the reason. Pretending that Putin just woke up one day and decided to invade Ukraine isn't helpful to anybody since it makes it seem like you're being dishonest.
Common sense can tell us Putin was itching for an excuse to annex Crimea, but then that leaves us with the very uncomfortable question of why the US pushed Ukraine into this situation knowing how Putin would respond.
Ukraine is being used a pawn in a proxy war between the US and Russia. People need to call it what it is if they actually care to understand it.
Let me tell you one thing — Yanukovich would go down, whether US interfered or not, there were enough of internal Ukrainian elites who wanted him to go. The whole US pushed Ukraine talk is delusional. Ukraine is not a pawn, it has it’s own interests which do not always align with the West.
If 2014 invasion was somehow related to Euromaidan protests, this 2022 invasion has no relation to internal Ukrainian politics nor to it’s foreign policy — nothing has fundamentally changed. The only reason why Putin attacked now is because he felt he could get away with it — Ukraine was asking for weapons since October and got only light anti-tank weapons to fight insurgency war. Nobody in the West pushed Ukrainians to fight, what West really wants is business as usual.
Yet now it becomes less and less possible due to Ukrainian information war.
Repeating Russian propaganda narratives is not what makes you a sudden expert on Eastern European politics.
>If 2014 invasion was somehow related to Euromaidan protests, this 2022 invasion has no relation to internal Ukrainian politics nor to it’s foreign policy — nothing has fundamentally changed.
There is no "if", unless you are arguing that invading Crimea the next day was a coincidence. That is fact, not opinion. Just like the post-coup regime in Ukraine then officially voting to drop neutrality, clearing the way to join NATO (which is just the international arm of the US military).
As to what has fundamentally changed, well Biden is back in charge like he was in 2014. Biden and family have huge financial interests in Ukraine, as evidenced by the emails that our totally honest media finally acknowledged were legitimate[1][2][3] (only after the election was over of course). And with that, Ukraine was set back on their path against Russia, to poke the bear some more at our behest.
There is a reason Russia/Ukraine was quiet for 4 years under Trump. And its the same reason we had to listen to that tired "Trump is Putin's puppet" conspiracy theory for most of his presidency. He wouldn't play their game. Hell, he was even impeached over Ukraine. Elements of the US government have been orchestrating this game for years, and innocent Ukrainians are the ones left holding the bag. Well them, and middle class US taxpayers who always end up footing the bill.
Because Putin is an idiot. If they come out victorious, I will stand corrected. But if it means Russia is going faster down the drain, I'm probably spot on.
He doesn't like NATO, so his strategy is to invade a non-NATO neighbour. What an idiot. Now all of a sudden, all neighbouring non-NATO countries want to join NATO. What a surprise. Finland applied already, Sweden later this year.
Deals with EU were going great, especially with Germany that is highly dependent on Russian gas. Consequence of the war: EU kicks out (of phases out) economic trade. Nice one.
If Russia hates US so much, why don't they collaborate more with EU? A strong EU-Russia relationship could match US in any sense. But no, Russia prefers to behave like an aggressive lunatic. EU was very much open to work together, see Germany. Now it is clear that was a big mistake.
So yeah, it's because he's an aggressive idiot lunatic.
1. Personalising it as being about Putin.
2. Characterising Putin as being stupid or mad.
Nearly everything that Russia (not Putin) has done has been pre-announced by the Russian leadership. In fact, most of the pre-announcement has been by Putin himself, and I wonder whether his generals think that's a good idea. NATO has treated those announcements as bullying bluster; they were wrong. Most of those announcements were based on long-established Russian or Soviet military doctrine. If anyone's an idiot, it's NATO leadership, for assuming it was all bluster.
Characterising your enemy as a mad fool is a standard propaganda technique. There are reasons why the invasion is happening now, not sooner and not later. Both Ukraine and Georgia have loudly declared their desire to join NATO and the EU; it's obvious that Russia would very much prefer not to have NATO on his border. If Russia thinks it needs to invade Ukraine, then it needed to be done now. Similarly, the cancellation of Nordstream II, and the increased deployment of renewables in Europe threatens Russia's economy. The Russian treasury is flush now, but even setting aside sanctions, it won't be for long.
Putin certainly has some odd beliefs, such as his views about the historical destiny of the Rus people. But basing claims to land on historical destiny isn't unique to Russia; there are long-standing US allies that make similar claims (Israel?).
> NATO has treated those announcements as bullying bluster
You mean Russia claiming it's just doing some military trainings at the border, and then US claiming it's going to invade Ukraine in the next few days?
> If anyone's an idiot, it's NATO leadership
You mean 2 non-NATO parties fighting each other? Seems like good old divide and conquer strategy to me. After this war, Russia won't have much left to fight NATO. NATO is not affected in any way.
> Russia would very much prefer not to have NATO on his border
This is going to double once Finland joins, which will happen this year. All because of Putin's mastermind strategy.
> the cancellation of Nordstream II
This happened after the invasion. One of the reasons why this was a very bad move on Russia's part.
> a mad fool
The best you can claim is that he was misinformed (hence the arrests and layoffs of the FSB).
Putin made a serious mistake. Now they are rolling with it. Anyone who claims this was a good move on Russia's part is just an idiot.
You seem to have mistaken me for an invasion supporter.
Calling people (me, Putin) an idiot is itself idiotic, if you are at all interested in understanding the situation. If you dismiss a participant as being [mad | stupid], then you lose the ability to understand and predict his actions.
My view is that Russia, mainly at Putin's instigation, has perpetrated a catastrophic mistake. But how and why did that mistake happen?
I think it's plausible to claim that Putin's ministers and generals are afraid to tell him anything he doesn't want to hear. That doesn't make him stupid or mad; that just means he's scary.
So why has he made this mistake, and why now? I think if you read what he has said, and take it seriously - not as the ravings of an idiotic madman - your chance of understanding why we are here, and of making accurate predictions about what might happen next, are much improved.
[Edit] What I think is idiotic is to not take seriously a man that controls 6,000 nuclear warheads. If you check out the guy's career, he's a competent but boring bureaucrat, embittered that nobody recognised his wonderfulness, who got lucky under Yeltsin.
> You seem to have mistaken me for an invasion supporter.
No I didn't think that. But it did seem to me that you thought this invasion wasn't a mistake on Russia's end.
> My view is that Russia, mainly at Putin's instigation, has perpetrated a catastrophic mistake.
So I wrongly interpreted your previous post. We basically agree on this one. So I don't consider you an idiot ;).
> I think it's plausible to claim that Putin's ministers and generals are afraid to tell him anything he doesn't want to hear. That doesn't make him stupid or mad.
I think it's here were we differ. He should know better as to how reliable the info is that he gets. If he punishes bad news, he should be smart enough to know that people will not tell him bad news. I call that idiotic.
> making accurate predictions about what might happen next, are much improved
I agree with you on this one. Maybe my "lunatic" was not well chosen, and should be replaced with "psychopath". Because only a psychopath kills or poisons political opposition.
But it's perfectly doable to predict an idiot's actions.
For the most part I think we actually agree with each other, it's just the wording that might differ.
It seems Putin was living in his own fantasy land for quite a while. And now that he's getting hit with reality, I sure hope he's sane enough to understand certain consequences.
> Because only a psychopath kills or poisons political opposition.
Poisoning opponents is actually customary in Russian politics. This isn't one man's psychiatric condition; it was Soviet policy. Stalin created units dedicated to the practice.
Rasputin apparently survived a cyanide attempt.
Ivan The Terrible poisoned three of his wives to death.
Putin is an admirer of Russian customs; it's not surprising that he favours poison.
It's easy for a layman to bandy-around terms like "psychopath". He may be a psychopath, for all I know; but I think it's much more likely that he's just a boring bureaucrat, promoted far beyond his abilities, and obsessed with a perverse view of Russian imperial history.
> Characterising your enemy as a mad fool is a standard propaganda technique
I don’t know about a mad fool. But I think it is pretty clear that the invasion of Ukraine is a bit of catastrophic buffoonery on par with the US invasion of Iraq by Bush jr and his neocon cronies.
If the past is prelude to the present we can predict that Putin’s political coalition is going to be thrown out, in a manner similar to what we saw in the 2016 US presidential primaries / election, which was more a rejection and overthrow of the political establishment than an endorsement of the orange Cheeto man.
Because the baseline view of the Russian government is that Ukraine achieving independence during the collapse of the Soviet Union was a mistake. Vladimir Putin is a Russian irredentists who does not believe Ukraine has a right to exist as a state unless under the Russian thumb.
This is not in dispute. This has been pretty much outlined explicitly by Vladimir Putin in several writings and speeches.
> I will start with the fact that modern Ukraine was entirely created by Russia or, to be more precise, by Bolshevik, Communist Russia.
Continuing in reference to the creation of the Ukrainian SSR:
> This immediately raises many questions. The first is really the main one: why was it necessary to appease the nationalists, to satisfy the ceaselessly growing nationalist ambitions on the outskirts of the former empire? What was the point of transferring to the newly, often arbitrarily formed administrative units – the union republics – vast territories that had nothing to do with them? Let me repeat that these territories were transferred along with the population of what was historically Russia.
...
> Why was it necessary to make such generous gifts, beyond the wildest dreams of the most zealous nationalists and, on top of all that, give the republics the right to secede from the unified state without any conditions?
> I would like to emphasize again that Ukraine is not just a neighboring country for us. It is an inalienable part of our own history, culture and spiritual space
The Russian head of state does not deny that this war is intended to dominate Ukraine and bring it effectively under Russian control and end its independence and its drift away from the Russian sphere of influence. You don't have to act like it's a complicated situation - not even Russia is pretending that it is.
most of the opposition comes from distrust of the US, not because of consideration of the objective fact that russia intends to extinguish a sovereign state. If you are ambivalent about whether the latter is wrong, then thats pretty much a nonstarter
For me it is the opposite: for the first time in a long time I see very clearly who in this war is the instigator and who are the defenders. Not since WW2 has there been a war where for me this is that clear.
> Not since WW2 has there been a war where for me this is that clear.
The continuous colonialism of Western nations to African and Middle Eastern countries? The Zionist occupation of Palestine? The US led invasions on Iraq and Afghanistan? Just to name a few.
All of those are in areas that are not and have not been peaceful if left to their own devices. I was as much against the invasion in Iraq as anybody around me that I know, I felt it was done on a pretext and still think that the whole way this was sold to the world was disgusting, but the United States did not invade Iraq to permanently occupy it (at least, I don't think it did).
As for Western nations in African and Middle Eastern countries: again, for the most part despicable but here too I don't see these as wars of conquest or ways to commit genocide by the West. That does not mean that what they are doing there is in general defensible but there are so many sides to those conflicts that clarity isn't always easy to come by, even the locals disagree on whether or not the Western involvement is a blessing or a curse, and it isn't rare for those sides to change as a conflict evolves.
The 'Zionist occupation of Palestine' as presented is already evidence of picking a side. Personally, and I'm not making any friends with this, I think the founding of the state of Israel and the preceding Balfour declaration were misguided - some of my Jewish friends agree with this - and the state of apartheid there is one that I can not and will not subscribe to. The behavior of Israel is unacceptable and I have no illusions that it is only the United States veto in the security council that stands between Israel and much wider condemnation of how they are behaving there. I do not believe that Israel as a state will survive unless they - and the Arab world around them - will find a way to effectively bury the past, and with every bullet fired and person killed that gets harder and harder. I do not subscribe to the Jewish people having an innate right to certain parts of the world based on religious texts from 4000 years ago, nor do I believe that to commit the same wrongs against people that others have committed to you make a right or can ever lead to an improvement.
But, and this is my point: in all of these situations there is are many factors at play that make me believe that some or all of the problems exhibited or some other form of discord or violence would be present in those regions, and in some cases that may have been far worse than what is going on there now.
Compared to Urkraine vs Russia these are all areas that are most likely going to be at war in one way or another with each other or internally regardless of what the West does to either pick sides or to try to improve things, it's at best meddling and at worst neo colonialism or patronization.
None of that however stops me from deciding - purely for myself - that these conflicts are too complex for me to fully appreciate all of the nuances and all of the aspects of the parties involved, in part because I do not know enough about the regions - though I know more about them than the people that I normally interact with -, I don't feel I'm on solid ground other than to roughly understand the basics and to draw coarse conclusions (see above for some of those).
But the degree of clarity with which I find myself judging Russia for the active destruction of a country closely aligned with Western Europe, a country close to Western Europe, a country that was party to more than one binding agreement and treaty which it did not violate is substantially larger.
I hope that clarifies my position enough for you to understand why this is different for me.
It's because Ukraine contains three of the nine "gap" invasion pathways into Russia and demographic collapse means if Russia doesn't take those gaps back now they won't be able to field an army to do so in the future. They had all of them before the Soviet Union fell. Invading Georgia gave them back one. Taking Crimea gave them back another. Taking the rest of Ukraine will give them two more.
A serious danger is that Putin deciding it's worth a war to take the Bessarabian Gap indicates he might think it's worth a war to take the baltic sea coast.
Yes, I've been saying that for 20 years. I have a lot of interests and family in the Baltics and NE Poland and this is a main point of worry for me. Russia could make a play for the Suwalki gap in a day or two at most, and then we'd have a real problem.
Everyone saying this ignores the nuclear arsenal. Which Russia constantly reminds everyone of, to the point of no one taking them seriously anymore.
If anyone decides to invade Russia, they better be super sure about their anti-ICBM capabilities. Just one warhead going through the defense means a leveled city. So, 200k-1million+ casualties.
Nobody is taking that chance. At the moment. But if Russia shows that they are willing to use their nuclear weapons to the point that it becomes believable that they will do so anyway then we are in completely uncharted territory. Note that this war isn't over yet and that Putin has threatened multiple times now more or less obliquely that he would not hesitate to use nuclear arms in a first strike situation for whatever pretext he seems to think is enough. This was then later walked back again by other Russian functionaries but the damage is already mostly done: Russia is no longer believable, and apparently nuclear first strikes for pretexts are on the table.
I'm not quite sure what your point here is, but if it is that there is no plausible way in which Putin can claim Russia is threatened with invasion from the west, I agree.
> Just one warhead going through the defense means a leveled city.
My understanding is that the majority of Russia's large nuclear arsenal consists of "tactical" warheads, with a yield small enough that they can be used on a battlefield containing Russian forces. These are not city-busters.
Countries like the US and UK, whose nuclear doctrine is "no first use" and deterrence, rely mainly on MIRVed city-busters. The UK submarine force includes some cruise-missile nukes; but it's mainly MIRVed ICBMs. If you launch a single missile, you have launched multiple warheads. I don't know how NATO doctrine is supposed to respond to (say) a single ten-kiloton nuke fired at a railhead or marshalling yard.
This seems to be quite a common view: "I'm not upset by the invasion of Ukraine because the US has done a bunch of bad things."
Bringing the US into the issue seems to be quite the non-sequitur - is self-determinancy a concept that can only be viewed through the lens of US imperialism? Are the rights of Ukrainians (and other states bordering Russia) merely a construct of US policy?
Suppose the US currently had in place an administration which took an isolationist, ambivalent or even "Putin has valid concerns" attitude - this is hardly a speculative leap - would your attitude change? If there is nothing to see in what is happening in Ukraine, why would US imperialism bother you?
Poland and Ukraine had the same size economy in 1991 after collapse of the Soviet Union. Last year Polish economy was 3 times bigger than Ukraine. Ukrainians want the same economic success as Poland and they think that membership in EU was instrumental. If Ukraine succeeds then people of Belarus and Russia will want it too. But Putin does not want to give up power, so he attacks Ukraine. There - that's the reason. Fear of successful Ukraine.
Putin quoted a song during press conference with Emmanuel Macron in early February about Ukraine:
"Whether you like it or don't like it, bear with it, my beauty."
The full quote from "Sleeping beauty in a coffin" song by Red Mold would be:
Sleeping beauty in a coffin, I crept up and fucked her. Like it, or dislike it, sleep my beauty.
That gives you the mindset of Putin with regard to Ukraine.
Also, some personal note - my grandmother as a little girl had to hide from Russian speaking soldiers who were raping women and girls in my home town during "liberation" of Poland from Germany at the end of WWII. The stories from Ukraine are exactly the same as what my grandmother lived trough.
That this is a battle between the USA and Russia is propaganda. Pushing that message allows a kind of moral ambivalence. But that's not the truth. This is a brutal invasion of a smaller weaker country by its neighbor. Despite all the fog of war, that much is clear. Claiming that nothing can be known at this point is denies that facts that are readily accessible now, of which there are plenty.
If you don't trust news or social media, that's fine. There are facts out there ready to be found in other ways. There are thousands of twitter feeds, embedded journalist, first person accounts, etc. But if you're not wiling to look for facts, and not willing to receive them from reputable summary sources, then you're an easy target for these kinds of propaganda tricks.
In the early years, some of Putin's speeches almost seemed liberal, and yet now, looking back, it is possible to see the imperial signature in his speeches, in particular, how his logic might lead to the erasure of an entire people. He initially emphasized a kind of multiculturalism, but now it seems to be the multiculturalism of an all-conquering empire, the kind of multiculturalism we sort of saw with the Roman Empire, not a multiculturalism that respects the independence of others, but a multiculturalism that feels that all cultures are fungible enough that the army will eventually bring all of them under control.
Still, it is possible that Putin really was, at one point, a bit more sympathetic to a multicultural point of view. It's possible that he's gone insane over the last 10 years. Consider how he sounded in 2012:
-----------------
Putin’s final major address as prime minister to parliament in April 2012 hammered home this point – the dangers of dividing and thus destroying. It came in the form of an answer to a suggestion from a member of the Russian Duma that the preamble to the Russian constitution be changed from beginning with “We the multinational people [narod] of Russia,” to “We the [ethnic] Russian [russkiy] people and the people who have joined with it.” Putin retorted:
Do you understand what we would do [if we did that]? Part of our society would consist of first class people and part would be second class. We must not do that if you and I want to have a strong single [yedinaya] nation, a single people [narod], if we want each person who lives on the territory of the country to feel that this is their homeland, and that there is no other homeland, nor can there be one. And if we want each person to feel like that, then we have to be equal. This is the principle question. The fact that the [ethnic] Russian [russkiy] people are – without a doubt – the backbone, the fundament, the cement of the multinational Russian [rossiyskiy] people cannot be questioned….But to divide everyone up into first, second, third categories, you know, this is a very dangerous path. You and I, all of us, must not do this.
I just want to point out that the bloodbath in Chechnia and the 2008 "military operation" in Georgia happened much earlier than 2012.
What changed is that they became much more open about their real goals.
Previously, they did their thing, perhaps slightly more subtly, while bullshitting the world.
Eh? They invaded a neighbouring sovereign country and murdered tens of thousands of civilians, what do you mean "no value judgment in the right or wrong of it"?
I mean if the people in eastern Ukraine or Crimea WANTED to join Russia, there's democratic and peaceful ways to go about it. If Russia wanted access to the Black Sea, there's peaceful ways to go about it, like trade and freedom of commerce agreements like Europe has.
> I mean if the people in eastern Ukraine or Crimea WANTED to join Russia, there's democratic and peaceful ways to go about it.
You remember Zelensky was elected on the narrative he'd bring peace. For that there was Minsk which was not good and giving in to force, but well, implementing it would have been a hell of a lot better than what's happening now. Yet, he wasn't able to achieve that? Maybe Ukraine isn't the center of democracy the State Department made it into the past 2 months.
So why Minsk agreements failed? There seems to have been a major decrease in ceasefire violations per OSCE during COVID years (to 1/3rd). So it seems a bit weird for Russia to escalate now, if calming the situation down was the Russian overall goal. And certainly if Russian so care about people's lives, orders of magnitude more are dying now than in the last few years.
I don't think Ukraine got a say in the yes/no decision for this invasion. Apparently the only person that got to influence it was Xi but he somehow forgot to pass on the facts to the relevant parties.
Under Zelenskiy situation in Donbas was de-escalating. Implementation of Minsk agreement the way Russia wanted it to happen was not on his agenda nor it was supported by majority of Ukrainian electorate. Ukraine is a democracy, whether you like it or not.
A hostile Ukraine, or a conquered Ukraine, only bring more enemies on Russia's borders.
> nato,
> missiles on the border
What missiles? There's already Poland, Baltics, Turkey, Romania that can be used for missile bases.
> warm water access
That's the bullshitiest one of the bullshit list - first, Russia already controls Sevastopol, and before the occupation of Crimea, it had a joint lease on it. And of course, it has hundreds of kilometres of Black Sea coastline to the east of Crimea, including the sizable port and naval base of Novorosiisk.
Russia is providing enough fake excuses ( Ukraine isn't a real nation, Nazis) as it is, no need to add even faker ones for them.
Bullshit. They state quite clearly that they want to annex part or even whole of Ukraine.
Sure what you say may have played the role also. But Putin wants "glory days" of SU back. That's why he continuously tried to expand Russia (and Russian influence) since he came into power.
It's about him being a power broker on international scale and not another has been dictator of 3rd world country.
Nato was just used as an excuse. Because of the submarines and ballistic missiles, It doesn't matters where weapons are.
And nothing excuses them for what we are seeing what is happening on the ground.
The elite in russia becomes wealthy by extracting natural resources from the vast territories of the russian federation's member republics. They need the distant republics and ethnic minorities to stay poor, dependent, and deferential to moscow. The danger putin would see in "dividing into categories" is ethnic pride (in anything but russian ethnicity), uprisings, and "colour revolutions".
I mean, everyone knows what would happen if Mexico or Republic of Ireland announced an agreement with Russia to let them send in weapons and military personnel and set up
military bases, right? I just ask that we don’t kid ourselves.
There's no way NATO or the US would risk direct confrontation with Russian troops. Potentially Nuclear armed Russian troops. Bear in mind Russian military doctrine places the decision on using tactical nuclear weapons with local commanders. The people you would be shooting at and bombing.
In any case Russia has many bases in foreign countries, and as far as I can remember there's only ever been a risk of direct conflict over it once, with Cuba, and that was specifically over nuclear missiles, not jut having a military base.
I recommend you check out info on Syria, where German-armed, NATO-integrated Turkish troops did a little special operation (and failed in a similar way against much worse equipped Kurds/Islamists) and American and Russian special forces stopped their vehicle chases short of blowing each other up.
Then also, NATO already risked direct confrontation in Ukraine, sending large training units to a country at war with Russia. As we speak US AWACS is providing early warning across large swaths of western Ukraine and the Black Sea, one wonders if missile sites actually use their early warning radars in the case where they most likely have a notebook with a nice situation log besides their soviet terminals.
In this situation I wonder why noone is pushing conspiracy theories around the Moskva sinking (which could still be Ukrainian luck combined with Russian ineptitude) which embed these facts. Apparently this ship was hit at the extent of the Neptunes range. Is it that much of a stretch to think that such thing might have been made much easier, when the ships SatNav was spoofed by a Globalhawk leading it towards shore, while the Ukrainians knew exactly where to look when they flared up their targeting radar?
Ukraine is at war with Russia? Surely not, do you really think this 'special military operation' might escalate that badly? In any case I don't believe there are any NATO troops currently in Ukraine, not officially anyway.
Western military aims in Syria are not to change the regime, they're just to support allies and suppress enemies like IS. There is no way US operations in Syria could possible be described as seriously attempting to topple Assad or drive Russia out of the country, that's simply not tenable. As you point out, US and Russian forces, when in the same vicinity, backed off from each other.
As Ukraine amply shows when one side, either the west or Russia, heavily commits militarily to a country the other side limits itself to interference operations only. That's been true ever since the Cuban missile crisis. Nobody wants a repeat of that.
Russia is doing a log more than 'liberating' them, with intentional targeting of civilians, mass graves, mass deportations & a borderline genocidal rhetoric. The USA did terrible war crimes in the past, but the cynicism about it should not blind us that this war is on an entirely different level in terms of atrocities & bad reason to go to war.
Venezuela is 3000km away from America. And still they’ve been plotting to overthrow the current government. Cuba is an island, and still the US was ready to start WW3 rather than let Russia put missiles there.
>everyone knows what would happen if Mexico or Republic of Ireland announced an agreement with Russia to let them send in weapons and military personnel and set up military bases, right?
you mean US or GB would announce that those countries/nationalities are an artificial creation and have never historically really existed, and that Mexicans or Irish people don't ethnically exist, that they are just "little/sub Americans" or "little/sub Englishmen", and US or GB would go to perform ethnical cleansing and genocide there?
> send in weapons and military personnel
that happens all around the world by pretty much all countries.
> set up military bases
you forgot to add major point of Russian propaganda here - development of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons DNA targeted to Russian DNA as well as breeding birds and dogs who only sh!t on and byte only Russians - all that with the direct help and financing by American imperialists.
Well they mobilized their nuclear forces and defences and enacted a blockade of the entire island until the threat was withdrawn, ready to launch air strikes and and/or an invasion if it did not. I hardly think this bolsters the case that they would react in a tolerant, passive manner to, say, China preparing to set up airforce bases along the southern border after currying favour with the Mexican president.
Yep, that's totally why Cuba has been a staunch US puppet for the past 60 years.
Oh wait...
Not that the US didn't try have their way with Cuba, but it's telling that in the only instance of your imagined scenario actually happening the US gave up when they realised the deed couldn't be accomplished with just ~1500 Cuban exiles as soldiers.
Are you suggesting it would play out just like it is now by the US government, with indiscriminate bombings of Mexican cities and targeting of civilians? I guess anything is possible in geopolitics. And if the USA started invading Mexico and indiscriminately bombing civilian targets, the government could successfully sell it to some portion of its population.
Certainly it would be a horrific act regardless of the invading country- autocratic, democratic, socialist, capitalist, communist, western, eastern, whatever. And yes, the US government has done some horrific things in the past.
None of that makes the current bloodshed by Russia any less terrible, or excuses it in any way, right? I just ask that we don't kiss ourselves on that either.
What if the US invaded Canada back in 2014, taking southern Ontario (the industrial heartland) and southern Alberta (the oil region), and set up two US puppet states called "The Republic of Ontario" and "The Republic of Alberta"? What if since then the US repeatedly said things like "Canada doesn't exist as a country", "Canadians are really USAians", and "Canada is full of Nazis and needs to be purged"? What if the US held yearly large-scale military drills on the Canadian border? Do you think that Canada might be alarmed enough to go looking for allies, even if the ally was Russia? Do you think they would be right to do so?
What if Mexico saw all that, and decided that they had better find some allies too?
Countries trying to join NATO didn't happen in a vacuum...
What exactly is the relevance of this discussion here? These things are not reciprocal! They just arent!
NATO was not the cause of this conflict. NATO would have stopped this conflict had Ukraine been a member.
NATO is a force of stability.
Russia is waging a war of extermination on Ukraine. Their sin was that they wanted to align with the west. Russia wants to genocide away all nations it consider taints Russian soil, what ever the international borders say.
Either you choose to go along with this (Fine, destroy their cultural identity, go ahead, it's your right. Let them kidnap the children, rape the women and - steal their washing machines?) or you do something to counter the Russian threat.
I presume most would prefer to live in a world that at least attempts to stop genocide.
There are two options here - NATO or nuclear proliferation.
Ukraine war showed that barring obvious superiority in conflict, nuclear threat is the only guarantor of state sovereignty.
Without more nukes, NATO is a necessary guarantor of state sovereignty at each state bordering Russia by providing credible force.
Russia has proved this theory themselves by assaulting every non-NATO country at it's borders.
How could countries like Estonia, Lithuania or Latvia defend themselves without a NATO alliance? Should they get a nuke? Or should they just yield to Russian rape, pillage and annihilation of cultural distinctiveness?
For those who like Star Trek - This is EXACTLY a situation where the Russian states behaves like the Borg. You oppose the Borg. Not say "yeah, you have right to do that because you are ... mean?"
The Russian state also behaves like a fascist villain but that's kind of obvious already.
"The pity is that emerging countries are making a grave error. As sovereign powers, they too have a stake in the war. All the West’s faults do not outweigh the fact that, in the system Mr Putin is offering, their people would suffer terribly."
this works if you presume "sovereignty" is an objectively existing fact for more than like 10 countries in the world, which it isn't... Perhaps 10 is too generous. And the US contributed to weakening sovereignty all over the world. US is not the sole culprit, of course, but a big one.
If by sovereign you mean 'I can do whatever I want within my own borders', then of course, very few countries can claim to it. On the other hand, a lot of countries are sovereign in the sense that the people generally are in general agreement with what's going on in their country and have a place in a negotiation room to decide their future. The reason the USA works as an empire is because it usually allows at least that much for their subjects.
Russia's problem is that if their neighbours have an ounce of sovereignty they will want to distance themselves from Russia as much as possible due to their terrible behaviour, so they are forced to rule their neighbours by fear & force.
> Russia's problem is that if their neighbours have an ounce of sovereignty they will want to distance themselves from Russia as much as possible due to their terrible behaviour, so they are forced to rule their neighbours by fear & force.
I fear the US is doing the same, but perhaps with more decorum. (edit: thinking twice, not much more decorum if we think about south america)
Yes, like that time when the USA invaded Mexico. /s
The only country that the USA invaded in Latin America was Panama and that was mostly because of the strategic interest in the Panama Canal, and they eventually pulled out when the country was on a more stable course. (That said, I don't doubt for a minute that they'd do it again if the Panama transit became threatened somehow.)
The other influence the USA has had in Latin America has been either much further in the past (which doesn't excuse it) or through the support or denial of support to various governments (which also doesn't excuse it), but it is absolutely nothing compared to what the neighbors of Russia have had to endure over the last 60 years or so.
These comments are immeasurably depressing. I had no idea so many in this community were one step away from openly supporting authoritarianism and genocide.
What helps: if you check the account creation dates you'll see that quite a few of these accounts have been created very recently or were created right around the invasion of Ukraine, chapter 1.
The problem is real but probably not as large as you might think it is based on the comments.
The more worrying thing is that lots of people have a 'somebody else's problem' approach to this, which is what got the world into World War II.
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[ 2.2 ms ] story [ 189 ms ] threadThe west is fighting for a unipolar world but the rest of the world would probably rather have a multipolar world. It gives them more options.
What this war has mostly done is laid bare the illusion that if we interconnect the world strongly by trade that we can avoid war. This is what will cause a massive re-drawing of the lines in the near future and that is what was at stake in Ukraine. Putin pulled away the curtain in a way that leaves no doubt about this and the aftereffects of that are far larger than Ukraine itself.
I don't know how good Russia will come out of this. But at least in Europe it seems to weld countries together a bit more and moving focus away from US help to being more self-sustained in many different aspects.
In the best case it can lead the Europe to become a real global contender besides China and USA again.
Maybe this is true but there is also huge division in Europe. You can see many countries blaming Germany. Fidesz keeping power. Le Pen rising again in France. Pro-Russian parties likely to win in 2 years in Slovakia... and so on.
[1] some might consider this word an error, it's not. It's an old scam liberist have done to be called "liberals" for masking better their real nature
That’s pretty much the natural state of human society. It sometimes gets shaken up by wars or revolutions and slowly goes back to that state during peacetime.
Surely a certain cohort of citizens will always be unable to improve much, that's part of natural selection, but the size and nature of such cohort vary, actual regimes, both westerns formal (not substantial) democracies and classic eastern/southern dictatorships seems to consider 99% of humans as farming animals...
I have encountered various kind of people, some really hopeless by nature, and NOT necessary poor (just yesterday a friend, reasonably middle class, with a comfortable life and a nice job asked me what I think about a "revolutionary investment scheme", a classic Ponzi's one so badly presented even a little child smell the stench miles away) but others are just trapped in social organization while having a formal potential the society fails to let them develop. Nothing is perfect, of course, but from perfection to the actual state of things...........
In my view we all have different kind of people in a society, the bad, the good, the ugly and any intermix of them in between, the point is that nature can self-regulate the percentage of those toward stability so a Democratic society in the classic demos sense (demos does not means the working class/the poor but the People in the sense of those who are, feel to be Citizens, active in their community, participating etc) we do not need a pyramidal structure.
The French Revolution divide a bit the power from all-into-one in few separated and that can't touch/interfere each others, we need perhaps just more subdivisions. Any of those surely have a kind of hierarchy but not with single subjects at the top nor with a very little oligarchy that rules on many others. Something much more like Renaissance society of the municipalities where there are competing powers, good and bag guys etc but a sufficiently subdivided power and crossed/contrasted interests that no one power can rule the others and the society keep changing at a certain peace, not issueless, for sure, but still in a turbulent but flourishing society.
Those systems in the history have worked in many different times and societies but they never last long, pushing toward too much resource usages and polarization, culture IMVO can compensate. In the past culture, basic ones eh, not all PhDs, was expensive, now can be cheap and easy to be accessed enough for nearly all. The quid I miss is how in the past when those kind of society start can start out of an age of darkness?
Both are bad, the one is bad every 50 years or so and then millions of people die the other kills millions of people over the same period. We need better ways to govern or we'll end up killing the species one day.
Even more dangerous things happen when the war is not a ruling class means to survive BUT just a business or mostly a business, that's why IMVHO private A/N&D companies should just exists for small weapons for civilians and nothing more. The rest should be a State-only production always kept but so expensive that a war is chosen only as extrema ratio. Private companies can only participate aside like providing steel etc to the State, BUT that at a fixed and low price high enough to avoid making companies failing but low enough that's not a profit even in a deep bear market case.
We do not live to be efficient, to innovate, to produce goods etc: we live to live, we work because it's needed to live well and in various cases is also a pleasure to a certain extent, but definitively not the contrary. Quality of life on any individual is the outcome IMVHO not the rest.
Even if nazi research pushed infrared, new way to survive in cold waters, rockets, many various maritime, aviation and generic mechanical innovation who now and not only from now have produced good things for us those who have build them do not have any pleasure from them, so the outcome is still negative. Working to left something good behind is good, but not at the price of ruining or dedicate a life for that purpose.
Invading by NATO members is as always ok, Libya Syria Afghanistan Iraq
Was Russia's invasion of Ukraine provoked? Like, has there been evidence of the claimed nazis (which AFAIK isn't grounds for invasion) or whatever? Did Ukraine strike first?
If western ukraine were trying to break away and kyiv used nazi soldiers to cling on to lviv im pretty sure that the western propaganda organs (and by extension, you) wouldnt feel so ambivalent about the swastika tattoos and their war crimes and yea, it probably would be used as grounds for an intervention.
This may be what the West is fighting for, in a cynical fashion. And it’s not exactly wrong: “the West” is a lot of people and some have motivations that are less than noble. But an alternative argument is that the West is fighting for liberal democracy as an alternative to authoritarian governance (or “democracy in name only” authoritarianism.)
It's become fashionable recently to claim that liberal democracy is on the ropes, and to argue that the future will be full of effective authoritarian governments (despite over a century of such governments being out-competed by modern democracies.) The Ukraine war is a hell of a showcase for the weakness of that strategy. At the end of the day, the real lesson the world should take from this war is that democracy (and particularly liberal democracy) simply works better than authoritarian systems: not because it’s perfect, but because it gives societies a way to course-correct and recover from corruption and stupid mistakes. During peaceful times it's really easy to forget this and get frustrated by democracy: there’s a lot of appeal to the idea of handing governance over to an effective strongman. But even if you somehow luck into a brilliant strongman, dictators eventually age and make mistakes. When that inevitably happens your government won't have the structures necessary to correct them. The performance of the Russian military in Ukraine is an extreme example that shows how naturally self-limiting this strategy can be.
Trying to reverse the results of a referendum where 80% voted and 90% voted yes and multiple western polls confirm the result doesnt exactly show a resounding commitment to democracy.
Nor does being besties with Saudi Arabia.
From an imperialistic perspective both make perfect sense though. Saudi is a global energy chokepoint and Crimea is a regional strategic chokepoint for a rival empire.
More generally, "the West is a lot of different people." Many of them are lousy and have made lousy decisions, such as the support for Saudi Arabia.
Democracy doesn't mean perfection, and I'm hugely in favor of making it better. I don't think supporting the current basket of authoritarian regimes on offer is "better". We can agree to disagree.
(90% was also the result of a German run poll 2 years later without tanks present... the poll was consistent with the referendum)
It's worth bearing in mind that Kyiv has no intention of rerunning the poll if Russia leaves likely coz they know what the result would be. It will simply reincorporate the territory. The only vote that was ever going to happen after Maidan was with Russian tanks present.
I dont think this is about agreeing to disagree or about accepting imperfections in democracy. This is about an overarching willingness of our society to discard democracy when it conflicts with western imperialist objectives.
Not only are we willing to do it we are willing to engage in orwellian doublethink about it.
It would take something about as long as the article posted here to write a proper refutation but if there was a point to be made then it could not doubt have been made much better.
For instance:
"Most of the emerging world either backs Russia over its invasion or is neutral. Some countries depend on Russian arms, others feel a misplaced nostalgia for Soviet largesse, but many see the West as decadent, self-serving and hypocritical. And many more, even if they do not welcome the invasion, see it as somebody else’s problem."
Where to even start? The two large players that matter in the 'developing world' are China and India, both have their own very unique reasons to be either supportive of or ambivalent towards Russia, not because they depend on arms but because Russia and/or Russian connected territories serve their interests or because they have similar political systems and have similar designs on their immediate surroundings. That's already by population almost 3 billion people and yet it is only two countries.
"As America and the rest of NATO rally support for action against Russia, that is a stunning rebuke."
So that 'stunning rebuke' is not nearly as stunning as the author makes it out to be.
Then:
"It is also taking the world down a dangerous path."
Correction: Russia is taking the world, and especially Europe down a dangerous path. If anything it has destabilized the European continent in a way that nothing has since WWII, not even the war around former Yugoslavia, where - it needs to be said - Russia again played a major role.
"On March 2nd, 141 countries voted in the UN to deplore Russia’s invasion. Just five voted against and 35 abstained. "
The ones that abstained have their reasons to walk a very fine line, in part because they depend on Russia and in part because they have ambitions to be more like Russia.
The ones that voted against are: North Korea, Eritrea, Syria, Belarus and Russia itself.
I don't think anybody is going to be surprised by four of those, the one that remains is Eritrea. Russian veto power in the security council has repeatedly protected Eritrean leadership.
"But the real pattern is more complex. Our sister organisation, the Economist Intelligence Unit, has noted that only a third of the world’s people live in countries that have not only condemned Russia but also imposed sanctions on it."
Yes, that's also the part of the world that either aligns with the West because they are closely tied economically and/or because they have the ability to do so without entirely ruining their own economy. If Upper Volta decides to boycott or sanction Russia it won't move the needle much because they aren't really the most active trading partners, but if the US, UK, the remainder of Europe or Japan does so it definitely does move that needle.
There is a whole debate possible about whether or not sanctions are effective and then another one about whether or not these particular sanctions are effective. But it is pretty easy to see why those countries that are most directly affected by Russia invading Ukraine would be the ones to support the sanctions and leave the rest of the world less likely to do so.
Proximity + economic ties + feeling threatened by Russia is enough explanation for me.
"Most of them are Western. Another third are in neutral countries. This group includes giants like India and tricky American allies, such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The final third are in countries that are echoing Russia’s rationale for the invasion. The biggest, China, has repeated propaganda claiming that Ukraine has hosted American-backed bioweapons laboratories."
I don't really see what this paragraph adds to the previous one, it is pretty clear that China has its own agenda with Taiwan, a wo...
I don't think your critique opposes the article as such - you provide the background information that generally Economist excpects it's readers to already have.
I think this quote from the article is very correct.
"the world Mr Putin desires would be far more decadent, self-serving and amoral than the one that exists today."
The concepts in the article are complex, and yes, it's more of a statement of sentiment than deep policy analysis (those take hundreds of pages).
this whole article looks to me as though it started out from a conclusion, then pulled together a bunch of unrelated facts to paint a completely incoherent picture.
Generally that's the whole point of Economist - their authors strive to digest a complex event and at least attempt to condense it to a brief article. I would love if they would cite all of the references used in an article but alas it is not so.
Economist is also declared itself politically very partial to the liberal world view, so it's not something that they hide. You go to the Economist to get the liberal take on things - you don't need to like it, but you are not deceived by the authors motivation as it is very clear.
That's true but that's just a pretty basic observation, the thing that the article seems to want to say most of all is that the rest of the world outside of a relatively small minority portion in the 'West' is either supportive of Russia or ambivalent and I don't see the support for that thesis.
See the part that starts with:
"In Mr Putin’s world, where might makes right, today’s lack of support is proof of Western decline."
India, I actually do take issue with. Their self-serving actions I hold against them and I've been disappointed with Indian leadership and alignment as of late.
But all of this misses the point. The unaligned movement is acceptable to my western eyes, but I never for a second forget that they need us for their stability and security. Small, poor, neutral states rarely change the course of world politics. So out of the countries that actually matter there is NATO (and friends like Australia and Japan), India, Brazil, Russia, and China.
India and Brazil both disappointingly went neutral, Russia started the war, and China is softly backing their junior partner. So my take away is simple: The countries that are willing to sacrifice at their own cost for others are the ones that have internal politics that mirror their values. The more populist or fascist or communist the country the more likely they are to put their own national interests ahead of others.
Or do you think Canadian-Ukrainian trade is so vital to Trudeau that he's willing to frost relations with Russia, outlay hundreds of millions in direct aid and munitions donations, and spend political capital garnering support for Ukrainian defence?
I bet there are people that see this as ideological, fair and good vs evil I also bet there are some for whom this is a strategic and precedent setting
That said, some things are good and evil. And Putin's invasion of Ukraine is evil. Ukraine was a democratic, peaceful country.
The thing that really got to me (and which made me actually write them an email, the first in 10+ years) was their latest Charlemagne column [1], the one where they were comparing Orban and his political party/government to a virus (to Covid, as it happens). I tried to explain to that poor fellow/lady writing the column that making that comparison in these parts of the world (I live in neighbouring Romania) is extremely, extremely problematic, given past history. We were supposed to be the "good guys", the ones that are fighting against Orban the anti-semite, but we can't be the good guys anymore when we're borrowing well-known anti-semite tactics from the past.
To say nothing that half-way through the article I was saying to myself: "maybe I'm imagining things, maybe painting your political enemies as a virus/disease is how it's done these day", until I saw one of the column's sub-titles that was just this text: Buda-pest . Absolutely horrendous.
[1] https://archive.ph/OUfpc
Also, there was a despicable "interview" with Blair a few years ago out of which he got pretty much clean as a whistle when it came to the Iraq war, no ruffling the feathers or anything like that.
I am asking this because I myself fell for some propaganda and this has shaken me up. I want to learn how to recognize propaganda better.
Can't pinpoint to an exact thing, because good propaganda is always diffuse, it kind of encircles you. Were it to be more "straightforward" it would be way easier for the target subject to just reject it, thus denying the propagandist's objective. It is easier for said target subject to say "no" (let's say) to one big thing that is presented to him than to say "no" to lots of smaller things addressed/presented to him, but which smaller things, taken together, have the same "effect" as the one big thing.
Back to The Economist, and after that long digression, the signs were in a sort always there. For example when it comes to the China section that it's included in every issue there was always that feeling that nothing that the Chinese government/authorities did was right. If something good was happening in China it was because of individual people, if something bad was happening, it was, of course, the government's fault. And maybe the "government" is the wrong word, because there are lots of people in the West itself who think that the Government is always wrong, too, it was more like "it was the fault of the Chinese regime taken as a whole, of the way it was set up, of its ideological system".
But when it came to the US the bad things were never the fault of the government, or if some government-related person was doing something wrong (think the previous US president) then it was the fault of that particular person, not of the entire system per se. Also, said US system, even with its minor faults, was always presented as being capable of self-correction, there was always an intrinsic belief that "things will get better, by definition". No such hope was attached to the Chinese-based system, which was always presented as an ideological dead-end (maybe not in this direct words, but that was the idea).
And then there are even smaller things. One that stood up to me was when the previous president was accused of lying, a thing that lots of other US president had done in the past (and will probably do in the future, too) but which I hadn't seen presented as such by this magazine, I mean, not with those words. And not only that, but that lye accusation was written down in one of their columns with a capital L, something like "the big Lye", which is a basic propaganda technique: one is not a mere "traitor", but a big, dangerous, "Traitor", one just cannot think and reason about a nondescript "people", one instead dreams big nationalistic things while thinking about the "People" etc.
The war/Russia issue I was talking about had all of the above dialed up to 100.
It was literally founded as a propaganda organ for the liberals in England. In opposition to the "Corn Laws"
It is also "where the Queen goes, go we". So if England (not Britain, England) declares war they are in, boots and all. They cheer lead the Iraqi debacle then years later talked of "those mistaken supporteds of the Iraqi invasion including this magazine".
It is what I like about them. Most media does not admit it bias, the Economist admits it every day.
"FROM A CYNICAL European perspective, Viktor Orban’s election triumphs are like covid-19 wave" it says. Because it has always been anti Orban. Always called on the Hungarian voters to rejected him.
I disagree with many of their priors (I find the emphasis on individual rights as opposed to collective rights unbalanced. Collective rights exist an often conflict with individual rights and I put the balance in a different place) But I have huge respect for the honesty.
You can label it "propaganda". It is not incorrect. But it is unsubtle and very honest.
Compare that to Fox News or the Guardian both of which do not recognise that their views are prejudice at all.
I hope you're happy now that we're buying your expensive gas which travels over the atlantic with tankers.
And wtf is Biden doing financing biolabs in a corrupt country at the doors of Russia anyway? f this
So biolab conspiracy nonsense (the US was funding the dismantment the old Soviet biological weapon program) + nonsense about GE (US went max pressure and GE left too). Kremlin probably can't pay even for a decent bot program?
https://nypost.com/2022/03/26/hunter-biden-played-role-in-fu...
> In April 2014, Metabiota vice president Mary Guttieri wrote a memo to Hunter outlining how they could 'assert Ukraine's cultural and economic independence from Russia'. 'Thanks so much for taking time out of your intense schedule to meet with Kathy [Dimeo, Metabiota executive] and I on Tuesday. We very much enjoyed our discussion,' Guttieri wrote
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10652127/Hunter-Bid...
Thanks to unlimited soviet bioweapons to dismantle I imagine.
Anyway, it's always the soviets and conspirationists isn't it, just like for the chemical weapons of mass destruction in Irak.
Just take the money for the gas, but then don't complain about CO2 emissions and especially don't lecture the rest of the world.
Actually the same argument about China's expansionist agenda can also be made for India. In the case of India it intends to at some point go to war with Pakistan over the Kashmir region.
Categorizing the other side, their supporters and their size as vested, threatened, agenda, opinion don’t count and proximity related Surely those apply to both sides
Leaving the one true view as what matters
The one true view that matters also lean on countries, have proximity to other countries and have designs and interests so why should their views be right and pure ?
The one part that I understand is that you think that I have the 'one true view' which is clearly not the case, all I have is my opinion. I'm not 'discarding' any country because they are still there, all I'm trying to do is to figure out their reasoning for positioning themselves as they do in contrast to what the article claims, which I think is simply not supported by the facts.
The rest of your comment I can either not parse, make sense of or reply to, sorry. If English is not your first language then it must be frustrating not to be able to communicate your ideas clearly, it isn't my first language either but I would definitely encourage you to keep trying because that is the only way to improve. Thanks!
In comparison to this, these other issues from the article seem to be secondary at most.
A lot of the USA anti NATO sentiment is still a leftover from the Trump administration which was all but preaching isolationism (and which of course very much played into the hands of Putin who would love to reacquire not just Ukraine but also the Baltics and maybe even other former USSR states).
I'm with you on the premise that they probably thought Trump would win a second term and I think if not for COVID that this would have all happened two years earlier.
Public opinion in the United States with respect to NATO will be put to the test: for the first time in a long time it looks as though other nations in NATO may have to lean on it when in the past it was the USA that asked other countries to stand with it when it was attacked. What the outcome of that will be I do not know but I agree with you that it is of primary importance compared to the points raised in the article.
Got to love the mental acrobatics required to think that an invasion 13 months after Trump's departure from the White House must have been planned assuming a second Trump term (since, y'know, Trump was a Russian agent!!!!!!1!11!!!). Anything, everything, to avoid the more obvious conclusion that Russia was more afraid of the US/NATO with Trump as president than Biden.
Example:
> Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine to force it to renounce the West and to submit to the Kremlin
I wonder what's their source, based on Putin's declarations this should be:
> Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine to force it to renounce the West and to remain neutral because it's located between the west and russia and because the west promised it
https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/nato-s-eastward-e...
Large scale things on contrary are far easier to spot, at least at a certain scale and at a certain extent. For instance when we keep reading "the Russian bombing hospitals, theaters and schools" it's evidently propaganda not because "Russians are good" vs "Russians are bad" but because missiles&co are not that cheap nor that abundant so an error can always happen, but normally no one army in the world waste ammo for nothing and as a result if those bombing are true then means Ukrainian army choose to violate Geneva conventions recycling hospitals, theaters, schools etc for military purposes and than as a result for the other side they became legit targets. But as always people at scale do not like to reason, prefer being fed with emotions.
With similar simple reasoning following the classic Latin cui prodest we can easy conclude that this war is needed by USA and UK élites against the EU, Ukraine and Russian interest. Unfortunately for those élites that move means pushing Russia toward China witch is less weak alone than Russia and far more important with Russian natural resources and a far augmented military tech transfer from Russia China will arrive in few years to have enough military capacity to counter USA and UK together. Those élites play the same game they have played with nazi Germany, counting on similar outcome, of course as back then against their own citizens interests. On the other side Russia need safety at their western borders, for them nazis are ok-ish if on their side, not ok if on NATO side, so they haven't really choice but go to war. China needs stability to keep growing, as any dictatorship that need to grow, but also to sustain it's population. There is no morale on all sides, just mix of interests, some legit some criminal, and different school of thoughts confronting.
Russia is mostly using in Ukraine (like before in Syria) dirt cheap unguided WWII style bombs, like FAB-250 (550lb) and FAB-500 (1100lb).
> if those bombing are true then means Ukrainian army choose to violate Geneva conventions recycling hospitals, theaters, schools etc for military purposes and than as a result for the other side they became legit targets.
You forgot to update your Russian propaganda version to spread. For example Russia hitting the Mariupol hospital because there supposedly was an Ukrainian army command center is the old version of their propaganda. Now they tell that they didn't hit the hospital, and that there were no Ukrainian military there, and it was just a real hospital which Ukrainians intentionally blown up.
This is disingenuous. Russia has a long history of bombing civilians as a psychological weapon. Both Grozny and Aleppo are well documented. Your arguments “the Russians are not stupid, so if they seem to be doing stupid, then it’s propaganda” rests on very faulty premises. They are not stupid, and are deliberately targeting civilian populations. We know their doctrine and we have seen their playbook. You are only carrying water here and your rhetorics are obvious.
> With similar simple reasoning following the classic Latin cui prodest we can easy conclude that this war is needed by USA and UK élites against the EU, Ukraine and Russian interest.
This is an interesting conspiracy theory.
> On the other side Russia need safety at their western borders, for them nazis are ok-ish if on their side, not ok if on NATO side, so they haven't really choice but go to war.
Come off it. NATO is an existential threat to Russia only if Russia’s existence depends on being able to invade its neighbours. The fact that its former satellites ran to the West at the moment they got the chance is telling. If they wanted stability, they’d have increased cooperation instead of rattling their metaphorical sabre for 20 years. NATO was not more menacing 2 months ago than it was 20 years ago, quite the contrary. It was desegregating before being reinvigorated by this stupid, pointless agression. Finland and Sweden applying was unimaginable just a couple of weeks ago. If stability was the point, a hot war was the absolute last thing to do.
Also, is there any evidence, even circumstantial, that Ukraine has a significantly larger nazi relative population compared to any surrounding country? Its government is just as incompetent and corrupt as you’d expect given the context. Where are their nazi policies?
You seem to be making a lot of effort to sound reasonable, but ultimately
All countries have attacked civilians, did you remember WWII USA in Europe mass bombing even on ally countries? Iraqi ones? French ones in Libya and Siria? NATO Belgrade siege? But their purpose is evident: WWII mass bombing were used to force rich European countries to reconstruct under the Marshall plan agreements a thing would not happen if those countries were not so badly treated, modern bombing in Iraq &c was done for similar reasons, less ample now, but equally in principles: making room for western private companies big earnings. Russia do not have such targets, they are meaningless for them, they do not have the western military-industrial complex, most of their activities are still public in military and health domains, private activities suffer more from sanctions and war than the outcome [1], they advance slowly and methodically clearly to minimize damages in area they want operational under their control.
[1] to a point I suspect some western sanctions are negotiated with Putin gov. to hit some oligarchs he dislike...
Major cities like Chernihiv, Kharkiv, Mariupol are shelled with dumb, indiscriminate weapons - Soviet free fall bombs from the 60’s, MLRS with unguided rockets. This stuff is cheap and plenty.
There residential areas where hundreds of thousands lived, now completely destroyed. There are videos, photos, everything. Yet you succumb to nice Russians narrative.
WWII bombing was mass bombing, with no precision target, '60s missiles are far more precise and absolutely not that cheap nor abundant and there is no military reason to mass using them even if you have a significant stockpile to bomb a residential area if this area is not filled by enemy forces. A practice mercenaries always use in war, regardless of their nationality, because that's the classic asymmetric war.
If I succumb to Russian narrative (curious, since I've cited western governmental sources to sustain my claims not TASS or Ria Novosti) you equally succumb to Bernaysian western propaganda. Being from EU BTW my own interest in on the Russian side, our major supplier, fellow European till the Urals (so Moscow included), not on the USA/UK side since those two equally do their best to pick our tech&talentsm put us one against each other (a thing we do remarkably well, shame on us for that) and do countless more or less discrete criminal and not criminal actions against us. The USA after WWII have transformed my home country (Italy) into the Mafiastan just to stop CLN Alta Italia (the major Resistence body of the country) to really becoming a democratic government, the UK help very well fueling corruption (a significant local weakness) by all means and imposing a redesign of public school to form a new kind of citizens unable to reason and act as Citizens. That after the UK itself have funded mussolini to became a dictator, that after Wall Street have founded hitler till the first year of WWII at least. Saying USA an UK obviously I'm talking about their ruling class, not their citizens that equally pay the price of their ruler business against their own interests.
Just consider a thing: EU countries can only blame themselves for their status from world superpower to a disaster, BUT Russians never invade US, while we try invading Russia few times, USA and UK and the world their ruling class represent have do so, few times. Even from history we are on opposite sides. And that's history not russian propaganda.
Or it's just a fact... I guess some people may think Ukrainian's are blowing up those palces themselves, or making it up. But this is not really the first time in history of indiscriminate bombings have been happening to terrorize the population of some place into submission/demoralization out of spite. (And I guess it will not be the first time, where it may strenghten such population's resolve, looking at you London...)
> but normally no one army in the world waste ammo for nothing
You seem to just explain away the fact that these places are being bombed/shelled with some reasoning amounting to "makes no sense to me, therefore it must be propaganda", without knowing about current leadership's real decision making, or taking into account results of any fact finding missions, like OSCE's.
All I can agree on is that we don't know for sure if it's a policy. But it sure looked like it was a policy in Syria, in addition to an apparent campaign to demonize the civil service and health care workers, so it's not really out of question. Especially not because of some flimsy reasoning about "I don't know who would benefit". Qucks like a duck, looks like a duck, etc.
I guess to understand the scale of the issue... to see if it's more like an active terror campaign with a city/village being shelled every single day (like the joint Russian/Assad terror campaigns in the northwest of Syria), or more like something else.
If it looks more like a former, then yes, I'll accept that UA gov doesn't care about civilians there.
I mean few weeks ago Italian main TV channel have passed "the bombing of Kiev" witch was recognized quickly as a cut-scene of the game War Thunder. Then various westerns media have publish a news about a correspondent killed on duty, the same one declared killed an year or so in Kabul. Other medias show pictures of crying women saying they are Ukrainian in tears for the Russian bombing, actually those photos came from AFP/2014 and were really Ukrainian women in tears, only they were Russian-speaking ones in tear for Euromaidan massacres.
Since I'm not there, not I know in person anyone there I can't say who bombed who nor if there war really such bombing at all. While I can reason at the macro level, because at micro level anyone can say no matter what it's next to impossible prove that true or false if not done so badly like actual propaganda, but at larger scale is equally next to impossible hiding things and reasoning about their real reasons is far easier.
Of course the fact that me, myself and I fails to see a sense in something does not disprove that something, but connecting dots help and the actual propaganda, on both sides, reached a level that's very easy to spot it.
As to the document you posted... That document is not from OSCE. OSCE just added a header to it. It's entirey written by https://democracyfund.ru/ . So it can hardly be described as created by a "western body". Also OSCE is not a purely western body anyway. It includes Russia, Azerbaijan, Turkey, and many other eastern european countries.
Most importantly, it's not a report from an official fact finding mission (which is a specialist endeavor to send observers to a location to gather facts regardless of the meaning of such facts, like movements and activities of armed forces, shots being fired, destroyed property, documenting casualties, etc.) with summary statistics, etc. The document you posted is composed of random interviews with released prisoners from UA prisons. I guess it has some value, torture by UA security apparatus may have been happening as described, but it's not relevant to what I asked for in my reply to you. (which was to take into account results from actual fact finding missions, which is about documented facts, not about interviews or hearsay)
And yes, news outlets are about clicks and speed and some about shock value, as we know. I agree with you that they sometimes report complete crap. Everyone needs to take individual news reports with a grain of salt. Game footage was reported as actual war footage by a Russian embassy on twitter during Syria war. There's stupidity on both sides, you know. ;)
One example; A Russian warship has sunk. This has been confirmed by the Russians, so that part is a fact. However, while the Ukranian side claims it was done by Ukranian anti-ship cruise missiles, the Russians claim it was "just" a fire / incident on board.
I mean personally am more likely to believe the side that isn't the aggressor and isn't run by an authoritarian person / government, but the news I follow didn't make any calls themselves; they just reported what the one AND the other side claimed, plus the facts (yesterday of a Russian warship being on fire, today of it having sank).
(or translation for that matter - if I didn't know english, I'd think kids in UKR are making mine laying drones instead of mine sweeping ones, and lot of other nonsense I don't remember anymore)
I'm not sure if I understand you right but it was my impression that it was Russia waging war on Ukraine.
Ukrainian Army was trained by NATO instructors.
The only thing the Ukraine is providing really in this war is cannon fodder.
The way I look at it: in 2014 an otherwise peaceful Ukraine was invaded by its far larger and far stronger neighbor who entrenched themselves after robbing a bunch of territory on a pretext. Ukraine learned the hard way that they were underprepared, changed tactics and dramatically improved their military, while at the same time due to internal issues (mostly corruption) their larger neighbors saw the quality of their army decline.
Then, in recent times Russia decided that just having the Eastern part of Ukraine wasn't enough because those pesky Ukrainians were showing other countries in their sphere of influence (notably: Belarus, Georgia) that it was possible for a country to lift itself out of poverty by aligning with the West.
A complete lack of realistic estimates of operational readiness, underestimation of the Ukrainian resolve and a significant propaganda effort later the larger neighbor decided to finish what they started in 2014, which is roughly where we are today.
The West obviously stands a lot to gain from Ukraine not ending up in the same way as Belarus and so has a strong motivation to ensure that the new Russian imperialist effort fails. This, plus the fact that housing another 40 million refugees is not an option suffices to explain why the West is fairly eager to support Ukraine in its defense against Russia.
I think I'll bow out of the discussion here, whenever people start posting that video there isn't much left to talk about.
The narrative "big bad Russia against small peaceful Ukraine" is very simplistic, and only leads to support of escalation of conflict.
FWIW: Big bad Russia against small peaceful Ukraine is the reality far more than any alternative that you might want to supply.
Please, think about what the actual fuck you're implying here.
It's still not sure if it will take Donbass. All the new captured parts of Ukraine are becoming new or join existing "People's Republics". I won't be surprised if after the end of campaign, there still will be independent republics and some shaky agreement that will be broken by Ukraine in the first week.
Even first plan was apparently to overthrow government, not to gain some land.
On other hand, the tactics of West/Zelensky is to destroy the East as much as possible, killing as many people as possible, destroying as much infrastructure as possible.
Not standing idle while Russian Nazist regime genocides Ukrainians speaks great of NATO.
>Ukrainian Army was trained by NATO instructors.
and it shows. There is a reason people try to get to best schools. At the same time it is obvious from its performance that Russia hasn't gone to school at least for the last several decades.
Btw, the video of the mightiest Black Sea missile cruiser whose main purpose was to provide air-defense to the naval group being hit by Ukrainian missile https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uXT3kOZGNE&t=73s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=um3_6NM6II4
Cruiser was hit indeed, but this footage is from completely different event.
Also, "cannon fodder"? Ukrainian army defends its people and its country. Russian soldiers are truly cannon fodder for Russian imperialists.
Ukraine is a key regional strategic partner that has undertaken significant efforts to reform its military and increase its interoperability with NATO.
Since 2014, the United States has committed more than $5.6 billion in total assistance to Ukraine, including security and non-security assistance. In 2021 alone we committed over $300 million in assistance to support Ukraine’s democratic and economic development, and over $650 million in security assistance.
https://www.state.gov/u-s-security-cooperation-with-ukraine/
But yeah, NATO is helping a lot.
There's no shortage of volunteers in Ukraine (and abroad), the forces are full, they're not accepting people even in support positions anymore. It's Russia who's providing the cannon fodder.
And before there's a whataboutism reply, I also do not agree with a lot of the US' aggression, and they and their leaders should be tried for war crimes.
I must have missed the bit where people started calling for Russia's destruction.
TBH it has surprised me that Ukraine hasn't carried out a lot more behind-the-lines attacks on Russian supply convoys; I'm aware of just one attack on a Russian fuel dump inside Russia. It's as if they are fearful that an attack on Russian territory might lead to retaliation. But isn't Russia already 'retaliating' as much as it can?
It's hard to do on Russian territory because of closed borders and anti-air. It's hard to do on captured eastern territories because there are too many ethnic Russian and Russian-speaking people live here, who are quite sympathetic to Russia. And there are rumors that FSB acquired the lists of all pro-ukrainian activists on these territories from SBU.
And no, Russia has not even start to retaliate.
Drones and missiles are flying in belgorod district but mostly countered by aa.
Ukraine is providing leadership, initiative, and massive amounts of weaponry on their own. Zelensky is asking western governments for more every week.
As for cannon fodder, civilian casualties are most likely much greater than military casualties at this point, and will likely get worse. Add to that the all the material destruction.
The cost in human lives would be far greater without western aid.
The way Ukraine fights is not in adherence to some NATO standards
Your comment is ridiculously cynical and dehumanizing. It's disgusting to me how many people act like Ukrainian people have no agency by themselves and act like Russia was forced to do an invasion because they feel threatened by the west.
I disagree on several points. I do not think it is cynical at all. It is factual. It approaches reality for what it is and explains existing circumstances. Frankly, I do not think it is dehumanizing either. For better or worse, war and struggle is an integral part of human condition. If anything, what is happening makes average person realize what is real.
<< If not being able to set a government of a neighboring country and completely controlling it is a security issue for Russia then maybe they should be the ones to rethink their security policy.
Russia's leadership did and decided that since their personal figurehead was deposed in aftermath of Maidan eventually resulting in West-oriented leader, they might as well get directly involved. You may not like their decision, but they did exactly what you suggested.
<< That is a different ballpark than being under the control of west which implies that the west has somehow taken over Ukraine.
You are right. It is. Being under US umbrella ( or sphere of influence ) is, to me at least, better than being under Russia's. Prentending big powers don't 'influence' small players seems naive to me though. It is not being cynical. It is just recognizing pattern in human history of the past few thousand years.
West did not take Ukraine. Yet. In fact, part of the reason of the war is whose sphere of influence Ukraine will belong to.
<< It's disgusting to me how many people act like Ukrainian people have no agency by themselves and act like Russia was forced to do an invasion because they feel threatened by the west.
They absolutely do. However, right now that agency was limited to choosing who to align with. I am not sure what is disgusting about it. Can you elaborate? It is possible I am misunderstanding your argument.
It is. But this is a straw man. It’s always been. Ukraine hasn’t been seriously considered for NATO membership since 2008. Even its path to the EU was muddled at best.
Some effects of the war, e.g. Ukraine being flooded with Western weapons where it wasn’t before or Germany pivoting away from Russia, were unpredictable. But some, like the response in Finland and Sweden, or the Baltics’ remilitarisation, were.
Ukraine was and is falling under the control of the Ukrainians, and that remains the problem for Putin—not Russia.
Is your argument that Putin does not represent Russia? I am genuinely struggling a little with parsing this response. Can you elaborate a little?
Russia has been totally screwed by this invasion. Strategically, economically and geopolitically. Putin, however, has consolidated his personal power. He has also opened up east Ukraine's mineral resources to himself and his cronies.
Yes, to an extent. The harm to America was far less than what Russia's facing. And the benefits to Bush et al less than what Putin hopes to reap.
Bush could retire in peace. Putin can't. Risking his country's destruction for a few more years in power wouldn't make sense for an American President; it does for Putin.
As for Bush, Cheney, Obama, Pompeo et al.. I don't know if they can retire in peace exactly. US taxpayers fund their security detail; some more so than others if you read some recent reports, but the point remains.
I am willing to agree with you on that there is a difference of degree, but Iraq war did a lot of damage.. not to just US standing, but to US population's perception of how things are really done. The main difference is that some of that damage is not as... easily translated into viral imagery.
So far as I can tell, Russia now controls some 40% of the worlds grain production which feeds much of Europe and North Africa, 70+% of neon production needed for semiconductors, the main source of nuclear material for French energy, the main source of fuel for German energy, and a great deal of raw materials and commodities besides, such as timber, palladium, etc.
They now also have avenues to trade in energy in means other than the dollar, something which was not possible before, and have experience against modern NATO weapons. They are, so far as I can tell, far from screwed.
Does the west threaten Russia's security? Do they have plans to invade Russia? Because that would be news to me.
It seems awfully defensive to me, especially coming from a country (Russia) that has been an aggressor for a long time, testing European defenses and readiness for a long time now. How often has the Russian air force intercepted European war planes?
Um.. I will respond in line with HN policy ( assume good faith ), but contingency plans do exist for various scenarios. Countries that do not have those are likely not going to be countries for long.
The west will mostly ally itself (as best it can) with champions of its values, whether they be Ukrainians, Russians, or any other ethnicity. This is the actual threat to the regime in Moscow.
Can you elaborate?
The beginnings of democracy in Ukraine demonstrates a roadmap for a potential Russian future. Democracy is a threat to the current regime in Moscow, but is not a threat to the Russian people.
I guess what I am saying is that you might be missing a forest for the trees. Democracy is a threat to Putin only in a sense that his control over Ukraine weakened with ouster of Yanukovych. He was fine with democracy as long as 'his' candidate won. Now, we can argue over whether Ukraine was a democracy, but I am not sure that is a good or even worthwhile argument to have.
- Ukraine isn't under Western control
- Ukraine wasn't a security concern for Russia (didn't pursue NATO, was shunned by the west regarding military aid)
- Even if a country is a concern to another, it just isn't acceptable to go on a genocidal war and take all civilian casualties as collateral damage.
<< Even if a country is a concern to another, it just isn't acceptable to go on a genocidal war and take all civilian casualties as collateral damage.
Yes? And yet it is seems to be happening all the time. In a very practical sense, it is kinda hard to enforce the kind of protections needed not to offend certain sensibilities. There is a reason war is not something one should haphazardly go into. Don't get me wrong. I don't really want to discourage your moral outrage over how the world should be and how it apparently is.
You are saying it is not acceptable, but the world is on the verge of accepting it. It is only US pressure that might, and I am stressing might, change the outcome here.
Decided to edit after all:
<< Ukraine isn't under Western control
Qualified yes. What do you think this war is about? Freedom? Democracy? It is not a trick question. There are a lot of players, power centers and interested parties and they all have their agendas. For Poland, it is about having a buffer zone. For US, it is about who controls Ukraine. Up until recently it was controlled by Russia. That control slipped with ouster of Yanukovych ( and we can spend some time discussing to what extent western powers influenced that ouster ). I don't want to spend too much time on this though, because I am worried we do not share the same background when it comes to the region.
<< Ukraine wasn't a security concern for Russia (didn't pursue NATO, was shunned by the west regarding military aid)
Um.. citation and some dates may be needed to back up that claim. Still, for the sake of argument let us assume, none of the previous administrations did; not just US, but EU as well. Details are kind of messy.
Still, why would Ukraine be a security concern while their personal puppet was governing Ukraine? I am being serious here. It was the orange revolution and Georgia that changed the calculus. NATO membership became an issue after a west-looking leadership was elected.
Russia willfully engaged in a war of aggression to make Ukraine a vassal state in line with Belarus.
The Chinese are mostly being neutral business people with regard to fentanyl, Americans are the ones seeking it out and importing it for resale. If China stopped selling fentanyl, the same dirtbags would still be importing it from a different supplier. If nobody sold fentanyl, they'd go back to importing Heroin from Mexico and SE Asia, though at least that'd be easier to target in customs and cause fewer OD deaths.
Re: the substance of your post.
>the Chinese are mostly neutral business people
This is naive. They remember what was done to them in the opium war, and there is a reason they manufacture the stuff.
>the same dirtbags…
When one person falls into folly, that person is a fool. When an entire society falls into folly, can you blame each man as a fool? We have an opium problem. It was fueled by large pharamceutical companies, but in 2022 there is also a geopolitical component.
Re: Russia
I have no doubt Russia would like to see America knocked on its rear. However my biggest qualm with the support of Ukraine is not “Russia right, America wrong,” but that this is a self-own. What we’ve done is force the world to make a decision, in which neutrality, once a holding pattern for the sake of good business, is now a knife’s edge slicing through one’s slipper. Moreover, the so-called “smartest people in the room,” by confiscating a substantial portion of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, have forced a realignment in which a great portion of the world is now trading oil in terms of rubles instead of dollars, which removes the base from under our own currency. I’m sorry, our involvement in Ukraine was an overextension, and our measures in support of it were foolish and self-destructive. If I sound sympathetic to Russia, it is because I am frustrated with America and how this country is being run. The people who knew how to handle situations like this, such as the now oft-mention John Mearsheimer were ignored, in favor of weak-minded flag-wavers with complementary Lockheed caps in their closet.
Russian energy sanctions are definitely coming, so your second point is moot.
It’s not just the manufacture but the money laundering for the cartels. Maybe “It’s just business” but so is knocking America down a peg.
>Russian energy sanctions
This is the core problem. We in the west are under the parochial impression that most of the world will follow along with this, and that impression is incorrect. Russia has too many resources, that too much of the world is reliant upon. That is the crux of the decision that is being forced, and IMHO it is not going to be forced in our favor.
If we wanted to force such a decision, it should have been from a far stronger position, with ready alternatives for the rest of the world in place. Of course, it was the Russians who took the initiative on when that would or would not be possible.
You mean for concrete matters of national chauvanism? It's amazing to still see people spreading this misinformation even after Russia accidentally broadcast its real motives to the world: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-60562240
> Mr Akopov justifies the "virtual civil war" as "Russia restoring its historical fullness, gathering the Russian world, the Russian people together".
Sure, but I don’t think we’d make it policy to level Mexican cities in retribution. We’d at the very least start with sanctions.
But we didn’t. We made specific threats with specific remedies. And there were nukes.
Russia has invaded. It never made reasonable demands. (Asking for your puppet back in power isn’t reasonable. And there was zero pretext for Crimea.) The last time there were nukes in Ukraine, Kyiv gave them in exchange for Russian security guarantees.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum_on_Secur...
last time I checked it was RU ill-prepared, and poorly informed by its own IC about the state of their neighbor invading a sovereign European nation. I guess it must be horribly embarrassing when your celebrated army is taken down by a collective of farmers. There is no need for NATO proxy-war because if Ukraine continues its brave defense at this rate then NATO will beg to join Ukraine.
I do hope they capture and kill each and every Russian on Ukraine soil who even vaguely looks like their alliance is not clear, or who are found to carry condoms in their uniforms.
Considering the brazenness and utter dumbfuckery of Russia's brainwashed middle class populace cheering for Putin it is our duty in the West to defend Ukraine and preemptively strike them not only outside Russia (ME/Africa, etc) but to also go after them at home in Moscow. We should also take a close look at any Russian overseas who isn't loudly denouncing the Putler regime.
Supporting this retarded regime is spitting in everyone's faces, including the Russians.
But here we are.
Living in Asia there is definitely not the staunch apposition to the war that you might expect to see.
People here don’t like it but are not lockstep on Ukraines side.
And as a so called and derided “red pilled” guy I’m not going to jump to any conclusions for the next year or so.
We’ve all been seen the ultimate truth and aims and outcomes of the last half dozen wars involving the USA.
Once you live abroad for a significant amount of time you tend to take off the rah rah USA rose colored glasses and see the world from the point of view of other peoples.
A very annoying thing about the news and SJW social media is everyone jumping on the Ukraine bandwagon with nary a thought as to why what is happening… is happening.
Not many people are asking WHY its happening.
Nothing warrants or excuses the annexion of Crimea.
Keep in mind Putin rolled his tanks into Crimea the day after the new pro-US/NATO regime in Ukraine had thrown out the democratically elected (albeit pro-Russia) government, and rewritten the Ukrainian Constitution[2] to then make it possible to drop neutrality[3] so that they could begin the process of joining NATO. A rule to join NATO is that a nation must be in control of its borders and not in active conflict, so by annexing Crimea, Russia ensured the moves to join NATO would be halted with that action.
Understanding cause and effect is not the same as excusing it. If I poke a bear with a stick, and the bear eats me, it's my fault. Just because the bear went a little overboard doesn't change the fact that it's a bear and I should know not to poke it with a stick.
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26079957
[2] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ukraine-crisis-constituti...
[3] https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-europe-30594763
and the time before that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30887629
Not to forget: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30653796 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30648054
If you'd like to challenge the facts, do so. Pointing out that facts have been posted before in response to the same questions, doesn't change the facts.
Unless you think we can't trust BBC and Reuters...?
As I said:
> this kind of disinformation does not need to even be self-consistent or even that believable. But it does need to be relentlessly sent out.
I don’t see how changes to Constitution which limit the power of President could be related to whether or not Ukraine could be neutral.
Common sense can tell us Putin was itching for an excuse to annex Crimea, but then that leaves us with the very uncomfortable question of why the US pushed Ukraine into this situation knowing how Putin would respond.
Ukraine is being used a pawn in a proxy war between the US and Russia. People need to call it what it is if they actually care to understand it.
If 2014 invasion was somehow related to Euromaidan protests, this 2022 invasion has no relation to internal Ukrainian politics nor to it’s foreign policy — nothing has fundamentally changed. The only reason why Putin attacked now is because he felt he could get away with it — Ukraine was asking for weapons since October and got only light anti-tank weapons to fight insurgency war. Nobody in the West pushed Ukrainians to fight, what West really wants is business as usual.
Yet now it becomes less and less possible due to Ukrainian information war.
Repeating Russian propaganda narratives is not what makes you a sudden expert on Eastern European politics.
There is no "if", unless you are arguing that invading Crimea the next day was a coincidence. That is fact, not opinion. Just like the post-coup regime in Ukraine then officially voting to drop neutrality, clearing the way to join NATO (which is just the international arm of the US military).
As to what has fundamentally changed, well Biden is back in charge like he was in 2014. Biden and family have huge financial interests in Ukraine, as evidenced by the emails that our totally honest media finally acknowledged were legitimate[1][2][3] (only after the election was over of course). And with that, Ukraine was set back on their path against Russia, to poke the bear some more at our behest.
There is a reason Russia/Ukraine was quiet for 4 years under Trump. And its the same reason we had to listen to that tired "Trump is Putin's puppet" conspiracy theory for most of his presidency. He wouldn't play their game. Hell, he was even impeached over Ukraine. Elements of the US government have been orchestrating this game for years, and innocent Ukrainians are the ones left holding the bag. Well them, and middle class US taxpayers who always end up footing the bill.
[1] https://www.newsweek.com/burying-hunter-biden-laptop-story-w...
[2] https://ijr.com/ny-times-confirms-emails-hunter-laptop-not-r...
[3] https://nypost.com/2022/03/17/the-new-york-times-hates-to-sa...
Can you say you know for sure why it’s happening??
He doesn't like NATO, so his strategy is to invade a non-NATO neighbour. What an idiot. Now all of a sudden, all neighbouring non-NATO countries want to join NATO. What a surprise. Finland applied already, Sweden later this year.
Deals with EU were going great, especially with Germany that is highly dependent on Russian gas. Consequence of the war: EU kicks out (of phases out) economic trade. Nice one.
If Russia hates US so much, why don't they collaborate more with EU? A strong EU-Russia relationship could match US in any sense. But no, Russia prefers to behave like an aggressive lunatic. EU was very much open to work together, see Germany. Now it is clear that was a big mistake.
So yeah, it's because he's an aggressive idiot lunatic.
> he's an aggressive idiot lunatic.
I think there are two mistakes here:
1. Personalising it as being about Putin. 2. Characterising Putin as being stupid or mad.
Nearly everything that Russia (not Putin) has done has been pre-announced by the Russian leadership. In fact, most of the pre-announcement has been by Putin himself, and I wonder whether his generals think that's a good idea. NATO has treated those announcements as bullying bluster; they were wrong. Most of those announcements were based on long-established Russian or Soviet military doctrine. If anyone's an idiot, it's NATO leadership, for assuming it was all bluster.
Characterising your enemy as a mad fool is a standard propaganda technique. There are reasons why the invasion is happening now, not sooner and not later. Both Ukraine and Georgia have loudly declared their desire to join NATO and the EU; it's obvious that Russia would very much prefer not to have NATO on his border. If Russia thinks it needs to invade Ukraine, then it needed to be done now. Similarly, the cancellation of Nordstream II, and the increased deployment of renewables in Europe threatens Russia's economy. The Russian treasury is flush now, but even setting aside sanctions, it won't be for long.
Putin certainly has some odd beliefs, such as his views about the historical destiny of the Rus people. But basing claims to land on historical destiny isn't unique to Russia; there are long-standing US allies that make similar claims (Israel?).
You mean Russia claiming it's just doing some military trainings at the border, and then US claiming it's going to invade Ukraine in the next few days?
> If anyone's an idiot, it's NATO leadership
You mean 2 non-NATO parties fighting each other? Seems like good old divide and conquer strategy to me. After this war, Russia won't have much left to fight NATO. NATO is not affected in any way.
> Russia would very much prefer not to have NATO on his border
This is going to double once Finland joins, which will happen this year. All because of Putin's mastermind strategy.
> the cancellation of Nordstream II
This happened after the invasion. One of the reasons why this was a very bad move on Russia's part.
> a mad fool
The best you can claim is that he was misinformed (hence the arrests and layoffs of the FSB).
Putin made a serious mistake. Now they are rolling with it. Anyone who claims this was a good move on Russia's part is just an idiot.
Calling people (me, Putin) an idiot is itself idiotic, if you are at all interested in understanding the situation. If you dismiss a participant as being [mad | stupid], then you lose the ability to understand and predict his actions.
My view is that Russia, mainly at Putin's instigation, has perpetrated a catastrophic mistake. But how and why did that mistake happen?
I think it's plausible to claim that Putin's ministers and generals are afraid to tell him anything he doesn't want to hear. That doesn't make him stupid or mad; that just means he's scary.
So why has he made this mistake, and why now? I think if you read what he has said, and take it seriously - not as the ravings of an idiotic madman - your chance of understanding why we are here, and of making accurate predictions about what might happen next, are much improved.
[Edit] What I think is idiotic is to not take seriously a man that controls 6,000 nuclear warheads. If you check out the guy's career, he's a competent but boring bureaucrat, embittered that nobody recognised his wonderfulness, who got lucky under Yeltsin.
No I didn't think that. But it did seem to me that you thought this invasion wasn't a mistake on Russia's end.
> My view is that Russia, mainly at Putin's instigation, has perpetrated a catastrophic mistake.
So I wrongly interpreted your previous post. We basically agree on this one. So I don't consider you an idiot ;).
> I think it's plausible to claim that Putin's ministers and generals are afraid to tell him anything he doesn't want to hear. That doesn't make him stupid or mad.
I think it's here were we differ. He should know better as to how reliable the info is that he gets. If he punishes bad news, he should be smart enough to know that people will not tell him bad news. I call that idiotic.
> making accurate predictions about what might happen next, are much improved
I agree with you on this one. Maybe my "lunatic" was not well chosen, and should be replaced with "psychopath". Because only a psychopath kills or poisons political opposition. But it's perfectly doable to predict an idiot's actions.
For the most part I think we actually agree with each other, it's just the wording that might differ.
It seems Putin was living in his own fantasy land for quite a while. And now that he's getting hit with reality, I sure hope he's sane enough to understand certain consequences.
Poisoning opponents is actually customary in Russian politics. This isn't one man's psychiatric condition; it was Soviet policy. Stalin created units dedicated to the practice.
Rasputin apparently survived a cyanide attempt.
Ivan The Terrible poisoned three of his wives to death.
Putin is an admirer of Russian customs; it's not surprising that he favours poison.
It's easy for a layman to bandy-around terms like "psychopath". He may be a psychopath, for all I know; but I think it's much more likely that he's just a boring bureaucrat, promoted far beyond his abilities, and obsessed with a perverse view of Russian imperial history.
I don’t know about a mad fool. But I think it is pretty clear that the invasion of Ukraine is a bit of catastrophic buffoonery on par with the US invasion of Iraq by Bush jr and his neocon cronies.
If the past is prelude to the present we can predict that Putin’s political coalition is going to be thrown out, in a manner similar to what we saw in the 2016 US presidential primaries / election, which was more a rejection and overthrow of the political establishment than an endorsement of the orange Cheeto man.
This is not in dispute. This has been pretty much outlined explicitly by Vladimir Putin in several writings and speeches.
> I will start with the fact that modern Ukraine was entirely created by Russia or, to be more precise, by Bolshevik, Communist Russia.
Continuing in reference to the creation of the Ukrainian SSR:
> This immediately raises many questions. The first is really the main one: why was it necessary to appease the nationalists, to satisfy the ceaselessly growing nationalist ambitions on the outskirts of the former empire? What was the point of transferring to the newly, often arbitrarily formed administrative units – the union republics – vast territories that had nothing to do with them? Let me repeat that these territories were transferred along with the population of what was historically Russia.
...
> Why was it necessary to make such generous gifts, beyond the wildest dreams of the most zealous nationalists and, on top of all that, give the republics the right to secede from the unified state without any conditions?
> I would like to emphasize again that Ukraine is not just a neighboring country for us. It is an inalienable part of our own history, culture and spiritual space
- Putin, 21 February 2022 [http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/67828]
> I am certain that the true sovereignty of Ukraine is possible precisely in partnership with Russia
- Putin, 12 JUL 2021 [https://tass.com/world/1313223?utm_source=google.com&utm_med...]
The Russian head of state does not deny that this war is intended to dominate Ukraine and bring it effectively under Russian control and end its independence and its drift away from the Russian sphere of influence. You don't have to act like it's a complicated situation - not even Russia is pretending that it is.
Special military operation. ;)
The continuous colonialism of Western nations to African and Middle Eastern countries? The Zionist occupation of Palestine? The US led invasions on Iraq and Afghanistan? Just to name a few.
As for Western nations in African and Middle Eastern countries: again, for the most part despicable but here too I don't see these as wars of conquest or ways to commit genocide by the West. That does not mean that what they are doing there is in general defensible but there are so many sides to those conflicts that clarity isn't always easy to come by, even the locals disagree on whether or not the Western involvement is a blessing or a curse, and it isn't rare for those sides to change as a conflict evolves.
The 'Zionist occupation of Palestine' as presented is already evidence of picking a side. Personally, and I'm not making any friends with this, I think the founding of the state of Israel and the preceding Balfour declaration were misguided - some of my Jewish friends agree with this - and the state of apartheid there is one that I can not and will not subscribe to. The behavior of Israel is unacceptable and I have no illusions that it is only the United States veto in the security council that stands between Israel and much wider condemnation of how they are behaving there. I do not believe that Israel as a state will survive unless they - and the Arab world around them - will find a way to effectively bury the past, and with every bullet fired and person killed that gets harder and harder. I do not subscribe to the Jewish people having an innate right to certain parts of the world based on religious texts from 4000 years ago, nor do I believe that to commit the same wrongs against people that others have committed to you make a right or can ever lead to an improvement.
But, and this is my point: in all of these situations there is are many factors at play that make me believe that some or all of the problems exhibited or some other form of discord or violence would be present in those regions, and in some cases that may have been far worse than what is going on there now.
Compared to Urkraine vs Russia these are all areas that are most likely going to be at war in one way or another with each other or internally regardless of what the West does to either pick sides or to try to improve things, it's at best meddling and at worst neo colonialism or patronization.
None of that however stops me from deciding - purely for myself - that these conflicts are too complex for me to fully appreciate all of the nuances and all of the aspects of the parties involved, in part because I do not know enough about the regions - though I know more about them than the people that I normally interact with -, I don't feel I'm on solid ground other than to roughly understand the basics and to draw coarse conclusions (see above for some of those).
But the degree of clarity with which I find myself judging Russia for the active destruction of a country closely aligned with Western Europe, a country close to Western Europe, a country that was party to more than one binding agreement and treaty which it did not violate is substantially larger.
I hope that clarifies my position enough for you to understand why this is different for me.
It's because Ukraine contains three of the nine "gap" invasion pathways into Russia and demographic collapse means if Russia doesn't take those gaps back now they won't be able to field an army to do so in the future. They had all of them before the Soviet Union fell. Invading Georgia gave them back one. Taking Crimea gave them back another. Taking the rest of Ukraine will give them two more.
https://i.imgur.com/0fIjhmB.jpg
If anyone decides to invade Russia, they better be super sure about their anti-ICBM capabilities. Just one warhead going through the defense means a leveled city. So, 200k-1million+ casualties.
So, who's taking that chance? For what?
My understanding is that the majority of Russia's large nuclear arsenal consists of "tactical" warheads, with a yield small enough that they can be used on a battlefield containing Russian forces. These are not city-busters.
Countries like the US and UK, whose nuclear doctrine is "no first use" and deterrence, rely mainly on MIRVed city-busters. The UK submarine force includes some cruise-missile nukes; but it's mainly MIRVed ICBMs. If you launch a single missile, you have launched multiple warheads. I don't know how NATO doctrine is supposed to respond to (say) a single ten-kiloton nuke fired at a railhead or marshalling yard.
Bringing the US into the issue seems to be quite the non-sequitur - is self-determinancy a concept that can only be viewed through the lens of US imperialism? Are the rights of Ukrainians (and other states bordering Russia) merely a construct of US policy?
Suppose the US currently had in place an administration which took an isolationist, ambivalent or even "Putin has valid concerns" attitude - this is hardly a speculative leap - would your attitude change? If there is nothing to see in what is happening in Ukraine, why would US imperialism bother you?
There's a history to this "What about this other thing" distraction / derailing technique, and it was fairly common from Russia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism#Soviet_Union_and_...
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Whataboutism
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/08/th...
Putin quoted a song during press conference with Emmanuel Macron in early February about Ukraine:
"Whether you like it or don't like it, bear with it, my beauty."
The full quote from "Sleeping beauty in a coffin" song by Red Mold would be:
Sleeping beauty in a coffin, I crept up and fucked her. Like it, or dislike it, sleep my beauty.
That gives you the mindset of Putin with regard to Ukraine.
Also, some personal note - my grandmother as a little girl had to hide from Russian speaking soldiers who were raping women and girls in my home town during "liberation" of Poland from Germany at the end of WWII. The stories from Ukraine are exactly the same as what my grandmother lived trough.
If you don't trust news or social media, that's fine. There are facts out there ready to be found in other ways. There are thousands of twitter feeds, embedded journalist, first person accounts, etc. But if you're not wiling to look for facts, and not willing to receive them from reputable summary sources, then you're an easy target for these kinds of propaganda tricks.
Still, it is possible that Putin really was, at one point, a bit more sympathetic to a multicultural point of view. It's possible that he's gone insane over the last 10 years. Consider how he sounded in 2012:
-----------------
Putin’s final major address as prime minister to parliament in April 2012 hammered home this point – the dangers of dividing and thus destroying. It came in the form of an answer to a suggestion from a member of the Russian Duma that the preamble to the Russian constitution be changed from beginning with “We the multinational people [narod] of Russia,” to “We the [ethnic] Russian [russkiy] people and the people who have joined with it.” Putin retorted:
Do you understand what we would do [if we did that]? Part of our society would consist of first class people and part would be second class. We must not do that if you and I want to have a strong single [yedinaya] nation, a single people [narod], if we want each person who lives on the territory of the country to feel that this is their homeland, and that there is no other homeland, nor can there be one. And if we want each person to feel like that, then we have to be equal. This is the principle question. The fact that the [ethnic] Russian [russkiy] people are – without a doubt – the backbone, the fundament, the cement of the multinational Russian [rossiyskiy] people cannot be questioned….But to divide everyone up into first, second, third categories, you know, this is a very dangerous path. You and I, all of us, must not do this.
-------------------
See more details here:
https://demodexio.substack.com/p/mr-putin-operative-in-the-k...
Chechnya and the other Caucasian republics are miniscule, and Putin and the Putin-sanctioned dictators there don't care about culture.
What changed is that they became much more open about their real goals. Previously, they did their thing, perhaps slightly more subtly, while bullshitting the world.
This is about encirclement, nato, missiles on the border, warm water access
No value judgment in the right or wrong of it
I mean if the people in eastern Ukraine or Crimea WANTED to join Russia, there's democratic and peaceful ways to go about it. If Russia wanted access to the Black Sea, there's peaceful ways to go about it, like trade and freedom of commerce agreements like Europe has.
You remember Zelensky was elected on the narrative he'd bring peace. For that there was Minsk which was not good and giving in to force, but well, implementing it would have been a hell of a lot better than what's happening now. Yet, he wasn't able to achieve that? Maybe Ukraine isn't the center of democracy the State Department made it into the past 2 months.
This is just straight up victim blaming.
A hostile Ukraine, or a conquered Ukraine, only bring more enemies on Russia's borders.
> nato,
> missiles on the border
What missiles? There's already Poland, Baltics, Turkey, Romania that can be used for missile bases.
> warm water access
That's the bullshitiest one of the bullshit list - first, Russia already controls Sevastopol, and before the occupation of Crimea, it had a joint lease on it. And of course, it has hundreds of kilometres of Black Sea coastline to the east of Crimea, including the sizable port and naval base of Novorosiisk.
Russia is providing enough fake excuses ( Ukraine isn't a real nation, Nazis) as it is, no need to add even faker ones for them.
Sure what you say may have played the role also. But Putin wants "glory days" of SU back. That's why he continuously tried to expand Russia (and Russian influence) since he came into power.
It's about him being a power broker on international scale and not another has been dictator of 3rd world country.
Nato was just used as an excuse. Because of the submarines and ballistic missiles, It doesn't matters where weapons are.
And nothing excuses them for what we are seeing what is happening on the ground.
Putin may well have been more open minded, he just got pissy lately and he has a lot of power. One tantrum means thousands die.
Why would anyone with half a brain allow that? Most people just want to live and work.
Besides, how is your "thought experiment" relevant to Ukraine?
In any case Russia has many bases in foreign countries, and as far as I can remember there's only ever been a risk of direct conflict over it once, with Cuba, and that was specifically over nuclear missiles, not jut having a military base.
Then also, NATO already risked direct confrontation in Ukraine, sending large training units to a country at war with Russia. As we speak US AWACS is providing early warning across large swaths of western Ukraine and the Black Sea, one wonders if missile sites actually use their early warning radars in the case where they most likely have a notebook with a nice situation log besides their soviet terminals.
In this situation I wonder why noone is pushing conspiracy theories around the Moskva sinking (which could still be Ukrainian luck combined with Russian ineptitude) which embed these facts. Apparently this ship was hit at the extent of the Neptunes range. Is it that much of a stretch to think that such thing might have been made much easier, when the ships SatNav was spoofed by a Globalhawk leading it towards shore, while the Ukrainians knew exactly where to look when they flared up their targeting radar?
Western military aims in Syria are not to change the regime, they're just to support allies and suppress enemies like IS. There is no way US operations in Syria could possible be described as seriously attempting to topple Assad or drive Russia out of the country, that's simply not tenable. As you point out, US and Russian forces, when in the same vicinity, backed off from each other.
As Ukraine amply shows when one side, either the west or Russia, heavily commits militarily to a country the other side limits itself to interference operations only. That's been true ever since the Cuban missile crisis. Nobody wants a repeat of that.
This is relevant to Ukraine because obviously it was allowing America to expand its military reach right up to Russia’s doorstep.
Did that happen with Cuba? (I know about the Bay of Pigs invasion, when it happened and what kind of force was used for it)
you mean US or GB would announce that those countries/nationalities are an artificial creation and have never historically really existed, and that Mexicans or Irish people don't ethnically exist, that they are just "little/sub Americans" or "little/sub Englishmen", and US or GB would go to perform ethnical cleansing and genocide there?
> send in weapons and military personnel
that happens all around the world by pretty much all countries.
> set up military bases
you forgot to add major point of Russian propaganda here - development of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons DNA targeted to Russian DNA as well as breeding birds and dogs who only sh!t on and byte only Russians - all that with the direct help and financing by American imperialists.
The main difference is that the US and NATO are not aggressors. At no point has there ever been a threat of them invading Russia.
Meanwhile, Russia has invaded Ukraine and has set its sights on other former USSR countries.
You're trying to apply false equivalence.
Oh wait...
Not that the US didn't try have their way with Cuba, but it's telling that in the only instance of your imagined scenario actually happening the US gave up when they realised the deed couldn't be accomplished with just ~1500 Cuban exiles as soldiers.
Certainly it would be a horrific act regardless of the invading country- autocratic, democratic, socialist, capitalist, communist, western, eastern, whatever. And yes, the US government has done some horrific things in the past.
None of that makes the current bloodshed by Russia any less terrible, or excuses it in any way, right? I just ask that we don't kiss ourselves on that either.
What if the US invaded Canada back in 2014, taking southern Ontario (the industrial heartland) and southern Alberta (the oil region), and set up two US puppet states called "The Republic of Ontario" and "The Republic of Alberta"? What if since then the US repeatedly said things like "Canada doesn't exist as a country", "Canadians are really USAians", and "Canada is full of Nazis and needs to be purged"? What if the US held yearly large-scale military drills on the Canadian border? Do you think that Canada might be alarmed enough to go looking for allies, even if the ally was Russia? Do you think they would be right to do so?
What if Mexico saw all that, and decided that they had better find some allies too?
Countries trying to join NATO didn't happen in a vacuum...
NATO was not the cause of this conflict. NATO would have stopped this conflict had Ukraine been a member.
NATO is a force of stability.
Russia is waging a war of extermination on Ukraine. Their sin was that they wanted to align with the west. Russia wants to genocide away all nations it consider taints Russian soil, what ever the international borders say.
Either you choose to go along with this (Fine, destroy their cultural identity, go ahead, it's your right. Let them kidnap the children, rape the women and - steal their washing machines?) or you do something to counter the Russian threat.
I presume most would prefer to live in a world that at least attempts to stop genocide.
There are two options here - NATO or nuclear proliferation.
Ukraine war showed that barring obvious superiority in conflict, nuclear threat is the only guarantor of state sovereignty.
Without more nukes, NATO is a necessary guarantor of state sovereignty at each state bordering Russia by providing credible force.
Russia has proved this theory themselves by assaulting every non-NATO country at it's borders.
How could countries like Estonia, Lithuania or Latvia defend themselves without a NATO alliance? Should they get a nuke? Or should they just yield to Russian rape, pillage and annihilation of cultural distinctiveness?
For those who like Star Trek - This is EXACTLY a situation where the Russian states behaves like the Borg. You oppose the Borg. Not say "yeah, you have right to do that because you are ... mean?"
The Russian state also behaves like a fascist villain but that's kind of obvious already.
this works if you presume "sovereignty" is an objectively existing fact for more than like 10 countries in the world, which it isn't... Perhaps 10 is too generous. And the US contributed to weakening sovereignty all over the world. US is not the sole culprit, of course, but a big one.
Russia's problem is that if their neighbours have an ounce of sovereignty they will want to distance themselves from Russia as much as possible due to their terrible behaviour, so they are forced to rule their neighbours by fear & force.
I fear the US is doing the same, but perhaps with more decorum. (edit: thinking twice, not much more decorum if we think about south america)
The only country that the USA invaded in Latin America was Panama and that was mostly because of the strategic interest in the Panama Canal, and they eventually pulled out when the country was on a more stable course. (That said, I don't doubt for a minute that they'd do it again if the Panama transit became threatened somehow.)
The other influence the USA has had in Latin America has been either much further in the past (which doesn't excuse it) or through the support or denial of support to various governments (which also doesn't excuse it), but it is absolutely nothing compared to what the neighbors of Russia have had to endure over the last 60 years or so.
The problem is real but probably not as large as you might think it is based on the comments.
The more worrying thing is that lots of people have a 'somebody else's problem' approach to this, which is what got the world into World War II.