That is not how people of Ukraine see this.
But it doesn't change the fact that the colonies wanted to be free.
> Sixty percent of the colonists either were neutral or opposed to the Revolution.
From https://www.econlib.org/archives/2016/12/bruce_bueno_de.html
> Bueno de Mesquita claims, quite plausibly, that a huge part of George Washington’s motive for fighting the Revolutionary War was to protect his substantial, and critically placed, landholdings in the Ohio Valley.
> An excerpt about GW’s wealth:
>> His last position, just before becoming President, was President of the Patowmack Canal Company–the Potomac Canal, as we know it, from the Potomac River. What that canal did was bring, make it possible to bring produce from the Shenandoah Valley–which George owned–up to the port in Alexandria, which had been built by Lawrence, by the Ohio Valley Company, in which George had a direct interest, and shipped goods out. So it was a very profitable undertaking–or so he thought it would be, in the long run, for him. And that’s what motivated him. Most people think of Washington as–besides a great hero, which he certainly was–as kind of a gentleman farmer. Economists have estimated the worth in real dollars adjusted for inflation, not appreciated, of George Washington’s estate, in contemporary terms; and it’s about $20 billion dollars. He is by far the wealthiest President. He is the 59th wealthiest person in American history. Three of the American founding fathers are in the list of the top 100 wealthiest Americans in all of history: Hancock, who was wealthier than Washington–made his money smuggling; and Ben Franklin, who was not quite as wealthy, who made his money because he had a monopoly on the printing press. These are the folks who led the Revolution. These were not the downtrodden. These were not the oppressed. These were people who stood to lose huge amounts of wealth because of the King’s policies. And so they fought a Revolution. Which was, by the way, not very popular. Sixty percent of the colonists either were neutral or opposed to the Revolution.
However, public choice theory has a--perhaps similarly--dim view of politics.
One observation I would make is that, for a social revolution to occur, you actually need a lot of people from basically every corner of society to want it to happen: even elites. So when they have occurred, it has generally been because the preceding situation was so awful that basically nobody, even the relatively privileged in it, felt it was tolerable. China and Russia both clearly qualify, but also countries like Haiti, or France. People tend to forget the mess preceding the revolution, and focus on the mess during and after.
Germany had a revolution that ushered in the Weimar Republic. Both countries had essentially just lost a war at that time.
> I guess there's a traditional division between 'really existing socialism', which is often messy, and marxism as a body of work for understanding society.
Marxisms is pretty useless for that. Useless in the technical sense that knowing just mainstream economics is as effective as knowing mainstream economics plus Marxism.
(Not useless in the more absolute sense of knowing nothing vs knowing Marxism. Basically, wherever Marxism deviates from modern mainstream economics, it's useless.)
I think there are two dimensions in which marxism, whatever your politics, will never be useless. First, a lot of it is a body of work authored by people in the midst of extremely bitter social struggles, civil wars, and revolutions. So you tend to get a pretty clear idea of how these things work, from the inside. Second, I think Marx is just a phenomenally clever and insightful thinker. I'm not particularly wedded to the economics (actually, neither was Lenin), but his thoughts on how economic and physical forces shape us as political actors are really good.
Also, I think that it does matter who started the war. Those who are fighting, those who provide support or neither of them (that is, the other party of the war).
Either way, this is a just a matter of how you choose to define the term.
The important point that I'm trying to make is that, while Ukraine is of course fighting for its own sake (not trying to claim here they are only a puppet or something - as is Palestine in the other example), it's also clear that NATO is massively involved in the conflict, with its own aims for the war which may or may not be entirely aligned with Ukraine's (or Ukrainians') best interests.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Israel_proxy_co...
What's special is that they are really good drones for their price.
In practice, however, closing the Straits has a much more negative impact on Russia than NATO, since the major NATO naval powers (US, UK, France) were never likely to send ships near Ukraine anyway, and as non-Black Sea states the Montreux Convention subjects them to special limits to which Black Sea states are not subject. In fact (according to some sources), the Straits are still officially open for the US/UK/French/etc navies, so long as they don't directly join the conflict – although I imagine they'd be rather hesitant to exercise that right at the moment, due to the risk Russia might interpret such an act as hostile.
If it is true they allowed some Russian ships through before closing it–that could have been simply the slowness of government decision making, plus the legal complexities involved, rather than a deliberate "balancing" act.
If anything, I think this conflict has caused Turkey to turn away from the "balancing" and move more firmly into the NATO column. Reminding NATO of their value helps silence the ongoing "can we expel Turkey?" debate, refusing to do so would have given it more steam. Turkey has been selling its TB2 drones to Ukraine, which Ukraine has been using to great effect against Russia – not a very good example of "balancing". Ukraine's successful use of Turkish drones is very helpful to Turkey, because it gives them more information on how they perform in an actual conflict (which they already had to some extent with the Syrian civil war, the KPP, etc, but Russia is a very different kind of adversary from the Syrian government or the Kurds), and also helps attract potential buyers.
I don't think the Barayktar has such a significant influence, but it could be a smart move from Ukraine to have add some difficulties to the balancing part of Turkeye.
Not sure about the last part though.
Not only they were likely, they actually did that in 2020 and 2021, as a part of joint war games with Ukraine. According to what I read, some 30 ships participated.
Sail an unarmed NATO-flagged vessel to the Azovstal Steel Plant and evacuate troops?
Putting that aside, even the official parties to the war are allowed through the straits to return their ships to their home ports (unless Turkey is directly involved in the war, in which case Turkey can block all enemy vessels, even those returning to their home port). Since the only coastline and naval bases of Bulgaria and Romania are on the Black Sea, that rule covers their entire navies. It only really disadvantages Russia, since Russia is the only Black Sea state (other than Turkey) with naval bases outside of the Black Sea. It means Russia can't send reinforcements to the Black Sea from their Pacific, Baltic or Arctic fleets.
In a scenario in which Romania or Bulgaria actively joined the war, it would be a direct Russia-NATO war, including Turkey. In such a dire scenario, Turkey would likely announce the unilateral suspension of the Montreux Convention for the duration of the war, and allow NATO warships unlimited passage. Russia would consider such a unilateral suspension of the Convention to be an act of war, but in such a scenario Turkey and Russia would already be at war anyway.
> Vessels of war belonging to belligerent Powers shall not, however, pass through the Straits except in cases arising out of the application of Article 25 of the present Convention [no longer applicable] , and in cases of assistance rendered to a State victim of aggression in virtue of a treaty of mutual assistance binding Turkey, concluded within the framework of the Covenant of the League of Nations, and registered and published in accordance with the provisions of Article 18 of the Covenant. https://timinhonolulu.files.wordpress.com/2022/02/montreaux-...
So basically, if (a) Turkey declares that there's a war and (b) Turkey is not a party to that war, then (c) Turkey is authorized to close the straits to warships of belligerent parties.
There's some exceptions in there about ships returning to their base, but it'd be a pretty big loss of face for the Russians to beg Turkey to agree that a sudden rebasing of ships qualified.
I'm Romanian, I live in Romania (Bucharest), so as I'm geographically close to this I've been following this particular Danube issue closer than the others, but the thing is that the situation on the ground is still pretty muddled. For example, just as the war started the Romanian authorities had suspended commercial navigation on the Chilia Danube Delta Branch, the one on which the Romanian-Ukrainian border is situated, for fear of Russian bombs. Presumably the navigation has been allowed to resume, but nothing official has been made public in the Romanian mainstream press, the only related news was something about the Ukrainian authorities being unhappy with us (Romanians) asking for navigation-related customs taxes that were seen as too high, so I assumed that commercial navigation had, in fact, resumed.
There was also our prime-minister meeting with the Bulgarian side (with which we share hundreds of kms of the Danube) and making a statement afterwards about how the Danube should be made easier to navigate (i.e. a strong hint made to the European Union to send us money to do that). If that indeed were to happen (i.e. if the Danube would be made easier to navigate) then the Ukrainians would be able to send a large part of their exports to Central and even Western Europe (via the Danube-Mainz-Rhine canal) via fluvial ships, at a fraction of the cost they now have to pay doing that using rail and road-transport. That's why (among other things) the Russians have set their eyes so strongly on the Budjak region (i.e. the Ukrainian region just North of the Danube's Delta) and that's why they have bombarded this bridge [2] that leads to that region at least three times in the last few weeks.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Commission_for_t...
[2] https://www.google.com/maps/place/Pidyomnyy+Mist/@46.0749075...
After the successful attack on Moskva I'm not even sure it's beneficial to NATO or not. Of course it is in the best interests of Ukrainians to keep these ships at bay, but from NATO's point of view this could be an excellent occasion to make some significant blows at Russian fleet.
This is kind of like seeing WW2 pre PH as a proxy war between the USA and Germany....
Ukraine is clearly a part in this war, as they have shown by their heroic ability to resist.
Nato is clearly on Ukraine's side.
You are right that NATO benefits greatly from still having Turkey on the team, though. Also, I think Turkey is not super supportive of Putins's attempts to annext territory by force and/or vassalize their neighbours through invasions.
Next time, they could annex Georgia, and I'm pretty sure that would be seen as a grave threat by Turkey.
The closest thing to kicking someone out of NATO would be all the other countries simultaneously withdrawing and forming NATO 2.0.
None of that is violated by kicking someone out before they are attacked.
I have to wonder to what extent the development of these alliances might have been influenced by the concern you raise though, you raise a good point.
Article 5 is the shield that drastically decreases the amount of nuclear weapons European nations need to deploy, because USSR / Russian inventories are balanced out by American inventories, if it comes to all-out war.
Consequently, the world as a whole is a lot safer because {flight time Russia-US} >> {flight time Europe-Russia}, which allows for additional fail-safe guarantees on weapons that there wouldn't otherwise be a time budget for.
The US stations some of its nukes in Europe, so the flight time is less than you think.
Also, it is widely believed that the US has an “understanding” with certain European countries that in extreme circumstances (aka World War III) the US will hand those nukes over to the host countries, and then the host country governments will decide for themselves what use to make of them. In part, this helps discourage nuclear proliferation-Germany or the Netherlands don’t need to make their own nuclear weapons because they know if they ever really need them, Uncle Sam will help them acquire them real real fast (“here’s the keys to the safe, good luck”)
As far as I know, the US hasn't stationed M/IRBM or nuclear cruise missiles in Europe since the early-60s Jupiter MRBM [0] and GLCM [1] were withdrawn.
[0] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/01/the-rea...
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BGM-109G_Ground_Launched_Cru...