What diplomatic off ramp does Russia need? There is a simple first step towards redemption and that is get out of Ukraine right now. Better yesterday.

Western Europe just learned a painful lesson that you can't trust Russia. Eastern Europe tried to hammer that point into the brains of the other European politicians but it didn't work until now.

> What diplomatic off ramp does Russia need?

One that saves face, to at least some degree.

> There is a simple first step towards redemption and that is get out of Ukraine right now. Better yesterday.

Simple for you, because you're not the one losing face For example, here's another "simple first step" for Europe "towards redemption" (in the eyes of the Russians): withdraw all military and financial support for Ukraine, and refuse to allow transit for weapons sent to it. How does that one make you feel? Do you think Europe will take it? It's probably only a little less likely than Russia taking your option.

It works both ways you know. Europe cannot afford to lose face either. Imagine EU can be blackmailed by Russia! Wouldn't stand a chance against the US or China.

The EU clearly believes they can win this fight so why should it withdraw support to Ukraine?

Europe has already been blackmailed by Russia - when they invaded Ukraine last time, in 2014. That's how we know Russia can only be dealt with by force: because we've tried to do it the other way and it failed terribly.

How do you envision "dealing with Russia through force" going down just curiously?

I would imagine there is a similar point of view in many Russians regarding the West (and they can make arguments about abuses and how intrinsically evil the other party is and patriotic jingles and all that too).

So how, on that road, does this end?

I think we know the answer and it really and truly is awful and the end of the world we have previously known.

> How do you envision "dealing with Russia through force" going down just curiously?

FYI, they're "dealing with Russia through force" right now. It's just through proxies, and it's going pretty well.

I'd say Ukraine is dealing with Russia through force quite directly, without any proxies. (The context here is that Russians like to pretend they are fighting against NATO; this is of course not true, they are fighting against Ukraine, which got some help from NATO, but it's relatively small compared to NATOs capabilities.)

Although there might soon be some "proxies" soon, like Azerbaijan (unfortunately) and (hopefully soon) Georgia.

I envision it exactly the same way it's already been going for the past six months: Russia has lost about half of their armed forces.

The road ends the same way it ended last time, 30 years ago - in adjustment of Russian borders.

Unless you claim that a state that can't even manufacture tanks or ordinary cars (or phones; Russia is wholly dependent on technology imports from Europe) is still capable of remanufacturing nuclear warheads, and is willing to sacrifice itself as a state to use them to... not even prove the point, because it would still be a defeat.

Here's what I see happening.

Some back and forth, increasing desperate Neocons with no reverse gear pushing the thing. Western society is over indebted and teetering. Eventually the world explodes in fire, billions die, and some version of MAGA presides over a much reduced United States when it ends. (I'd rather believe your prediction but do not).

There might be a way to avoid the scenario (unlikely at this juncture but possible). It isn't with wishful (Russia has lost half it's armed forces) and hostile thinking though.

Just my opinion.

To the vast majority of the world this is a good thing, if anything - they get oil cheaper, because Russia can no longer sell it to the west. To US this means more money being pumped into the industry, which is good for their economy. EU... EU has already been through something much more hardcore - COVID - and temporarily shutting down some gas-dependent factories will reduce revenues, but it's not the end of the world. None of those are in any way in danger - Russia lost to Ukraine; one can only imagine how many hours it would take them to lose to, say, NATO. Or USA. Or EU alone. The world won't explode, simply because Russia has no capability to make it explode.

To Ukraine, this is about pretty much everything - Russians are quite open with their intention to erase Ukraine as a nation, and hundred thousand civilians killed in Mariupol alone proves they are serious.

And then there's Russia, USSR's retarded offspring. They will likely get a lifeline, but it's unlikely they will be allowed to keep the army.

Well, although I wish it were not so, it's an interesting time to be alive.

We will see.

>>> There is a simple first step towards redemption and that is get out of Ukraine right now. Better yesterday.

>> Simple for you, because you're not the one losing face For example, here's another "simple first step" for Europe "towards redemption" (in the eyes of the Russians): withdraw all military and financial support for Ukraine, and refuse to allow transit for weapons sent to it. How does that one make you feel? Do you think Europe will take it? It's probably only a little less likely than Russia taking your option.

> It works both ways you know. Europe cannot afford to lose face either. Imagine EU can be blackmailed by Russia! Wouldn't stand a chance against the US or China.

Exactly my point.

> The EU clearly believes they can win this fight so why should it withdraw support to Ukraine?

I never said they should. I said that a proposal that Russia unilaterally withdraw is not actually an "easy" one because it would feel to the Russian leadership like the EU withdrawing would feel to your typical Westerner.

The EU doesn’t stand a chance against the US: look how they forced us to wage a proxy war against Russia. And now we’re going to buy liquefied gas from them.

> The EU doesn’t stand a chance against the US: look how they forced us to wage a proxy war against Russia.

America forced the EU into a proxy war with Russia... by having Russia invade Ukraine? Sounds like somebody has been huffing Russian propaganda.

It's a a reasonable assessment if you accept following three (I think easy to accept) items.

- That the US has a long term goal of preventing a "peer competitor" from arising.

- That the US has a financial and strategic interest in causing the collapse of the Russian Federation.

- The US leadership is capable of intelligent long term thinking (so we have to ignore Trump/Biden).

https://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR1346.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grand_Chessboard

https://www.dw.com/en/chinas-rise-and-conflict-with-us/a-550...

https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/world/nato-versus-russia-in-u...

A quick quote from the last link sounds like classic US policy to me:

"A much more truly ambitious apparent long-term US ambition seems to have been to instigate the breakup of Russia into smaller manageable countries, paralleling the emergence of nations in eastern Europe after 1989. It could then deal with a reconstructed historical Russia of smaller emerging statelets run by competitive elites at odds with each other. These new polities, anxious for revenues, will then, presumably, be eager to sign lucrative commercial deals with US corporations since the entire region is extraordinarily wealthy in raw material resources."

And if we look at the result of the current crisis (I'll quote myself from a post above):

"- Potential collapse of the Russian Federation and the economic benefits this would bring (for the West)

- Solidifying EU support of NATO

- Increased energy sales to Europe at higher prices

- Increased military sales to NATO countries due to new threat

- Increased budget for "the military industrial complex"

- Further the long term goal of preventing a peer competitor from appearing by both weakening Russia and making the EU more dependant on the US both economically and militarily.

- Mutually beneficial German/Russian cooperation is pretty much dead now so no threat of such an alliance appearing in the future."

I think its pretty well played on the part of the US; nothing to be ashamed about. I'm interested to see what happens next.

Except that those aren't really US goals anymore, those are wins for the entire western world.

Still, what matters is who invaded. Russia did. And of course what _really_ matters is who ends up being the loser, and again, it's quite obvious it's going to be Russia.

I dunno maybe? I don’t think the outcome is obvious.

It’s easy to imagine Ukraine coming out just as big a loser as Russia even if they “win”. The EU is in for a tough time too.

I do wonder where we’ll be in 12 months time.

Well, Azerbaijan seems pretty convinced, they wouldn’t risk fighting them otherwise. Georgia sounds interested too. And those are small countries, they are making a colossal bet here.

BREAKING: It appears Kazakhstan might be finally leaving the union they had with Russia; China just acknowledged they will guarantee Kazakhstan's security, which essentially means a huge middle finger towards the "second army of the world".

Unfortunately it also means Armenia is screwed. That's what you get for putting trust in Russia.

They've made a bad mistake and if they were the men they've were portraying themselves to be, they would own up on their mistakes.

Only cowards need to save face.

Your analysis is seemingly based in the notion that all viewpoints are equal valid, but an analysis of the war needs to be rooted in what’s right and what’s wrong.

Russia is fighting a war of aggression in Ukraine. Do they have interests there? Sure, but that doesn’t give them the right to invade and topple the government.

Before you ask, yes the US is extremely guilty of this exact same behavior, it is also wrong.

This war started because Putin won’t accept anything less then complete fealty from the leaders of Ukraine/Belarus, and the 2014 revolution that threw out Yanikovich meant that they didn’t have a leader that was 100% on their side in Ukraine.

> Your analysis is seemingly based in the notion that all viewpoints are equal valid,

No, it's rooted in the notion that Russia has it's own POV, and it's that POV that will determine its actions. The GGP's "simple first step" is nonsense, because it didn't recognize that POV.

> but an analysis of the war needs to be rooted in what’s right and what’s wrong.

And if someone (like an adversary) doesn't share your views about what’s right and what’s wrong, they'll reject your analysis and any recommendations based on it.

> Your "simple first step" is nonsense

What are you talking about? I never said anything about a “simple first step”

> appeals to right and wrong are only persuasive for people who are aligned with you one that

Look, I’m all for understanding the other side, but don’t take empathy so far that morality has no meaning.

> What are you talking about? I never said anything about a “simple first step”

I corrected that. I didn't notice at first that you were a different account than the one I originally responded to.

The POV of Russia is genocide of Ukrainian people and culture. This is a POV that is not up for consideration or saving of face.

> The POV of Russia is genocide of Ukrainian people and culture. This is a POV that is not up for consideration or saving of face.

Exactly, so no one should suggest to the Russians that they just go home because what they're doing is wrong. It's not realistic. If you want them to just go home, you have to do better than that to engineer the situation. Otherwise, the options are fight or surrender to them.

>but an analysis of the war needs to be rooted in what’s right and what’s wrong.

I don't think such an analysis is 100% useful because because that's not the main criteria that countries use to make their decisions. The main criteria are strategic and economical considerations. Ethical considerations are nice to have but they are more often used to justify a decision based on furthering strategic/economic goals. The US has played a blinder on this one.

> yes the US is extremely guilty of this exact same behavior, it is also wrong.

Has US ever suffered sanctions for that? I don't remember any.

> This war started because Putin won’t accept anything less then complete fealty from the leaders of Ukraine/Belarus

How do you know this? Did Putin said this personally to you? Announced this in the media?

You attribute to him something that western propaganda fakes like it's some irrefutable absolute and complete truth.

BTW, do you remember that before it all started, Russia explicitly asked for guarantees that NATO won't expand further towards Russian borders and that request blatantly refused by the West.

Also, your media probably do not say that Ukrainian politicians repeatedly announced plans to exterminate Russian population of Ukraine. Physically kill all the Russians just as Hitler (he's considered a hero in Ukraine) wanted. You'd probably never find this in English or any other language spoken on the West, but there is plenty of evidence in Russian/Ukrainian even though a lot of it being scrubbed in the last 200 days. Still you can find a lot of those on YouTube for example, if you can understand Russian/Ukrainian.

You'll never be able to get a complete picture of what was and what is happening here because you can read and understand only what is fed to you by your media and this information is heavily biased to put it politely.

> the 2014 revolution that threw out Yanikovich

It wasn't a revolution - it was a coup funded and organized by the EU and USA.

> It wasn't a revolution - it was a coup funded and organized by the EU and USA.

I don’t doubt that there was western involvement, just as there was certainly Russian involvement supporting prior administrations. While it can be difficult to discern the true desires of Ukrainians given outside involvement, its very easy to say that the current government in Ukraine is much more democratic than plenty of US Allies in other parts of the world, eg the Middle East.

> Also, your media probably do not say that Ukrainian politicians repeatedly announced plans to exterminate Russian population of Ukraine. Physically kill all the Russians just as Hitler (he's considered a hero in Ukraine) wanted. You'd probably never find this in English or any other language spoken on the West, but there is plenty of evidence in Russian/Ukrainian even though a lot of it being scrubbed in the last 200 days. Still you can find a lot of those on YouTube for example, if you can understand Russian/Ukrainian.

If this is so easy to find, why not provide actual sources?

Edit: the irony here is the extremely close parallels between this war and hitter’s annexation of the sudentenland.

> How do you know this? Did Putin said this personally to you? Announced this in the media?

I can tell from his actions. Russia has been invading its neighbors the entire time he’s been in power.

Did I go a bit overboard when I said “complete fealty”? Sure. But it’s quite obvious that Putin won’t accept those states as anything less than Russian client states within its sphere of influence.

> Has US ever suffered sanctions for that? I don't remember any.

US does bad things so other countries should do bad things too.

> its very easy to say that the current government in Ukraine is much more democratic than plenty of US Allies in other parts of the world, eg the Middle East.

What makes you think so? What was/is democratic about Ukraine? How Zelensky, for example, crushed all the opposition parties and media, and even arrested some of his opponents after he came to power? Do you know about that?

BTW, here's the video of him before he became president: https://youtu.be/cAfXNbnXwxg Hilarious, if you understand Russian. It's about so-called Ukrainian democracy. I'm pretty sure it won't exist for long on YouTube, and it won't be ever translated to English.

> If this is so easy to find, why not provide actual sources?

Would you be able to understand without translation? Who would translate it to you?

Can you understand this, for example: https://youtu.be/ofEF5l72sjQ

> Edit: the irony here is the extremely close parallels between this war and hitter’s annexation of the sudentenland.

There are no parallels. Except that Ukraine was pumped with nazi propaganda to the top. They named streets and stadiums after Nazi collaborators that helped Germany exterminate tens of thousands of Jews in Ukraine during WWII. If you look at almost any photo/video of Ukainian army personnel, they openly wear Nazi uniform, Nazi tattoos, SS insignia. They even use Nazi salute.

It was especially easy to find before 24.02, they've become more careful since then, but still they fail many times to blur swastika or Hitler tattoo when filming their new propaganda videos.

There're tons of videos like this: https://youtu.be/_eDjtPwC2wY

> US does bad things so other countries should do bad things too.

More like, US does bad things and always gets away with it.

> How Zelensky, for example, crushed all the opposition parties and media, and even arrested some of his opponents after he came to power? Do you know about that?

This has been covered in Western press:

https://m.dw.com/en/ukraine-zelenskiy-bans-three-opposition-...

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/former-ukraine-presiden...

However, I haven’t seen any thing that says _all_ opposition has been banned, do you have proof of this?

> Would you be able to understand without translation? Who would translate it to you?

I’d rather you post something than just make blanket statements with no basis. Unfortunately I can’t understand Russian/Ukrainian, but then again anything translated into English would be from western sources anyways.

> I'm pretty sure it won't exist for long on YouTube, and it won't be ever translated to English

Everything you posted has been up for years.

The big problem is that you, western people, especially people from USA, see the whole situation through the tiny keyhole where your media project whatever bias they want.

You have no means of access to objective or balanced information. You can't read anything about Russia or Ukraine in the original uncensored form. You can't watch any video from Ukraine or Russia without it being carefully selected by somebody and then translated for you.

E.g. you wouldn't be able to ponder when you see videos of Ukrainian soldiers being killed during combat, why seconds before dying they always speak in Russian, how that resonates with Joseph Brodsky poem last lines: https://russianuniverse.org/2017/02/27/joseph-brodsky-on-ukr...

And usually it's you, Western audience that makes blanket statements with no basis, uttering it so arrogantly as you know it all, where you actually know nothing.

> You have no means of access to objective or balanced information. You can't read anything about Russia or Ukraine in the original uncensored form.

Does anyone? I never was under any belief that I did.

Excuse my understanding, but is it your assertion that there is unfettered access to uncensored information within Russia??

> there is unfettered access to uncensored information within Russia??

Well, there is. Why do you think I have less possibilities to access information than you? Yes, some websites are blocked. A tiny minority of USA/EU funded propaganda horns like Meduza, that for years translate pretty obvious rusophobic messages. But I can read even them through VPN or through numerous other ways that CIA and NSA provide for free for such propaganda factories.

A huge difference is that I can speak and read three languages. I can (and do) read US and European news in their native languages. I can read and do read from time to time social media like Reddit. I have friends and relatives in various countries of the world.

People in US and EU have less possibilities. Does any significant proportion of population can read Russian? No. You are forced to read only tiny amount of information that is selected by somebody else and translated for you.

Regarding Russia/Ukraine conflict there's even more. There's no separate Ukrainian nation. It's not genes, it's not anything else. Republic of Ukraine was created by Lenin and later was supported by Stalin who promoted "ukrainization" of eastern regions of Russia. We do not yet fully understand why they did it. We only see documents signed by Stalin, for example, "to intensify teaching of Ukranian in schools in universities" in this region. It's an irony, that they vilify and destroy monuments devoted to people that created their state. Also, I'm sure you never read about this and saw these documents translated anywhere in your media, because it would be pretty inconvenient truth.

Anyway, because it was always Russia, there're millions of families split between Russia and Ukraine. We understand each other. Even Ukranian language is easy for us to understand - it's Russian grammar but some words are replaced with Polish equivalents. There was and is perpetual movement of people between Ukraine and Russia. My ancestors were living on Ukraine when there was no such state but it was a part of Russia.

You cannot understand the history and relationship of Ukraine and Russia to the same extent as we do. You can't understand the Nazi propaganda in Russian and Ukranian that is all over the Internet, especially Russian/Ukranian parts.

You're being told a very simple story: "Putin hates democracy and that's why it want to destroy the great democratic state of Ukraine and it's great democratic people!" and you have no other choice but to believe it. There's simply no other source of information for you. Nor would you ever be able to understand what people here feel and think about it, when US based agencies come to Ukraine, for example, and publish books like "Paladins of Hitler" and other rusophobic propaganda, that is either Nazi or entirely confabulated.

> Regarding Russia/Ukraine conflict there's even more. There's no separate Ukrainian nation. It's not genes, it's not anything else

You seem to think that because Ukrainians and Russians have some shared heritage (cultural, linguistic and biological), they cannot be separate nations. But many other pairs of nations also share a significant degree of these things – Germany and Austria (and German-speaking Switzerland too), France and Belgium (Wallonia), Belgium and the Netherlands (Flanders), the US and Canada, the UK and Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. Do you apply the same standards to any of them?

> Republic of Ukraine was created by Lenin and later was supported by Stalin who promoted "ukrainization" of eastern regions of Russia.

Neither Lenin nor Stalin invented the Ukrainian nationalist movement. There were already people within Ukraine who viewed themselves as belonging to a distinct nation from Russia; Lenin and Stalin just decided to ally themselves with some of these people and grant them some of their policy wishes.

> We do not yet fully understand why they did it

Marxism was originally an anti-nationalist movement–hence, it was very natural for the Bolsheviks to oppose Russian nationalism and support the demands of ethnic minorities for autonomy. Then, in the 1930s, Stalin gradually changed his mind about the topic – he began to see ethnic autonomy movements as a potential threat to his rule, and started promoting Russian nationalism and Russification in response.

I didn't believe the Nazi claims that were being thrown around at first but I found these short documentaries on the BBC Newsnight YouTube channel a while back about the seemingly rather large Neo-Nazi influence in Ukraine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEKQsnRGv7s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SBo0akeDMY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hE6b4ao8gAQ

Redemption? Even if Putin is toppled, some of his potential replacements are either ultra nationalists (basically Russian nazis) or the commies (Zuganov) who are now both blaming him for not ordering general mobilization. The Russians who do not support the war are a minority. The good thing is that their army is exhaused, ill equipped and their military capacity has diminished. Putin has lost all his credibity with the West, it can't be redeemed. At home he did not deliver a victory. He will be replaced if he doesn't and it's currently not looking good for him. His replacement is probably going to be another rational actor from the FSB, who will be forced to negotiate some kind of ceasefire arragement to ease the sanctions and keep the gas, oil and the money flowing.

There were a bunch of people making a deal about how we'd gone out and done piracy to Russian yachts, legal questions be damned. If there are any options people are not looking for them. There'll be something.

> Western Europe just learned a painful lesson that you can't trust Russia.

Do you recall what happened to people who trusted the British? A lot of them died. And they were almost the nice Europeans. Trusting the Americans is foolish, trusting the Chinese is insane. The Indians will turn out to be perfidious in time.

Everyone is untrustworthy. There should be more serious grappling with why the Russians did this (and Crimea in 2014) than "Putin bad". The last time a president started trying to calm the situation down he was hounded for it - the whole strategy here is mad and stupid. If the West can deal on good terms with China and the Middle East then we can be friends with Russia too.

We need serious attempts and ongoing discussion about how to stop military escalation.

>We need serious attempts and ongoing discussion about how to stop military escalation.

History has shown us that appeasement is the worst possible policy.

Has it ? What's the data point, beyond Hitler ? Because History has shown repeatedly and consistently that escalation is reckless and extremely costly.

Native Americans appeased the US till there was nothing left. You don't tend to see many appeasers around because there is nothing left of them.

Native Americans didn't have the means to offer any substantial resistance past the initial stages of colonisation in North America. The point is moot. That's not even getting into the fact that "Native Americans" only exist in the eye of the colonizer. It's not a people, a collective body with agency.

Yep and the ones that did appease are still around. The others not so much.

This parable works multiple ways.

I agree, and even Hitler is dubious. I am Czech, and the Munich Agreement is very emotionally painful for us. However, objectively, I don't think Czechs defending (like the Ukraine chose to) would save more human lives. (Nor would fighting against Russian invasion in 1968, btw.)

And arguably in the case of Ukraine the appeasement already happened after 2014 Donetsk war.

I also heard that appeasement was backreaction to WW1, where everybody was eager to go to war and it ended in bloodshed.

That's also ignoring few earlier opportunities to strike against Hitler.

>https://www.thefirstnews.com/article/first-strike-how-the-po...

Additionally, after remilitarization, there were more opportunities to Strike. Rhineland, Anschluss of Austria... the longer you wait it's worse.

>I also heard that appeasement was backreaction to WW1, where everybody was eager to go to war and it ended in bloodshed.

Wehrmacht was not close to being combat ready yet, and would get crushed by combined Polish-Czechoslovakian-Western Allies troops. Without Czechoslovakia opposing them, and Czech industry fully contributing to Hitler's war machine odds were drastically better for Nazis. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panzer_38(t)

>However, objectively, I don't think Czechs defending (like the Ukraine chose to) would save more human lives.

And Ukraine is winning the war, saving 40 million Ukrainians from genocide.

> However, objectively, I don't think Czechs defending (like the Ukraine chose to) would save more human lives.

That's actually very uncertain. If the war broke out, Hitler might get overthrown: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oster_conspiracy

Hitler's position was shaky at the time, but his success in Czechoslovakia made any opposition impossible and increased hunger for more.

>What's the data point, beyond Hitler ?

Ukraine 2014. The West should have stopped Russia back then and there.

In the time since 2014, Ukraine got stronger while Russia got weaker. Had Russia pressed forward with their invasion in 2014, they might have succeeded in taking the whole country before NATO-aligned countries worked up the willpower to do anything about it. But because Russia stalled then, the cancer of corruption and hardware decay ate away at their power, while Ukraine began preparing for the inevitable.

How do you show that such action would lead to fewer deaths and less suffering?

Slaves minimize their deaths by not revolting. However, powerful support of their freedom by Union states led to far better world than the one without American Civil War.

That isn't a relevant question. The goal is to contain Russian expansionism, not to minimize deaths.

Well, our values seem to differ, then. I don't mind Russian expansion unless there are dead people in its wake. I think saving the lives should always trump the national pride.

So just so we're clear.

Russia is ok invading another country and killing it's populace. But the west shouldn't fight back incase it kills someone?

Why aren't you holding Russia to the same standard as everyone else. Why don't you require them to talk and 'appease' the west rather than invading?

I am holding both to same standard. Russian invasion is of course terrible, and it in fact undermined Russia's own goal of keeping Ukraine neutral, at the very least.

But I think everybody here agrees with that, so what's the point of stressing it? You think Putin listens to my opinion?

Yes, and the West should be careful with military intervention, and consider whether it won't lead to more escalation and more death.

In fact, I think the EU could do more with economic sanctions. AFAIK we still buy oil from Russia.

Europe could do even more to promote peace by declaring putin to be the emperor of Europe, and granting him dictatorial power over the continent

What about Ukraine? Should they refrain from defending themselves? Lest it cause blood shed?

I really don't get your POV Putin has repeatedly shown they he will invade other countries. If we don't stop him at Ukraine then next it may well be a nato member and then how much blood shed will there be?

Your suggested course just rewards aggression. Sometimes you need to stand up to bullies. Putin is a bully.

I think Ukrainians have the right to do it, and it's not my call to make, it's up to them. I am torn on it, emotionally I understand it, but I think rationally it's possibly a wrong choice (as I explained elsewhere in the discussion).

Chomsky made a nice comparison with Palestine. Do Palestinians have the right to defend themselves against Israeli apartheid by shooting rockets at them from Gaza strip?

Regarding my POV - I don't want NATO to get involved as long as it doesn't have to, because I worry about nuclear escalation. That should tell us, try to get serious about complete ban on nuclear weapons in the future, because they prevent exactly the type of action that you propose.

If my country wasn't a NATO member, then military aid against Russian invasion to Ukraine would be more acceptable to me. It is NATO that is making us helpless - we are bound by risk of escalation into a nuclear war. Simply, NATO was designed to handle a different type of threat. (Not to mention, we IMHO have somewhat less efficient military because we partly outsourced it to USA.)

I don't think what I suggest as an alternative (sanctions, resistance) rewards aggression. Occupying Ukraine is a big liability for Russia.

>Chomsky made a nice comparison with Palestine. Do Palestinians have the right to defend themselves against Israeli apartheid by shooting rockets at them from Gaza strip?

How does that defend Palestine in any way? It's a stupid revenge targeting civilians. If you're so helpless you can't act against military or targeted collaborators then don't do anything at all.

I would be the first to suggest to drop support to Ukraine, and even support acting against it, if they started to deliberately target Russian civilians - Belgorod is very close. Even more, they could produce large amount of chemical and even nuclear weapons if they chose, yet they don't do it.

> How does that defend Palestine in any way?

Punishes the oppressors, in an attempt to make them stop oppressing. Same reasons why Ukrainians fight back against Russians.

And yes, he makes the same case, that Palestinians should instead attempt for a peaceful resolution and negotiation, despite it being extremely difficult (against a much stronger adversary, who doesn't respect them).

>Same reasons why Ukrainians fight back against Russians.

No, Ukrainians are fighting to defeat the aggressors. The main difference is that if they succeed, the occupier will not have anything to say. Palestinian tactics can only succeed by the mercy of the IDF.

In contrast to this, it is symmetric conflict, in which Russia targets citizens by desperation, but those losses are nothing compared to what would happen if they've succeeded.

>I don't mind Russian expansion unless there are dead people in its wake.

Well, you can't have one without the other, there's clear evidence of that going back decades.

That's a different discussion, then. The point is, the onus is on whoever is doing the military intervention to prove that they will save more lives than they will destroy. This is very high bar to clear especially since the enemy is going to fight as well, and we do not know the future.

In general, I am in favor of nonviolent resistance (which might include economic sanctions, sabotages etc.) rather than military action. In fact, it is often easier to gain moral support that way.

However, I understand that many humans naturally choose the latter, for tribal reasons, despite it being overall a worse choice.

Russian expansion does indeed mean dead people. It means constant suffering, political oppression (including killing opponents or forcibly relocating them), destruction of economy and the death of culture.

Do you not mind Russia transferring Ukrainian children to brainwash them? Admit it, Ukrainians face genocide.

The future will show large nuclear arsenals are the worst policy. It is not the 1930s and Russia is not Germany. The borders of the USSR have retreated over most of our lifetime, Moscow controlled all of Ukraine as recently as 1990 and gave it up more-or-less voluntarily.

If the US can invade the middle east and not be called an authoritarian regime, I don't think we need to draw a red line at the Ukraine border against the other nuclear superpower. And we should be negotiating.

> If the US can invade the middle east and not be called an authoritarian regime...

First, I wouldn't call this authoritarian[1] but imperialistic[2].

But semantics aside, I don't really get that line of argument. Do you think the US invading parts of the middle east was justified? If you do not, how can this comparison be used to justify Russia's invasion of Ukraine?

I do condemn both invasions!

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authoritarianism

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperialism

> I do condemn both invasions!

So does many Americans politicians. Indeed a vocal minority opposed the US invasion at the time (they weren't prosecuted).

IMO, the way the US negotiates and works with allies makes these wars incomparable.

Ah, thankyou. I was struggling to find the right word.

> But semantics aside, I don't really get that line of argument. Do you think the US invading parts of the middle east was justified? If you do not, how can this comparison be used to justify Russia's invasion of Ukraine?

Both invasions were horrific. But the response to the US invasion of central Asia by other Asian powers was "eh, what can you do?". I don't see why the Russian invasion of Ukraine needs to be treated so differently, pouring in weapons, levelling sanctions, triggering various crisises, increasingly aggressive rhetoric and so forth. If Asia can get invaded and we all take it in stride, Europe can get invaded and we can admit the idea that we could again take it in stride. These people aren't so different from each other.

The response should be a lot more thoughtful. More people need to acknowledge that in all likelihood that Russia is acting deliberately in response to long-term pressure and not because Putin is a special evil.

Who is the "we" that should be negotiating? The US, EU, and NATO aren't parties to the conflict. Russia and Ukraine are free to negotiate at any time, and in fact have already held talks at several points during the conflict.

I assume thought, that you favor some sort of negotiated settlement. How much territory should Ukraine cede to Russia in exchange for peace? And what would prevent Russia from coming back and taking another slice in a few years? Remember they already did this once before in 2014.

It's also hard to negotiate when Russia said there'd be no invasion, like the day before they crossed the border.

What credibility is left?

While I disagree with your other comments, I totally agree with denuclearization. Expanding NATO (founded on nuclear deterrence paradigm) as a reaction to Russia is wrong.

As we can clearly see now, NATO does not need nuclear deterrence again Russia's conventional weapons.

What protects, for example, the Baltic countries is not the threat that the US might take initiative to drop a nuclear bomb on Russia, no it is the vast conventional capabilities of the US.

Just supplying a relatively small amount of weapons to Ukraine is enough to destroy most of the Russian army.

Based on Russian performance at the start of the invasion, a similar force would have overrun the Baltic states. Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania are small and geographically isolated. They are surrounded by Russia, Belarus, and the Baltic Sea. Any attempt to support and supply them would have to go through the small gap between Kaliningrad and Belarus, or over the Baltic Sea, which would be heavily contested.

The geographic situation largely explains why the Baltic States support the NATO membership of Sweden and Finland so strongly, and why Russia is opposed to it. With Sweden and Finland in NATO, the Baltic Sea will become NATO's internal sea. NATO would likely have naval and air superiority over it, which would keep supply lines open and give them a chance to defend the Baltic States with conventional weapons.

Wouldn't any Russian force driving around in the Baltic states be easy targets for NATO cruise missiles and air power?

None of which NATO countries has offered to use in Ukraine.

I think logistics by railway would be problematic if NATO allies launched a few thousand cruise missiles.

That's the benefit of Sweden and Finland joining NATO.

Air power is of little use if your forces don't have access to the relevant area. The Baltic states are surrounded by Russian bases and air defenses, while NATO bases are far away. Right now, Kaliningrad is effectively a fortress that separates the Baltic states from the rest of NATO. Sweden and Finland give NATO air forces the option to bypass Kaliningrad and operate from bases that are closer to the Baltic states.

There was already Norway, Denmark and Poland fairly close by (close in terms of air travel).

But yes, Sweden and Finland in NATO is nice. Also for the fact that NATO not intervening in aggression against Sweden or Finland is hard to imagine, so getting papers on the marriage is nice for all parties involved.

The idea is that if Sweden and Finland are not members of NATO, their airspace would be closed to NATO air forces in a NATO–Russia conflict. Then the only way to reach Baltic airspace would be flying past Kaliningrad.

Also, as far as I understand, the combat radius fighter jets is quite short. It's something like 500 to 1200 km, depending on aircraft type and weapons load. Having bases 100 or 200 km closer is already a significant advantage.

The fighter jets can refuel during flight, which is a routine operation.

Tankers won't help here. The problem is that NATO fighters would effectively have to fly over Russia before they can reach the Baltic states. The area where tankers can operate safely already has plenty of NATO airbases.

If NATO doesn't need nuclear weapons, one more reason to get rid of them. The truth is number of states that endorse nuclear weapons expands as NATO expands, and I see that as a security risk.

The poster you've replied to said

>NATO does not need nuclear deterrence again Russia's conventional weapons

NATO has more than enough capabilities to destroy Russia's conventional weaponry, but as Russia has nuclear weapons, NATO must also have them to keep parity.

Getting rid of nuclear weapons is impossible. Genie's out of the bottle.

> Getting rid of nuclear weapons is impossible.

I disagree. Progress is being made (see ICANW), despite setbacks, some unfortunately coming from "the West", which is supposed to be morally more advanced.

And NATO doesn't need to keep parity with Russia, what for?

I also consider nuclear retaliation strike to be morally dubious. What's the point?

> I also consider nuclear retaliation strike to be morally dubious. What's the point?

The point isn't that you win something with a second strike. The point is that second strike capability ensures no actor can make a first strike without risking consequence. It's about deterrent, not about winning.

NATO does have to at least keep parity with Russia. Russia is the number one threat in the region, and NATO was made specifically for this purpose. Without adequate weapons to ensure peace, there would be no point of the alliance.

Nuclear weapons are necessary as a deterrent. In this case from an adversary that has nuclear weapons - without those in stock NATO would be outmatched and vulnerable to being subject to the threat of using them.

At the end of the day, states with nuclear weapons get to push non-nuclear states around. Good luck getting Russia, China, Israel, India, Pakistan or North Korea to disarm.

Getting the West to abandon their nuclear weapons would be morally reprehensible as those states would become subjects to the states that did not.

It's a nice dream, but:

1. It won't happen.

2. Nuclear weapons I believe are the most important reason why we did not have a conventional war in Europe for 80 years. Russia would not attack an adversary that was nuclear armed or in a nuclear sharing program.

I do not agree with your cynicism. You just made an opposite argument - that NATO doesn't really need nuclear weapons to defend against Russia.

I think, if NATO countries (and the U.S.) wanted to, they could make lot more effort to denuclearize. I don't think NATO can institutionally do it, though (it wasn't designed for it). For example, they could propose more aggressive mutual disarmament treaties, that would decrease arsenal in certain proportions on a timeline, with inspections. They don't do that, so I conclude that they don't really want to.

As for the peace - plenty of countries in Europe that are not involved in nuclear weapons and yet enjoy peace. As you said - nuclear countries bully the non-nuclear ones around, therefore, effort should be made to get rid of them completely.

>The borders of the USSR have retreated over most of our lifetime, Moscow controlled all of Ukraine as recently as 1990 and gave it up more-or-less voluntarily.

The problem is you think they "own" them.

>If the US can invade the middle east

One nation they invaded was Iraq, and while catastrophic, they've created a democracy that later told US to fuck off: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S.%E2%80%93Iraq_Status_of_Fo...

You can very much argue against that, and I'd agree, but it's not comparable to colonial war of aggression to literally enslave and genocide free nation.

>I don't think we need to draw a red line at the Ukraine border against the other nuclear superpower.

They are far from anything super, as we've seen in Kharkiv Oblast last week.

> done piracy to Russian yachts

which of course is the greater crime. Property rights for the ultra rich above everything else!

> There should be more serious grappling with why the Russians did this (and Crimea in 2014) than "Putin bad".

Why don't you give us your explanation?

It's just very odd to advocate for an appeasement policy when the aggressor keeps wanting more (first Crimea, then tried to take the whole Ukraine by going straight for the capital). It wasn't just Eastern Ukraine with Russian-speaking population, they went straight to the capital.

I'd say the west is perfectly fine with ignoring a lot of their principles for the sake of peace and money, China and Middle East are very good examples of it as you just said. The west was even perfectly happy to roll over their principles just to get the gas they needed from Russia. It looks like it's Russia that self destroyed all those economical agreements for the sake of wanting to expand their borders.

> We should all be lobbying for a large neutral buffer zone between US-aligned Europe and Russia

As long as that buffer is inside Russia, I would be fine with it as I suppose most others would.

It's not OK to suggest that countries can have a sphere of influence in 21st century. Each country chooses their alignment and alliance independently. Russia has repeatedly shown to be a poor neighbour, so it shouldn't be a surprise to them if independent countries decide to turn away from Russia.

US and Russia simply can not agree between themselves what should be Ukraine's place in the world. That kind of world order does not exist any more.

Do you not think that the US has a huge sphere of influence? It seems to me that the US can and does take any action it wishes to outside its borders. Sometimes those actions have a good moral justification and sometimes they don’t.

>US and Russia simply can not agree between themselves what should be Ukraine's place in the world.

I’ll argue the opposite. The Ukraine has no inherent right to join NATO. Ukraine isn’t going to join NATO unless the US wants it to join and this is morally correct in every way considering the obligations of article 5. Additionally every other NATO member has the right to veto expanding the alliance (this is fact btw not opinion).

Additionally the US has every right to negotiate with Russia over Ukraine joining should the US wish to.

> The Ukraine has no inherent right to join NATO.

This is not what is argued. I agree with you, it's of course up to NATO and EU to decide who they accept as members, and they may include Russian interests in the decision if they want.

Point is that Russia has no say over Ukraine's ambitions. The war started because Ukraine wanted away from Russia and moved towards Western values. This is unquestionably Ukraine's right. And if they don't succeed at joining the EU, then their place may be a non-aligned country with Western values and ambitions. That Russia must simply accept and move on.

Sorry, it seems I misinterpreted your comment.

>Point is that Russia has no say over Ukraine's ambitions...That Russia must simply accept and move on.

Well, that's the crux of the matter isn't it. They've not accepted it and haven't moved on and unless/until they are expelled from Ukraine they have a rather large amount of influence over what happens there.

It's interesting to watch that's for sure. One way or another the world is going to look different when this is over.

Ukraine has inherent freedom to join NATO.

It needs NATO's permission because that's how NATO works, but it doesn't need Russian permission

>Ukraine has inherent freedom to join NATO.

>It needs NATO's permission because that's how NATO works

Sorry to be a pedantic asshole but those statements are in opposition to each other. What you want to say is that they should they should have the freedom to apply and join if accepted.

>but it doesn't need Russian permission

In an ideal world they shouldn't need Russian permission, unfortunately we seem to live in a world where might makes right.

>It's not OK to suggest that countries can have a sphere of influence in 21st century

Ask your Congressman about pulling out of Guam and closing all overseas military bases.

>That kind of world order does not exist any more.

This is, ironically, enough, something that Putin started saying to us since he came into power. Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, etc. He lobbied the west to adhere to a rules based international order rather than couping or invading whomever we damn well pleased.

In 2003 he said "please respect Iraq's national sovereignty and international law". Oh how we laughed.

What did you think the result of ignoring that was gonna be?

For me it was fairly predictable. He treated it both as a threat and a precedent. That said, Im not in denial about America being an empire.

> Ask your Congressman about pulling out of Guam and closing all overseas military bases.

I'm from a small country by the Russian northern border, so I don't have anything to do with Guam but of course do have pretty strong opinions about who should be able to dictate our future.

This probably means that your country (maybe reluctantly, maybe not) lent its support to the Iraqi occupation under pressure from the US government.

That was due to those competing spheres of influence.

When you join a criminal gang for protection youve gotta prove your loyalty to the top dog and respect his power.

The dynamics arent all that different to when a 15 year old kid joins a gang in south central - sometimes after demonstrating loyalty he gets protection and sometimes he gets chewed up and spat out as cannon fodder in a wider turf war.

It's Finland, so not that much to do with Iraq either. Instead, Finland has a lot of experience about being in the USSR sphere of influence (see Finlandization), and thus I wholeheartedly support Ukraine's right to choose their own alignment.

> When you join a criminal gang for protection

I think we agree that in this context you choose to join a gang, and the opposing gang doesn't get to prevent you from leaving them. Nobody has promised NATO membership to Ukraine. However, they are free to align with Western values and apply for any membership they wish, be it EU or NATO. And when they join, yes that membership comes with certain obligations too.

>thus I wholeheartedly support Ukraine's right to choose their own alignment.

I would agree but I would also argue that unless you also wholeheartedly support Crimea and the Donbass's right to choose their alignment (something Kiev and the west both publicly reject), you are probably somewhat halfhearted in your belief in people's right to self determination.

This is the litmus test of whether you are just flashing a geopolitical gang sign or demonstrating an actual commitment to democracy. Most Westerners will do the former, and are, for example, enthusiastic supporters of a (NATO) troop presence acting as an enabler for Kosovo's referendum.... while simultaneously supporting Kiev's position of "Crimeans dont get to choose".

I'm no expert in Ukrainian demographics so I won't weigh in too much on that.

I will however say this much: what makes the situation of any Russian neighbour difficult is the Russian history of forced relocations and genocide, Russian imperialism and irredentism, and their lack of any resemblance of fair elections and referendums. Russian modus operandi is forced russification. So if you move enough ethnic Russians to Crimea so that they have majority over native Tatars, you can simply annex it at will? I definitely understand if there are opinions to both directions on that topic.

>So if you move enough ethnic Russians to Crimea so that they have majority over native Tatars, you can simply annex it at will?

If it happened in the 19th century I think so. At some point you have to simply accept that the democraphics changed and the sins of the ancestors arent the sins of the descendants and the descendants are just as deserving of democracy as anyone else.

A group of Serbs rather famously didnt subscribe to this view and committed genocide on Bosnians in the 90s to avenge what the ottomans "did to them" in, like, the 1700s.

To be consistent with the notion that historical lands belong to historical residents you'd have to cancel democracy and give back the United States to the native americans (or mexicans, even).

Do you believe in just handing back the United States to the people whom they genocided when they took it over and letting them rule? I suspect not. I dont. Most people dont.

The awkwardness of this double standard on closer inspection underscores the fact that what you espouse here is less of a moral principle and more of a geopolitical gang sign, even though you might not realize it.

> Ask your Congressman about pulling out of Guam and closing all overseas military bases.

Guam is a US territory - not a foreign base.

The US has not been marching NATO towards Russia.

It's ex-eastern bloc countries willingly joining the alliance to be protected from Russian aggression. If Russia did not have a long history of invading their neighbors, there would be no need or will to join the alliance.

If, say, Cuba joined a Russian military alliance of their own free will and started setting up a military installation with a couple of Russian missiles of uncertain providence, would the US tut-tut quietly or would it be a war situation? Because as I recall it was considered a major crisis that nearly doomed us all. And Cuba is further from the US than Ukraine is from Russia.

Those countries should have been vetoed out of NATO after considering the look of the situation to Russia. There should be no countries aligned with the US military within a very wide margin of Russia, and the alliance should have stopped expanding north-east when the USSR fell. Militaries deal in present realities, not how voluntarily people signed up for military alliances. Russia should not have to wonder how trustworthy the US is being (spoiler: the US is not trustworthy although they are a lot less capricious than the average nation). It is easy to see why they might have felt pressured to invade after the Ukrainian revolution, without needing to resort to "well Putin must just be that evil & crazy!".

If Cuba decides to align itself with the USSR, then it has the right to do so. Same as Ukraine has the right to align with the West rather than Russia.

>There should be no countries aligned with the US military within a very wide margin of Russia

Why, just because Russia wants that, so that it's free to invade it's neighbors? People in Eastern Europe do want to be part of NATO for a simple reason - not to have to worry about their big neighbor deciding that it's time for a "liberation". This is not about aggression, this is about not being invaded.

> And Cuba is further from the US than Ukraine is from Russia.

Not a great analogy. Ukraine had not joined NATO, and there seemed to be no prospect of it.

The countries that actually did join NATO appear to be safe from Russian invasion. If the Baltic states hadn't been allowed to join NATO then Russia might already have a land bridge to Kaliningrad and we'd have lost some more liberal democracies.

The alliance as such would not be a problem. The problem is that its key member, USA, is Russia's nemesis, and that the common NATO defense is based on nuclear retaliation (that's why there are automatic triggers).

I wouldn't mind if it was a military alliance of Russia neighbors and it disavowed the use of nuclear weapons. Then it would truly make the world safer, IMHO.

> We should all be lobbying for a large neutral buffer zone between US-aligned Europe and Russia, not expanding the alliance designed to destroy Russia towards Moscow.

Ukraine was neutral before 2014, somehow it didn't help. It didn't get invaded because they were about to join NATO, but because they started to orient themselves to the EU.

What you actually argue for, and what Putin is after, is to let Russia re-build its satellite system of countries dependent on Russia.

AFAIK the reason why Ukraine wasn’t invited to join back then were objections from France and Germany. The US were courting them and lobbying for them to join.

This is a classic escalation spiral, where flirtations between Ukraine and NATO triggered Russian aggression which in turn intensified the collaboration of NATO and Ukraine. And so on and so forth.

Nothing NATO related happened in 2013/2014 which would trigger the invasion. People keep ignoring the fact that from the Russian side this is not (just) about security/NATO, but about the larger goal of keeping CEE (and specifically Ukraine) within its sphere of control.

First you said they were neutral, then I pointed out that they were courted by the US. 2014 was when Ukraine clearly changed its alignment to the West, which triggered Crimea.

It’s about several things, agreed.

The NATO Bucharest Declaration of 2008 mentioned Ukraine and Georgia joining NATO.

Again, Ukraine was nowhere near to joining NATO in 2008, 2014 or 2022.

I never said it was close. You seemed to put the demarcation date for the discussion of it joining at 2014 but it started before that. I simply wanted to add more information to the discussion.

>We need serious attempts and ongoing discussion about how to stop military escalation.

Bit late in the day, isn't it? The EU leaders were trying to talk to Putin till their eyes glassed over and Biden was willing to talk to Russia about legit security concerns.

Yet, what did that get us? Military escalation. Looking back, maybe the West should have put a couple of tank divisions around Kyiv and Charkiv and tell Putin to better not mess with them.

> Biden was willing to talk to Russia about legit security concerns

Jeffrey Sachs claimed on Democracy Now that USA refused the diplomatic talks with Russia in November 2021. France, Germany and NATO tried, but apparently Putin felt that US is a key player. Whether true or not, it was wrong for the US to act as if it's just Ukraine's (and Europe's) problem, because it isn't - US has been providing Ukraine with some military support.

There's a series of videos that document how Macron talked to Putin (including the famous one where Putin cuts him short because he has to train for ice hockey), and Macron clearly says he has the message from Biden that he'd meet Putin. That must have been in February.

> There should be more serious grappling with why the Russians did this (and Crimea in 2014) than "Putin bad"

There won’t be. We are being lied to.

There is no redemption for Russia, this is by now probably etched into their brains after Yugoslavia, two NATO expansions, Georgia and Ukraine.

The sanctions are also here to stay, so claiming that “getting out of Ukraine now” would make any sense or bring them any benefits is wishful thinking.

As far as lessons go, Europe didn’t really learn anything or drew the wrong conclusions based on their approach to China. Instead of staying on its own continent and minding its own business, the EU is playing wannabe-US.

Finally, we have Eastern Europe. Which have hammered the point so hard into the brains of Western Europe that they must have forgotten themselves what the point was. Or at least that would be the case given the dependency they have on Russia, sometimes carefully disguised by moralwashing the gas through another country.

Pray tell, when did Georgia and Ukraine join NATO?

Not GP but i think they are referring to Russian invasions of Georgia (2008) and Ukraine (2014, 2022).

Georgia was complicated but from any zoomed out perspective it was clearly a Russian aggression.

"Western Europe just learned a painful lesson that you can't trust Russia. "

Russia learnt that it cannot trust West when NATO started expanding into Eastern Europe and ex-USSR not too long after Warsaw pact and the USSR dissolved.

Quite strange to say that West 'trusted' Russia after it betrayed Russia.

Quit repeating this crap. There was no agreement for NATO to not expand eastward and even Gorbachev stated there was no such agreement. You are just repeating the bullshit spread by Pozner and Mearsheimer. It is still bullshit propaganda no matter how many people repeat it.

I fell for it too, at the start of the war, and then I tried to combat it each time I came across it.

Mearsheimer is way more of an authority on the subject than you are, so if you're going to dismiss his claim as bullshit while claiming you're trying to combat the claim you could at least provide a link. Also even if Mearsheimer is wrong in that claim it doesn't make it propaganda.

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2014/11/06/did-nato-...

>the former Soviet president criticized NATO enlargement and called it a violation of the spirit of the assurances given Moscow in 1990, but he made clear there was no promise regarding broader enlargement.

More regarding Mearsheimer in case anyone is interested.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Mearsheimer

https://political-science.uchicago.edu/directory/john-mearsh...

https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/why-john-mearsheimer-...

There is a distinction between an explanation and a justification. There are many ways to explain why some thing happened or might happen. They can not be used to justify said action. I believe Mearsheimer and Pozner, for reasons, confound one for the other. Saying that Russia could not help not to attack, that it is the rational choice for Russia, is like saying that advertisers can not help themselves tracking users, it is the rational choice to track users. Again, explanation is not justification. Explanations are not excuses. That is why I call it bullshit propaganda: He is justifying the war. War is not just. War is never just. War is death and tragedy, even if you can write entire books explaining how it happened and why every party had legitimate interest.

RealPolitik, the realist school of thought, evolutionary psychology, etc. only ever provide explanations. And often they may be good explanations. They are useful when trying to understand events or people or groups of people and when trying to predict behavior or create models.

But to derive justification from those explanations means that you ascribe to the belief that determinism (lack of free will) absolves you of responsibility. It does not. Whether you have free will or not you still have to make choices and still bear the responsibility of those choices. If you believe you have free will you are directly responsible and must assume responsibility for any consequence coming your way. If you believe you do not have free will, than any consequence is simply the system correcting itself. There is no escape from making choices.

But what do I known? So since you are claiming he has more authority I will counter with someone of equal or greater authority, Alexander Stubb, past Prime Minister, Minister Of Finance and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Finland and Director and Professor of the School of Transnational Governance at the European University Institute:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlB-pRqdyBg

Declassified documents show security assurances against NATO expansion to Soviet leaders from Baker, Bush, Genscher, Kohl, Gates, Mitterrand, Thatcher, Hurd, Major, and Woerner [0]

[0] https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2017...

Oh sure, I wonder why Eastern Europe wants to join NATO. Hmmm, I wonder why countries who were on the fence about joining NATO have suddenly fast tracked applications in 2022?

You are justifying an action by the reaction to it.

It's like saying that Russia's invasion of Ukraine is justified by the Ukrainian drones and rockets attacking Russian cities [0] and villages near Ukrainian border.

[0] https://t.me/zhest_belgorod/16230

Russia has been invading it's neighbors for centuries. Eastern Europeans do remember that.

Joining NATO is not only about the conflict today, it's due to pretty much all generations in the area suffering due to their aggressive neighbor further to the east.

Nearly every country in Europe has been invading its neighbors for centuries, that’s what normal looks like in Europe. In fact some countries liked invasions so much, that they invaded countries all over the world.

Joining NATO is not at all only up to the countries which apply. The US is more or less the game maker, with big countries like Germany, France, the UK etc. also having an important voice.

It’s not unexpected that the former Warsaw Pact countries would want to join. It is surprising to see the US being so short-sighted to allow these expansions considering that several of its own diplomats and foreign policy experts were warning against it.

> Nearly every country in Europe has been invading its neighbors for centuries,

Which was horrendously destructive, and the two World Wars fought using more modern weaponry were particularly awful. In fact, avoiding similar wars in Europe was part of the original justification for creating the EU, Europe has benefited tremenously from the almost a century of near-peace it's experienced, and this makes Russia's recent actions basically an existential threat to the rest of Europe.

If the goal was to avoid war in Europe, then keeping a buffer of neutral countries between Russia and the EU/NATO would have been the logical course of action, when failing to integrate Russia in the European family.

It seems to me that the EU and US didn’t know when to stop and only looked at the potential economical and respectively geopolitical gains, while not giving enough weight to the risk of conflict when it was known what Russia’s red lines were.

This was a policy blunder. Looking at it from a moral or international law perspective is a dead end when the primary driver of the chain of events leading to today was geopolitics.

You are ignoring the will of the people in a buffer state. In the EU they see prospering liberal democracies and on the other side it's permanent authoritarian kleptocracy, which by the way still sees them as part of a lost empire. Of course they are going to want a path to the EU.

You seem to be assuming that countries may decide on their own freely who they associate with. This is the case in international law, but not in reality, as can be seen in many examples concerning Russia or the US or China.

Realpolitik vs ideal-oriented policy. It wasn’t the buffer states driving the decision, it was the US and NATO. They had to choose between buffer states and expanding NATO. The developments in Ukraine were predictable and likely avoidable had they chosen differently - see the fate of Belarus or Georgia or Ukraine before 2004 and before 2014.

And that's why countries have to consider all of their neighbors when deciding on their foreign policy. There was a lot of bad blood for example against Germany, but since we have a very good economic partnership with them, there is no reason for being overly prepared for war with them. They haven't done anything to consider them hostile.

Russia has consistently been a bad neighbor that keeps on threatening or playing weird tricks against other countries. They have invaded multiple neighbors in the last 100 years, where the rest of Europe has become more peaceful.

There is a clear danger to peace in Europe, and that's why countries want to join NATO.

Why do you think that letting Eastern European countries join NATO is misguided? So far, it has been the number one reason that Russia hasn't invaded any other countries in the region.

Now you’ve scaled back from hundreds of years to a just as arbitrary 100 years.

I assume you’ve led with Germany to address the very obvious WW2, when Germany turned the entire continent into a bloodbath. Ok, let’s skip that one :-)

There were the Cod Wars, which were mostly boat ramming affairs, if it weren’t for the fact that Iceland threatened to leave NATO, expel US forces and broke diplomatic relations with the UK at some point.

There was the Turkish Cypriot conflict, which continues to smolder until the present day.

Quite a few civil wars and uprisings.

Then the big Yugoslav war, where a defensive alliance oddly decided to go on the offensive.

The next big war was the current one in Ukraine.

Rather quiet given Europe’s bloody past. But if we look outside Europe, we see that the warfare just moved to other places. Falklands, Iraq twice, Syria, Libya. Not to mention the French and British colonial empires.

Core NATO are no slouches at invading and making war. So what’s the point in trying to make Russia seem irredeemable? We measure with very different standards what we do vs. what they do. Makes it easier to justify militarization, spending enormous amounts on weapons, reducing civil liberties, etc if you have an evil enemy.

Edit: forgot to answer your question about expansion. Because the likely outcome of not expanding would have been Belarus, Georgia or Ukraine in the 00’s, not invasions and war. This is not some far-fetched theory, Russian and ex-USSR leaders were repeatedly advocating for it and US and German/French politicians were obviously aware of it and in agreement. Post Bush the 1st the US changed its policy and went on a NATO expansion quest.

> Nearly every country in Europe has been invading its neighbors for centuries

We don't need to go into that long history. Most of these CEE countries have been invaded by Russia in the last 100 years.

> It’s not unexpected that the former Warsaw Pact countries would want to join. It is surprising to see the US being so short-sighted to allow these expansions considering that several of its own diplomats and foreign policy experts were warning against it.

It actually worked out well. Not letting e.g. Baltics into NATO/EU would almost certainly mean they have been already absorbed back into Russia. The rest of CEE would be vassalized.

"Not letting e.g. Baltics into NATO/EU would almost certainly mean they have been already absorbed back into Russia. The rest of CEE would be vassalized."

Why?

Because Russia has a recent and current track record of behaving this way.

You too are trying to justify NATO expansion by Russian reaction to it.

Not necessarily. Most of the new members have been invaded by Russia in the past 100 years.

And Russia has been invaded by most of the European countries in the same time period. Starting from the Intervention and Poland's invasion to the invasion by Germany and its allies.

I’m puzzled by this statement. Russia has been invaded by Germany several times. Has it been invaded by France, Spain, Poland, Denmark, The Netherlands, Belgium, the Czech Republic, or The UK in the past 100 years? As a parochial American, what have I missed?

Poland: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish%E2%80%93Soviet_War

Czechoslovaks, United Kingdom, France, Greece, Estonia, Serbia, Italy, Romania: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_intervention_in_the_Rus...

Germany, Romania, Hungary, Italy, Slovakia, Croatia, Finland: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Front_(World_War_II)

The intervention was a messy affair, but can hardly be called an invasion. Czechoslovak legion got to Russia to fight on its side and when Bolsheviks took over, mostly just tried to return home. The goals of other countries interventions in this chaos were diverse, but again, mostly not directed against Russia, some e.g. tried to prevent Germany from taking more Russian territory.

"but can hardly be called an invasion"

It was an invasion in support of one of the sides in Russian civil war. Russia made peace with Germany 1917 [0], the intervention started in 1918.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armistice_between_Russia_and_t...

You're deflecting. The point is that CEE countries had a valid reason to fear Russian imperialism and acted accordingly.

You're deflecting.

I remind you that I asked 'Why?' in response to your bold statement "Not letting e.g. Baltics into NATO/EU would almost certainly mean they have been already absorbed back into Russia. The rest of CEE would be vassalized."

And I responded to you that Russia has both long and recent history of imperialism in this region.

Just like almost anyone else which makes it a deflection and not an answer.

No, the countries in question have been recently threatened only by Russia.

The only other recent aggressor was by that point completely pacified Germany.

Again, you are justifying an action by the reaction to it.

No, these aggressions happened in the recent history (< 100 years) before NATO accessions. Once in NATO, these countries were off limits (= main lure of the membership).

You are going in circles: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32829679

You're going in circles. We're not discussing why Russia started CSTO, but why CEE nations felt the need to enter NATO. The fact that Russia was also invaded in its history bears no relevancy in this matter.

And here we go again.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32835337

And which neighbor hasn't invaded Russia? Russia remembers that too. In the 1990s there was a perfect chance to turn the page, but it was squandered by the West.

I agree, Russia should form or join an already existing defensive alliance to protect itself against what it considers to be aggressive neighbors.

That sounds reasonable to me, just like the neighboring countries doing likewise - joining a pact to defend against Russia.

This exists, its called the Организация Договора о коллективной безопасности or Collective Security Treaty Organization. Its member states include Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Tajikistan. It used to include Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Uzbekistan.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_Security_Treaty_Org...

That organization is functionally defunct

Russia has been a prison of people’s for some time. I’m all for countries like Finland wanting to be neutral but Russia’s actions and out right threats of war really force their hands.

There’s a reason Belarus is the only real ally in the region.

Is Spain the prison of Catalonians?

Russia used to be more on the fence about NATO too when it acted defensively - before Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.

The war crimes committed during the NATO Libyan intervention - with a deliberate emphasis on regime change and creating a failed state - sparked the same fear in Russia that the Ukraine invasion sparked in Finland.

Russia already went through a period of internal collapse and being ruled by an American puppet, too, so the feeling that "they could make it happen again" is pretty visceral.

Afaik the NATO mission in Yugoslavia and Libya were the two big ones. Both misused NATO and were not defensive in nature.

And none of them were targeted against Russia.

For the obvious reason that NATO countries are largely rich, peaceful, and doing pretty ok and are not gonna waste their time and energy attacking a nation with f'ing nuclear weapons.

Oh it was. If you thought it was coincidence that they were both Russian allies you'd be utterly wrong.

You're right that NATO definitely isnt interested in committing to a full scale ground invasion of Russia.

Similarly the British were never interested in committing to a full scale invasion of India. Therefore they were... never a threat?

There was a real hope Russia would join NATO at one point. That it has devolved back into the primary threat was never a foregone or even straightforward conclusion.

It's very unclear if Russia being in NATO would change anything in its imperialistic tendencies. Wouldn't it be, after all, the best chance to destroy NATO from within?

Russia has no say over Eastern Europ and ex-USSR countries. If they want to join NATO, there is nothing Russia can do. Justifying a war based on this is just very wrong.

I remember when I learned about the Cuban missile crisis as a kid (in America) my initial thought was to ask what moral right the US had in nearly starting a war in order to stop the Soviets from moving their missiles to Cuba when both the USSR and Cuba wanted that.

Thankfully for the world saner minds prevailed and a settlement was reached. The soviets turned their ships around and the US removed their missiles from Turkey.

Such a settlement unfortunately is no longer possible with the current situation.

And yet, the USA did not invade Cuba or press a regime change after the CMC. There was a negotiated settlement where the USA withdrew their missiles from Turkey, left Castro alone and that settled the issue.

NATO never deployed nukes in any of the ex-USSR countries, did not build extensive permanent bases, signed the Russia/NATO founding act and in general tried to accommodate Moscow.

There's a world of difference between deploying offensive nukes in a neighboring country and allowing countries to join a defensive alliance. That's not to say I am a huge fan of US politics of the 1960's, but the comparison is simply lopsided.

>And yet, the USA did not invade Cuba or press a regime change after the CMC. There was a negotiated settlement where the USA withdrew their missiles from Turkey, left Castro alone and that settled the issue.

No, but they were willing to go to war to prevent the missiles from getting there. Waiting until after would have been too late.

>NATO never deployed nukes in any of the ex-USSR countries, did not build extensive permanent bases, signed the Russia/NATO founding act and in general tried to accommodate Moscow.

There are NATO missile bases in ex-Warsaw Pact countries though (Poland and Romania). Yes they are ostensibly to defend against an Iranian missile attack but the US has a poor record for honesty in its international dealings so I can understand that a potential missile base in Ukraine would cross a lot of red lines for the Russians.

>There's a world of difference between deploying offensive nukes in a neighboring country and allowing countries to join a defensive alliance. That's not to say I am a huge fan of US politics of the 1960's, but the comparison is simply lopsided.

It's easy to argue that the potential nukes in Cuba were defensive to deter any further US invasion attempts. At any rate balance of power I think is a better lens through which to examine these things rather than the ethics of offence and defense because that's actually what drives the decision making.

Likewise calling NATO a defensive alliance is a bit tenuous I think (at least from the American perspective). NATO is controlled by the US and the US is quite aggressive about pursuing its perceived interests.

Over the last 20 years there has been lots of chatter regarding US long term ambitions towards Russia and those ambitions are now being discussed more openly even in mainstream press. For example this article is from yesterday.

https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/world/nato-versus-russia-in-u...

>A much more truly ambitious apparent long-term US ambition seems to have been to instigate the breakup of Russia into smaller manageable countries, paralleling the emergence of nations in eastern Europe after 1989. It could then deal with a reconstructed historical Russia of smaller emerging statelets run by competitive elites at odds with each other. These new polities, anxious for revenues, will then, presumably, be eager to sign lucrative commercial deals with US corporations since the entire region is extraordinarily wealthy in raw material resources.

So while I agree that Russia has acted in a paranoid manner vis-à-vis Ukraine/NATO I also think that the paranoia is understandable. Russia has after all been invaded by Western European countries three times in the previous 180 years (I'm not suggesting a military invasion of Russia is on the cards but certainly an economic and cultural one).

From an American perspective I think the US has played their hand very well. By manufacturing this conflict they created a situation where Russia had to choose between allowing further NATO expansion or starting a war which 30 years ago would have been considered a civil war. This results in all sorts of benefits for the US.

- Potential collapse of the Russian Federation and the economic benefits this would bring (for the West)

- Solidifying EU support of NATO

- Increased energy sales to Europe at higher prices

- Increased military sales to NATO countries due to new threat

- Increased budget for "the military industrial complex"

- Further the long term goal of preventing a peer competitor from appearing by both weakening Russia and making the EU more dependant on the US both economically and militarily.

- Mutually beneficial German/Russian cooperation is pretty much dead now so no threat of such an alliance appearing in the future.

Russia it seems only had two bad choices to pick from strategically speaking; a "Kobayashi Maru". We'll never know what would have happened if they had made a different choice but its fascinating to watch all this play out. History is happening in real time!

edit: I'm not the one downvoting you.

Yeah, but the Americans pinky swore that they wouldn't expand NATO in the early 90s in an early negotiating round.

That's how negotiations work. Everything the west proposes at any point of negotiations must be honored irrespective of whether it was actually an agreed upon outcome of that negotiation or not. And if Russia blatantly breaks the agreed upon, written, formally accepted points of the negotiation that doesn't count.

edit: Oh, I think I may have misread what you wrote. You were being sarcastic and saying that the US proposed not to expand early on but no agreement was reached, and Russia is trying to hold NATO to that anyway. Sorry!

Could you provide any proof of this? I don't see any evidence of this, are you referring to a verbal agreement?

https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_111767.htm#c203

Claim: NATO promised Russia it would not expand after the Cold War

Fact: Such an agreement was never made. NATO’s door has been open to new members since it was founded in 1949 – and that has never changed. This “Open Door Policy” is enshrined in Article 10 of NATO’s founding treaty, which says “any other European State in a position to further the principles of this Treaty and to contribute to the security of the North Atlantic” can apply for membership. Decisions on membership are taken by consensus among all Allies. No treaty signed by the United States, Europe and Russia included provisions on NATO membership.

The idea of NATO expansion beyond a united Germany was not on the agenda in 1989, particularly as the Warsaw Pact still existed. This was confirmed by Mikhail Gorbachev in an interview in 2014: "The topic of 'NATO expansion' was not discussed at all, and it wasn't brought up in those years. I say this with full responsibility. Not a single Eastern European country raised the issue, not even after the Warsaw Pact ceased to exist in 1991. Western leaders didn't bring it up, either."

Declassified White House transcripts also reveal that, in 1997, Bill Clinton consistently refused Boris Yeltsin's offer of a 'gentlemen's agreement' that no former Soviet Republics would enter NATO: "I can't make commitments on behalf of NATO, and I'm not going to be in the position myself of vetoing NATO expansion with respect to any country, much less letting you or anyone else do so…NATO operates by consensus."

Just like Cuba wanted to host Soviet missiles in 1962.

Oddly, the US didn't think 'there is nothing we can do' and was about to start WW3 over it.

That's obviously where Russia went wrong. The US made stupid mistakes when it comes to Cuba, but with the Soviet missiles they made it stick.

In contrast, Russia thought that could take over a country while Europe and the US would sit still. Then when that didn't happen, Russia didn't figure out that something was going wrong. So they got a complete economic boycott and they are letting Ukraine destroy most of the Russian army.

Soon Russia will be a country with no economy to speak of and no army.

So, uhm, which country in central/eastern Europe hosts NATO nuclear missiles again?

That's just whataboutism.

And Russia isn't about to sink American ships. Yet.

Here is NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg talking about moving American nukes to Eastern Europe. [0]

"The alternative to NATO nuclear sharing is different kinds of bilateral arrangements and also the risk of having, you know, nuclear weapons also . . . so, of course, Germany can, of course, decide whether there will be nuclear weapons in your country, but the alternative is that we easily end up with nuclear weapons in other countries in Europe, also to the east of Germany."

And please don't use the word 'whataboutism' unless you want to say "I have double standards."

[0] https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/opinions_188772.htm

According to https://icanw.org, Germany and Turkey currently host U.S. nuclear weapons.

Verbal face to face agreements that go against the explicit wish of the countries involved which you give no agency? Should a finger be pointed at the agreement regarding Ukraine giving up the USSR nukes?

Such agreements are based on trust and if that’s gone both parties stand to lose a lot. The kind of global challenges we will meet can only be tackled by having the US, Russia, China, India, the EU work together.

Pointing out that it was a verbal agreement is correct, but is missing the bigger point. This is not just a technical gotcha, the future of humanity is at stake.

Those countries which wanted to join have agency, but they don’t decide if they are accepted or not. The US does, with a few other big players. The rest rubber stamp what was decided by the big boys.

Finally, both the US and Russia had an interest in those nukes not staying in Ukraine. In fact the Ukrainians changed their mind at the last moment, but they were more or less forced/bribed to take the agreement.

Turkey apparently didn't get this rubber-stamping message, and used their vote for own gains. To me this still looks pretty much like a state deciding for themselves.

Turkey are an important member of NATO and they know it. They’re also hosting US nuclear missiles.

"which you give no agency"

It takes two to tango. Those countries didn't promise anything to Russia, but the West did.

"Should a finger be pointed"

Yes, please. But be sure to read the memorandum to the end, where you will find the Annex describing West's and Russia's commitment to the common inclusive security system for all Europe. The NATO expansion that followed is nothing like that.

>where are the nuclear reactors?

In France. Mostly idling.

To add: They are idling b.c. 1) some are old and under disrepair and 2) it's so hot right now, that there is not enough cooling to run them at full load.

The water in the rivers providing cooling water is so warm that the water that comes out the other end crosses a temperature threshold set to protect the river down stream. As I understand the situation at least. Technically the plants can run at full load, but you'd risk harm life in the river downstream.

I had no idea outputs are hindered by weather. Do you know if this applies to newer reactors as well, or just older ones France is operating?

France claims two things:

- Reactors are seasonally idle and will ramp back up for winter - During this normally idle time, they do maintenance

https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/minister-fren...

Perhaps this idea that "half of France's reactors are idle" is partly true, partly scare tactics from the "anti-nuke" group?

Nuclear reactors require vast amounts of cooling water so timing your "down time" to coincide with low water levels does make sense.

Here(Ontario) we build them on the shores of Lake Ontario and the intake pipe extends far into the lake to avoid any sort of water level fluctuations impacting power production.

This summer, France has been importing significant amounts of electricity from countries that burn gas or coal. You don't do that if you have plenty of nuclear power available.

Re-read what i wrote.. if you know that water levels will be low and you purposely idle your reactors annually.. then you do import power.

It looks like this is NOT a new problem (from 2016) https://www.economist.com/business/2016/12/01/frances-nuclea...

This can in theory happen to any steam-based power plant. Using steam to generate electricity is about 30% efficient. So you still need to get rid of the other 70% of heat that is generated, but not converted to electricity.

So it would also happen to power plants that burn coal.

This! People think this is a "nuclear" problem. .it is a cooling water problem regardless of where the heat came from.

These things can run in the middle east or India. The concern is that river life will be harmed.

55% of French electricity as of right now: https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/FR?solar=false&remote=t...

>> where are the nuclear reactors?

> In France. Mostly idling.

Isn't the problem natural gas and not electricity? If there was a reactor on every corner wouldn't Germany and the other countries still be in the same boat? They can't convert all that natural gas infrastructure over to electricity in a couple months..

> where are the nuclear reactors?

Same place as usual. Decades behind schedule, 3x over budget, often cancelled, and then sitting idle in spite of near unlimited public subsidy. All while tying up enough money in cleanup costs for a single disaster to double worldwide wind capacity.

Somehow this does not seem to be an issue for most nuclear power plants built in the past in Europe or most built elsewhere today. Here in Belgium the reactors were built and gridconnected in 4-6 years and China still seems to pull similar with it's French or more modern designs.

The EPRs are all going just great

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taishan_Nuclear_Power_Plant

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C_nuclear_powe...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamanville_Nuclear_Power_Pl...

Too many in charge of policy who have never served in the military. War can be more profitable than peace. They could have had a cease fire, but they squelched it.

Because the west was too greedy, and thus to cautious about sanctions when this war started in 2014. For russia war actually looked more profitable that the status quo, and i can see why.

What you're describing is basically why Kissinger et al lobbied to kick out Taiwan from the UN, lobbied to shut down Taiwan's nuclear weapons program at the UN and worked so hard to intertwine US and Chinese economies. It's also the reason why Kissinger had that speech and the WEF advising the political leadership of the west to change course.

It doesn't really matter though, there seems to be no way to have a reasonable discussion on this topic without being attacked as a Putin sympathizer in most places of the "free world".

>What you're describing is basically why Kissinger et al lobbied to kick out Taiwan from the UN

As much as I hate Kissinger, this is not what happened at all. This wasn't about "kicking Taiwan out", it was about acknowledging the fact that KMT no longer ruled China, Beijing did. Also, it was the seventies; at that time Taiwan was ruled by a fascist regime - those were the folks who had to flee continental China because they were even worse than Mao.

In fairness, there are many who got it wrong on China. Not just Kissinger. Many made a lot of money off of China as an emerging market. Trying to calm the situation down in Ukraine is to his credit. Few seem to be calling for a ceasefire. On the contrary, they seem to doing all they can to scuttle any kind of agreement.

A ceasefire only benefits Russia, because they are the ones that gained territory in eastern Ukraine and would serve them well to not have to fight for this territory and just make it under their umbrella. It's clearly what they want.

I don't know who are the "they" that are trying to destroy any kind of agreement, but there hasn't been any type of close agreement as Ukraine made it very clear that they don't want anything else beside Russia leaving their territory. Any type of territory concession is a non-starter for any agreement on Ukraine side.

I'm just going to assume that you are American. If Russia invaded Alaska.. would you advocate for a "ceasefire" and tell people they should negotiate an agreement... that would keep Russia on the sovereign territory of the US? I'm assuming no. Then why are you advocating for this?

I don't like the guy, and I absolutely don't agree with most of what him and his administration did. But the one thing that they got right(which every person outside of the collective west seems to understand) is that only a complete madman would throw the biggest nuclear power, the biggest natural resource country and the biggest missile manufacturer in the world right into the arms of the biggest manufacturing power in the world.

They did what they did, so the decisions that are being done now need to be done with the current state of reality in mind.

>throw

Russia is responsible for it's own action. It's not a weird state machine reacting to "western" actions and applying appropriate response.

Russia was given everything they possibly could be given to become part of "the west" - growing, democratic nation, like many of the nation they formerly occupied. Instead they choose kleptocracy, mafia state ruled by the guy who bombed apartment buildings in his own country to become president - and it only went downhill from there.

"Into the arms" is a pretty big overstatement. China is not a friend of Russia. It has its own goals and challenges.

And many challenges they do have: China made a huge progress on industrialization, put some checks on corruption and conquered widespread hunger, but it is still a mostly poor, agrarian country with a rapidly aging population. They, absolutely rationally, jump at the option of cheaper energy import, but I would not read that as a long-term support of the Russian view of the world (which, I heard from several folks, they often despise). They pursue their own agenda. My 2c.

Do you believe that if we've let Russia to take Ukraine, Putin would become the West's best friend?

Or maybe that's not enough and return to 1997 NATO borders would be necessary?

Or perhaps that would not be enough and return to the 1988 geopolitical situation would be necessary to make Putin a friend of the West?

What if even that wouldn't make Putin a western ally? Wouldn't we be just be letting our geopolitical enemy get stronger?

One logical solution is to make sure Russia is no longer an useful asset, by splitting off its colonies.

>What you're describing is basically why Kissinger et al lobbied to kick out Taiwan from the UN, lobbied to shut down Taiwan's nuclear weapons program at the UN and worked so hard to intertwine US and Chinese economies.

Which turned out to be worst of possible policies.

> Which turned out to be worst of possible policies.

Depends on your metric. US companies gained the ability to outsource to low-cost china and this has been fantastically profitable for them.

For the average US citizen, they did benefit from a massive influx of cheap goods and cheap debt at the expense of hollowing out the economy. As it says on the back of most Apple products - "designed in California made in China".

Could be made in the US as well, but too many rules, too inflexible, too high labour costs.

https://theweek.com/articles/478705/why-apple-builds-iphones...

I'm certainly not picking on Apple, most US companies outsource but the Obama/Jobs question really hammers the point.

Probably not a long-term sustainable strategy but i did work for many years.

I don’t really think so. At the time Taipei was saying to not take them seriously and hopefully they would support dual representation seats in the UN soon. [1]

Instead of having a Cold War with China and proxy wars, we intertwined our economies much like MAD except with mutually assured economy destruction.

[1] https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/local/archives/2001/09/12/0...

The scenario with China is the same as Soviet Union in 20-30s, 60-70s and Russia in 00s-now, just not fully resolved yet.

You prop up hard authoritarian or totalitarian government with trade. They get strong, and instead of "democratizing" they take a hard line and endanger democracies.

Europe also had economic MAD with Russia, yet they did not care. Now they flare gas and destroy Ukrainian cities.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Kahn_(architect)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamaz#History

I think Russia actually does care - Putin recently said that closing the natural gas supply was in retaliation to EU's economic sanctions.

Are you suggesting the West should deliberately keep countries poorer, in the fear of them becoming (more) authoritarian? I think that would be wrong (and also counterproductive) thing to do.

>keep countries poorer

Keep hard authoritarian and totalitarian countries poorer. That's done with multiple countries right now, like North Korea, Iran, Cuba, Venezuela.

Keep weak authoritarian (on a road to democracy) and democratic nations richer. EU and NATO expansion have been historic successes, with democracy extending farther than ever in the 90s and 00s. Moreover, US policy on India has been largest geopolitical tragedy of XX century. The largest democracy in the world is relatively hostile to "the west", despite being threatened by China.

Opposite policies - keep enemies close - drastically failed in case of Russia and China, with both countries being especially bloodthirsty right now.

>Keep hard authoritarian and totalitarian countries poorer. That's done with multiple countries right now, like North Korea, Iran, Cuba, Venezuela.

It's also not done in multiple other countries which don't happen to be US military allies, like Saudi Arabia. You're seeing a pattern that isn't there. Totalitarianism is just an excuse.

Also, I'm sorry, but claiming China - which hadn't invaded anyone for decades - is as bloodthirsty as Russia (or US for that matter) is just silly.

How could you tell that Russia was "hard authoritarian" when Putin came to power? I don't think there is a meaningful distinction.

I also think it's immoral to intentionally keep any country poor, whether authoritarian or not. I don't know where you live, but I would certainly not want Czechoslovakia to be intentionally kept poor during communist dictatorship just so that some Western politician could stroke his ego about how is he fighting against communism. I think that's very authoritarian and patronizing idea, to do so. It's just a double whammy for citizens of such countries.

>How could you tell that Russia was "hard authoritarian" when Putin came to power?

He bombed his own people to come to power. If not then, then in 2008, when he invaded Georgia. Even if not then, then surely 2014 would be the final whistle, right? No. Nord stream 2 was started to be build 4 years later.

>I don't know where you live, but I would certainly not want Czechoslovakia to be intentionally kept poor during communist dictatorship just so that some Western politician could stroke his ego about how is he fighting against communism.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a5/Pomnik_R...

This is Ronald Reagan monument in Warsaw. I, and many Polish people are thankful for his hardline stance he took against our occupiers, meaningfully contributing to crashing their economy, which ultimately made us free.

> I, and many Polish people are thankful for his hardline stance he took against our occupiers, meaningfully contributing to crashing their economy

I think this is bordering on masochism. To me, hurting people (even economically) in order to make them "free" (which Reagan didn't, in fact) is just morally reprehensible, patronizing and authoritarian.

I also think that you don't know much about Reagan. He supported policies that were explicitly against education of the middle class (trying to made universities into a pay model) and pro-segregation (like hard stance on drug war). He almost started a 3rd world war. This is all on record.

That's the thing with authoritarians - they have many faces. They can be perceived very differently by different groups. That's why you cannot just to simplify it as you did.

I am very skeptical when somebody says, we need to sacrifice lives of X people today in order for Y people (Y>X) have better lives in the future. I don't know of an example where there isn't a solution (although possibly slower) without the sacrifice, and often you can have both. Human live is precious and therefore we should value human lives now more than some kind of vague improvement in the future. We can always change society, but we cannot resurrect a dead person.

>hurting people

>sacrifice

There is no sacrifice. People in Poland still had food and shelter. Even North Korea gets humanitarian help, if their tyrant allows it to. I'm not against that. I'm against making them more powerful. Food does not change that, but transfer of technologies or means of production - which happened with Russia and China, and even Poland [1] in the 70s strengthened the regime, making the fall longer and more painful.

US, and any other country, has no obligation to prop up failing dictatorships technologically or economically - which they and also famously Germany - did.

>I also think that you don't know much about Reagan. He supported policies that were explicitly against education of the middle class (trying to made universities into a pay model) and pro-segregation (like hard stance on drug war). He almost started a 3rd world war. This is all on record.

Internal policies of Reagan, and a lot of external ones were bad. Still, he was right on that one, compared to failed policies of Nixon and Brandt.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polski_Fiat

> Demonising people doesn't help.

Letting a country get away with genocide with a slap off the wrist will only encourage them to do it again.