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.
>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.
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.
>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.
It needs NATO's permission because that's how NATO works, but it doesn't need Russian permission
>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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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 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.
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.
Guam is a US territory - not a foreign base.
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.
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!".
>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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
It’s about several things, agreed.