Come now, two of the more plausible candidates for the beginning of this whole thing are the violated promise not to expand NATO Eastward and the American invasion of Serbia. Relations between America, and its allies, and Russia have been soured for decades now, with America being largely to blame.
In May 2002 Vladimir Putin said Ukraine was entitled to decide on its own whether to join NATO and that he did not see such a decision as one that would “cloud” Russian-Ukrainian relations.
I think it's highly loaded to phrase this as NATO expansion. It sounds like NATO somehow coerced these countries into joining, or annexed them somehow. These countries came beating on NATO's door desperate to be let in. The instigating trigger for Putin's 2014 annexation of Crimea wasn't anything anyone in NATO said or did, it was the newly elected Ukrainian government's signalling that they wanted to join NATO.
That's not where I would put the emphasis. Though there was some courting, the anti-Russian sentiment in these countries was genuine.
Russia shares its borders with 14 other nations. What happened is that, one by one, many of these joined, or became partner to, an alliance which views Russia as something to be contained. Russian leaders may not have been worried at first, but that changed later.
Contained within it's borders. You mean like constrained from territorial expansion and annexation of neighbouring territory? Yes. Just as all the European countries are contained within their borders.
Being constrained within your borders should be the default for everyone. The fact that Moscow has a president that doesn't think that way is exactly the problem NATO was created to deal with.
I'm a realist, I know there are cases when military interventions are necessary. Preventing genocide in Kosovo, kicking the Iraqi army out of Kuwait. There can be messy situations where the right course of action isn't clear, but Ukraine is not one of those. Flat out annexing large swathes of neighbouring countries is precisely the problem NATO was created to counter. It turns out for very, very good reason.
Are we talking about 1999?
There have been... a lot of momentous geopolitical events since 1999.
That was long after the whole mess in Bosnia, so it's not like we hadn't seen a horrible bloody genocidal conflict that the US and European countries intervened in before.
Yeah we didn't start it, we just backed a coup to overthrow Ukraine's pro-Russian government in 2014 and, according to Merkel, used the Minsk (peace) agreements as cover to buy time to use NATO trainers to build up Ukraine's military. Russia and Ukraine were close to a deal at the very beginning of the war in Turkey and we obviously pressured Ukraine to abandon that. To this moment we have our secretary of defense on TV saying "no cease fire". The idea that we've been helpless bystanders to this war is false, it's the exact opposite, we've been in the driver's seat of this conflict from way before it started.
The reality is, the military industrial complex, which is in complete control of foreign policy, has been pushing for this for years so they could get a $100B+ check from DC and they got it.
There is unprecedented growth of oil and natural gas sales to Europe, which completely displaced Russia as the biggest supplier. The arms contracts are rising heavily, making at least half of the world's armies interested in replacing old equipment. Prices are rising as well as profits.
Secondly, securing Ukraine would add up to the capitalistic market huge amounts of resources like grains and metals. This is a huge area of future investments that would provide gains for capital markets for years. Not to mention educated, hard-working populace.
There is also a matter of prestige. It is hard not to see the military advantage that western weapons have over the soviet ones. The risk of any other conflict is lower elsewhere. Still, the US is considered a worthy ally, whose guarantees are reliable.
Those are the advantages. Costs? Old military equipment that should be replaced anyway. Some money as well, but hey, banks are being given free cash as well. No boots on the ground, NATO expansion, many of the help come from allies. You can't make it cheaper.
And above all, morally you are still on the right side. Incredible.
Raytheon didn’t invade Ukraine. Boeing didn’t invade Ukraine. There’s one country with one leader that invaded Ukraine, and that is where the sole responsibility lies for that decision.
He did so solely and specifically in response to the expressed democratic wishes of the Ukrainian people. That is what this war is about. You know it, I know it, the rest is just distraction.
You have been misinformed. The sovereign institution in Ukraine is the Verkhovna Rada, the parliament, which overwhelmingly approved an association agreement with the European Union. Yanukovych refused to sign it, and after extensive popular protests in favour of the association agreement, on 22 February 2010 the parliament voted overwhelmingly to remove Yanukovych from office. Crucially he then issued an official statement of resignation.
The constitutional situation is messy, for sure, but the guy resigned. He didn't have to do that, but he did. The fact he went crying to mommy in Moscow and then tried to un-resign himself is rather sad, but doesn't change the facts.
>The reality is, the military industrial complex, which is in complete control of foreign policy, has been pushing for this for years
So the military industrial complex in the USA have been pushing for Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine. I'm not sure I understand how that works. Could you explain?
The Russians will have had their corresponding preferences and influence campaigns, just as they did in US elections. (They may have even expressed them via dioxin, in Yushchenko's case.)
> What do you think diplomats do?
Or wait, how many coups do you think the US has actually been involved in since WWII?
Then again, the fact that you claim the US uses no coercion means you're probably trolling and I fell for it, so well played.
https://www.wsj.com/video/opinion-joe-biden-forced-ukraine-t...
I'm sure you were well aware of this and many other examples and yet you are on here pretending we don't use those tactics in Ukraine. Why?
Here's a UN report on aid agencies using their influence on recipient countries to demand better governance and fight corruption. So the answer to your question is, it was responsible aid management in line with international norms.
https://www.unodc.org/documents/treaties/publications/aid_ag...
Since you're so deeply concerned about US coercion of Ukraine for the personal political advantage of US politicians, I'm sure Trump's blatant attempts to do so as confirmed by several members of his own administration are particularly outrageous to you. Strange that you didn't mention it.
> I'm sure Trump's blatant attempts to do so as confirmed by several members of his own administration are particularly outrageous to you. Strange that you didn't mention it.
These "popular protests" were violent. The vote was at gunpoint, that's what makes it a coup.
> the military industrial complex in the USA have been pushing for Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine. I'm not sure I understand how that works. Could you explain?
Sure. They lobby the legislative and executive branch to aggressively expand NATO, to send NATO trainers into a military on Russia's border, they lobby to have the US sabotage the Minsk accords, so that anti-Russian forces in Ukraine spend 8 years killing thousands of ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine.
It's like everyone taking the State Dept/arms industry bait on this conflict hasn't heard of the Monroe Doctrine. If another country did in Mexico 1/5th of what we've been doing in Ukraine for the past 15 years we would have turned Mexico into ashes.
The idea the parliament voted for the EU accord at gun point is absurd to the point of fantastical. Whose guns? The president was in charge of the army and police and he was pro Moscow. If there were any guns pointed, and there were, it was to try to prevent the pro western tide.
> Meanwhile US relations with Europe would be at the lowest level since WW2, it would be seen as an utter abandonment and betrayal of our shared values, including US treaty guarantees on the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine
If you’re referring to the Budapest agreement, it’s not a treaty. And other countries should educate themselves and understand that unilateral commitments by the President that aren’t ratified by Congress aren’t worth anything.
That is being affected by the land war. As soon as the first tank went over the line into Ukraine there were going to be harmful global consequences whatever any other country did.
As for presidential commitments. Taiwans existential security is based entirely on verbal presidential commitments going back to George W.
Do you relish the prospect of Russian troops on the borders of Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania? I don't.
Meanwhile US relations with Europe would be at the lowest level since WW2, it would be seen as an utter abandonment and betrayal of our shared values, including US treaty guarantees on the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine. America's allies across the world would know for a fact the US could not be relied upon to support them. Russia would know this. Taiwan would know this. China and North Korea would know this.
They would also realise that this situation might only last as long as the current administration. There are some in the world that would see this as a golden opportunity.