Chomsky's foreign policy views can somewhat accurately be reduced to "everything is either American imperialism or reactions against it," to a degree that he ignores the imperialist tendencies (and other unpleasantries) of countries that aren't the US because they're against the US. For example, his denial of the Cambodian genocide essentially boiled down to "well, the US doesn't like the Khmer Rouge, so therefore everybody criticizing the Khmer Rouge was overselling the criticism, how was anyone at the time to know what they were doing?"
I don't think that makes sense - they only bombed a small percentage of Cambodia but no doubt the turmoil helped Pol Pot get into power.
"...it would be a credulous fool who swallowed the (unsupported) word of Osama Bin Laden that his group was the one responsible. An attempt to kidnap or murder an ex-president of the United States (and presumably, by extension, the sitting one) would be as legally justified as the hit on Abbottabad. And America is an incarnation of the Third Reich that doesn’t even conceal its genocidal methods and aspirations. This is the sum total of what has been learned, by the guru of the left, in the last decade."
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2011/05/noam-chomsky-on-...
Also, of course Osama Bin Laden did 9/11. The part that doesn't get talked about is that we blatantly antagonized this sort of result by (by in part the funding of) murdering and dehumanizing people worldwide in the name of ideological and economic dominance and called it progress.
Noam Chomsky had some financial money transfers and a series of meetings arranged by Jeffrey Epstein. At least one meeting with Ehud Barak (former PM of Israel). And he refused to explain himself.
This got quickly swept under the rug. But it's there even on mainstream media if you bother to search for it.
In addition a LOT of academics met with Epstein. The whole point of Epstein was that he clawed himself up the social ladder by schmoozing with money people and raising funds for academic work. It would be entirely shocking if Epstein raised all this money for academia and didn’t even try and meet probably the only famous academic in the world.
You can find many things that Noam missed the mark on. To err is human. But this is conspiratorial and not fair. If you were judged by all the people you had financial or social dealings with I’d imagine you would share a similar sentiment.
course, that would be a social demerit - a paddlin', boy.
This is a mischaracterization. He explained Russia's stated motivation for invading Ukraine, that it felt threatened by NATO's continual eastward encroachment and breaking of promises not to do so. That's different than endorsing the invasion, which he did not.
There were never any promises, and Putin barely even cared that it resulted in Finland and Sweden joining NATO.
Because Russia's stated motivation for invading Ukraine was never Putin's actual reason, which is basically an emotional desire for historical greatness by reclaiming Russia's lost empire, combined with war always being an excellent mechanism for staying in power and distracting from domestic problems.
So it's sad to see anyone falling for Putin's lies so easily. (See also Mearshimer.)
Even if you reject the "encroaching NATO" narrative, what makes "Putin just woke up one day and decided that remaking the Soviet Union and/or the zarist Russian Empire would be a great thing to do in the 21th century" the more plausible hypothesis?
What information do you have that Mearsheimer doesn't?
The IR community does not share Mearsheimer's take. He is very much known to be the exception. Which is why he's the only one we're referring to by name here, because his analysis is so contrary to the overwhelming consensus of experts.
(Having both "pro-russian" and "pro-western" family members, so I'm engaged in lots of discussions currently and would be glad for new information, no matter which side)
I think it's important which countries the experts are coming from. That our own IR/Russia experts are sharing this view doesn't seem very surprising to me - it's a war situation after all. I just notice that a lot of non-Western countries seem to be at least undecided which narrative to follow, e.g. Brazil, India, Turkey, many African countries. (Ignoring China which is obviously allied with Russia and therefore also has a clear bias).
Also, BRICS membership seems to be in demand, what I wouldn't expect if it was generally believed to be dominated by an insane, warmongering megalomaniac.
Mearsheimer is not alone though (even though it's definitely a minority position here). Jeffrey Sax, Ulrike Guerot and, well, Noam Chomsky come to mind, or also organisations such as fair.org with well-documented sources.
I don't think it's important to engage in prejudice based on national origin.
> I just notice that a lot of non-Western countries seem to be at least undecided which narrative to follow
141 countries decided that Russia's aggression is deserving of condemnation and must stop: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_General_Assembl...
Additionally, the court with relevant jurisdiction (composed of impartial judges from western and non-western countries) has decided that Putin should be arrested and tried for his crimes: https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/situation-ukraine-icc-judges-is...
Doesn't seem too undecided.
My post did not cover Chomsky's takes on the matter because, honestly, I have not read them. Not for lack of desire, just personal time and priority.
Because personal attacks are common, I am western born and raised and I don't consume any media outside western media outside of the sporadic stuff that drifts down through social media.
I have no idea if this is true. I also don't want to say that Russia always tells the whole truth without lies and propaganda. But I'm finding it rather that our own side doesn't behave in the Ukraine conflict as we behave in other conflicts between third countries. We also engage in a lot of propaganda and biased reporting, especially on the topic of Ukraine and Israel (as shown by fair.org), so I've become careful too quickly deciding what the truth is.
(I do disagree in at least one point with all the russia apologists though: Whatever may have happened in Ukraine before the war and whatever the larger context is, what is happening right now there is driven by Russia and is absolutely devastating for Ukrainians. That Ukrainians hate Russia is absolutely understandable. So I think we should continue to support Ukraine. Nevertheless, if there was some hidden context in the lead-up of the war, it would be in our best interests to expose this.)
Except from within.
Why does thinking about nuclear weapons cause most people to think in absolutist terms like this?
Maybe Russia was counting on getting a 15-minute warning of ICBMs approaching, but if a hostile military can station missile right on their southwestern border (523 miles from the center of Moscow) their plan goes out the window.
I don't understand the question. Can you elaborate?
How would you go about invading Russia, as a senior NATO commander? Russia's stated policy is to deploy nuclear arms against any invading force.
As for a hypothetical sneak attack on Moscow, are you familiar with the concept of the strategic defense triad?
NATO would have to nuke Russia, then invade. Tank crew are protected from fallout radiation. If they have filtered air, I think they can enter "fallout plumes" right away. Soldiers not protected by tanks will be able to enter in about 3 weeks: weapons fallout is very different in character from the contamination from, e.g., Chernobyl or Fukushima. It dissipates much more rapidly. In fact, since the fallout plumes will cover only about half of the land area or less, the tanks can map out the locations of the plumes, after which the infantry might be able to enter the parts of the country missed by the fallout plumes well before 3 weeks after the end of the nuclear attack. (The fallout stays in one place after it has fallen out of the sky and has hit the ground -- or more precisely the fallout that does end up being blown around by the wind after it has hit the ground is small enough in particle size to not be deadly, though it will mess up your mucus membranes via beta radiation, hence my words above about filtering the air for the tanks.)
When Jens Stoltenberg says that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought, his "cannot be won" is not literally true. He is saying it to emphasize that NATO would never even consider starting a nuclear war. And in fact I don't think the US or NATO ever would choose to start an intercontinental nuclear war, but it is very hard for the Kremlin to come to understand the US well enough to be as confident of that as I am (having lived in the US for over 60 years). Also, the people who run Russia and who will run Russia after Putin is dead are professional spies. They are evaluated by how seriously they take national security. Also, Russia has been invaded about 50 times in its recorded history: by the French, the Germans, a Polish-Lithuanian confederation, Sweden, the Turks many times, various groups (other than the Turks) looking to get slaves, Central Asian peoples and many kinds of steppe nomads (mostly notably the Mongols, Tatars and Cossacks). The whole country takes national security very seriously.
Of course NATO would want to evacuate its cities before it begins its attack. If it does, more than half of its population will survive the inevitable Russian response -- probably much more than half. (It's been a while since I saw the relevant papers.) Also, the US has spent many tens of billions on research into missile defense, and Russia cannot know with any certainly whether that research has born enough fruit so that the US can shoot down most of Russia ICBMs in a big war. Also, the Kremlin has expressed concern that the US Aegis system can shoot down Russian ICBMs, and now that Ukraine is good buddies with NATO, Russia has to consider the possibility of NATO's stationing many Aegis systems in Eastern Ukraine in addition to the Aegis systems already on US destroyers in the Baltic Sea.
In 1951 or so, China sent an army of about a million men against a large number of soldiers of the US Army. This Chinese army had the usual instructions from its political masters, namely, to kill as many US soldiers as possible and to destroy their equipment. They did this even though they would only get their first nuke in the 1960s whereas in 1951 the US had hundreds of nukes. Although the events I just described are a far cry from China's invading the US homeland, it does go against the notion that nukes are somehow a magical shield against conventional military attacks if even a non-nuclear military will contemplate attacking a nuclear power.
By the way, consider the motive of Beijing in 1951: the reason they risked getting nuked was to avoid having a regime (namely, the regime in Seoul) friendly to the US on their border. They preferred having a buffer state, namely, North Korea between them and any country friendly enough with the US to maybe agree to host US troops. They preferred it so much that they sent a million men and risked getting nuked. That is one of the data points that led Mearsheimer, Kissinger, Merkel, Sarkozy and many other security experts to criticize the plan of adding Ukraine to NATO. (Merkel and Sarkozy stopped their criticism because Paris and Berlin depend on Washington to guarantee their security, which gives Washington the last word on Paris and Berlin's security policy, so they went along with the plan even though that thought they still thought it was dumb.)
(And it makes no sense to nuke Russia without first evacuating US cities and advising Americans to make fallout shelters, which would mostly consist of trenches dug into the ground covered by logs or plywood covered by a plastic sheet to keep out the rain covered by 18 inches of dirt.)
Think about it. There would be acts of Congress involved with drumming up and establishing funding and fiscal programs devoted to the task of constructing, or making available to everyone the material to construct these types of shelters. Once it was prioritized as s National Security priority posture, you can bet your sweet rear Moscow would be on the line to Washington/the State Department, and similarly mobilizing their own interests in response to what would be a transparent act of escalation in the abscence of any reasonable explanation. It would also be a clear signal to someone who actually had some intent to initiate or chance a strike that somehow, news of that had leaked to their adversaries as well, even if they vehemently denied any such intent up to zero-day.
You don't just mobilize on that kind of scale, militarily, or civically without sending very clear and obvious signals to other nation states with even a modicum of interest in self-preservation in the face of external threats. Especially in today's highly interconnected world.
Got it.
I'd take advantage of Russia's folly of invading a neighboring country and use that opportunity to destroy Russia's military forces, all while hampering their ability to rebuild that materiel.
Meanwhile, I'd have anti-ICBM technology in place so if Russia did try to launch, it would be largely ineffective. Besides, if Russia did try to launch, they'd lose the few allies they have, save for North Korea. It would probably also ensure Siberia leaves - and at that point Russia would be powerless to stop it.
What I don't need to do is invade Russia.
NATO threat to Russia is internal fear-mongering propaganda and I have no idea why Mearsheimer and others talk about it with a serious face. We're not in the middle of 20th century anymore.
On one hand we have EU/US/NATO intelligence saying Kiev will fall in 72 hours to the 2nd best army in the world.
And then on the other hand we must believe Mearsheimer that Putin really fears that EU/US/NATO would start a war out of the blue with a country that has 45% of world's nuclear arsenal in the middle of Europe?
Give me a break.
No one sane in Europe is interested to start a war with Russia.
Europe and especially Merkel have spent the last few decades turning Russia into an important trading partner and tying them heavily into the European market. This worked well for them with the economic union post World War 2 (that turned into the European Union) which stopped wars in Europe for almost a century.
Similar approach was taken with Russia, but sadly it didn't work.
Russia has every right to fear NATO and make plans around it. But to say Russia invaded Ukraine because of NATO (or nazis) is nonsense.
I don't believe you'll even find any Russian opposition/anti-government journalist/scientist/economist or politician talk the "NATO threat" reasoning seriously. They know what Putin has been doing to their country for the last 20+ years, and it has nothing to do with NATO.
Sane, no, but Macron for instance suggested the West should send boots on the ground in Ukraine, and while he's clearly unhinged he was until recently the President of the second most powerful EU country and an important nuclear Nato member (although French people I've met were dismissive about the French nuclear deterrent; "it can bleach corals", I was told).
And don't forget that the far right (to put it politely) is rising in Europe, including in France and in Germany were they are the second most powerful political power and possibly soon the first in France. Do you know what happened last time the far right was rising in Europe?
When we're talking about nuclear war as a possible future I don't think it hurts to hedge al the bets ever.
USA isn't counting on a 15 minute warning either, MAD is ensured via second strike capability AFTER the first strike, if you are counting for the first strike you've already lost.
But on second thought, I concede that the shortened warning time relative to ICBMs is probably not a major cause of Russia's anxiety about Ukraine.
See: the Cuban Missile Crisis:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Missile_Crisis
In any case, even in a MAD setting every side will be constantly trying to manoeuver to a position of advantage. That's what military people do when they're not actually fighting, kind of how computer nerds play video games when they're not coding, eh?
The Russians have had more than ample opportunity to join the civilized world and stop acting like dicks, but that's apparently not what they want to do. So, containment it is.
And if they feared NATO encroachment on their borders, trying to take over Ukraine was a really stupid way to discourage that. Nukes are scary enough, but nukes in the hands of stupid people are downright terrifying. Personally I doubt any of theirs still work, but that's all too easy to say.
>In any case, even in a MAD setting every side will be constantly trying to manoeuver to a position of advantage.
There is no real "advantage" over having an extra few minutes or not. Russia is also building some sort of nuclear tsunami weapon, the US does not care. Because the strategy remains unchanged from threat of ICBMs. Frankly speaking, if you want to talk about what actually is a disadvantage for Russia right now, it's this war. If NATO actually invaded, they'd caught with their pants down. Hell, the US might even successfully ensure a first strike given they moved their air defences away.
The fact that Putin started this war even when knowing this should tell you that he dosen't actually view NATO as a threat. And they're not, from the Houthis, to Iran to Hamas, everbody can tell the US has no stomach for a war. This is not the result of US aggression, it is the result of US unassertiveness
The problem with that is that NATO is next door to Russia now. Nuclear deterrence doesn't work that well when it means nuking your foot.
Seen another way, Russia doesn't need ICBMs to reach London, Paris, Berlin...
But, really, try to think more carefully of what you're discussing: nuclear war. The threat to the existence of human civilisation from that is too big for macho politics and "we're stronger than them" braggadocio. As Chomsky pointed out once, and as aggravating as this is, that means letting assholes get away with murder on the international scene; which means not just Russia, but also the US, Israel, China, and who knows who else, in time.
Putin is definitely crushing us at manly and assertive displays, though.
Russians are winning now because they've figured out logistics within 50 miles of their borders compared to earlier in the war. Still doesn't mean they can project globally, and everyone knows.
Give me a break. You can throw a rock from Estonia and hit Saint Petersburg, look at a map of the area sometime. Estonia has been in NATO for over 15 years or something like that. Somehow Russia's been ok with that situation so far as to not start a shooting war over it.
This war with Ukraine is purely a war of aggression based on a Russian chauvinistic narrative of history. Putin explicitly says so in his writings, e.g. "On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians".
Russia wants to regain its "lost" territories, started with annexation of tchetchenia (2 wars), annexation of parts of Georgia, and annexation of Crimea. Ukraine was next regardless. They already annexed the break away republics of Ukraine, and even land that they since lost.
No need for pretexts (NATO, denazification, biolabs, or protection of Ukraine ethnic Russians) to explain Ukraine invasion. Ukraine not ruling out joining NATO meant they had to invade while they could, or let go the dream of a glorious Grand Russia.
I mean, they don’t even hide it, it’s all over their state TV networks, with propagandists telling things like "Europe will be ours", "To Berlin", and "The world belongs to the superior Russian race". It’s textbook fascism, state-sponsored, casual, on modern TV shows. I find it disturbing that some still think they are the victim and it’s all about NATO imperialism. When was the last time some NATO country annexed some land?
As to a more realistic narrative -- it's a bit more nuanced than the formulation you suggest, but even so -- is pretty much obvious once we look at the things Putin and key people around him have been saying, along with the last 350 years of so of Russia's history vis-a-vis its neighbors and Belarus and Ukraine in particular.
The links in the short comment tree below (which answered essentially the same question from just a few weeks ago) might be useful here:
Giving a simple answer is not wrong if the long one takes much longer to explain. Multiple factors can be true, I'm sure Russia was uneasy that Siberia wanted to leave and with Ukraine gone they would have no direct access to water there. And the threat of China slowing taking over Russian land *with Russian permission of course*. Russia has attempted to do something even if extremely poorly miscalculated. That's kinda what Russia is known for, doing something and very often failing at it.
They have been lucky, sometimes clever but often terrible truly terrible at long term long planning. Ask their unpatriotic AI what it thinks, they will get mad about it too.
Explain?
Mearsheimer can be a bit too convincing for his own good, surely. What he has argued that is certainly convincing is that Russia was ready to negotiate a peace at the start of the war, when Russians and Ukrainians met in Belarus and then in Istanbul. If Putin wanted to recreate Imperial Russia, or the Soviet Union, then why would he negotiate for peace?
That's Mearsh's argument, which he articulates, e.g. here in Lex Friedman's show (sorry, I couldn't find a better source):
https://youtube.com/watch?v=r4wLXNydzeY&t=2684
Full transcript here:
That Russia and Ukraine were negotiating an end to the war, early on, and that their representatives met in Istanbul and hammered out a deal is not in dispute, you can find information about those talks all over the 'net, e.g. here by the BBC:
https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-europe-60890199
And here by Reuters:
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/turkey-says-russia-ukra...
From what I can find online, the negotiations advanced to the point where there was a comprehensive deal on the table that detailed security guarantees for Ukraine and a neutrality commitment on their side, but the deal was abandoned. Mearsheimer has claimed that it was because the US and the UK told the Ukrainians to drop the deal because they could win the war with the continued support of the West (and we saw how well that turned out). I obviously don't know enough to tell for sure whether that claim makes sense. There may well have been more than one reason that the deal fell apart.
Details here:
And a longer discussion here, were a speaker claims that Putin's plan was a US-style change of government, like the Americans did in Baghdad, (and we all saw how well that one turned out):
https://www.nprillinois.org/2024-05-06/the-story-behind-2022...
I don't know who those people are though in the panel, so I have no idea about their credibility etc.
Now, whatever the reason for the negotiations, I think it's indisputable at this point that Russia did come to the negotiating table and proposed terms to end the conflict. A sensible thing to do given that their "special operation" was, at the time, going to the dogs.
This is laughable. Russia cannot give any credible security guarantee to a country that it has just invaded! The war has shown precisely that Russia still believes that it has the right to control Ukraine and that any negotiated peace is nothing more than a temporary pause in hostilities in anticipation of a more opportune moment for Russia. Putin is a cypher and no-one really knows exactly why he wants to invade and conquer Ukraine, but as it is enormously plain at this point that he does want to do so, this entails that there is no really workable negotiated settlement.
Security guarantees would be provided by Western countries, not only Russia.
Russia's key conditions for the supposed "deal" that you refer to were that (i) the size of the Ukrainian army would be heavily constrained and that (ii) Russia would have a veto on any response to future aggression against Ukraine. Ukraine rejected the deal because it would have been worthless.
To distract western military support.
To distract offensive\defensive ukrainian plans.
To construct a peaceful narrative at home or the war mongering west.
To strengthen or pet allies, who mediate.
To gain intelligence about the willingness of territorial sacrifice.
Would Putin ever publicly admit his grand soviet plan? If no, then how would he behave instead? Consider georgia, chechenia, belarus, etc.
Now, I don't like guessing. When Russia entered negotiations the war was clearly not going its way, so the obvious explanation is that Putin wanted to disentangle from it with the least damage to his image as possible.
The question is why the negotiations failed, if they were really as advanced as suggested in the articles I linked above. Since the name of Boris Johnson has been brought up (in the context of being one of the Western representatives that told Zelenskiy to drop the deal) I tend to believe that a peace deal failed because at least one side in the negotiations was incompetent fools who should have never made it in power. That the other side is probably the same makes no difference.
The problem is that Western media picks too easily up even the most stupid Russian narratives.
Because as he keeps saying over and over -- the only "peace" he will accept is one in which his claims to sovereignty on the territories he is currently sitting are recognized by Western powers. This was his core demand during the Istanbul talks, and it's his current demand now (though he's upped it a bit recently to include regime change in Kyiv).
For a serial territorial aggressor like the modern Russian state, "peace" is simply another mechanism for arriving that same the desired end state.
It's also useful as a propaganda tool, to mollify the opposition to what he's doing ("See, Putin just wants peace -- he even says so!"), get people to start talking about how costly the war is, how the West is the real aggresor and so forth. That's where Mearsheimer et al come in.
That seems to be the essence of your argument here.
(None of those wars are directly analogous to what Russia is doing to Ukraine right now of course; but never mind that for now).
And yes, the wars were not directly analogous but the stark reality of the matter is that the US and RUssia are two of the world bullies that are capable of invading anyone they like, and nobody can do anything about it. Again: why should I like one more than the other? Why should anyone, who is not their citizen?
One shouldn't, and both should be condemned of course.
And not apologized for, like you are doing here.
To be even more clear: those nations include Russia, the US, China, and basically every other national entity with an army that you might want to propose.
For the record, I also dislike, strongly, people on the internet who cannot hold a conversation without insulting their interlocutor, or accusing them of some perceived mind crime.
If that's not what they were, then I misread them. In regard to the peace negotiations -- it does seem (from some of the sibling threads) like you're very quick to grant the Russian side a pass, and to assign an unduly high a likelihood to the possibility that the Ukrainian/Western side simply botched their end of it (because Boris, etc). An assessment that just doesn't hold up in view of how the Russians conducted themselves during those negotiations, as the person responding to you pointed out:
Check also: Germany, South Korea and Japan have more American militiamen stationed there than the active duty personnel of the majority of the countries in the world.
You seem to be implying equivalence between a thousand soldier operation and a full scale war comprising of half a million soldiers on both sides.
Afghanistan? You seem to forget that Russia also invaded them.
You also seem to forget Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Georgia, and Ukraine.
So, no, the wars started by "the West" are not significantly more than the wars started by Russia or the USSR.
In any case that still leaves Russia aggression on par with US aggression. My point in this thread is that I don't see the reason to prefer the US and "the West" to Russia. Or China. I would certainly not want to be a citizen of any of those three.
Fine. Don't take my word for it. Go look.
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_War:
"The Korean War was fought between North Korea and South Korea; it began on 25 June 1950 when North Korea invaded South Korea and ceased after an armistice on 27 July 1953. North Korea was supported by the People's Republic of China and the Soviet Union while South Korea was supported by the United Nations Command (UNC) led by the US."
How many wars post-WWII can you name that were started by US allies? Other than Israel, and excluding domestic terrorism issues (Italy, Germany, UK), I'm drawing a blank here.
Korea was started by a USSR ally (North Korea invading South Korea), the UN Command (led by the US) was a defensive response.
Vietnam is...well, the whole post-WW2 situation in the region is complicated, but it's reasonable to view it as started by Western allies of the US, particularly France.
Iraq 1990- was started by Iraq. Iraq 2003 was started by the US.
Afghanistan 1980 was started by the USSR Afghanistan 2001 was started by the al-Qaeda, a force intimately connected to and defended by the Taliban and based in Taliban-held territory, attacking the US.
Your list of examples doesn't really make a strong case for your thesis.
Maersheimer and Chomsky are useful idiots of the Kremlin
you don't know for sure. The only evidence is some notes from brit diplomats I think which refer on such promise..
Also, Ukraine is much more considered as Russian inner territory than Finland and Sweden, and Putin likely got freaked out that pro-western movements will move to actual Russia and kill his regime.
Putin's regime wanted heavy-handed control over its neighbors; and the Maidan revolution demonstrated not only that this control wasn't as strong as it appeared, but also that it might be possible to break free from that oppression for others too, including perhaps Russian's. That example was the threat from which Putin was "defending" himself.
As much as Chomsky's well-reasoned talks are worth respect, he never really addressed that well. Putin's defense vs. the NATO threat was about as reasonable as a colonial power's "defense" vs. their subject's freedom; and it's also being executed about as reasonably, too. But to hear Chomsky describe it this is basically irrelevant; anything opposed to American overreach is reasonable - even when it's clearly not, and it's not even clear there's any overreach in the matter at hand.
I wish Chomsky a speedy recovery, but he has had a number bad political takes over the years.
All this talk of "poor Russia and its thirteen timezones felt threatened by a defensive alliance" is complete bullshit. It's the "she looked at me wrong so I stabbed her" defense, and the fact that Chomsky could not see right through this is telling.
The explanation is much simpler - Putin wanted to add a slice to the empire, and miscalculated that the West would do nothing, like it did before. And then the bitching and moaning ensued.
Did the neutral Sweden consider joining NATO before the invasion? No. Poor Russia, besieged by all sides by the neighbors who do not want to die defending against Russian recidivist meat waves and in torture cellars.
Just. Stop. It.
That is a total nonsense that has been called as such by people who were in key positions of power in the USSR and pre-Putin Russia. Out of their irrational anti-american hatred, "intellectuals" like Chomsky choose to blatantly ignore when people like Gorbachev directly say that the sob story about NATO promising not to accept Eastern Europe into the organization is a myth that even theoretically isn't plausible and couldn't be true.
The way he phrases it, NATO was essentially at fault and the Russian response followed from that. I don't buy that he misspoke or we misheard; the line of reasoning was very clearly stated. We can quibble about what "taking sides" means, but the message he meant to convey was that the current outcome was the US's responsibility.
Chomsky's line of reasoning was clear, but it's always been very weak on this matter (he's said this quite often). It largely ignores the Kremlin's agency; it hardly matters what the US did here since the Kremlin had choices too and those mattered much more. Even more problematically, it ignored both Ukrainian and the wider post-Soviet region's agency as well. NATO expansion was never forced on anyone; to the contrary, it was eagerly sought after, and why? Because the Kremlin wasn't to be trusted, which turned out to be an accurate prediction.
It didn't have to be so; the Kremlin's institutional mistreatment of its neighborhood _caused_ that mistrust and sustain it to this day. The Kremlin could have acted in good faith, and would have continued to receive the warm welcome from western governments that the initial post-Soviet governments did. It could have mended the Soviet-derived mistrust in eastern Europe, and likely easily so given it's richness in natural resources, and the logistical centrality that attracted trade between former USSR nations via Russia, and it's initially warm reception by western powers.
The hint of far-future NATO membership was a "threat" to Putin the way mere talk of bolt-cutters are a threat to a kidnapper. That threat might well have been real, to be clear, but framing it the way Chomsky did isn't helpful; it obscures Putin's (or the Kremlin's inner circle's) choice to be an oppressive, almost colonial power ruling over it's neighbors.
The problem never was talk of bolt-cutters, the problem is that people _wanted_ those for a reason.
The guy has a different opinion.
It's going to happen a lot so maybe better to get used to it?
It matters.
It seems a bit of a historical change - in the 19th century view it would be ok for the Russians to get pissed off with the US trying to steal their Ukrainian peasants and associated property. These days you're supposed to let sovereign democracies do their own thing even if they have smaller armies.
“These days” also apply to us and our allies and it is an unfortunate part of how things run.
Yes, until they make the mistake of democratically electing someone you don't like, at which point you send in the secret services to instigate violent regime change.
There's an entire wikipedia article dedicated to the US doing that all over the place:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...
They sort of did that to my own country (Greece) where they supported a ridiculous military dictatorship (Junta), although I don't think they actively helped it to power. If you find my comments coloured by a certain antipathy towards US external policy, that may be one reason.
Taking sides is a sign of emotional, not intellectual approach. And Russia/Ukraine conflict is way far from good fighting evil simplified construct.
I don't like leftists in general and Chomsky in particlar, but I give him huge respect for intellectual and independent position, which will cause him losing appreciation from people like you.
I'd say rather than emotional he has the usual academic thing of being up in one specialist area - in this case US imperialism and not up on another speciality like Russia's history of invasion, expansion and the like.
I agree its well thought position. As much as I disagree with him on many matters, he is absolutely right here. Besides being right, it takes immense courage to go against mainstream (which he apparently did all his life) and that’s something i can’t avoid admiring.
I don't. There are some things out there that are up for debate. But not Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Chomsky, for some weird reason, chose to take Russia's side.
Edit: To be sure, I wish him full recovery and many more happy years.
https://www.e-flux.com/notes/470005/open-letter-to-noam-chom...