↪Isaac
He's wrong if one believes that what distinguishes revolutions from coups is massive popular participation. — Xanatos

Geroge Friedman's quotation is misleading, due to opportunistic editing (something Isaac himself and others like-minded participants are prone to do) as he himself explained:
On a visit to Russia, I told the business journal Kommersant that if the US were behind a coup in Kiev, it would have been the most blatant coup in history, as the US government openly supported the uprising and had provided some funding for the demonstrating groups. In other words, it was no coup. The Russian news service Sputnik published what I said, cutting out a few odds and ends, and quoted me as saying that Ukraine “was the most blatant coup in history.” The neat part is that they didn’t make it up. I did say it. They just left out the words before and after the statement. Since I was of no importance in the United States, they had to promote me as someone significant, which on the whole was nice of them.
https://www.businessinsider.com/george-friedman-russia-is-winning-the-internet-2016-4?r=US&IR=T

you keep talking about “the United States jealously guarding its position at the top” and “U.S. hubris” which seem to me bearing a moral connotation (even though neither Russia nor the US are moral actors). — neomac

I'd say it's a fairly accurate description of how the United States acts. I could have used more objective terms. — Tzeentch

How would you rephrase those expressions in more objective terms?

There's no question that the West and Russia sought to influence Ukraine prior to 2008, but I explicitly used the term "security competition”. — Tzeentch

All right, then what were you referring to when you wrote “If there was any, it was one-sidedly coming from the West” in your previous post?

On one side, “peaceful coexistence” should be “the goal of nations” (at any price?), on the other, many nations pursue hegemonic ambitions at the expense of peaceful coexistence. How can any non-hegemonic geopolitical actor ensure that all other hegemonic or non-hegemonic geopolitical actors will give up on pursuing hegemonic ambitions? — neomac

They can't, which is why I consider myself a realist. But that doesn't change the fact that any reasonable human being desires peace. Geopolitical actors simply aren't very reasonable when it comes to that. They are only reasonable when it comes to maximizing their power. — Tzeentch

Again if “any reasonable human being desires peace” is a fact, then is “any reasonable human being desires peace at any cost” also a fact to you? If so, then the latter sounds not only more accurate, but arguably a first step to cope with your cognitive dissonance.

I have no illusions that geopolitical actors will ever pursue policies that are compatible with my moral views. You can stop spinning your cognitive dissonance yarn now. Didn't I recall you saying something about intellectual dishonesty? — Tzeentch

There is a misunderstanding. By “cognitive dissonance” I didn’t mean that you have delusional expectations (I don’t think that’s what the technical notion implies either [1]), but that there is an undesirable clash between incompatible beliefs (normative and factual) both of which you hold.

[1] In the field of psychology, cognitive dissonance is the perception of contradictory information, and the mental toll of it. Relevant items of information include a person's actions, feelings, ideas, beliefs, values, and things in the environment. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance)

As I have said earlier in this thread, I don't believe what the French or the Germans wanted, or even to a large extent what the Ukrainians themselves wanted, was very relevant to Russia's perception of the threat of Ukraine joining NATO. And I would agree with that Russian assessment. If the United States wanted Ukraine into NATO, it was going to pursue that policy whether the French, Germans or Ukrainians wanted it or not, and it likely succeed also. — Tzeentch

First, if we want to scrutinise threat perception about Russia by Westerners, we should be ready to do the same for threat perception about Ukraine joining NATO by the Russians. So Russia made a preventive move to thwart an uncertain (or most certainly opposable, postponeable, non-imminent) future event that was perceived as a threat, which however is not clear to what extent would have impacted its “vital” security concerns.
Second, maybe the US was going to pursue that policy as it did for 30 years, but it’s not evident that it would have succeeded since Germans and French could still have opposed Ukraine joining NATO (also Turkey could have been in handy for that matter) as they did for 30 years, even more so with Nord Stream 2 up and running. Of course the odds changed after Putin aggressed Ukraine. Yet even in the current conditions Western Europeans are still reluctant to discuss about NATO membership for Ukraine. At the end of last year, Macron was still more concerned about giving security guarantees to Russia than discussing NATO membership for Ukraine.

The official statement was that "[Ukraine and Georgia] will become members of NATO." There's nothing ambiguous about that. Don't come at me with 2022 interpretations of what that sentence meant. Moreover, NATO explicitly reaffirmed their commitment to the Bucharest declarations on several occasions. And the U.S. took away all doubt, if any remained, when it supported the 2014 coup d'etat. — Tzeentch

Nothing of what you are saying questions the fact that there was no defined timeline, nor a guarantee that Ukraine was able to meet NATO standards for another 15 years or more. E.g. I wouldn’t exclude the possibility that Putin was in condition to keep supporting the separatist fight in Donbas and the annexation of Crimea with the revenue from Nord Stream 2 to destabilise Ukraine and so likely compromising the Ukrainian chances to join NATO or EU, without making any “special military operation”.
I’m not sure to understand why you keep talking about “coup d'etat” supported by the US. This doesn’t sound as wikipedia trivia, does it? (BTW “coup d'etat” as I understand it refers to illegal and often brutal overthrow of power by politicians or military, Maidan Revolution was a popular revolution).

Yanukhovic was widely considered a Russian puppet by Ukrainians. Putin practically and publicly ran his political campaign, and supported him against fierce Ukrainian opposition. Besides Yanukhovic’s policies concerning national security although pursuing formal neutrality were arguably pro-Russian — neomac

All very regrettable, of course. Sometimes Ukrainian leaders were in the pocket of the West, sometimes in the pocket of the East. It was a delicate balance that they had to protect.
Hard to see this as evidence of "puppetization”. — Tzeentch

Then tell me what you take as evidence of "puppetization”, possibly with historical examples.

After 2014 war was essentially inevitable, because from the Russian point of view, Crimea being cut off from Russia without a land bridge was unsustainable for the same reason Ukraine in NATO was unsustainable.
We must see everything after 2014 as the opening moves of war, and not as representative of policies prior, which is what you and many others here are trying to do. — Tzeentch

I was talking about puppetization and Russification, the war doesn’t question these trends. It’s just the next stadium: forceful territorial annexation and direct political subordination to a hegemonic authoritarian regime. Anyways, even if Putin’s was preparing for this war after 2014 for whatever reason (why wasn’t the Kerch Bridge enough?), something has been holding his “special military operation” until 2022, so I find your claim of “inevitability” debatable (even more so if one takes into account the infamous Russian intelligence failures at the beginning of this war: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2022/russia-fsb-intelligence-ukraine-war/).

The Budapest Memorandum, the hearings entitled “Debate about NATO enlargement”. Mersheimer’s article "The Case for a Ukrainian Nuclear Deterrent” (1993). Russia starting a territorial dispute over Crimea practically immediately after recognising Ukrainian independence. — neomac

A-ha. So NATO enlargement was all about Ukraine, then? Interesting theory. — Tzeentch

This is a random objection. The hearings entitled “Debate about NATO enlargement” concerns NATO enlargement about Central and Eastern Europe including the Baltic States. The article that I linked in the part you opportunistically chopped out was again about Poland and Baltic states (https://www.politico.eu/article/western-europe-listen-to-the-baltic-countries-that-know-russia-best-ukraine-poland/).
To clarify once more my views, my general argument is not that Americans supported NATO enlargement due to a current military threat posed by Russia to Europe or the US. But that the US did so driven by the need to shape a global order ensuring the American hegemony in a post-Cold War era in the longer term (e.g. by controlling international legal and economic institutions like EU and global market) wrt the evolving security challenges posed by main hegemonic competitors (e.g. China in Asia and Russia in Europe), and pretty aware of all the implied risks (including e.g. overstretch, militarisation, provocation). On the other side, in the post-Cold War era the European interest of preserving/enlarging NATO was to let NATO deal with regional and global security concerns (for historical reasons France and the UK were more worried about Germany, while central-eastern europeans were likely worried about Russia), and to focus on economic development and integration, while being pretty aware of the implied risks (demilitarisation, conflict of interests especially between East and West Europe wrt Russia, provocation, etc.). I tried to roughly summarise the American carrot&stick strategy (economic globalisation vs NATO expansion or US interventionism) elsewhere in these terms:

The geopolitical gamble the US took with the globalisation: the implicit bargain the US offered to the Rest of the world was roughly something like the European countries proposed to the US, namely “let’s form a global market for everybody’s prosperity in exchange for global security assurance”. After ~30 years of trying to make this work the US concluded that some ambitious regional powers (e.g. China, Russia, Iran) instead of improving standard of life and regime of rights for their people with the resources available thanks to the globalisation (peaceful and convergent with western progressive views), they were growing more authoritarian, more sympathetic toward anti-western propaganda (if they weren't already, and exporting it also into western countries), more assertive (in economic-military terms) outside their borders and naturally converging into a front hostile to the West. And that's the opposite of security assurance. So Ukraine turned out to be willingly or unwillingly the plausible key test for the US to revise their security strategy both in Europe and on a global scale and address the threats coming from powerful authoritarian anti-Western regimes before it was too late. — neomac

Realism is the lens through which I understand the why and how. A moral framework is what I use to judge how I feel about that. — Tzeentch

What do you mean by "Russia is not a moral actor"? Is the US a moral actor? — neomac
Individuals are moral actors.. — Tzeentch

If you ground your expectations on your realist geopolitical views and at the same time you hold moral beliefs fundamentally incompatible with those expectations, then there is a cognitive dissonance. Such cognitive dissonance may also lead to conceptual confusions: e.g. you claim that “Neither of those (moral or legal) are particularly useful lenses to view the current situation through”, yet you keep talking about “the United States jealously guarding its position at the top” and “U.S. hubris” which seem to me bearing a moral connotation (even though neither Russia nor the US are moral actors).

During this period the Russians were committed to playing nice with the West. Since there wasn't any indication that NATO or the EU were making serious attempts at incorporating Ukraine or that such a thing was even feasible, why would they have answered any different? It seems to me they went to great lengths not to give the impression of being aggressive, even when it touched on vital security concerns. Even when it finally did become a real worry to them, they gave warnings for 15 years. — Tzeentch

Well, signals from Putin were pretty mixed. Despite his conciliatory dispositions in public speeches targeting Western audience, Putin’s deepest attitude was pro-actively adverse toward Westernization of Russia and its neighborhood even before 2008. Here for more details: https://www.understandingwar.org/sites/default/files/ISW%20Report_The%20Kremlin%27s%20Worldview_March%202019.pdf

Crimea is about more than just access to the Mediterranean. It's about control over the Black Sea, the Kerch Strait, the Sea of Azov (highly important in connecting the Russian heartland to trade), Odessa, etc. — Tzeentch

You were talking of “vital interests” and, since often people when talking about Crimea overlook that Russia owns also the Port of Novorossiysk in the Black Sea, it is still matter of debate to what extent the Port of Sevastopol is really “vital” to the Russian interests in the Black Sea.

Prior to 2008, there was a clear commitment from Russia to maintain good relations with the West, and the West was mostly receptive to that.
It is when the U.S. realized Russia was not going to subjugate itself to the U.S. that it started to pursue its policies in Ukraine.
I see no evidence for real security competition between the West and Russia prior to 2008. If there was any, it was one-sidedly coming from the West. — Tzeentch

“One-sided” in what sense? Take the example of the Orange Revolution. This was an example of competition between West and Russia prior to 2008, because Putin publicly campaigned for Yanukovych in Ukraine and Russia, while Western pro-democracy organisations were supporting Yushchenko. In other words in Ukraine there were 2 foreign powers taking sides wrt domestic political competitors. 2 foreign powers are 2 sides, not one.

My perspective presupposes peaceful coexistence is (or "should be") the goal of nations. Sadly, many nations and certainly the U.S. are not driven by that goal. They are driven by hegemonic ambitions like the ones you consider risky to appease.. — Tzeentch

That’s the cognitive dissonance I was talking about. On one side, “peaceful coexistence” should be “the goal of nations” (at any price?), on the other, many nations pursue hegemonic ambitions at the expense of peaceful coexistence. How can any non-hegemonic geopolitical actor ensure that all other hegemonic or non-hegemonic geopolitical actors will give up on pursuing hegemonic ambitions?

Security concerns were taken seriously, that’s the reason why Ukraine felt safer under NATO. What is implicitly suggested by that claim is that Ukraine should have surrendered to Russian demands... — neomac

That's presupposing that Ukraine sought to join NATO for security reasons. It also sought to join the EU, and join the "western world" at large - the U.S. sphere of influence. There were plenty of other benefits that could have guided their decisions.
What was stubbornly ignored were 15 years worth of the Russians voicing their security concerns. A recipe for disaster, anyone could have told you 15 years ago, and that is what we got.
What I'm explicitly suggesting that whoever drove Ukraine to try and join NATO was either A) extremely foolish, or B) not acting in pursuit of Ukrainian interests. (I'm still entertaining the hypothesis that this whole ordeal is largely U.S.-orchestrated).. — Tzeentch

You yourself keep overlooking the fact that for 15 years Russian security concerns led France and Germany to oppose Ukraine inside NATO. Plus, with pro-Russian governments, like Yanukovych’s, the Ukrainian cooperation with NATO wasn’t an issue for Putin, also because it didn’t exclude a strategic partnership with Russia at all. I understand that Putin got more worried when Yanukovych was ousted , however the popular opinion in Ukraine still wasn’t favourable to joining NATO until Putin aggressed Ukraine in 2014 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine%E2%80%93NATO_relations#Popular_opinion_in_Ukraine). As if it wasn’t enough, his “special military operation” is eroding also the support Putin got from the Western Europeans.
In other words, if somebody drove the Ukrainians to try and join NATO, Putin must be put on top of the list of suspects. I’ll let you decide if Putin falls under case A, B or both.
Besides, since I don’t discount the Ukrainian agency and no Western support is enough to explain the historical aversion the Ukrainian widely feel toward the Russians, especially when it’s matter of their independency, and now reinforced due to the war, we can plausibly assume that Ukraine didn’t look for a peaceful coexistence with Russia at any price.

Not sure what you are referring to. Is any of such trivia on wikipedia? Do you have links? — neomac

I'm referring to the 2008 NATO Bucharest Summit, during which it was decided that: "... [Ukraine and Georgia] will become members of NATO."
NATO officially reaffirmed its commitment to this promise on several occasions between 2008 and 2014. — Tzeentch

Allied leaders also agreed at Bucharest that Georgia and Ukraine, which were already engaged in Intensified Dialogues with NATO, will one day become members. In December 2008, Allied foreign ministers decided to enhance opportunities for assisting the two countries in efforts to meet membership requirements by making use of the framework of the existing NATO-Ukraine Commission and NATO-Georgia Commission – without prejudice to further decisions which may be taken about their applications to join the MAP. (Source: https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/topics_49212.htm)
MAP is the Membership Action Plan, a programme which helps nations prepare for possible future membership. Participation does not guarantee membership, but is a key preparation mechanism.
As a commitment it’s still pretty vague about timing and in any case conditional on a series of requirements which Ukraine must fulfil prior to submit candidature. Not to mention that to realists like Mearsheimer such international commitments do not deserve much credit.

If you believe puppetization or Russification was Russia's goal you must provide some evidence. I can go along with the idea that Russia, like any nation state, acts in its self-interest. I do not go along with the idea that Russia can only do so by acting in hostile ways, and therefore must always have sinister intentions even if we can't see them.. — Tzeentch

You are no geopolitical agent, nor a state neighbouring Russia, nor - I guess - equipped with memories/education of Russia oppression against your people, so to me your beliefs are pertinent to the extant they express your understanding of the geopolitical context.
Yanukhovic was widely considered a Russian puppet by Ukrainians. Putin practically and publicly ran his political campaign, and supported him against fierce Ukrainian opposition. Besides Yanukhovic’s policies concerning national security although pursuing formal neutrality were arguably pro-Russian (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13518046.2012.730372)
Russification is a leitmotif of Russian history. Both Donbas and Crimea were subject to Russification until practically these days. And the readiness of Putin to solve territorial and political disputes through war was evident in Georgia and Chechnya. So whatever doubt about Russification/puppetization one might have had prior 2014 is now even more hardly sustainable given that, besides the Crimean annexation and the civil war started in Donbas, the “special military operation” was declaredly pursuing “denazification” which implied forcefully installing a pro-Russian regime supporting Russian cultural and ethnical homologation (as we see in the occupied areas).

Brzezinski was a National Security Advisor and participated to the official “the debate on NATO enlargement” (https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-105shrg46832/pdf/CHRG-105shrg46832.pdf). Mearsheimer has always been just an academic. — neomac

I think it's crazy that you would dismiss academics in such a way, but whoever you base your views on is your business. If practical knowledge is required in order not to be considered by you a "armchair academic" then why are you referring to someone whose practical experience is nearly half a century old? Anyway. Have you ever considered the difference between the words of an "armchair academic" and a politician? — Tzeentch

I generally don’t dismiss armchair academics, especially prominent ones like Mearsheimer. I myself rely on his insights as far as I find them plausible. However, a part from my doubts on the merits of his geopolitical analysis, I find methodologically very limiting to rely exclusively on the insights of academics if we are talking geopolitics. Indeed, NATO enlargement can’t be realistically understood without considering the reasoning of the decision makers and their background understanding of the American national interest wrt the geopolitical environment and its interplay between domestic/foreign factors.
Armchair academics in the domain of geopolitical analysis have more likely an a-posteriori, partial and abstract understanding of the epistemic and decisional constraints of politicians, and are dispensed from those political power struggles and moral dilemmas that politicians have to endure to do their job effectively whatever their goal is. Both factors may significantly bias their analysis (e.g. ignoring the agency of all involved parties, or underestimate the role of ethnic lobbies, etc.).

If you are so quick to suspect intellectual dishonesty when someone disagrees with you, defer to phoney psychoanalysis and believe everybody here to only be "avg dudes", it begs the question what you are doing here. — Tzeentch

Being quick at detecting intellectual dishonesty sounds more as a compliment if detection is reliable. Besides you seem even quicker to detect “craziness” when I disagree with you no matter how plausible my arguments are. Concerning your question imbued with “little personal animosity”, I take my participation in this forum as a form of personal intellectual entertainment, like a chess game.

You can not say that NATO enlargement doesn’t have to do with threat from Russia, because I brought you evidence that that’s the case. — neomac

And what evidence would that be? The Budapest Memorandum? — Tzeentch

The Budapest Memorandum, the hearings entitled “Debate about NATO enlargement”. Mersheimer’s article "The Case for a Ukrainian Nuclear Deterrent” (1993). Russia starting a territorial dispute over Crimea practically immediately after recognising Ukrainian independence.
Some more input also in the article: https://www.politico.eu/article/western-europe-listen-to-the-baltic-countries-that-know-russia-best-ukraine-poland/.
You yourself were talking of "plenty of historical grievance to build it on”, did you already forget?
And I could go on discussing about the rise of the Russian far-right nationalist (even nazi) movements before and during Putin (see “managed nationalism”) etc.

However the accusation about “the United States jealously guarding its position at the top” sounds like a moral judgement which presupposes your moral assumptions (which I might not share). — neomac

Certainly. This is a philosophy forum after all, and realism is one lens through which I might view current events - not the only one.

So American “jealousy for being on the top” seems perfectly in line with what Mearsheimer’s “offensive realism” predicts. — neomac

Indeed. Which is why I've been making the argument that that is the core of why things in Ukraine happened the way they did. — Tzeentch

That’s also why you are trapped in a cognitive dissonance, because you seem to hold realist expectations in geopolitics that systematically frustrate your idealistic moral standards or your relatable desire for peace.

Let's be frank. Russia accepted most of NATO's enlargement. Ukraine was simply a bridge too far. That has more to do with the way Russia views Ukraine with regards to its vital interests, and less with its sphere of influence, though it would stand to reason Russia would prefer to have Ukraine in its sphere of influence for this reason. — Tzeentch

First, that Ukraine was “a bridge too far” wasn’t always so obvious as you seem to believe. Here is an interview with Sergej Lavrov by the German business newspaper Handelsblatt (02.01.2005):
Question: Does the right to sovereignty also mean for Georgia and Ukraine, for example, that Russia would have nothing against their accession to the EU and NATO?
Lavrov: That is their choice. We respect the right of every state - including our neighbors - to choose its own partners, to decide for itself which organization to join. We assume that they will consider for themselves how they develop their politics and economy and which partners and allies they rely on
(Source: https://amp2.handelsblatt.com/politik/international/handelsblatt-interview-mit-aussenminister-lawrow-russland-oeffnet-ukraine-den-weg-in-die-nato/2460820.html)
Although that conciliatory response by Lavrov was questioned by Putin himself, especially in the case of Ukraine, a few months later: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x88b9ii
Second, what would be the difference between vital interests and sphere of influence in the case of Ukraine? I see the latter as a desirable condition to ensure the former. And even if one wants to consider the worst scenario for Russia, namely Russia losing the port of Sevastopol (but I wouldn’t exclude a possible compromise convenient to Russia), Russia could still keep its access to the Mediterranean through the Port of Novorossiysk.

For such a position as yours to make sense, you would have to provide some evidence that Russia viewed the ex-Soviet republics in Eastern Europe as part of its ("rightful") sphere of influence. I don't think you'll find much of the sort. — Tzeentch

The evidence I need is what I already provided. Threat perception is in the eye of the perciever (as NATO enlargement for Russia). Surely one can question how reasonable they are but historical legacies can sediment in blood and bones for generations. Besides it’s also up to Russia’s signalling good intentions by acts and words, especially if aware that the ex-Soviet Republics might have been particularly suspicious about any innuendo to Russian hegemonic pride and historical revisionism. Unfortunately Russia (especially under Putin) didn’t send the right signals most of the time. E.g. Russia has almost always complained about NATO enlargement (aside from East Germany), Putin has vowed to protect the rights of Russian minorities (like in Ukraine and Georgia, and the problem is that there are Russian minorities also in all ex-Soviet Republics, including Baltic states and Moldova), Putin questioned the legitimacy of modern Ukraine and Ukrainian nationalism (BTW Putin complaining about Ukrainian nazism is not new, even against the Baltic states he raised the same accusations https://www.dw.com/en/putin-accuses-europe-of-ignoring-nazism-in-the-baltics/a-2817872).

Neither of those (moral or legal) are particularly useful lenses to view the current situation through. International law is entirely ignored, and Russia is not a moral actor — Tzeentch

.

What do you mean by "Russia is not a moral actor"? Is the US a moral actor?

From a perspective of how nations can best coexist peacefully and war can be avoided, it is of vital importance that countries' security concerns are taken into consideration — Tzeentch

.

I see at least 2 issues: 1. How can democratic countries best deal with security concerns of non-democratic countries, especially if driven by hegemonic ambitions (imagine a Nazi regime, Isis, Soviet Union, etc.)? Appeasement might be a very risky game 2. Your idea would sound more plausible if every geopolitical agent had a full understanding about the security concerns of its peers, yet any defensive move can be perceived as hostile (NATO enlargement was defensive for the ex-Soviet Republic but perceived as hostile by Russia, but also Russian perceiving NATO enlargement as hostile was perceived as hostile by ex-Soviet Republic, etc.).

Or is it convenient to the US, neighbouring countries or Ukraine for that matter to let Russia have a sphere of influence at their expense? How so? — neomac

It certainly would have been convenient for the Ukrainians had Russian security concerns been taken more seriously. If they had been, many would not have lost their lives and homes. — Tzeentch

Security concerns were taken seriously, that’s the reason why Ukraine felt safer under NATO. What is implicitly suggested by that claim is that Ukraine should have surrendered to Russian demands (which for Ukraine means losing its independence to the historical most dangerous country/people to the Ukrainians, let’s not forget that to Ukrainians Hitler’s Germany wasn’t perceived as dangerous as Soviet Union). And the West should have played along, which Germany and France could have done and likely kept doing so until Russia invaded Ukraine.

I view this conflict as having started in 2008, with war becoming extremely likely after the U.S. backed coup — Tzeentch

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Not sure what you are referring to. Is any of such trivia on wikipedia? Do you have links?

What the Russians demanded was Ukrainian neutrality, not puppetization or Russification.
If they were willing to have their country wrecked as a consequence of not wanting to meet the Russian concerns in any way, fair enough. — Tzeentch

It’s a bit naive to think that Russia would have explicitly demanded the puppetization or Russification of Ukraine in these terms (e.g. “denazification” is Putin’s ersatz for puppetization and Russification). There are implied risks though. Ukrainians seem willing to sacrifice and resist now to be free later.
Just imagine how shitty must feel to be under the Russians to them.

I think you're letting a little personal animosity bleed into your realism yourself.

Sir, it’s just that I’m more pugnacious when I suspect intellectual dishonesty. Said that, “homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto”.

On the other side Mearsheimer is an armchair academic... — neomac

Said what I assume is also "some avg dude on the internet"?
A bit of self-awareness would suit you well, I think. — Tzeentch

And correctly said so, because that’s a fact. Check on wikipedia. Brzezinski was a National Security Advisor and participated to the official “the debate on NATO enlargement” (https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-105shrg46832/pdf/CHRG-105shrg46832.pdf). Mearsheimer has always been just an academic.

Concerning my “bit of self-awareness”, is the following enough?

I’m an avg dude (not en expert), we are reasoning under uncertainties of many relevant facts, and exchange in a philosophy forum from our armchair during leisure time. Didn’t we explicitly factor in all that in our claims many times already? Yet I care about the clarity/logic of my arguments and the evidences available to me to assess them (including the input from all sorts of news/stats/reports/experts of course). Since I take such arguments and evidence assessment to be affordable also by other avg dudes in a philosophy forum post format, I expect such avg dudes to reciprocate in intellectually honest and challenging ways — neomac

as an avg dude, I’m far from assuming to know better or enough how to play the game to “propose” or “recommend” anything to anybody about geopolitical issues, or to have any significant impact on this war directly or indirectly through my posts here — neomac

nobody and certainly not avg dudes like me and you can figure out a reliable plan to grant an optimal military victory — neomac

As an avg dude, I would rely more on geopolitical speculation and historical analogies for guidance. — neomac

Exactly. NATO enlargement had nothing to do with a threat from Russia, but the United States jealously guarding its position at the top. — Tzeentch

You can not say that NATO enlargement doesn’t have to do with threat from Russia, because I brought you evidence that that’s the case. You would also contradict yourself, in claiming otherwise.
The best you can argue is that Russia wasn’t a direct threat to the US as it was for the Baltic States or Ukraine because it’s very much unlikely that Russia was prepared or determined to aggress the US after the collapse of Soviet Union. However the accusation about “the United States jealously guarding its position at the top” sounds like a moral judgement which presupposes your moral assumptions (which I might not share). One may wonder why is the US so jealous, though? Realist views like Mearsheimer’s are not concerned with moral assessments but with how security dilemmas by geopolitical agents are expected to be addressed. And what are “offensive realism” expectations about how the US (or any possible geopolitical actor at its place) would act wrt Russia (or any other possible geopolitical competitor at its place)? Here is the answer [1]. Indeed there are evidences in support of the fact that American decision makers would reason like that [2]. So American “jealousy for being on the top” seems perfectly in line with what Mearsheimer’s “offensive realism” predicts.
One can still wonder at individual level or state level: if that’s the typical hegemonic behaviour and the alternative to the US is China or Russia, which one is more convenient for remaining non-hegemonic states to bandwagon with?

This is further supported by the fact NATO enlargement received a great deal of criticism over the years, precisely because there was no Russian threat - in the end, NATO enlargement turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy. — Tzeentch

The criticisms were out of fear of Russian reaction in case of NATO enlargement. But why would a superpower like the US fear Russia for NATO enlargement? Russia is no threat to the US right? And why would Russia react to NATO enlargement to the point of threatening European security? NATO enlargement wasn’t an invasion of Russian territory, was it? Maybe it’s because NATO was interfering with the Russian sphere of influence (euphemistically called “Russia’s backyard”)? Why should the US (or neighbouring countries or Ukraine for that matter) care for Russia to have a sphere of influence at their expense exactly? Does Russia have a moral or legal right to have a sphere of influence? Or is it convenient to the US, neighbouring countries or Ukraine for that matter to let Russia have a sphere of influence at their expense? How so?

This conflict was initiated by the U.S. when it sought to change Ukrainian neutrality, which was obviously a prerequisite for a robust peace. — Tzeentch

Or maybe the “conflict was initiated” by Russia when it sought to forcefully preserve the “alleged” Ukrainian neutrality?
BTW, neutrality could be an obvious precondition for robust peace as much as for repressing independents movements (Chechnya), military engaging over territorial disputes (Georgia), puppetization (Belarus) and economic exploitation/depression (the whole of Russia federation, except major Russian urban areas like Moscow and St. Petersbourg) and Russification (Ukraine). What if Ukraine didn’t want any of that?

Further, Brzezinski is a terrible source to quote in favor of your position, since he basically laid out how U.S. domination of the globe works and how to maintain it, and it fits perfectly into the picture of U.S. hubris. — Tzeentch

On the contrary, it’s precisely because Brzezinski contributed to the decision process that led America to NATO expansion, that is absolutely worth to have a good grasp of his reasoning over American security dilemmas. On the other side Mearsheimer is an armchair academic who most certainly didn’t benefit from the informational network, the internal understanding, and related responsibilities in foreign policy decision making as Brzezinski (not surprisingly, Brzezinski analysis are richer in terms of Russian political, social, historical insights than Mearsheimer’s).
For the notion “hubris” holds the same I said for “jealousy”. They are polemical notions which do not improve our understanding of geopolitical agents’ behaviour. At best, they can appease some avg dude’s sense of moral entitlement which anonymously, on the internet, is very cheap and verges on virtue signalling, right?



[1]
To be more specific, the international system has three defining characteristics.
First, the main actors are states that operate in anarchy, which simply means that there is no higher authority above them.
Second, all great powers have some offensive military capability, which means they have the wherewithal to hurt each other.
Third, no state can know the intentions of other states with certainty, especially their future intentions.
[…]
In a world where other states might have malign intentions as well as significant offensive capabilities, states tend to fear each other.
[…]
Therefore, states recognize that the best way to survive in such a system is to be as powerful as possible relative to potential rivals. The mightier a state is, the less likely it is that another state will attack it.

(Source: https://nationalinterest.org/article/say-goodbye-taiwan-9931)


”Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power. These regions include Western Europe, East Asia, the territory of the former Soviet Union, and Southwest Asia.
"There are three additional aspects to this objective: First the U.S must show the leadership necessary to establish and protect a new order that holds the promise of convincing potential competitors that they need not aspire to a greater role or pursue a more aggressive posture to protect their legitimate interests. Second, in the non-defense areas, we must account sufficiently for the interests of the advanced industrial nations to discourage them from challenging our leadership or seeking to overturn the established political and economic order. Finally, we must maintain the mechanisms for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role.”

(source: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/iraq/etc/wolf.html)

My argument is that none of this 50-year old argumentation is particularly relevant after the Cold War. It's a completely different situation. There is no threat of European infighting. The Germans didn't need to be "kept down", the Soviet Union no longer existed and the Americans had no military reason to stay in Europe (but of course they had a geopolitical reason to want to be "in"). Russia is severely weakened, the United States is the undisputed hegemon.

There was no threat of war in Europe after the Cold War. You're just making it up. — Tzeentch

See how you are dodging again: there was no "threat" (which you who are not a geopolitical agent measure on a single metric) or there was no "perceived threat" in Europe after the Cold War (which contradicts your claim that NATO expansion was based on "plenty of historical grievance to build it on.")?

You did none of the sort. You avoided giving me a metric, probably because you're fully aware that they all point towards the same thing - that Russia was weak after the Cold War, and not a threat to NATO. — Tzeentch

Of course I did [1]. And I re-iterated on analogous points over several posts in my past exchanges.
Besides there is no geopolitical theory I'm aware of that uses such single metric to assess threat perception by geopolitical agents (not even Walt's or Mearsheimer's). Not surprisingly NATO enlargements as expression of the US hegemony fits very well Mearsheimer's "offensive realism" theory ("states recognize that the best way to survive in such a system is to be as powerful as possible relative to potential rivals").

How can you interpret this in any other way than a solid commitment to peace and cooperation?

Note that the United States and the United Kingdom also signed this treaty, vowing to respect the sovereignty of its signatories. — Tzeentch

That Russia violated by invading Ukraine which is why the United States and the UK felt compelled to react. And let's not forget the returning of 1/3 of soviet nuclear weapons to post-Soviet Russia with the support of the very much "aggressive" and "Russophobic" US/UK.

Yes, and there are plenty of experts that make this point for me. Mearsheimer explicitly makes the point that the U.S. pushed NATO expansion all the way into Ukraine because it felt Russia was weak and it could get away with it. — Tzeentch

I know about Mearsheimer's views. But I'm not impressed by them for several reasons: it contradicts Mearsheimer's own "offensive realism" assumptions (which is even more unmitigated if alliance commitments shouldn't be taken seriously just because they are written on paper). Secondly, it questions the explanatory power of Mearsheimer's theory (I won't reiterate on my old arguments about this, you can find precious inputs also from Robert Jervis "Liberalism, the Blob, and American Foreign Policy: Evidence and Methodology"). Thirdly, Mearsheimer's completely bypasses the historical arguments I made which owe also to Brzezinski's insights (Brzezinski wasn't just a armchair academic like Mearsheimer, but someone who contributed to shape American foreign policy after post-Cold War), and which Mearsheimer didn't question (he too predicted the tensions between Ukraine and Russia would likely increase).

Dr. Brzezinski, some critics of NATO enlargement are alarmed by the negative reaction of Russia to this policy. If, as we are led to believe by those critics, Russia has no designs on the territory of Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, how does the membership of those countries in NATO impact Russian interests?
Dr. Brzezinski. Mr. Chairman, I do not believe that it impacts on Russian interests adversely at all unless Russia is of the view that NATO is an enemy and that the United States is an enemy. If that is the Russian view, then we have a very serious problem, in which case we ought to expand NATO for that reason as well.
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-105shrg46832/html/CHRG-105shrg46832.htm



[1]

What’s your argument? A comparison of US military capacity and Russian military capacity is enough to make your point? — neomac
Essentially, yes. What would you like me to compare instead? GDP? Think it'll paint a different picture?

There are many factors that shape threat perception in geopolitical agents "military capacity" being one of the most important, but not the only one (and notice that in the case of Russia things are complicated by the fact that Russia is not only the 3rd rank country by military capability but also the country with the largest stockpile of nuclear warheads in the world, relevant to the defensive/offensive military capacity balance, and that it’s military/offensive capacity can sum up with the Chinese one in case of a anti-American alliance). Military capacity is important because it contributes to shape “security dilemmas” but in this respect, also aggressive intentions count (signalling strategies and ideological convergence may help in mitigating the issue), so geopolitical agents are prone to detect and anticipate potential threats based on other geopolitical agents’ past/current behavior and their dispositions/opportunities for alliance and conflict.
Reactions may be defensive or offensive (pre-emptive): especially, hegemonic powers may certainly not wait for threatening competitors to be strong enough to attack, before reacting against them. As I wrote elsewhere, geopolitical strategies can involve long-term goals covering decades and generations to come (so timing is important too). Any response implies risks, because of uncertainties induced by mistrust, complexity/timing of coordination and unpredictable events (like a pandemic).
Now let’s talk about “threat perception” for the post-ColdWar American hegemonic power (which, not surprisingly, is perfectly in line with “offensive realist” views [1]):
”Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power. These regions include Western Europe, East Asia, the territory of the former Soviet Union, and Southwest Asia.
"There are three additional aspects to this objective: First the U.S must show the leadership necessary to establish and protect a new order that holds the promise of convincing potential competitors that they need not aspire to a greater role or pursue a more aggressive posture to protect their legitimate interests. Second, in the non-defense areas, we must account sufficiently for the interests of the advanced industrial nations to discourage them from challenging our leadership or seeking to overturn the established political and economic order. Finally, we must maintain the mechanisms for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role.” (source: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/iraq/etc/wolf.html)
Pretty diabolical, isn’t it?! Yet in the last 30 years, Europe got richer and less committed (in terms of security/economy) toward the US, and at the same time Russia and China got much richer (also related avg standard of life improved), more militarised and assertive abroad, in the hope of extending their sphere of influence at the expense of the US. Europeans, Russia and China abundantly exploited the institutions and free-market (the soft-power!) supported by the Pax Americana after the end of Cold-War era. And anti-Americanism (along with American decline calls) grew stronger too. What could possibly go wrong given those “security” premises held by the hegemonic power?

While you (like many here) keep focusing on arguable failures of the American interventionism in middle-east (Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, etc.) and whine over the drawbacks of American imperialism (as if any avg dude on the internet could plausibly offer a better and realistic alternative), you close an eye over the part of the world that abundantly profited from the Pax Americana (or, if you prefer, the neoconservative liberal democratic capitalist Blob military-industrial-complex satanist American foreign policy). This intellectually dishonest attitude reminds me of a famous Napolitan maxim: “chiagne e fotte”, it roughly means “whine (over injustice of the system) and keep screwing them (the system) over”.


[1]
My own realist theory of international relations says that the structure of the international system forces countries concerned about their security to compete with each other for power. The ultimate goal of every major state is to maximize its share of world power and eventually dominate the system. In practical terms, this means that the most powerful states seek to establish hegemony in their region of the world, while making sure that no rival great power dominates another region.
To be more specific, the international system has three defining characteristics. First, the main actors are states that operate in anarchy, which simply means that there is no higher authority above them. Second, all great powers have some offensive military capability, which means they have the wherewithal to hurt each other. Third, no state can know the intentions of other states with certainty, especially their future intentions. It is simply impossible, for example, to know what Germany’s or Japan’s intentions will be toward their neighbors in 2025.
In a world where other states might have malign intentions as well as significant offensive capabilities, states tend to fear each other. That fear is compounded by the fact that in an anarchic system there is no night watchman for states to call if trouble comes knocking at their door. Therefore, states recognize that the best way to survive in such a system is to be as powerful as possible relative to potential rivals. The mightier a state is, the less likely it is that another state will attack it. No Americans, for example, worry that Canada or Mexico will attack the United States, because neither of those countries is strong enough to contemplate a fight with Uncle Sam.

https://nationalinterest.org/article/say-goodbye-taiwan-9931 — neomac

There was no "dangerously unstable Europe" after the Cold War. First off, Yugoslavia hardly represents all of Europe. Second, the U.S. played a major role in destabilizing Yugoslavia, because Yugoslavia insisted on neutrality instead of joining the U.S. bloc. — Tzeentch

You keep dodging my objections. Notice I never claimed, nor implied, nor suggested that NATO expansion wasn’t in the interest of the US, or to extend its sphere of influence, or that the US didn’t take initiatives, nor that Yugoslavia represents all of Europe.
The point I’m making is that fears of European instabilities due to historical legacies from 2 WWs and the Cold War (from ethnic nationalisms like in Yugoslavia to imperialistic ambitions like from Germany and Russia), were shaping the risk perception of European countries and the US. That’s why Western European (like France and the UK) and East European (like Poland and the Baltic states) welcomed NATO presence. That’s how you get a British lord, H.L. Ismay, the NATO’s first Secretary General, claim that NATO was created to “keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down” or a debate on NATO enlargement by the American committee on Foreign Relations talking about Russian imperialism.
And the reason why I’m making this point is that you need to divert your attention from these facts to build a narrative in which Russia and the US are the only relevant actors, the US is always the most aggressive, and Russia is just victim of the latter.
But that’s a myopic caricature of what actually happened. Russia and the US were absolutely not the only actors that shaped the evolution of NATO. And all other actors involved, including the US, were driven also by very much serious historical fears. Sphere of influence build on fears (of military clashes) and/or opportunities (economic partnership). And the Americans weren’t perceived always as aggressive and exploitative. Both the US and Europe had their interests to favour the American sphere of influence compared to available alternatives.

And when asked for a metric that you would find more acceptable you presented nothing. — Tzeentch

I presented an argument to explain why your approach is flawed. And if that’s not enough you can read plenty of geopolitical theories (also within a realist tradition like Walt’s “balance of threat theory” or Mearsheimer’s “offensive realism”) that would explain what’s wrong with your single metric. On my side, I’m not committed to any specific theory. I limit myself to take the patterns these theories individuate just as patterns of reasoning over security dilemmas more or less plausible depending on the given circumstances, and more or less empirically supported.

Ukraine is not NATO.

When after 2008 it was becoming clear Ukraine might be the stage for a new geopolitcal rivalry, Ukraine was right to fear a Russian invasion. — Tzeentch

But who started that conflict? NATO, at the 2008 NATO Bucharest Summit, and through its continued efforts to make good on the promises that it made back then.

So any notions that NATO did what it did in response to a Russian threat is utter nonsense. — Tzeentch

First, you are contradicting your previous argument. If deltas in “military capacity” is enough to identify "real" threats, then the "real" threat for Ukraine was there even before 2008 (most certainly after Ukraine returned 1/3 of soviet nuclear weapons to post-Soviet Russia in 1994).
Second, since now you are reasoning in terms of “threat perception”, then again your claim is very much questionable. The Budapest Memorandum (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum) was proof that Ukraine had legitimate worries from Russia not only for historical reasons but also for the case of Crimea, which became a contested region practically immediately after Ukraine declared its independence.
Third, since the deltas in “military capacity” most certainly increased after the Budapest Memorandum, and the security assurances weren’t binding, the problem was still there (as Mearsheimer’s explicitly suggested) so Ukrainian NATO membership (along with other Baltic states) became more appealing to Ukrainians. Even more so after Putin started an increasingly authoritarian and nationalist internal consolidation of power against rebel peripheries concerning territorial disputes prior to 2008.
But, once again, you rely on your own outlandish “threat perception” assessments indifferent to how all directly affected actors and circumstances actually shaped geopolitical events, because you need to support the narrative that basically the US started aggressing Russia for no other reason than its hubris.

I'm not sure what to make of the fact you're still referring to NATO as a defensive alliance. I don't know if you've been paying attention, but NATO has invaded several countries post-Cold War, and left ruin in its wake.

Today it is not a defensive alliance by any stretch. — Tzeentch

“Collective defence and Article 5” is a binding commitment. There is no equivalent for offensive operations. This suggests that all other military activities allegedly going beyond the commitments of NATO by NATO members may be based on other international relation reasons (e.g. including the UN charter) and still express the cohesion of the West toward perceived threats (e.g. by those authoritarian countries vetoing UN agreements in line with the UN charter).

Even Pax Romana and Pax Britannica weren’t exactly Disneyland. — neomac

Then don't come with bullshit like this:

While you (like many here) keep focusing on arguable failures of the American interventionism in middle-east (Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, etc.) and whine over the drawbacks of American imperialism (as if any avg dude on the internet could plausibly offer a better and realistic alternative), you close an eye over the part of the world that abundantly profited from the Pax Americana (or, if you prefer, the neoconservative liberal democratic capitalist Blob military-industrial-complex satanist American foreign policy). This intellectually dishonest attitude reminds me of a famous Napolitan maxim: “chiagne e fotte”, it roughly means “whine (over injustice of the system) and keep screwing them (the system) over”. — neomac — Tzeentch

I get that “then” suggests an inference. “Bullshit” suggests something you find objectionable.
Yet, there is absolutely no contradiction between those claims I made. On the contrary, they support each other! So I find your brachylogy utterly unintelligible.

After the Cold War, NATO became something different from a military alliance that pursued deterrence and mutual defense, since there was no enemy to defend against. What happened after the Cold War is that the Americans collected their prize. It became a different name for the European part of the American sphere of influence, and a soft power tool to control Europe, even if it's original nature was a hard power deterrent towards Russia. That change in character is well-documented and part of the reason why NATO went through several identity crises post-Cold War. This isn't misleading language, this is simply understanding the purpose of NATO post-Cold War from the American perspective. — Tzeentch

The repurposing of NATO post-Cold War from the American perspective doesn’t exclude the fact that Russia, along with Germany (especially after the reunion), were still perceived as potential threats by other Western and Eastern European countries. The fear of nationalist revanchism in Europe (at the origin of 2 bloody world wars) remerged after the Cold War (as in the case of Yugoslavia). This is also to say that it’s not just that US wanted to extend its sphere of influence (say for economic reasons), but for keeping safe and stable a dangerously unstable Europe by their own request too.

Right, so it was never about actual threat perception. It was about pre-emptively protecting U.S. hegemony. That's basically what I've been saying all along. — Tzeentch

You are clearly playing dumb. First you were talking about threats in terms of deltas in “military capability”, but that’s a very poor understanding of what constitute “threat perception” for geopolitical agents. Indeed, what was the military capacity of Ukraine wrt Russia prior to this war?! Secondly, if threat perception were elicited only by an actual military buildup on the border and/or ultimatum, it would be useless, because then it might be already too late to prepare a response. Take the case of Ukraine, even its joining NATO defensive alliance wasn’t an actual threat to Russia. Even more so if such event wasn’t imminent at all. And most certainly so if Germany/France were stubbornly against it. And yet Putin perceived such possibility as an intolerable threat and decided to react preventively as timely as he could.

Ask the people of Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Lybia, and all the other nations the United States invaded and cast into the fires (a long list it be) what they thought of that "Pax Americana". :vomit: — Tzeentch

Even Pax Romana and Pax Britannica weren’t exactly Disneyland.

United States controls Europe through NATO. That is to say, it controls Europe through (in this case) political means not dependent on coercion.

The nature of soft power is the lack of a coercive element. — Tzeentch

Then your terminology is misleading:
Hard power encompasses a wide range of coercive policies, such as coercive diplomacy, economic sanctions, military action, and the forming of military alliances for deterrence and mutual defense.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_power
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/natosource/transatlantic-division-of-labor-nato-hard-power-and-eu-soft-power

And I still suspect that the rhetorically purpose of such misleading usage was to convey the impression that the actual motivation behind NATO expansion is not the fear from a threatening Russia, but the fun of being part of the Western club.

What’s your argument? A comparison of US military capacity and Russian military capacity is enough to make your point? — neomac

Essentially, yes. What would you like me to compare instead? GDP? Think it'll paint a different picture? — Tzeentch

There are many factors that shape threat perception in geopolitical agents "military capacity" being one of the most important, but not the only one (and notice that in the case of Russia things are complicated by the fact that Russia is not only the 3rd rank country by military capability but also the country with the largest stockpile of nuclear warheads in the world, relevant to the defensive/offensive military capacity balance, and that it’s military/offensive capacity can sum up with the Chinese one in case of a anti-American alliance). Military capacity is important because it contributes to shape “security dilemmas” but in this respect, also aggressive intentions count (signalling strategies and ideological convergence may help in mitigating the issue), so geopolitical agents are prone to detect and anticipate potential threats based on other geopolitical agents’ past/current behavior and their dispositions/opportunities for alliance and conflict.
Reactions may be defensive or offensive (pre-emptive): especially, hegemonic powers may certainly not wait for threatening competitors to be strong enough to attack, before reacting against them. As I wrote elsewhere, geopolitical strategies can involve long-term goals covering decades and generations to come (so timing is important too). Any response implies risks, because of uncertainties induced by mistrust, complexity/timing of coordination and unpredictable events (like a pandemic).
Now let’s talk about “threat perception” for the post-ColdWar American hegemonic power (which, not surprisingly, is perfectly in line with “offensive realist” views [1]):
”Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power. These regions include Western Europe, East Asia, the territory of the former Soviet Union, and Southwest Asia.
"There are three additional aspects to this objective: First the U.S must show the leadership necessary to establish and protect a new order that holds the promise of convincing potential competitors that they need not aspire to a greater role or pursue a more aggressive posture to protect their legitimate interests. Second, in the non-defense areas, we must account sufficiently for the interests of the advanced industrial nations to discourage them from challenging our leadership or seeking to overturn the established political and economic order. Finally, we must maintain the mechanisms for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role.” (source: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/iraq/etc/wolf.html)
Pretty diabolical, isn’t it?! Yet in the last 30 years, Europe got richer and less committed (in terms of security/economy) toward the US, and at the same time Russia and China got much richer (also related avg standard of life improved), more militarised and assertive abroad, in the hope of extending their sphere of influence at the expense of the US. Europeans, Russia and China abundantly exploited the institutions and free-market (the soft-power!) supported by the Pax Americana after the end of Cold-War era. And anti-Americanism (along with American decline calls) grew stronger too. What could possibly go wrong given those “security” premises held by the hegemonic power?

While you (like many here) keep focusing on arguable failures of the American interventionism in middle-east (Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, etc.) and whine over the drawbacks of American imperialism (as if any avg dude on the internet could plausibly offer a better and realistic alternative), you close an eye over the part of the world that abundantly profited from the Pax Americana (or, if you prefer, the neoconservative liberal democratic capitalist Blob military-industrial-complex satanist American foreign policy). This intellectually dishonest attitude reminds me of a famous Napolitan maxim: “chiagne e fotte”, it roughly means “whine (over injustice of the system) and keep screwing them (the system) over”.


[1]
My own realist theory of international relations says that the structure of the international system forces countries concerned about their security to compete with each other for power. The ultimate goal of every major state is to maximize its share of world power and eventually dominate the system. In practical terms, this means that the most powerful states seek to establish hegemony in their region of the world, while making sure that no rival great power dominates another region.
To be more specific, the international system has three defining characteristics. First, the main actors are states that operate in anarchy, which simply means that there is no higher authority above them. Second, all great powers have some offensive military capability, which means they have the wherewithal to hurt each other. Third, no state can know the intentions of other states with certainty, especially their future intentions. It is simply impossible, for example, to know what Germany’s or Japan’s intentions will be toward their neighbors in 2025.
In a world where other states might have malign intentions as well as significant offensive capabilities, states tend to fear each other. That fear is compounded by the fact that in an anarchic system there is no night watchman for states to call if trouble comes knocking at their door. Therefore, states recognize that the best way to survive in such a system is to be as powerful as possible relative to potential rivals. The mightier a state is, the less likely it is that another state will attack it. No Americans, for example, worry that Canada or Mexico will attack the United States, because neither of those countries is strong enough to contemplate a fight with Uncle Sam.

https://nationalinterest.org/article/say-goodbye-taiwan-9931

To clarify once again my point, I asked you "Why would the US care to protect the EU against a potential aggression from Russia?" and your answer was roughly that the US needs to control Europe and its “immense powerful nations” from becoming its own great power or fall under the control of another foreign power. — neomac

I tried to give you an explanation for why the United States is worried about controlling Europe, which it evidently is.
If your argument is "they shouldn't be", then that's something you'll have to discuss with the policy makers in Washington, I suppose. — Tzeentch

I summarised my argument for you, so no need for you to suggest any other answer: “In conclusion, the EU can’t just blindly rely on the US support in the risky case that Russia turns military hostile for revanchist reasons, and the US is troubled by other pressing domestic and foreign challenges.”
Evidently you lost track of our previous exchange. In short:
- I claimed “if the EU is more demilitarised than Russia, then EU is more military vulnerable to Russia”.
- You countered “Except that the EU has a military ally, the United States, which has the most powerful military in the world by a mile and a half. So no, Europe wasn't vulnerable”
- I replied “If you want to discuss the US reasons to engage in such a war, you can’t simply take the US military alliance to the EU for granted” and in relation to that I asked “Why would the US care to protect the EU against a potential aggression from Russia?”
- You rebutted “If the United States doesn't control Europe, it will either be controlled by another great power or possibly even turn into its own great power, which will inevitably find itself in conflict with the United States at one point or another”
- And I commented that, although true in general, that doesn’t exclude the possibility that the US intervention against a potential Russian aggression might be frustratingly less or less reliable than expected (arguably as in the Ukrainian case), so the European vulnerability wrt Russia is not automatically gone just because the United States are their most powerful ally independently from the circumstances.

My point was that NATO was a tool to expand US influence, not whether the Europeans' feelings of historical grievance and/or fear were justified.
Your confusion would probably lessen if you paid more attention to what I write, and less to what you believe I am implying. — Tzeentch

I find “NATO was a tool to expand US influence” trivial, but you didn’t limit yourself to make such trivial point. You were talking about “soft-power” and “plenty of historical grievance to build it on”. NATO is not expression of soft-power (so why would you call it soft-power? [1]) and “historical grievance” was treated just as pretext, not on its own merit as you did with the Russian grievance (why this difference in treatment?). The way you conceptualise and argue things may be rife of understated implications which you later confirmed anyways [2].

A part from the fact that you start underplaying the influence of US presidents over foreign policy, ... — neomac

Yes. Let there be no doubt about my position on this: US presidents don't have much influence over foreign policy at all. Many tried. Obama for example, who famously failed and admitted this in his exit interview. Trump also. The neoconservative lobby, aka "the Blob" is probably the most powerful entity in US politics. — Tzeentch

The “bombastic words” by Trump were taken so seriously by the Congress representatives themselves to the point that:
Such concerns led the House of Representatives in January 2019, to pass the NATO Support Act (H.R. 676), confirming Congress' support for NATO and prohibiting Trump from potentially withdrawing from NATO. On December 11, 2019, the Senate's Foreign Relations Committee passed a bill to be put in front of Congress which would require congressional approval for American withdrawal from NATO
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Withdrawal_from_NATO — neomac

You're making my point for me. Trump (might have) wanted to leave NATO. The establishment ensured he couldn't. Who is in power here? Not Trump. — Tzeentch

As I said American foreign policy making is institutionally divided between Congress and presidents, in non-emergency times. So it’s false that presidents don’t have much influence over foreign policy at all (like all the agreements Trump withdrew from and the Budapest memorandum being an example of Clinton’s administration policy that returned 1/3 of soviet nuclear weapons to post-Soviet Russia). Besides if the Congress didn’t intervene Trump could have tried to withdraw the US from NATO so his weren’t perceived just as “bombastic words” which no political leader should have taken seriously (Trump could have also acknowledged Crimea annexation by Russia: https://www.rferl.org/a/trump-doesnt-rule-out-recognizing-russian-annexation-ukraine-crimean-peninsula/29328403.html). Finally, if American presidents have no influence in foreign policies, there would be no reason for Putin to favour/lobby for Trump more than Biden, or aggress Ukraine during Biden’s administration instead of Trump’s, etc. Indeed, presidents have decision powers over military deployments and intelligence activities, sanctions, and control executive international agreements that may be of tremendous importance for competitors.
The Blob, the military-industrial complex, etc. are more useful for polemical than analytical elaboration of the American foreign policy. And the logic of power doesn’t depend on any ideology, not even on “liberal hegemony”, but the other way around, that’s why militarisation and overstretch are recurrent phenomena in all hegemonic great powers independently from their ideology.
So no I’m not making your point at all.

What did you just write?! — neomac
NATO has a clear soft power element in terms of the relation between the US and it's allies. I don't see what's controversial or hard to understand about that. It's pretty obvious. — Tzeentch

Because the point of NATO is to military defend a country against aggressors. Military defence is a coercive response and readiness for that task. That is the element that can make the Russian security threat perception plausible, not the fact that NATO members serve each other tea and cookies.

Yes. Russia was not a threat to NATO at any point between 1989 up until now. Clearly that doesn't mean it wasn't still a powerful nation. Just not in relation to US/NATO. — Tzeentch

What’s your argument? A comparison of US military capacity and Russian military capacity is enough to make your point?
Something like: IF AND ONLY IF X is more military capable than Y (like the US vs Russia) and X is interfering in Y’s “backyard” (like the US in Ukraine as Russia’s backyard), then X is a threat to Y ?




[1] https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/natosource/transatlantic-division-of-labor-nato-hard-power-and-eu-soft-power/


[2]

What you are so surreptitiously yet so clumsily trying to do is to support the idea that the West had no reason to fear Russia, and Russia had all reasons to fear the West. — neomac


I'd probably put it in slightly more nuanced terms, but that's indeed the part of the point I have been making for a while now, and unapologetically so. — Tzeentch

So no, at the moment, it’s not evident that the US must intervene or engage more than it does in Ukraine... — neomac

I don't know where you get the idea that I implied as much. If anything I believe the Europeans should stop backing the war in Ukraine and encourage the Americans to leave as fast as possible. — Tzeentch

Why did you chop my quotation like this? My claim wasn’t about the war in Ukraine, it just drew a parallel with it. To clarify once again my point, I asked you "Why would the US care to protect the EU against a potential aggression from Russia?" and your answer was roughly that the US needs to control Europe and its “immense powerful nations” from becoming its own great power or fall under the control of another foreign power. Even if that’s true in general, a Russian aggression against the EU might not necessarily need to worry the US and compel its prompt reaction just for that reason. In concrete scenarios, the nature, magnitude, timing of the US intervention may greatly vary as a function of the nature, magnitude and timing of the Russia aggression (scenarios are countless), and as a function of the American priorities (imagine that Russia is attacking in the European front when China is attacking in the Asian front), so the American intervention may in the end frustrate expectations as it does in Ukraine at least to those who would welcome greater and quicker support (that’s the parallel I was making). Even more so if certain US administrations are playing with their credibility as reliable partners (https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/04/22/trump-says-he-threatened-not-defend-nato-russia/), emboldening Russia to take greater initiative against Europe (Russia is not even short on pretexts see the case of Serbia). Not to mention that Russia can both inflict great damage on EU territories (independently from land grabbing) and always threat escalation to nuclear strikes. In conclusion, the EU can’t just blindly rely on the US support in the risky case that Russia turns military hostile for revanchist reasons, and the US is troubled by other pressing domestic and foreign challenges.

If there was virtually no military threat from Russia why the NATO expansion then? — neomac

Because NATO became a tool to expand US influence through soft power, and there was plenty of historical grievance to build it on. — Tzeentch

I find your reasoning pretty confused. To me “historical grievance” means that Eastern block countries and especially post-Soviet countries were reasonably fearing Russian revanchism (https://www.politico.eu/article/western-europe-listen-to-the-baltic-countries-that-know-russia-best-ukraine-poland/) for a full package of reasons: border disputes, Russian minorities, Russian ultranationalist surge, and historical imperialist trends. Indeed, this “historical grievance” was a deep-rooted reason behind NATO expansion as I pointed out elsewhere [1]. This makes sense also wrt what you were claiming before: if the US cares about long-term control over Europe against rival powers, then of course it’s prudent to expand control against potential threats from Russia. “Potential threat” doesn’t mean “actual threat”, but it doesn’t mean no threat either. It has to do with long-term expectations and for such threats you don’t want to wait to find out if it was worth to prepare for it, because it might be too late. Unless you can turn a blind eye on it for convenience, or for otherwise feeling just remotely concerned, of course.
In 1993 (so no Putin and no NATO enlargement, apart from the consensual case of East Germany), even Mearsheimer famously suggested Ukraine to keep Russian nuclear weapons precisely for that reason: My argument for a Ukrainian nuclear deterrent assumes that Russian-Ukrainian relations are likely to deteriorate in the future. If trouble were not in the offing, Ukraine would not need a nuclear arsenal. The safest strategy is to make Ukraine a responsible nuclear power before serious trouble starts between them, and not have to attempt this in the middle of a Russian-Ukrainian crisis
Source: https://www.mearsheimer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Mearsheimer-Case-for-Ukrainian-Nuclear-Deterrent.pdf
(While via the Budapest Memorandum the Russophobic US helped Russia get back its nuclear weapons from Ukraine, which kept about 1/3 of the former Soviet nuclear weapons, go figure!)

Putin (after the annexation in Crimea and still at war in Donbas) didn’t seem too much worried about the US until Trump was there, right? — neomac

US presidents have very little influence over foreign policy, so I don't think Trump's presidency made any difference in the Russian's view of the situation at all.
If anything Trump probably eased their minds at least for a little while, since he was all about his America First policy and a commitment to stopping "forever wars" across thousands of miles of ocean, etc. Of course, Trump used some bombastic words but such rhetoric isn't aimed at or taken seriously by world leaders. That was aimed at the US population towards which he wanted to seem like the "strongman". — Tzeentch

Even Putin’s concerns for NATO enlargement were just words until they weren’t. — neomac

Russia acted the part as well. Concentrating troops and exercising near the border, letters of ultimatum, etc. and lets not forget they put forward a consistent message over the course of 15 years.

But when Trump says he wants to pull out of NATO, and the rest of America panics and starts yelling they have to secure their overseas alliances, such rhetoric has zero credibility. Only if it becomes consistent policy over several presidencies might it start to be seen as actually representing the geopolitical vision of the US foreign policy establishment. — Tzeentch

A part from the fact that you start underplaying the influence of US presidents over foreign policy, and then you highlight the influence of Trump’s policy on American foreign affairs, the main problem is that your claims don’t stand factual scrutiny. It’s true that American foreign policies is not determined exclusively by presidential administrations: Congress (sided by the the Pentagon) thanks to its institutional powers can set or stabilise major trends in foreign politics. Yet presidential administrations, even in non-emergency times, have significant powers concerning military operations, international agreements, and trade among others (e.g. signing the Budapest Memorandum). If American presidents weren’t influential, it wouldn’t make sense for foreign administrations to favour one over the other, or to try to interfere with their political elections, or to set their foreign activities’s timing accordingly.
Trump’s case was even more worrisome given his penchant for destabilising American institutions from the inside, his complicity with Putin and his polarising withdrawals from various international agreements:
https://www.trtworld.com/americas/trump-s-top-five-withdrawals-from-international-agreements-18543
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/01/31/politics/us-mike-pompeo-inf-withdrawal/index.html
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-germany-military-roettgen-idUSKCN24U2BJ
Indeed, the European leaders were seriously worried about Trump and needed reassurance: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/05/28/thanks-to-trump-germany-says-it-cant-rely-on-america-what-does-that-mean/
The “bombastic words” by Trump were taken so seriously by the Congress representatives themselves to the point that:
Such concerns led the House of Representatives in January 2019, to pass the NATO Support Act (H.R. 676), confirming Congress' support for NATO and prohibiting Trump from potentially withdrawing from NATO. On December 11, 2019, the Senate's Foreign Relations Committee passed a bill to be put in front of Congress which would require congressional approval for American withdrawal from NATO
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Withdrawal_from_NATO

And why would Putin worry about NATO expansion if it’s just American soft-power and American military presence was declining? — neomac

That should be obvious. When powerful nations are close to each other, conflict is bound to arise. And the United States' sphere of influence was inching ever closer to Russia. Powerful nations care greatly about what the other powerful nations are doing in their backyard.
And you underestimate the power of soft power if you think it cannot pose a serious threat to other countries. The American empire is largely based on soft power, though it never shied away from hard power either. — Tzeentch

What did you just write?! You are the one randomly qualifying “Nato expansion” in terms of “soft-power” not me. And after downplaying its deterrent value by calling it “soft power”, you need to re-affirm it’s threatening nature in terms of hard power to make sense of Russian reaction. In other words, you just demystified your own mystification.
As far I’m concerned, NATO is essentially a military defensive alliance so an expression of coercive power, against potential military threats. NATO is not like having McDonald’s and IKEAs (used to be present also in Russia), nor like joining the EU. NATO specifically concerns military security, so “hard-power”, not “soft-power”. I’m also the one claiming that any defensive measure can be taken as potential threat by competitors trapped in security dilemmas. So if me it’s easy to acknowledge that Russian national security concerns and demand for NATO access denial to Ukraine look persuasive, other considerations discounted.

Yes. Great powers, even a small one like Russia, are often busy serving their interests militarily all over the globe. That's nothing new or special.

Whatever military build-up took place was nowhere near significant enough to pose any threat to Europe. After the fall of the Soviet Union it was only normal to expect some raise in military expenditure at some point, for a country as big as Russia with long borders and many potential flashpoints.

It is dwarfed by the actual military build-up we are seeing today, encouraged in part by the West's own actions. — Tzeentch

You make no sense to me. On one side you claim: “when powerful nations are close to each other, conflict is bound to arise. And the United States' sphere of influence was inching ever closer to Russia. Powerful nations care greatly about what the other powerful nations are doing in their backyard”. So it’s all about Russian threat perception , that you seem to find definitively justified being Russia a powerful nation, even though NATO is defensive alliance, Russia is 3rd rank country by military capability with the largest stockpile of nuclear warheads in the world, Germany/France were against Ukraine within NATO (and cozying up to Russia), Russia had already annexed Crimea easy-peasy and whatever military support Ukraine got prior to the war wasn’t significant enough to pose any threat to Russia.
On the other side, when it’s time to assess the Russian threat from Western perspective, Russia is all of a sudden a small great power, nothing new or special, just busy serving their interests militarily all over the globe (but apparently not its borders despite all pretexts for territorial disputes and Russian minorities to protect) whose military build-up posed no threat to Europe (in other words, very powerful nation but not so very powerful nation after all, and let’s bother us over the fact that we are talking about the 3rd rank country by military capability with the largest stockpile of nuclear warheads in the world, very much active in the Mediterranean Sea & North Africa, Middle East, East Europe and Baltic sea, so all around Europe!) and whose nasty political/economic leverage in the West wasn’t used to mess with America’s backyard at all.

And until the military special operations French and Germans didn’t seem much compelled by the US soft-power to change their attitude toward Russia, ... — neomac

Well yes, that may have been exactly the point.

The European leaders seem pretty naive and self-interested, but there are plenty of people smart enough to not assume the United States' benign intentions, so that reluctance will probably stay.

There is ultimately a limit to what United States influence can achieve, but there are historical examples aplenty of the United States leading countries willingly down the path of their own destruction. — Tzeentch

Oh so now the US doesn’t want to control Europe (hosting “immensely powerful nations”) because Mackinder/Brzezinski say so, it wants to lead it down the path of its own destruction?!
BTW you most certainly seem one of those people smart enough to not assume United States' benign intentions, right? What can you tell me then about Putin’s benign intentions toward the satanist Europe ? Does his murdering, raping, deporting, torturing, wrecking the life of their own people (oh he’s very much peremptory about this! Ukrainians and Russians are one people! Don’t even dare question him, he could tzar bomb your ass!) give you any idea about it by any chance?


What you are so surreptitiously yet so clumsily trying to do is to support the idea that the West had no reason to fear Russia, and Russia had all reasons to fear the West. And then put all the blame on malign-intentioned US for artificially pulling all the triggers of this war at the expense of Europe (coz they are immensely powerful nations, so powerful that the war in Ukraine by a small great powerful nation could destroy them) and Russia (which is such a cute small great powerful nation that doesn’t bother anybody, just busy serving samovar tea & babushka cookies all over the globe). And you’d count yourself among the “smart people” for thinking all that by yourself, right?



[1]

From:

THE DEBATE ON NATO ENLARGEMENT
======================================================================= HEARINGS
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED FIFTH CONGRESS 
FIRST SESSION
__________
OCTOBER 7, 9, 22, 28, 30 AND NOVEMBER 5, 1997
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Relations


Comments about the Russian “imperialist bent” were of the following kind:

Russia has also been an imperialist country that, for 400 years of its history, acquired territories, expanding from the region around Moscow to the shores of the Pacific, into the Middle East, to the gates of India, and into the center of Europe. It did not get there by plebiscite. It got there by armies. To the Russian leaderships over the centuries, these old borders have become identified with the nature of the state.
So I believe that one of the major challenges we face with Russia is whether it can accept the borders in which it now finds itself. On the one hand, St. Petersburg is closer to New York than it is to Vladivostok, and Vladivostok is closer to Seattle than it is to Moscow, so they should not feel claustrophobic. But they do. This idea of organizing again the old commonwealth of independent states is one of the driving forces of their diplomacy. If Russia stays within its borders and recognizes that Austria, Singapore, Japan and Israel all developed huge economies with no resources and in small territories, they, with a vast territory and vast resources, could do enormous things for their people. Then there is no security problem.

[…]

According to Zbigniew Brzezinski, ``We should not be shy in saying that NATO expansion will help a democratic Russia and hurt an imperialistic Russia.''

[…]

Dr. Kissinger. One slightly heretical point on the Russian situation. We have a tendency to present the issue entirely in terms of Russian domestic politics. I could see Russia making progress toward democracy and becoming extremely nationalistic, because that could become a way of rallying the people. We also have to keep an eye on their propensity toward a kind of imperialist nationalism, which, if you look at the debates in the Russian parliament, is certainly present.

[…]

Advocates of NATO transformation make a better case for the Alliance to disband than expand. NATO's job is not to replace the U.N. as the world's peacekeeper, nor is it to build democracy and pan- European harmony or promote better relations with Russia. NATO has proven the most successful military alliance in history precisely because it has rejected utopian temptations to remake the world.
Rather, NATO's mission today must be the same clear-cut and limited mission it undertook at its inception: to protect the territorial integrity of its members, defend them from external aggression, and prevent the hegemony of any one state in Europe.
The state that sought hegemony during the latter half of this century was Russia. The state most likely to seek hegemony in the beginning of the next century is also Russia . A central strategic rationale for expanding NATO must be to hedge against the possible return of a nationalist or imperialist Russia, with 20,000 nuclear missiles and ambitions of restoring its lost empire. NATO enlargement, as Henry Kissinger argues, must be undertaken to ``encourage Russian leaders to interrupt the fateful rhythm of Russian history . . . and discourage Russia's historical policy of creating a security belt of important and, if possible, politically dependent states around its borders.''
Unfortunately, the Clinton administration [/b] does not see this as a legitimate strategic rationale for expansion. ``Fear of a new wave of Russian imperialism . . . should not be seen as the driving force behind NATO enlargement,'' says Mr. Talbott.
Not surprisingly, those states seeking NATO membership seem to understand NATO's purpose better than the Alliance leader. Lithuania's former president, Vytautas Landsbergis, put it bluntly: ``We are an endangered country. We seek protection.'' Poland, which spent much of its history under one form or another of Russian occupation, makes clear it seeks NATO membership as a guarantee of its territorial integrity. And when Czech President Vaclav Havel warned of ``another Munich,'' he was calling on us not to leave Central Europe once again at the mercy of any great power, as Neville Chamberlain did in 1938.
Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and other potential candidate states don't need NATO to establish democracy. They need NATO to protect the democracies they have already established from external aggression.
Sadly, Mr. Havel's admonishments not to appease ``chauvinistic, Great Russian, crypto-Communist and crypto-totalitarian forces'' have been largely ignored by the Clinton administration. Quite the opposite, the administration has turned NATO expansion into an exercise in the appeasement of Russia.

[…]


Regarding Mr. Simes' comments, I would simply clarify my own position. My position is not that we should accommodate Russia. Far from it. It does seem to me that whatever residual imperialistic tendencies, which, indeed, can be a problem, can best be contained by methods other than adding members to NATO. I can think of no lever more effective, no political lever, than the threat that if Russian behavior does not meet certain standards, NATO will be enlarged, and enlarged very rapidly, and even further, and considerably further, than the current proposal envisages.

[…]

The Russian people do not see NATO as an enemy or a threat. They are mainly interested in the improvement of their desperately bad living conditions.
Unfortunately, the Russian political ruling class has not reconciled itself to the loss of its empire. The economic and political system has been changed, but the mentality of the people who are pursuing global designs for the Soviet super power all their lives cannot be changed overnight. Eduard Shevardnadze warned the American people that the Russian empire disintegrated but the imperialistic way of thinking still remains. Andrei Kozyrev also warned against the old guard which has a vested interest in presenting NATO as a threat and an enemy. ``Yielding to them,'' wrote Kozyrev in Newsweek, ``would play into the hands of the enemies of democracy.''
Both statesmen have inside knowledge of the Russian ruling elite. They certainly speak with authority. Moscow is opposed not to the enlargement of NATO but to the very existence of NATO because it rightly sees a defensive military alliance as a threat to its long-term ambitions to regain in the future a controlling influence over the former nation of the Soviet orbit.
As in the time of the Soviet Union, we have to expect that the continued enlargement of NATO will meet with threats and fierce opposition from Moscow. Once, however, the process is complete, any imperialistic dreams will become unrealistic and Russia may accept the present boundaries of its influence as final. Such a reconciliation with reality would prompt Moscow to concentrate its full attention and resources on internal recovery. A change of the present mind set would open a new chapter of friendly relations between Russia and her neighbors, who would no longer see Moscow as a threat. This new sense of security would be an historic turning point.
This is exactly what happened between Germany and Poland.


Comments about Ukraine were of the following kind :

If, for example, we are saying that this is not the end. The Baltic countries are welcome. Ukraine is welcome. What then would be the consequences within Russia?
I guess all of this leads me to one question, and maybe this is my way, as somebody who is trying to sort through these issues, of getting closer to what I think would be the right position for me to take as a Senator.
You said that if countries meet this democratic criteria, they are welcome. Would Russia be welcome? Maybe that is the question I should ask. If Russia meets the criteria, after all, all of us hope that they will build a democracy. I mean, it will be a very dreary world if they are not able to. This country is still critically important to the quality of our lives and our children's lives and our grandchildren's lives. If Russia meets this criteria, would they be welcome in NATO?
Secretary Albright. Senator, the simple answer to that is yes. We have said that if they meet the criteria, they are welcome. They have said that they do not wish to be a part of it.
[…]

My estimate here rests on the fact that including the Madrid 3, there are now 12 candidates for NATO membership. This total of 12 candidates can easily increase to 15 if Austria, Sweden, and Finland decide to apply. In fact, I see a 16th country, Ukraine, on the horizon.

[…]
The most important issue this prospect raises, however, is NATO's relationship to the countries to its east. Specifically, expansion to the borders of the former Soviet Union unavoidably raises the question of NATO's approach to that vanished empire's two most important successor states: Russia and Ukraine. The suspicions and multiple sources of conflict between them make the relationship between these two new and unstable countries, both with nuclear weapons on their territory, the most dangerous and potentially the most explosive on the planet today.
An expanded NATO must contribute what it can to promoting peaceful relations between them, while avoiding the appearance either of constructing an anti-Russian coalition or washing its hands of any concern for Ukrainian security.
There is no more difficult task for the United States and its European allies and none more urgent. To the extent that their accession to NATO provides an occasion for addressing that task seriously, Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic will have performed yet another service for the West.

[…]
Some may ask, if the aim is to promote stability, then why not admit Ukraine or the Balkan countries first, since they need stability even more than Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. The answer is that prospective new members need to have achieved a certain degree of political, economic and military maturity before they can become members. They need to be ``contributors to security'' not just ``consumers'' of it. Otherwise, NATO and the EU would simply become a collection of economic and political basket cases and both organizations would be unable to function effectively.
[…]
I am not by this question suggesting that you do not feel and believe we have a commitment to the Baltics, but I think there is a factual historical difference between Ukraine and the Baltics. For example, I think the immediate effect on the Russian psyche of admitting either the Baltics or Ukraine would be very similar. But in fact we never recognized that the Baltics, which were annexed by the Soviet Union, were legitimately part of the Soviet Union. We have never recognized that, and it seems to me that any further actions will take some time and may need some massaging. I am not smart enough to know exactly how to do it, but it seems to me as a matter of principle that it is very important to make a distinction between the Baltics, for example, and Ukraine.
[…]
That understanding will be advantageous even to the nations not invited, at least in the near future, to join the Alliance just as the presence of NATO members on the borders of Austria, Sweden, and Finland provided an essential security umbrella during the Cold War. Ukraine and the Baltic States will benefit in a similar manner from the inclusion of Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic in the Alliance. Although Ukraine is not at this point seeking membership in the Alliance as Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia are, all four states are united in the belief that NATO enlargement--even if limited to its current parameters--is advantageous to their security. As a matter of fact, as expansion of the Alliance has become increasingly likely, Russian treatment of Ukraine and the Baltic States has become more moderate and more flexible. Russian policymakers clearly appreciate that rocking the boat too much could accelerate NATO's expansion to Russia's frontier--something they are eager to avoid.
 — neomac

Why would the US care to protect the EU against a potential aggression from Russia? — neomac


Because Europe is home to a number of immensely powerful nations which are, united or seperately, essentially destined to play a big role in global affairs (most notably France and Germany).

Since WWII, the United States has controlled Europe through soft power. It bought influence for the cost of paying the lion's share of Europe's defense bill.

Such control over a large portion of the Heartland is extremely important to United States hegemony, at least if we are to follow Mackinder's and Brzezinski's ideas.

If the United States doesn't control Europe, it will either be controlled by another great power or possibly even turn into its own great power, which will inevitably find itself in conflict with the United States at one point or another. — Tzeentch

If it wasn’t for the fact that:
1 - Europe is still far from turning into its own great power: existing military deficiencies and “strategic cacophony” inside Europe (also between France and Germany too) remain an obstacle to reach strategic autonomy
2 - EU with its large market (which included East Europe) is not Germany (nor Germany and France)
3 - The new developing economies (in South Asia, South America and Africa) are expected to become more relevant in next decades while EU is becoming less and less competitive
4 - Russia is supposed to be a mafia state and declining power so whatever they will be able to achieve by stretching further West their hegemony won’t be an evident challenge to the US military and economy
5 - The greatest challenge to American hegemony comes from China so the Americans might think to take Russia on their side to fight against China.
Not to mention that Germany became the peaceful economic power it has become, thanks to 30 years US-backed support for EU project, NATO and globalisation. And since world-wide power projection has its monstrous costs, everybody must pay for it. Even more so if they largely benefit from it for decades. Most certainly not play against it.
So no, at the moment, it’s not evident that the US must intervene or engage more than it does in Ukraine if Russia actually tried to military expand westward just because Europe has “powerful nations”. The US could handle this this during Cold War when Russians had also half Germany.

Indeed, the US military presence in Europe has been declining for 30 years (which doesn’t fit well into the NATO expansion narrative). — neomac


That's no surprise. After the Cold War up until now there was virtually no military threat from Russia, so numbers of troops decreased while NATO was turned into an instrument to expand US influence through soft power. — Tzeentch

If there was virtually no military threat from Russia why the NATO expansion then? And why would Putin worry about NATO expansion if it’s just American soft-power and American military presence was declining? Those countries that tried to invade Russia in its recent history (Germany and France) were pretty complacent toward Russian security concerns. So why was Russia so worried?
Besides under Putin Russian military budget increased significantly, power consolidation in domestic affairs and over rebel peripheries turned authoritarian, nationalist, and aggressive (see war in Chechnya and Georgia), Russian military projection overseas increased (in the Mediterranean Sea, Middle East and Africa), governmental cyberwarfare activities and “soft power” (by lobbying populist and anti-American info-war) in the West increased as well, anti-American rhetoric became more hostile up until calling for a new world order in partnership with China, and last but not least Russia (not the US) was the one with border disputes, Russian minorities scattered in neighbouring countries, a lost hegemonic influence to recover, and post-Soviet Russian political/economic/intellectual elites with revanchist dreams.

Trump wanted to pull out the US from NATO. And Sarkozy declared NATO braindead. — neomac

Those are words, not actions. — Tzeentch

Even Putin’s concerns for NATO enlargement in Ukraine were just words until they weren’t. The debate over transatlantic relations in the US has become bitter for a while now. Besides Putin (after the annexation in Crimea and still at war in Donbas) didn’t seem too much worried about the US until Trump was there, right? And until the military special operations French and Germans didn’t seem much compelled by the US soft-power to change their attitude toward Russia, and they still look reluctant about it (e.g. Sarkozy was still talking about Russian security guarantees just a few months ago).


I think it’s more intellectual honest to understand geopolitical agents’ security dilemmas for what they are. So misrepresenting them by removing implied uncertainties and risks, it’s myopic not only toward administrations’ internal tensions and ambiguities in international relations, but also toward administrations’ resolutions and consistency as expressions of their agency.

I already did, in painstaking detail, multiple times over, and I can't be bothered to do so again. You can go back and read them yourself. — Tzeentch

If that below [1] is the piece you are referring to, then ok, I missed it and I would basically agree. But then I totally disagree with your following comment.

Except that the EU has a military ally, the United States, which has the most powerful military in the world by a mile and a half. So no, Europe wasn't vulnerable, which is why they left their militaries to collect dust for decades. — "Tzeentch

That’s begging the question though. If you want to discuss the US reasons to engage in such a war, you can’t simply take the US military alliance to the EU for granted. War is often too heavy/costly endeavour on national and international level, and plenty of imponderable factors that even military/intelligence experts can't foresee until shit hits the fan. So one can reasonably expect geopolitical agents to avoid war not only for an understandable desire for peace, or avoiding wasting resources, but also because they might not want to discover how awfully wrong things can go. And the worst scenario for everybody is when war concerns major nuclear powers. Isn’t it? Besides the US is also plagued by deep domestic political conflicts, pressured by the rise of China, suffering from additional economic/technological competition from the EU (while enjoying the NATO shield and the benefits of the Pax Americana), suffering a growing anti-americanism from the Rest to the West. Why would the US care to protect the EU against a potential aggression from Russia? Why would the US preserve the globalisation if that benefits more its adversaries and its allies, and making them more defiant? For the sake of Europe? Because "those are the rules of the game”? Indeed, the US military presence in Europe has been declining for 30 years (which doesn’t fit well into the NATO expansion narrative). Besides the US solicited the EU to increase their military budget for a long time. Actually, since the Obama administration they have become very much vocal about it. Trump wanted to pull out the US from NATO. And Sarkozy declared NATO braindead.
So yes, Europe is vulnerable to Russia if Europe doesn’t give a shit about the US security concerns or plays against them.

[1]

Earlier in this thread I've tried to offer a geopolitical explanation for the United States' actions:

Since the United States cannot have been surprised by the Russian invasion and also does not seem overly committed to a Ukrainian victory, I am entertaining the hypothesis that the United States intentionally sought to provoke long-lasting conflict between Europe and Russia.

Europe and Russia were cozying up to each other too much, while it is in America's best interest to keep the Heartland divided.

With China and Russia in an alliance that was futher strengthened by the American push for Ukrainian incorporation into NATO, the Eurasian continent was basically already 2/3's united. There was an actual threat of the Heartland uniting completely - with Europe becoming apathetic towards the United States and fairly neutral towards Russia and China, and with Russia and China being markedly anti-American.

The war in Ukraine attempts to establish Europe as a committed American ally, and a counterbalance against Russia in case a large-scale security competition breaks out between the United States and Russia and China.

Far-fetched? Sober big-picture thinking? You be the judge. — Tzeentch

I don't personally subscribe to any one way of viewing international politics, and it should be noted Mearsheimer often states that he believes his theories aren't right 100% of the time either. — Tzeentch

Yet you cited Mearsheimer (along with Sachs and Chomsky) to support the idea that the US has provoked this war, didn’t you? And you did that to imply what exactly?
Whatever Russia claims to be “provocation” doesn’t mean that Russia had a right to invade Ukraine in international law terms.
Nor it can possibly mean that the US (or the West in general) should put Russia security concerns above or at the same level of the US (or the West in general) security concerns, if you want to talk about geopolitical strategy.
Nor it can possibly mean that different political administrations are morally bound to follow the same path/commitments toward third countries that previous administrations followed without considering geopolitical strategy (and third countries’ administrations!).
So what else does it mean exactly? Can you spell it out?

Russia de-militarised prior to this conflict breaking loose?
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1203160/military-expenditure-russia/ — neomac


Numbers mean little without context, and the context is that the Russian military consisted of 190,000 troops at the start of the invasion. For a gigantic country like Russia that is very tiny. With it they struggled conquering and occupying only a few regions of Ukraine. It didn't come close to being a threat to NATO. They could double that, and it still wouldn't be.

Prior to this conflict most European armies were in shambles (for the most part they still are) and Russia was maintaining a small army relative to its size, and compared for example to the size of the armies of the Soviet Union. — Tzeentch

Then I don’t see enough context in there either. What counts for geopolitical considerations is Russian military capacity, not just what is mobilised in specific military operations and invested in military budget. Then its military offensive capacity (not only defensive) which needs to be compared to the defensive/offensive military capacity of any target country (e.g. post-Soviet Republics). Then its hegemonic ambitions wrt hegemonic competitors (like the US) and allies (like China).
Concerning the logic of your argument, if the EU is more demilitarised than Russia, then EU is more military vulnerable to Russia. Besides nobody is reasonably going to invade Russia as a whole, which would practically imply inheriting all the security issues Russia has for occupying such a vast territory (comprising lots of wastelands).

“Peace talking” is always derailing your reasoning outside the power game “rules” you are trying to understand. — neomac

Hard to see what you mean by this.

Countries don't prefer to be at war. They prefer to be at peace. War is simply an inevitable consequence of the power structure states find themselves in.

When the status quo is resilient peace, there's no rational reason for states to disrupt that status quo simply because "those are the rules of the game”. — Tzeentch

Hard to see what you mean by this as well. The “rules of the game” are just patterns of behavior that geopolitical agents show in dealing with security dilemmas that power structures and struggles “inevitably” pose. And that’s a fundamental premise to discuss the rationals for ensuring a otherwise mostly uncertain “resilient” peace. “Uncertain” precisely because indeed there are scarce resources, competing interests over those resources and no rules granting successful cooperation (not to mention equal distribution of related costs/benefits & risks/opportunities).

So this might be a possible deterrent for Russia to engage in the eastern front. — neomac

I think it will have the exact opposite effect.

By inserting itself between Russia and one of its core strategic interests, the United States has guaranteed a permanent state of conflict (hot or cold) for as long as that situation persists. — Tzeentch

Any deterrence can also have the opposite effect. Anybody trapped in a security dilemma can likely see defensive measures of its opponents as offensive provocations. That’s e.g. how you get the nuclear race. The point is that the US is military engaged in Russia’s neighbourhood not the other way around. And the permanent state of conflict is useful to decouple Russia from Europe with little military investment wrt Russia. The benefit for Europeans, it’s the time to prepare for worse. And let’s hope that’s enough.

Even if Crimea is the core in Russian geostrategic calculations, its annexation wouldn’t guarantee its security as it would if Ukraine was under Russian control (or at least, demilitarised). So the threat for Russia may still be serious enough to work as a deterrent. — neomac

Holding a nation's core strategic interests hostage will not work as a deterrent. It will ensure conflict permanently looms over the region, just like with Taiwan. — Tzeentch

Deterrence on the Western from means that a costly retaliatory measure might ensue. And that is what Russian rational strategists need to take into account and possibly discourage any hostile move. The threat of an attack from Ukraine against Russia on the West front, say in the Black Sea, will oblige Russia to invest part of its military capacity in protecting that region, as it happens now for Ukraine under the threat of an attack from Belarus.
For any move it’s possible to imagine a counter move. But all moves have costs, so for the US investing resources to pressure competitors’ to pay greater and rapidly growing costs and re-aligning allies is still a good strategic move.

First, the Europeans are realising how delegating their own security to the US can be costly and risky as they never could before... — neomac

There seems to be little awareness within the European leadership that they and the United States have played a prominent role in provoking this conflict. The US is playing them for fools, because they largely are.

They've been given the illusion of importance and agency, but current US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland's words probably describe the United States' position vis-à-vis Europe the best: "F*CK the EU!"

It would be great if the Europeans started to realise this, but I see nothing of the sort. — Tzeentch

I don’t see it that way. “Provocation” sounds weird in competitive games (even more so if one champions Mearsheimer’s “offensive realism”). It’s like calling “provocation” a first pawn exchange on a chessboard by a player against an opponent. That’s the game they are supposed to play.
Besides “provocation” is in the eye of the receiver so it’s easy to represent one’s action in terms of reactions to some actual or perceived “provocation”. Also the US reacted to European provocations (who were flirting with American authoritarian competitors: Russia and China, “NATO is braindead”) and Russian provocations (Russia under Putin was set out to re-establish its great power role at the expense of the US plus “I and my Chinese boyfriend want a new world order”, and messing in America and America’s backyard, namely Europe, with infowar and lobbying) while both were enjoying the benefits of the globalisation promoted by the US (so without considering the US security concerns).
In talking about “provocation” Russia is just claiming some right that it can’t prove to have (and which within Mearsheimer’s offensive realism shouldn’t even make sense!), it’s an indirect threat to the US or the West, and it’s trying to make a genocidal mafia state look as a victim, if not a martyr. Ridiculous.

Ironically, how can we conclude anything other than the fact that Europe and Russia were quite de-militarized prior to this conflict breaking loose? And wasn't that something we should have fostered? — Tzeentch

Russia de-militarised prior to this conflict breaking loose?
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1203160/military-expenditure-russia/
“Peace talking” is always derailing your reasoning outside the power game “rules” you are trying to understand. In the opposite direction goes the ancient piece of wisdom: si vis pacem, para bellum

any government promoting human rights (competing with those promoting others political agenda) is realistically drawn willingly or unwillingly into a power race — neomac

Exactly why I spent so much time demonstrating that your assumption that the US are following a different agenda to Russia in terms of basic human rights is completely unfounded. It may have different methods (elections plus narrative control), but the outcomes are the same - power concentrated into the hands of a smaller number of wealthy individuals. — Isaac

First, I didn't even understand what assumption you are attributing to me. Since you have a poor understanding of what I write better to avoid rephrasing. Quote me, it's much easier and fair.
Second, my claim suggests the opposite of your conclusion: even if power was concentrated into the hands of a smaller number of wealthy individuals, this may still serve human rights promotion.

that doesn’t exclude convergence and cooperation among states at all (indeed, that’s why there are alliances and partnerships — neomac

Exactly. So none of your theory, even if true, has any bearing on the debate about the US's involvement in this conflict. It may gain this 'power' you claim it needs by beating Russia militarily, but it may also gain it by clever diplomacy, territorial deals, persuasion, economic offerings, power-sharing... — Isaac

It has bearing to the extent that we are talking about geopolitical agents, so it makes sense to discuss our assumptions about what's their expected behavior and aims in given circumstances e.g. to understand why the US might spend hundreds of billions in military expenditure instead of fighting famine and diseases around the world. And to remind us that possibilities are not free floating in a vacuum of geopolitical constraining factors and historical legacies, that affect threat and trust perception: Russia had 30 years to become more pro-West through diplomacy, persuasion (G8), economic offerings (energetic cooperation between Europe and Russian) , power-sharing (in Syria and war against Islamist terrorism) but then Putin preferred to become more anti-US (profiting from the complacency of the pro-Russia attitude of the West, right?), pushing anti-West populist narrative in the West, and directly challenge the US leadership. On these premises, better to look for a diplomatic solution always in position of power.

Ok, but I have trouble reconciling this with page-long discussions about human rights, when you are now giving very straight-forward realist explanations for why Ukraine in NATO is useful to 'the West', which I think means primarily the United States. — Tzeentch

My recent discussion about human rights was just reviewing a narrowly scoped argument of mine inspired by Isaac’s claims [1].

Anyways, the shortest and most general answer I can give you about reconciling clashing views (human rights and realist geopolitics) is the following:
1. Policies promoting human rights (as any alternative policy agenda like the extermination of jews, or the working class liberation from capitalist exploitation, or Islamist sharia) require power. And since power is grounded on scarce resources this will trigger struggles over capitalising those resources among competitors. That’s how any government promoting human rights (competing with those promoting others political agenda) is realistically drawn willingly or unwillingly into a power race (including propaganda wars, economic wars, military wars, you name it).
2. Power is constrained by geographic factors so in international relations it makes sense to relativise (de facto and or normatively) political goals and decision making as a function of territorial sovereignity. This in turn will imply that any other interstate relation will be instrumental to empowering/securing sovereignty and determined by power relations. But that doesn’t exclude convergence and cooperation among states at all (indeed, that’s why there are alliances and partnerships).
3. Geopolitical strategies can involve long-term goals covering decades and generations to come, and always relative to competitors. So the power race is constrained by timing factors: any players is incentivised to be pro-active and facilitate/exploit other players failures/slowness/lack of reactivity as opportunity windows to take bolder steps. In other words, any understanding of geopolitical endgames limited to short term goals and irrespective of what competitors might do next is geopolitical myopic (and most certainly unreliable to support rational expectations about geopolitical players).
4. For a minimal moral justification one can simply argue in terms of the lesser evil (wrt costs and risks): so as long as the great power game is de facto framed as a conflict between US-led coalitions and Russia (and/or China) where the European security is jeopardised in so many ways that Europeans can’t autonomously or effectively address, then European governments are forced to pick a side (with costs and risks included). What’s the lesser evil even for empowering/securing human rights policies?

These are the background assumptions of my reasoning.

I honestly don't think any European nation fantasizes about invading Russia. They have no offensive capabilities to speak of.

The type of threats the Russians fear are probably more focused on economic and (geo)political strangulation - the type that a hostile Ukraine could have facilitated by cutting off Russia's access to the Black Sea. — Tzeentch

I agree and my comment was focusing on the possible contribution of Ukraine. As I said if Ukraine is integrated to the West security system through NATO or through n-lateral security agreement which includes the US, so not demilitarised de facto, Ukraine will always constitute a threat for Russia's access to the Black Sea, its ports might be bombed and military operations can attack Russian Western front, especially the annexed territories if they remain to Russia (in other words the US can play in Ukraine the same game Russia is now playing in Belarus against Ukraine). One way or the other pretexts can be found, if needed. So this might be a possible deterrent for Russia to engage in the eastern front.

I don't believe the Russians had much incentive to pick a fight in Ukraine (let alone the rest of Europe) before the United States threatened to incorporate it. Even now the regions it occupies relate directly to their primary strategic interest - Crimea. — Tzeentch

Even if Crimea is the core in Russian geostrategic calculations, its annexation wouldn’t guarantee its security as it would if Ukraine was under Russian control (or at least, demilitarised). So the threat for Russia may still be serious enough to work as a deterrent.

I don't agree the path the Europeans have chosen is in any way conducive to their own security. — Tzeentch

First, the Europeans are realising how delegating their own security to the US can be costly and risky as they never could before. And that Russia and China are on the path of engaging the US in a nasty power struggle. Understanding the dangers is a necessary step to better address them.
Second, Europeans can profit from the weakening of Russian military capacity, the lessons gained through this war, and the time gained to re-group and re-arm as well as they can.
That’s in some way conducive to Europeans’ own security. In the hindsight it may look suboptimal. In the hindsight.


[1]

As compassionate outsiders, our concern should solely be for the well-being of the people there. — Isaac

What is the well-being of the people? — neomac

That's up to us to decide. Personally I think the notion of human rights is a good starting point. — Isaac

Now, my theory is that they didn't aim to keep Russia out (they wouldn't be able to), but to drag the Europeans in. — Tzeentch

Of course, I don't exclude that possibility either. My point is that Ukraine may play a key role in the Western security system for future challenges, even after this war ends. Ukraine may offer plausible triggers to bend the NATO defensive alliance logic into an offensive operation, if needed. For the same reason, having Ukraine outside NATO has its risks for Russia too because it may keep re-militarised Europeans outside a direct confrontation (not military aid though) but it may also lead to some n-lateral military pact with Ukraine that is less "defensive".

Ukraine and possibly all of Europe served up as the sacrificial pawns when that great power conflict breaks loose. — Tzeentch

I do not see any soft way to come out of this game. So either Europeans learn to be and act as a great power (a bit late for that) or they must suffer the great power initiative. Peace-talking (even when successful!) is not a way to disengage from this dangerous game nor to avoid to be sacrificed, because great powers will always have the upper-hand in power dynamics and the less powerful will always pay the greater costs (wrt the benefits). In other words, si vis pacem, para bellum.

...but, you know, I'm sure your guesses are good too... — Isaac

You are confused (as usual). I'm not trying to sell my guesses more than what they are. In any case, the problem is not the lack of support from the experts (as Manuel clarified). The point is that my speculation concerns what the West is actually looking for in Ukraine, however this war ends, in terms of geopolitical endgames. Your analysis concerns costs/benefits suggesting what the US should do (avoid a protracted war) and which doesn't contemplate at all in what ways Ukraine is instrumental to the Western security system.
The question that you systematically fail to address in realistic terms is how on earth the US administration AND deep state (including the other Western administrations with their deep states) could possibly engage in such a war if the entire universe of experts you consulted have repeatedly for years suggested otherwise. Your only possible answers in the end are that either they are a corrupt evil cabala of alien-nazi-vampires or it's just a bunch of brainless wild monkeys. And multiply this for all world issues you think humanity morally ought to address. Since ever.

That doesn't get us anywhere since none of us are qualified to comment on the accuracy of those facts. We can only discuss ideology. — Isaac

What does "ideology" mean to you? Explain that to me. What is there to discuss when we can only discuss ideology?

https://unherd.com/thepost/henry-kissinger-nato-membership-for-ukraine-is-appropriate/

My understanding: Ukraine must be part of the West security system (inside or outside NATO may have pros/cons for Russia too!). Russia gave the West the justification on a golden plate. Ukraine (which is far more reliable then Turkey in containing Russia in that area) will be important later on, as soon as the military clash between the US and China materializes. To keep Russia out of it.

Anyone who understands the above paragraphs, understands. — Tzeentch

Brzezinski is definitely one of the most influential experts to understand US geopolitical strategy (far more than Mearsheimer, Chomsky and Sachs are not even geopolitical analysts). Good you cited him. I was already discussing Brzezinski 3 months ago:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/750556

But after gaining membership, you can have populists coming into power who don't give a damn to human rights or see them just a way for the West to control their country's sovereignty. Hence you have the problems like the EU is having with Hungary and Orban. And of course Turkey under Erdogan has become a somewhat problematic member of NATO. — ssu

I agree. Focusing on the EU, while there is lots of literature out there about the problematic interplay of domestic factors and foreign factors showing the limits of EU pre-accession conditionality in shaping post-Soviet EU members’ “Europeanisation” (as the Visegrad group has shown), yet there are also the effects of EU integration after post-accession which help explain the relative stability of democratic trends in other cases (https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/gpop/files/why_no_backsliding.pdf). To which one can now add the Russian threat which is breaking the Visegrad group (https://en.uj.edu.pl/en_GB/news/-/journal_content/56_INSTANCE_SxA5QO0R5BDs/81541894/150377650) and may turn in favour of a greater EU integration (e.g. in the domain of security and foreign affairs) but also European re-democratization (https://www.democratic-erosion.com/2022/10/13/democratic-backsliding-in-the-ukraine-conflict-and-renewed-prospects-of-re-democratization-in-europe/).

I see. So Ukraine may or may not “improve”, it's plausible the EU might help but the evidence isn't in the charts, but it's “obvious” so there's no need for you to actually show any… and we don't need evidence anyway because we're just a philosophy forum... and Ukraine is "different" from any of the places where western influence hasn't worked (but oddly the same as the ones where it might have), but again, no need to actually specify how because.... hey, who needs all this 'evidence'... and 'deregulation' is the means by which regulations are sometimes enforced....

But somehow this is all enough evidence to justify full-throated support for a devastating war which many experts think risks full nuclear exchange...

Yeah, I think we're done here. — Isaac

As usual, you need to caricature my views to score a point:
1 - The word “improve” is misleading, but since your objection revolved around it, you need to keep framing my views accordingly
2 - I said nowhere that is “obvious” from those charts. I was the first one to acknowledge that does charts did not discriminate between driving factors. So, given that we were uncertain about some relevant facts, I simply said it’s reasonable to make some assumptions. And to support the plausibility of those assumptions I also provided evidences.
3 - What needs to be shown depends on what it is actually claimed (not what you think the interlocutor has claimed) which concerns both what can be verified and inferred from the available evidence.
4 - I didn’t say anywhere “we don't need evidence anyway because we're just a philosophy forum”. Just that one can not set evidence-based reasoning standards arbitrarily high for a forum post. Even more so if you yourself are not up to standards you demand from others. For example: prove from unbiased sources that regulations are always correlated to improvements of human rights. That’s exactly how dumb your counter-arguments look to me.
5 - My claim wasn’t generic about “Western influence” nor made without considering “how” this needs to be specified wrt to other countries: e.g. Ukraine is different from Saudi-Arabia wrt joining EU/NATO as neighbouring countries with shared history did. And EU/NATO accession requirements imply policies and strategic concerns which hold for Ukraine too as they hold for its neighbouring post-Soviet countries (which joined EU/NATO).
6 - Deregulation and privatisation happened also in Poland (as suggested by Jeffrey Sachs according to his infamous “shock therapy”), and are still considered by many as the major drivers of Poland economic boost:
Advising in post-communist economies
Sachs has worked as an economic adviser to governments in Latin America, Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. A practice trained macroeconomist, he advised a number of national governments in the transition from Marxism–Leninism or developmentalism to market economies.[citation needed]
In 1989, Sachs advised Poland's anticommunist Solidarity movement and the government of Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki. He wrote a comprehensive plan for the transition from central planning to a market economy which became incorporated into Poland's reform program led by Finance Minister Leszek Balcerowicz. Sachs was the main architect of Poland's debt reduction operation. Sachs and IMF economist David Lipton advised the rapid conversion of all property and assets from public to private ownership. Closure of many uncompetitive factories ensued.[24] In Poland, Sachs was firmly on the side of rapid transition to capitalism. At first, he proposed American-style corporate structures, with professional managers answering to many shareholders and a large economic role for stock markets. That did not bode well with the Polish authorities, but he then proposed that large blocks of the shares of privatized companies be placed in the hands of private banks.[25] As a result, there were some economic shortages and inflation, but prices in Poland eventually stabilized.[26][third-party source needed] The government of Poland awarded Sachs with one of its highest honors in 1999, the Commander's Cross of the Order of Merit.[27] He also received an honorary doctorate from the Kraków University of Economics.[17]
Sachs's ideas and methods of transition from central planning were adopted throughout the transition economies. He advised Slovenia in 1991 and Estonia in 1992 on the introduction of new stable and convertible currencies. Based on Poland's success, he was invited first by Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and then by Russian President Boris Yeltsin on the transition to a market economy. He served as adviser to Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar and Finance Minister Boris Federov during 1991–1993 on macroeconomic policies.[citation needed] Sachs' methods for stabilising economies became known as shock therapy and were similar to successful approaches used in Germany after the two world wars.[23] When Russia fell into poverty after adopting his market-based shock therapy in the early 1990's,[28] some Western media called him a cold-hearted neo-liberal.[29][30]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Sachs

BTW the author Tyler Cowen you cited a while ago to question the myth of the Marshall plan is talking about pro-market policies like privatisation and deregulation as major factors of European economic recovery
U.S. advisors urged Italy to undertake a coordinated public investment program and extensive Keynesian aggregate demand management policies. In 1949-1950, American officials finished a study of the Italian economy without mentioning stringent migration controls across municipalities and rent controls, perhaps Italy's two worst pieces of economic legislation. Once again, the recommendations involved Keynesian macroeconomic poilicies

Policy makers and aid proponents should no longer view the Marshall Plan as an unqualified success. At best, its effects on postwar Europe were -mixed, while its impact on the American economy was negative. The basic problem with foreign aid is that economic growth is not a creature of central planning and direction. Growth is the result of individual initiative and enterprise within a sound legal and economic framework. Government can only supply the framework. Anything more will result in the well-known problems of central or socialist planning: the impossibility of rational economic calculation, the creation of perverse incentives, and the stifling of entrepreneurial initiative, among others. Foreign aid programs always will be plagued by such problems.

In most cases, and certainly in the case of the Marshall Plan, the government-to-government character of foreign aid encourages statism and central planning, not free enterprise. The best way to promote free markets in other countries is to allow their businesses to trade with the U.S. without government interference. This freedom of trade includes not only exporting and importing, but also lending, borrowing, and labor emigration and immigration.
https://www.ccoyne.com/files/Marshall_Plan.pdf]/
So the problem is not “deregulation” per se but how it is implemented and fits other major driving factors.

And correlation is not causation.

Nothing in that establishes that those countries made those changes because of western influence, or were accepted into the western sphere because of an internal desire to make those changes. — Isaac

Suddenly lost all their agency have they? — Isaac

You are conceptually confused. I didn’t talk about causation which is a notion that can be particularly misleading in human affairs since human affairs involve agency (and that’s not the first time we have been discussing about it). I’m fine with correlations and arguable reasons for agents to process those correlations for decision making or explaining those correlations.
BTW human agency is also matter of responding to incentives and the fact that incentives do not lead to the desirable effect right away is not a sufficient counter-argument to those incentives. For example: even economic sanctions to Russia and military aid to Ukraine are not proving effective in convincing Putin to stop the war, yet we didn’t stop sanctioning Russia nor military aid to Ukraine, why is that? Because for example people can be stubborn in the pursuit of some goals as long as they can afford it, until they can’t of course. Since nobody can be certain that competing rational/irrational agents stop misbehaving out sweet-talking, one can just raise the costs of misbehaving until the misbehavior wears out its resources. And Putin will make the reciprocal reasoning. (One could also cursorily mention that even scientific theories have some resiliency against adverse evidences, and this phenomenon is the object of much debate about epistemologists like Kuhn, Lakatos, Feyerabend)

No, you're ignoring the evidence and continuing with your fairytale in spite of evidence to the contrary.

Your theory is that Western influence on Ukraine would improve human right compared to Russian influence. — Isaac

Not “improve” for the reasons I already explained.

my hypothesis is not that joining EU improves human rights because: 1. when you roughly reached the top (the range is between 0-1) of course there is no much improving , at best you can preserve it 2. Those trends do not discriminate between driving factors (e.g. domestic vs foreign). Indeed EU/NATO membership could also contribute to inhibit/weaken adverse trends prior and after the membership was accepted e.g. through sanctions, monitoring and induced constitutional reforms etc. — neomac

You've given data showing that some ex-soviet countries improved their human rights record (according to one metric) after leaving the USSR, but others didn't. Those that did later joined the EU, some later joined NATO.

You've not shown that Western influence was responsible for this improvement, not even given any data at all regarding the cause. — Isaac

Not exactly. First, I didn’t talk about “improvement”, you did. Secondly, also those post-Soviet republics which didn’t join EU/NATO experienced a boost in the earliest years according to those charts but then they didn’t keep the trend (until the top position) or degraded sharply. One might need to investigate domestic and foreign factors accounting for those trends (as I pointed out many times). Yet we have plausible reasons to suppose EU/NATO offered enough benefits to keep that trend relatively stable, even if we can not see that from those charts.

You've not shown that Russian influence was responsible for the lack of improvement in Ukraine (and Belarus), not even provided any data at all on the matter. — Isaac

I didn’t know such evidences were even needed (and I’m not certainly going to unload all the credible sources that anybody can easily consult on the internet in support of my claims, and that you are not going to read anyways or still consider biased because they do not into your echo chamber). Also because it’s very much obvious and implied in all discussions here. Yours included

at issue is not simply the question of whether Ukraine would be better off outside of Russian puppetry (undoubtedly yes). — Isaac

Besides it’s preposterous to set standards for evidence-based reasoning for a philosophy forum exchange arbitrarily high. So unless you provide more unbiased and conclusive evidence for your claims than what you demand from me to offer for my claims, you are proving yourself to be intellectually dishonest. For a while now.

2. Many other countries within 'western influence' like Saudi-Arabia, have seen their human rights record decline (from an already poor start). If there was a significant driver of human rights improvements in the ex-Soviet nations post 1999, western influence clearly wasn't it since it did not have a similar effect outside of those states and that time period. — Isaac

3. The US (the chief 'western' influence in Ukraine) has a steeply declining human rights record and is currently below Belarus, a Russian puppet state.[/quote]

This is a total equivocation of the notion “Western influence”. The case of Ukraine is completely different from the case of Saudi-Arabia. To say the least, for Ukraine there is a meaningful discussion over its EU/NATO membership as there was for other post-Soviet countries in its neighbourhood (until their actual integration). And nowhere I claimed that Western influence has the same effects in every case. Western interests (vs competitor interests) in the region and domestic conditions must be taken into account.
Concerning Ukraine, the situation is particular because of the bitter conflict between anti-Russians and pro-Russians, and the ensuing effects of forced Russification: from the national government control to the pro-Russian Ukrainian regions (including the tragedy of the Crimean Tatars). Besides, according to your eagle eye for positive variations, the US influence may have improved the situation in Ukraine:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/physical-integrity-rights-fkr?tab=chart&time=2014..latest&country=UKR~RUS

What we do see, however, is data which opposes your theory. — Isaac

You cherry-pick a particular group of states at one very narrow period of history (ex-Soviet states post 1999 to early 2000s) and then extrapolate a general theory from those despite the fact that you've been shown other states and other time periods which contradict that theory.
You infer reasons for those cherry-picked improvements which are not given in the data ('western' vs Russian influence), again despite being given data which shows the opposite - the Russian-influenced Belarus is now above the archetype of western influence, the US. — Isaac

You simply misunderstood my claims (your cherry-picking charge is grounded on your strawman fallacy). And keep playing dumb as if nobody can notice it.

You then ignore all other data, such as the fact that Ukraine's post-war policy is documented as being one of “deregulation" — Isaac

Economic deregulation may be needed, for example if the local economic regulations are meant to let local corrupt oligarchs win easily. There is nothing in the notion of “economic deregulation” that makes it incompatible with regulations promoting human-rights. Again it all depends on how deregulation is going to be implemented. BTW I don’t need AT ALL to ignore all side-effects and failures of Western induced policies in post-Soviet countries (like Russia). Yet they didn’t fail everywhere (see Poland). Besides, as I understand the stakes of the current war, lots of already compromised Western reputation (instrumental to its power struggle as for any other competing power) hinges on the fate of Ukraine, so the West can’t reasonably let it be just another failure story in Western and international perception.

The collapse of the Soviet Union + ensuing independence is correlated with boost in human rights support to the top for many countries in eastern block and post-Soviet countries. — neomac


Not derivable from the charts. As I said, V-dem bias their scoring heavily in favour of democratic representation which is only a small part of human rights. We can say with certainty that the collapse of the Soviet Union produced a strong increase in democratic representation (and associated freedoms). The rest of human rights are not addressed by your charts. — Isaac

Oh, you just went back to complaining about the metric.
The charts caption says “Based on the expert assessments and index by V-Dem. It captures the extent to which people are free from government torture, political killings, and forced labor, they have property rights, and enjoy the freedoms of movement, religion, expression, and association.” This is what they measured. If you have anything pertinent to the issue at hand and arguable better than those charts, show them to me. If you do not have them, I’ll keep reasoning over the evidence I have. You feel free to keep speculating over the evidence you do not have.

After some of those countries joined EU/NATO, they managed to keep their positive trends relatively stable, and for those which experienced a noticeable decline (like Poland) still the trend doesn’t look as bad as it looks for other post-Soviet countries still under Russian influence — neomac


Again, that's not what the charts show. The trend is similar in EU nations as it in Russio-sphere nations (in fact the trend is, on average, slightly more positive in Russio-sphere nations than it is in EU nations). — Isaac

What do you mean by “similar”? I don’t see very much relevant similarity wrt what I’m arguing.
Here some latest stats:

Post-Soviet republics (outside NATO/EU):
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/human-rights-vdem?tab=chart&time=1988..latest&uniformYAxis=0&country=MDA~TJK~TKM~UZB~BLR~RUS~ARM~KAZ~KGZ~GEO~UKR~AZE
Only 3/12 are upper bound >= 0.9
Only 4/12 are upper bound >= 0.8
Only 5/9 are upper bound >= 0.7
Only 5/9 are upper bound >= 0.6

Post-Soviet republics and Eastern bloc (within EU/NATO)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/human-rights-vdem?tab=chart&time=2000..latest&uniformYAxis=0&country=LVA~LTU~EST~SVK~ROU~BGR~POL~CZE~HUN~HRV~SVN
Only 7/9 are upper bound >= 0.9
Only 9/9 are upper bound >= 0.8
Only 9/9 are upper bound >= 0.7
Only 9/9 are upper bound >= 0.6

Once again you fail to consider comparative likelihood, and comparison is not over variation but over desirable levels of human rights index. Also a turd can look similar to a chocolate muffin. Yet I guess it would still taste different enough in your mouth, innit? Would this change significantly enough if you removed the sugar-coat on top of the muffin and put it on the turd?

We have no such reason from the data you've provided. You've given no evidence that EU pressure, monitoring and requirements improve human rights as a whole. You've given no evidence that Russia is responsible for the low V-dem scores of the nations which chose not to join the EU. Basically you've come at this with a preconceived notion and squeezed the data into your theory. — Isaac

The data I provided shows some trends and allow us for some reasoning under uncertainty.
The good reasons are things like these:
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2020/648145/IPOL_BRI(2020)648145_EN.pdf
https://european-union.europa.eu/priorities-and-actions/achievements_en
https://international-partnerships.ec.europa.eu/policies/peace-and-governance/human-rights_en
Which must be again assessed comparatively. And the alternative here is to be Russian puppetry.

at issue is not simply the question of whether Ukraine would be better off outside of Russian puppetry (undoubtedly yes). — Isaac

What we actually have is...
Post Soviet break up, some nations chose to move toward joining the EU, for which they increased their systems of democratic representation which dramatically improved their V-dem scores. We don't have any data on why or how.
2. Other nations chose not to, so their V-dem scores remained low. We don't have any data on what influenced them to make this choice, certainly nothing showing that 'Russian influence' was the determining factor. That is entirely a fabrication of yours.
3. We have no data at all on comparisons between non-democracy related human rights such as freedom from slavery and the right to respect for family and private life.
4. We have no data at all on the impact of the post-soviet states on the human rights of other nations such as developing world trading partners.

Relating this to Ukraine. We have no reason (from the data you've given) to think that Ukraine defeating Russia would lead to a Lithuania-style improvement, or maintain the previous Ukraine-style levels. We don't know why Ukraine had such a low score and we've no evidence at all to suggest that might be related to Russia in a way which their defeat in a land war would prevent. — Isaac

Of course we have reasons. Just we are reasoning under uncertainty as avg dudes by considering the available evidences (which will always be very limited, we are neither experts nor decision makers), make comparisons, guided by some reasonable assumptions like the EU/NATO policies, the degree of involvement of the West in Ukraine, the Ukrainian aspirations, geopolitical theories, history, etc. If you refuse playing this game, that’s fine with me. Believing that’s not worth playing it, that’s entirely your problem not mine. You didn’t offer any better alternative anyways to anything we have discussed so far. You just wish all and only Western rich people and politicians sell all they have and pay for Yemeni/African/Chinese/Indian/Russian kids starving and the UK healthcare system. And apparently the best strategy for you to make that happen is by holding them accountable through posts on a philosophy forum. How is it going so far? Don’t need evidences, use your imagination.

since the XIX century Ukrainians are striving for having an independent nation and resisting Russification and Russian subjugation pursued by any Russian regime — neomac


Bollocks. There has been a civil war raging between those who want to remain in the Russian sphere of influence and those who don't. Your elaborations of data are bad enough. If you're going to just start making shit up we can't progress at all. — Isaac

Which doesn’t contradict what I’m saying at all. Indeed the separatists fighting the civil war concerns Russified regions of course. If you are ignorant about Ukrainian history, it’s not my problem. I gave you the link to Timothy Snyder classes. Alternatively a wikipedia summary can come in handy too:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russification_of_Ukraine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De-Tatarization_of_Crimea
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_nationalism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donbas
Ukrainians in the Donbas were greatly affected by the 1932–33 Holodomor famine and the Russification policy of Joseph Stalin. As most ethnic Ukrainians were rural peasant farmers, they bore the brunt of the famine.

NATO expansion has so far secured certain East block countries against the perceived Russian threat — neomac


...and a single shred of evidence for this would be…?. — Isaac

I gave it a while ago [1]

it’s important to not discount other promoting factors (like EU membership) that might counterbalance potential declining trends — neomac


It is unequivocal from the data you yourself provided that the EU is no such promoting factor. Look at the data. The main net gains during the period after most states joined the EU were from Russia and Belarus. If anything, the data show the exact opposite, that being outside of the EU is a better influencer on human rights.. — Isaac

Irrelevant. Even if one can’t discriminate the impact of the EU/NATO from domestic factors from those charts (“absence of evidence does not mean evidence of absence”), one can still clearly see that COMPARATIVELY those post-Soviet or eastern block countries which joined EU/NATO are in much better human rights conditions than those which didn’t. Besides we know that EU membership requires reviewing before and after the accession, pro-human rights policies, sanctioning mechanism and various other economic/security/social benefits which may motivate countries to stay in line. So if we do not fully know how effective or broad they are in promoting human rights (in comparative terms), still anybody who cares about human rights and is risk averse may still reasonably prefer to have them than nothing at all or the opposite of it.

how likely is that Russia will spare Ukraine from becoming Russian puppetry given all its strategic relevance — neomac.

That depends on the progress of the war. If the war goes very well and Russia lose quickly and completely, then that will secure Ukraine a free and intact future. If the war goes really badly and Russia make gains, that will actually increase the chances of Ukraine becoming a puppet state over say, simply ceding Crimea and Donbas right now. If the war drags on, then it will be the worse outcome of all since whether Russia win or lose will be irrelevant. Ukraine will be financially crippled and will be utterly under the control of either Russia or the IMF. In neither case will it be free to make its own choices. — Isaac

That’s not related to what I was arguing: EU/NATO influence vs Russia influence. If Ukraine didn’t join EU/NATO, it would have likely become a Russian puppet as Belarus due to its strategic importance and the evident intolerability for Russia to have a pro-West democratic government over there. So human rights conditions would have been likely as shitty as they are in Russia and Belarus.
There is no free meal you know? And IMF may still be the lesser evil than Russia.
In any case, my understanding is that Western international reputation is bound with the fate of Ukraine during and after this war. So if Ukraine can not be sold as a success story in some credible way for years to come Western reputation is screwed much more severely than what happened in Iraq or Afghanistan or Vietnam (put together).

there is no reason for the West to let Russia take Ukraine for free — neomac


Firstly, No one is talking about Russia taking Ukraine. That has never been a negotiating position of either power. The dispute is over the territory of Donbas and Crimea and the security thereof.

Secondly, there's ample reason. The longer the war drags on the more people die (or are put at risk of death) both Ukrainians and other affected groups such as those reliant on Ukrainian exports and those who care not be destroyed by nuclear holocaust.

No one has yet provided a shred of evidence showing that a Russian controlled Donbas/Crimea would be so much worse for the people of those territories as to justify the deaths of thousands (and risk to millions) of a continued war. All the evidence points to the fact that life for the people of those regions would be much the same either way (pretty bloody awful). — Isaac

Russia tried to attack Kyiv with the purpose of denazifying the Ukrainian regime. Since it failed, it had to redefine its military objectives and now it seems to focus on South-Eastern Ukrainian territories. But threats from Russia and for Russia are all still there. Even if you want to limit the scope of your argument, the choice for Ukraine between joining EU/NATO or remaining prey of Russia is still there. Therefore for the West and Ukraine the Russian threat needs to be reduced as much as possible (e.g. concerning Russian military capability to pursue conventional wars for further expansion or in support of China, also to give the West enough time to grow its military capacity bigger and more advanced than Russia’s ). That’s necessary for any negotiation to be perceived enough reliable (coz Putin’s word have absolutely zero value right?).
I don’t think the West/Ukraine are fighting this war to save the pro-Russian separatists in Donbas/Crimea, but to keep strategic territories and to save those who aren’t pro-Russian.

If Ukrainian casualties... — neomac


We're not talking (primarily) about Ukrainian casualties. We're talking about the risk of nuclear war, mass starvation, and future economic devastation. Ukrainian casualties are a drop in the ocean. More people died from Ukraine's appalling environmental pollution that died in the war so far (civilians). I don't see that over the front pages day after day. — Isaac

If you are claiming that pollution is a more serious problem than border disputes because it causes more deaths, that has nothing to do with the war. One can’t fix all problems at once and those that have priority concern the means of survival for competing geopolitical actors.
So, for example, the strategic relevance of “risk of nuclear war, mass starvation, and future economic devastation” can’t discount implied moral hazards which competitors can exploit (indeed less risk averse or bluffing competitors may easily turn perceived risks into emotional blackmailing strategies).

https://jacobin.com/2023/01/ukraine-postwar-reconstruction-western-capital-blackrock-neoliberalism/

Ukraine is being sized up by neocolonial vultures from BlackRock to the EU for a carve-up after the war is over. On the menu is deregulation, privatization, and “tax efficiency” — measures that may have already begun.


Among the policy recommendations are a “decrease in government spending,” “tax system efficiency,” and “deregulation.”


Perhaps you could explain to me how "deregulation", the removal of what you call "conditional requirements", can have the effect you're claiming is likely?

All this bullshit fairy tale you're spinning about how EU rules are going to keep human rights up to scratch is counter to the documented reality that westernised post war Ukraine is planned to be a deregulated neo liberal nightmare. — Isaac

"jacobin.com"? "deregulated neo liberal nightmare"? "documented reality"? show that to me, I wanna see the metrics of your unbiased source.




[1]
From:

THE DEBATE ON NATO ENLARGEMENT
======================================================================= HEARINGS
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED FIFTH CONGRESS 
FIRST SESSION
__________
OCTOBER 7, 9, 22, 28, 30 AND NOVEMBER 5, 1997
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Relations


Comments about the Russian “imperialist bent” were of the following kind:

Russia has also been an imperialist country that, for 400 years of its history, acquired territories, expanding from the region around Moscow to the shores of the Pacific, into the Middle East, to the gates of India, and into the center of Europe. It did not get there by plebiscite. It got there by armies. To the Russian leaderships over the centuries, these old borders have become identified with the nature of the state.
So I believe that one of the major challenges we face with Russia is whether it can accept the borders in which it now finds itself. On the one hand, St. Petersburg is closer to New York than it is to Vladivostok, and Vladivostok is closer to Seattle than it is to Moscow, so they should not feel claustrophobic. But they do. This idea of organizing again the old commonwealth of independent states is one of the driving forces of their diplomacy. If Russia stays within its borders and recognizes that Austria, Singapore, Japan and Israel all developed huge economies with no resources and in small territories, they, with a vast territory and vast resources, could do enormous things for their people. Then there is no security problem.

[…]

According to Zbigniew Brzezinski, ``We should not be shy in saying that NATO expansion will help a democratic Russia and hurt an imperialistic Russia.''

[…]

Dr. Kissinger. One slightly heretical point on the Russian situation. We have a tendency to present the issue entirely in terms of Russian domestic politics. I could see Russia making progress toward democracy and becoming extremely nationalistic, because that could become a way of rallying the people. We also have to keep an eye on their propensity toward a kind of imperialist nationalism, which, if you look at the debates in the Russian parliament, is certainly present.

[…]

Advocates of NATO transformation make a better case for the Alliance to disband than expand. NATO's job is not to replace the U.N. as the world's peacekeeper, nor is it to build democracy and pan- European harmony or promote better relations with Russia. NATO has proven the most successful military alliance in history precisely because it has rejected utopian temptations to remake the world.
Rather, NATO's mission today must be the same clear-cut and limited mission it undertook at its inception: to protect the territorial integrity of its members, defend them from external aggression, and prevent the hegemony of any one state in Europe.
The state that sought hegemony during the latter half of this century was Russia. The state most likely to seek hegemony in the beginning of the next century is also Russia . A central strategic rationale for expanding NATO must be to hedge against the possible return of a nationalist or imperialist Russia, with 20,000 nuclear missiles and ambitions of restoring its lost empire. NATO enlargement, as Henry Kissinger argues, must be undertaken to ``encourage Russian leaders to interrupt the fateful rhythm of Russian history . . . and discourage Russia's historical policy of creating a security belt of important and, if possible, politically dependent states around its borders.''
Unfortunately, the Clinton administration [/b] does not see this as a legitimate strategic rationale for expansion. ``Fear of a new wave of Russian imperialism . . . should not be seen as the driving force behind NATO enlargement,'' says Mr. Talbott.
Not surprisingly, those states seeking NATO membership seem to understand NATO's purpose better than the Alliance leader. Lithuania's former president, Vytautas Landsbergis, put it bluntly: ``We are an endangered country. We seek protection.'' Poland, which spent much of its history under one form or another of Russian occupation, makes clear it seeks NATO membership as a guarantee of its territorial integrity. And when Czech President Vaclav Havel warned of ``another Munich,'' he was calling on us not to leave Central Europe once again at the mercy of any great power, as Neville Chamberlain did in 1938.
Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and other potential candidate states don't need NATO to establish democracy. They need NATO to protect the democracies they have already established from external aggression.
Sadly, Mr. Havel's admonishments not to appease ``chauvinistic, Great Russian, crypto-Communist and crypto-totalitarian forces'' have been largely ignored by the Clinton administration. Quite the opposite, the administration has turned NATO expansion into an exercise in the appeasement of Russia.

[…]


Regarding Mr. Simes' comments, I would simply clarify my own position. My position is not that we should accommodate Russia. Far from it. It does seem to me that whatever residual imperialistic tendencies, which, indeed, can be a problem, can best be contained by methods other than adding members to NATO. I can think of no lever more effective, no political lever, than the threat that if Russian behavior does not meet certain standards, NATO will be enlarged, and enlarged very rapidly, and even further, and considerably further, than the current proposal envisages.

[…]

The Russian people do not see NATO as an enemy or a threat. They are mainly interested in the improvement of their desperately bad living conditions.
Unfortunately, the Russian political ruling class has not reconciled itself to the loss of its empire. The economic and political system has been changed, but the mentality of the people who are pursuing global designs for the Soviet super power all their lives cannot be changed overnight. Eduard Shevardnadze warned the American people that the Russian empire disintegrated but the imperialistic way of thinking still remains. Andrei Kozyrev also warned against the old guard which has a vested interest in presenting NATO as a threat and an enemy. ``Yielding to them,'' wrote Kozyrev in Newsweek, ``would play into the hands of the enemies of democracy.''
Both statesmen have inside knowledge of the Russian ruling elite. They certainly speak with authority. Moscow is opposed not to the enlargement of NATO but to the very existence of NATO because it rightly sees a defensive military alliance as a threat to its long-term ambitions to regain in the future a controlling influence over the former nation of the Soviet orbit.
As in the time of the Soviet Union, we have to expect that the continued enlargement of NATO will meet with threats and fierce opposition from Moscow. Once, however, the process is complete, any imperialistic dreams will become unrealistic and Russia may accept the present boundaries of its influence as final. Such a reconciliation with reality would prompt Moscow to concentrate its full attention and resources on internal recovery. A change of the present mind set would open a new chapter of friendly relations between Russia and her neighbors, who would no longer see Moscow as a threat. This new sense of security would be an historic turning point.
This is exactly what happened between Germany and Poland.


Comments about Ukraine were of the following kind :

If, for example, we are saying that this is not the end. The Baltic countries are welcome. Ukraine is welcome. What then would be the consequences within Russia?
I guess all of this leads me to one question, and maybe this is my way, as somebody who is trying to sort through these issues, of getting closer to what I think would be the right position for me to take as a Senator.
You said that if countries meet this democratic criteria, they are welcome. Would Russia be welcome? Maybe that is the question I should ask. If Russia meets the criteria, after all, all of us hope that they will build a democracy. I mean, it will be a very dreary world if they are not able to. This country is still critically important to the quality of our lives and our children's lives and our grandchildren's lives. If Russia meets this criteria, would they be welcome in NATO?
Secretary Albright. Senator, the simple answer to that is yes. We have said that if they meet the criteria, they are welcome. They have said that they do not wish to be a part of it.
[…]

My estimate here rests on the fact that including the Madrid 3, there are now 12 candidates for NATO membership. This total of 12 candidates can easily increase to 15 if Austria, Sweden, and Finland decide to apply. In fact, I see a 16th country, Ukraine, on the horizon.

[…]
The most important issue this prospect raises, however, is NATO's relationship to the countries to its east. Specifically, expansion to the borders of the former Soviet Union unavoidably raises the question of NATO's approach to that vanished empire's two most important successor states: Russia and Ukraine. The suspicions and multiple sources of conflict between them make the relationship between these two new and unstable countries, both with nuclear weapons on their territory, the most dangerous and potentially the most explosive on the planet today.
An expanded NATO must contribute what it can to promoting peaceful relations between them, while avoiding the appearance either of constructing an anti-Russian coalition or washing its hands of any concern for Ukrainian security.
There is no more difficult task for the United States and its European allies and none more urgent. To the extent that their accession to NATO provides an occasion for addressing that task seriously, Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic will have performed yet another service for the West.

[…]
Some may ask, if the aim is to promote stability, then why not admit Ukraine or the Balkan countries first, since they need stability even more than Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. The answer is that prospective new members need to have achieved a certain degree of political, economic and military maturity before they can become members. They need to be ``contributors to security'' not just ``consumers'' of it. Otherwise, NATO and the EU would simply become a collection of economic and political basket cases and both organizations would be unable to function effectively.
[…]
I am not by this question suggesting that you do not feel and believe we have a commitment to the Baltics, but I think there is a factual historical difference between Ukraine and the Baltics. For example, I think the immediate effect on the Russian psyche of admitting either the Baltics or Ukraine would be very similar. But in fact we never recognized that the Baltics, which were annexed by the Soviet Union, were legitimately part of the Soviet Union. We have never recognized that, and it seems to me that any further actions will take some time and may need some massaging. I am not smart enough to know exactly how to do it, but it seems to me as a matter of principle that it is very important to make a distinction between the Baltics, for example, and Ukraine.
[…]
That understanding will be advantageous even to the nations not invited, at least in the near future, to join the Alliance just as the presence of NATO members on the borders of Austria, Sweden, and Finland provided an essential security umbrella during the Cold War. Ukraine and the Baltic States will benefit in a similar manner from the inclusion of Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic in the Alliance. Although Ukraine is not at this point seeking membership in the Alliance as Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia are, all four states are united in the belief that NATO enlargement--even if limited to its current parameters--is advantageous to their security. As a matter of fact, as expansion of the Alliance has become increasingly likely, Russian treatment of Ukraine and the Baltic States has become more moderate and more flexible. Russian policymakers clearly appreciate that rocking the boat too much could accelerate NATO's expansion to Russia's frontier--something they are eager to avoid.


So you morally ought to do nothing to have people abide by your moral principle, except engage in dialogue perhaps. So I guess nobody else morally ought to do anything to have people abide by your moral principle, except engage in dialogue perhaps. Clear enough.
So imagine someone is bombing the neighborhood where your family and friends live (some die a horrible death, others are severely injured or maimed), they lost where to live and all basic services in the neighborhood, some even jobs if working in the neighborhood, does anybody (you included) morally ought to do anything about it?

I would consider even a single person dying against their will to be an enormous cost that was unjustly imposed, on the moral ground that no person has the right to tell another to give their life against their will, under any circumstance. — Tzeentch

Clear enough. Question: do you yourself ought to do anything to have people to abide by your principle?

you have neomac literally arguing that Western influence is so instrumental in improving a country's human right record that it's worth fighting a bloody war for, — Isaac

Side comments to this otherwise misleading summary:

• "literally arguing that Western influence" yet the starting point of my views is not "Western influence" and "human right" was just a good starting point.
• "so instrumental" suggests a degree of conviction that I do not have, nor need to have. We are assessing likelihood under uncertainties.
• "it's worth" always in relative terms (like letting Russia subdue Ukraine and get away with it)

So you admit that you cannot possibly derive anything from them about Ukraine's likely trajectory by knowing only one such factor (sphere of influence). — “Isaac

I disagree. Notice that the reasoning was focusing on “human rights” only (e.g. we didn’t talk other benefits: economic, security etc. which may also be very much relevant for well-being [1]). Accordingly, based on some related charts and despite the uncertainty (about the driving domestic/foreign factors) anybody can notice that:

• The collapse of the Soviet Union + ensuing independence is correlated with boost in human rights support to the top for many countries in eastern block and post-Soviet countries.
• After some of those countries joined EU/NATO, they managed to keep their positive trends relatively stable, and for those which experienced a noticeable decline (like Poland) still the trend doesn’t look as bad as it looks for other post-Soviet countries still under Russian influence

And since we know that Soviet Union (and Russia’s Putin) have shitty policies in terms of human rights and hegemonic ambitions, while the EU has conditional requirements (which may have been influential in the years prior to the entrance to the EU), policies to monitor and promote human rights [2] and pressuring means, we have good reasons to think that EU may have been a stabilising (if not a boosting) factor, while Russia may be a destabiliser and threat to human rights. So in relative terms, “human rights” may more likely benefit from joining EU/NATO than falling under Russian influence despite the uncertainties.

[1] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2020/648145/IPOL_BRI(2020)648145_EN.pdf
https://european-union.europa.eu/priorities-and-actions/achievements_en

[2] https://international-partnerships.ec.europa.eu/policies/peace-and-governance/human-rights_en

So what improvements could you possibly anticipate, since electoral reform is petty much the only improvement that's consistent and even Russia achieved that with the break up of the USSR. I don't see any evidence of Ukraine's 'likely' path there.
What's more, at issue is not simply the question of whether Ukraine would be better off outside of Russian puppetry (undoubtedly yes). — “Isaac

First, it’s good that you see electoral reform and democracy in post-Soviet Eastern European countries have improved human rights. Yet Putin doesn’t seem to like pro-West democratic governments in Ukraine despite the fact that since the XIX century Ukrainians are striving for having an independent nation and resisting Russification and Russian subjugation pursued by any Russian regime (Empire, Soviet Union, Putin). So, democracy may very much need securing and NATO expansion has so far secured certain East block countries against the perceived Russian threat (besides allowing states to keep low military budgets in the interest of civil economy/society). Even more so if Russia under Putin doesn’t seem to be very sensitive toward just sanctions and diplomacy (as proven during this war and before). Second, from those stats, one can notice that the trend of human rights protection in post-Soviet states has improved immediately after the collapse of Soviet Union in all countries yet in later years it declined too in some countries, even sharply (see Russia, Belarus, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan [1]). So it’s important to not discount other promoting factors (like EU membership) that might counterbalance potential declining trends (e.g. before and after the accession for Eastern block countries to the EU). Third, “if Ukraine would be better off outside of Russian puppetry (undoubtedly yes)” (so also for the sake of human rights) how likely is that Russia will spare Ukraine from becoming Russian puppetry given all its strategic relevance (as the war is proving), wrt Ukraine joining EU/NATO? Even Kissinger changed his views about it: https://unherd.com/thepost/henry-kissinger-nato-membership-for-ukraine-is-appropriate/



[1]
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/human-rights-vdem?tab=chart&time=1988..latest&uniformYAxis=0&country=MDA~TJK~TKM~UZB~BLR~RUS~ARM~KAZ~KGZ~GEO~UKR~AZE

It's whether a protracted land war is the best, or even acceptable means of achieving that, considering the enormous cost. — “Isaac

Wars often have enormous costs. Yet no country will likely capitulate if it has the means to fight. First reason, readiness to surrender to a foreign force can be a very disturbing moral hazard because it encourages further abuses (especially by an authoritarian ruler that pursues hegemony) that may lead to subjugation and degradation of standards of life (also in terms of human rights). Ukrainians know very well that from history. Secondly both subjection and freedom may affect not only current but also future generations.
For the West is the same. Even if Russia doesn’t constitute yet an actual existential threat to the West as it is to Ukraine, there is no reason for the West to let Russia take Ukraine for free (and enjoy related strategic benefits plus full military assets for further expansions) just to find out later what existential threat Russia might become, because then it may well be too late. So Western support for Ukraine is not just for the present generations but also for the future ones. This includes a greater integration that might benefit both the West and Ukraine.
Besides, you keep talking about “enormous cost” without giving any moral criteria to understand the moral relevance of such “enormous cost”. For example: exactly how many Ukrainian casualties count as morally relevant “enormous cost”? If Ukrainian casualties were 0.000001% of the population would it be an “enormous cost” in moral terms? How about 0.00001%, or 0.0001%, or 0.001%, or 0.01%, or 0.1%? On what moral grounds you choose that number?

None of the countries you cite as examples have come out of long protracted land wars, nor have such significant far right nationalist sentiment, nor have such influential natural resource reserves, nor have Ukraine's position strategically for Russia... Nor a dozen other factors. The charts I selected show that there's nothing causal about entering a Western sphere of influence. Some countries improve (Lithuania, Estonia), others don't (Croatia, Saudi-Arabia, Iraq). so there's no reason at all to believe that it's the Western influence, and not internal factors that drive the changes. — “Isaac

As already argued, I question the claim that there are no reasons to think that the West had an influence in terms of human rights as a driving factor. On the contrary, since the West is appealing for many good reasons we can understand why Eastern block people (including those who could care about human rights among other benefits) wanted to join EU/NATO after the collapse of Soviet Union instead of wanting to ally with Russia (now Georgia and Moldavia are also very much interested).
If the far right nationalist sentiment looks more significant in Ukraine, that’s because mainly nurtured by anti-Russians and philo-Russians tension. Otherwise it would likely be as intense as in other Eastern European countries given their more xenophobic culture wrt the Western European countries (https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2018/10/29/eastern-and-western-europeans-differ-on-importance-of-religion-views-of-minorities-and-key-social-issues/) which also suggests that foreign conditions may more likely trigger social reforms and government response supporting human rights than just domestic ones.

. Joining the EU is unlikely to improve human rights in Ukraine based on the unequivocal evidence that it has not done so for any other country. — Isaac

But my hypothesis is not that joining EU improves human rights because: 1. when you roughly reached the top (the range is between 0-1) of course there is no much improving , at best you can preserve it 2. Those trends do not discriminate between driving factors (e.g. domestic vs foreign). Indeed EU/NATO membership could also contribute to inhibit/weaken adverse trends prior and after the membership was accepted e.g. through sanctions, monitoring and induced constitutional reforms etc.
As I explained several times but you keep playing dumb, I care comparing the likely trends concerning human rights institutions of ex-Soviet Republic between those which joined EU/NATO and those which didn't and remained under anti-West Russian influence. Why would I care about such comparison? For the obvious reason that Ukraine wants to join EU/NATO to escape from Russian sphere of influence. So it's relevant to understand what might happen to "human rights" institutions in the 2 cases. And since no trend in Russia/Belarus is close to reach any trend in ex-Soviet Republics that joined EU/NATO so far (EVEN WHEN IS DECLINING), my hypothesis is still very much plausible.

But I see you have a new favourite metric. — Isaac

What?! You were wining about the metric "physical integrity rights " (as you wined about the "democratic index" in the past). Then you wined about the examples I've selected. And now that I gave you the metrics you asked for, you are wining over trend variations [1] which aren't significant enough to challenge my hypothesis. Are you crazy?!

[1]
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/human-rights-vdem?tab=chart&time=2004..latest&country=BLR~RUS~ROU~LVA~SVK~BGR~LTU~EST~POL

So because western countries have better human rights records than Russia, it's morally legitimate to support Ukraine's fight over territory?

If Ukraine would then join the west's approach, and if the west's human rights are not simply bought at the expense of others (1), and if the utter destruction of Ukraine's economy and the flooding of its black markets with weapons aren't enough to tip it back over into nationalist extremism (2)… then you might, just might, get an improvement in human rights.

And this slim chance is worth the deaths of tens of thousands? (3) — Isaac

Concerning claim (1), my reasoning is about the likely fate of human rights institutions in Ukraine once they join EU/NATO as other ex-Soviet republics did IN COMPARISON WITH the likely fate of human rights institutions in Ukraine under the influence of an anti-West Russia (e.g. as Belarus is). So unless you can bring actual arguments (what does it even literally mean “human rights are simply bought at the expense of others”? e.g. In what way the West is “buying” its human rights status out of say Iran’s, China’s, North Korea’s, Russia’s human rights?), evidences to support your bare conjecture, and argue for its pertinence wrt what I’m arguing, I don’t feel rationally compelled by it.
Concerning claim (2), again bare conjecture which still ignores the membership conditions of EU/NATO and Ukrainian motivations to join the West, as premised by my line of reasoning.
Concerning your moral question (3), first, I prefer to assess chances over actual pertinent evidences and arguments about their relevance, instead of rummaging biased conjectures as you do, but only when it goes against your opponents’ arguments (because you yourself don’t abso-fucking-lutely give a shit about chances when it’s matter to support your moral claims). Second, yes it’s arguably worth it as the lesser evil for Ukrainians and Westerners. But given the Western hesitancy to support Ukraine and the internal conflicts of national interests wrt this war my expectations about the evolution of this war change over time as much as my conviction about future consequences at the end of the war. So I too have my doubts. Obviously.

Tell me. Those other ex-soviet countries which came under western influence, did we fight a proxy war with Russia over each of them? Or did economic development, local political action and covert support bring that about? — Isaac

No to the first question. Yes to the second. Now you tell me: do you agree with that? If not, for what reason?

So in what way is fighting a long protracted proxy war with Russia necessary for this vague and speculative end goal of yours? — Isaac

The random charge of being “vague and speculative” is simply preposterous because I’m an avg dude (not en expert), we are reasoning under uncertainties of many relevant facts, and exchange in a philosophy forum from our armchair during leisure time. Didn’t we explicitly factor in all that in our claims many times already? Yet I care about the clarity/logic of my arguments and the evidences available to me to assess them (including the input from all sorts of news/stats/reports/experts of course). Since I take such arguments and evidence assessment to be affordable also by other avg dudes in a philosophy forum post format, I expect such avg dudes to reciprocate in intellectually honest and challenging ways. So in relative terms that charge is more apt to qualify roughly all your arguments and objections as I abundantly proved.
Besides the charge must be abso-fucking-lutely irrelevant especially to you: bare conjectures (nothing in any empirical theory excludes that things can’t go differently, right?) and “not enough imagination”-kind of objections are enough to you.
Finally, why on earth would I even care to answer such “vague and speculative” question of yours? In what sense, would this proxy war be “necessary” ? It you merely conjecture historical possibilities for Ukraine by comparison to the ex-Soviet republics, of course there is a counterfactual possibility that for Ukrainians things could have gone differently, the proxy war is “necessary” at all. Besides we should consider related choices by political strategic agents, so if those were free choices and free choice is understood as a non-necessary choice, then of course the proxy war is “necessary” at all. Still there are dramatic events, reasoning over them and choices by involved strategic players that led them step-by-step where we are. So I try to understand them as input for my arguments, whenever pertinent.

BTW, I forgot to mention the context where I extrapolated that line of reasoning from:

As compassionate outsiders, our concern should solely be for the well-being of the people there. — Isaac

What is the well-being of the people? — neomac
That's up to us to decide. Personally I think the notion of human rights is a good starting point. — Isaac

That’s what inspired the first step of my line of reasoning, namely "human rights is an acceptable way to identify collective well-being? Yes”, as a good starting point (not because I find it self-evident).

And you're using physical integrity rights as a proxy for human rights because…? — Isaac

Because physical integrity rights are covered by human rights, aren’t they? And I care to assess my claims against actual and pertinent evidences accessible to me. So if they support my claims, that’s good. Anyways you’ve got plenty of charts in that site. Here:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/human-rights-vdem?tab=chart&country=~RUS
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/human-rights-vdem?tab=chart&country=~USA
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/human-rights-vdem?tab=chart&country=~UKR
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/human-rights-vdem?tab=chart&country=~POL
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/human-rights-vdem?tab=chart&country=~LTU
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/human-rights-vdem?tab=chart&country=~ROU
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/human-rights-vdem?tab=chart&country=~BGR
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/human-rights-vdem?tab=chart&country=~SVK
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/human-rights-vdem?tab=chart&country=~BLR

Anything else you want to randomly quibble about?

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/physical-integrity-rights-fkr?tab=chart&country=HRV~BLR~IRQ~RUS~SAU~UKR~USA

1. Note Croatia, the most recent accession to the EU, whose record has gone down since joining.
2. Note Belarus, undoubtedly a Russian puppet state whose score is higher than the US.
3. Note Saudi Arabia, an ally of the US performing identically to Russia.
4. Note Iraq, a famous beneficiary of the US's military help, at the bottom of the list below everyone.

Even with your own cherry-picked proxy for human rights (which are so much more than just democracy and government freedoms), your argument falls flat on its face. — Isaac

The charge of “cherry-picking” is random (as it was when you raised the same charge months ago, so re-looping again over the same stuff). You evidently don’t even understand what the charge of “cherry-picking” actually means.
My speculation concerns specifically the fate of Ukraine which wants to enter EU and NATO, so it makes perfect sense to make comparisons with other countries to the extent they share relevant similarities with Ukraine for that hypothesis (cherry-picking happens when part of the dataset falling within the scope of the hypothesis is ignored to support the hypothesis, defining the theoretical scope of the hypothesis is not cherry-picking at all!). Ukraine, ex-Soviet Republics, Belarus and Russia share part of recent history and many aspects of their social background again due to historical and geographic reasons. Due to these similarities it makes perfect sense to compare them more than including Saudi Arabia, Iraq and the US in the comparison, and delimit the scope of the hypothesis accordingly. Besides certain ex-Soviet republics joined EU/NATO, which is also what Ukraine wants. While Russia and Belarus didn’t. So we have a test for COMPARING their trends wrt question “what could happen to ex-Soviet countries joining EU/NATO instead of remaining under Russian sphere of influence in terms of human rights?”.
Getting back to your random objection: you can take the examples of US, Saudi Arabia and Iraq into the garbage. And leave them there forever and ever.
How about Croatia? Well it wasn’t an ex-Soviet Republic, it wasn’t even an ex-Warsaw pact member. So it’s the least similar in the group and we could throw Croatia into the garbage for ever and ever too. But I get that it’s an interesting case for comparison if the scope of the hypothesis was extended to ex-communist European countries. However the decline is not so sharp to significantly question the extended hypothesis either, so I don't mind if you play with it. Just don't forget to throw it in the garbage once you finished.

In any case, what you fail to understand is much deeper. There is no need for me to ignore deviant cases because I’m talking in terms of relative likelihood (and supporting evidences) wrt alternative hypotheses (like having Ukraine fall under Russian influence as Belarus). So not mathematical certainties. Besides I’m not assuming anywhere that the original hypothesis (nor even the extended one which I didn’t make) identifies the only relevant driving factor in the evolution of a country wrt human rights, because there may be other domestic or foreign factors that can get in the way.
Nor I’m assuming anywhere that a boost in human rights is the main motivating factor for countries to join EU/NATO: there are also economic/security benefits too, of course. For that reason I’m not even assuming that joining EU/NATO is necessarily a booster in human rights (indeed, the main booster looks national independence after the collapse of Soviet Union and ensuing reforms). Still the membership may be a relevant counterbalancing factor against potential declining trends due to domestic politics (like the EU for Orban’s Hungary).

BTW, I forgot to mention the context of our exchange in introducing that line of reasoning:

As compassionate outsiders, our concern should solely be for the well-being of the people there. — Isaac

What is the well-being of the people? — neomac
That's up to us to decide. Personally I think the notion of human rights is a good starting point. — Isaac

That’s what inspired the first step of my line of reasoning, namely "human rights is an acceptable way to identify collective well-being? Yes”, as a good starting point (not because I find it as a self-evident, or the only possible, or the best starting point).

Here's it's chart that it achieved all on its own first ...

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/physical-integrity-rights-fkr?tab=chart&time=earliest..2004&country=~LTU

Notice the difference? In 2004 Lithuania joined the EU and NATO. That move ended all progress in your chosen metric of human rights. — Isaac

Mind blowing, innit?

Apparently neomac is capable of comparing two entities only by looking at data on one of them — Isaac

Where did I do that?

If we were to do a side by side comparison of human rights violations in the 21st century of the United States and Russia, I'm not sure who would come out on top, but my bet would be on the Americans taking the cake. — Tzeentch

Here all the stats you want:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/physical-integrity-rights-fkr?tab=chart&country=RUS~CHN~IRN~DEU~ITA~ESP~POL~LTU~ROU~BGR~SVK~GBR~USA~AUS~CAN~JPN~KOR
Ukraine is better than Russia, and the US is better than Ukraine and Russia. The rest of Western countries (including ex-Soviet republics) are much better than the US, Ukraine and Russia.

We're all up in arms about supposed Russian torture of Ukrainian POWs (which if true is horrible and inexcusable, don't get me wrong), but have we already forgotten Guantanamo? — Tzeentch

No we didn't. It simply doesn't abso-fucking-lutely have anything to do with the line of reasoning I was making (is Ukraine going to be like the US by joining EU/NATO?) and you two keep abso-fucking-lutely ignoring.

Here is a summary for you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Russia — neomac

John is taller than jack because John is 6 foot.
See any problem with that argument. — Isaac

I gave you the chart:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/physical-integrity-rights-fkr?tab=chart&country=RUS~CHN~IRN~DEU~ITA~ESP~POL~LTU~ROU~BGR~SVK

The wikipedia article was to make you appreciate the remarkable breath of evidences one can find about the poor status of human rights in Russia (especially under Putin).

Christ! You didn't even put Ukraine on the fucking chart (which if you had, would have put them next to Russia).
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/physical-integrity-rights-fkr?tab=chart&country=UKR~RUS
It's like arguing with children. — Isaac

Why would I need to put Ukraine? I was comparing Russia with the West (including ex-Soviet republic joining the West) not Russia with Ukraine, for the obvious reason that I expect that the Western integration process of Ukraine will improve its human rights conditions as it did with other ex-Soviet republics (indeed it's one of the condition of EU membership https://neighbourhood-enlargement.ec.europa.eu/enlargement-policy/conditions-membership_en). That's exactly the line of reasoning that you can't even follow on a step-by-step basis.
But good you posted your chart, because it still neatly fits into my line of reasoning: Ukraine outside the Western influence, under Russian sphere of influence or in conflict with Russia, shows as poor human rights conditions as Russia wrt West (according to those charts). Not to mention that Ukrainian very poor human rights conditions may very well include the human rights violations of the pro-Russian Ukrainian regions [1] during the years of the conflict (including the tragedy of the Crimean Tatars). So the resulting border changes may also positively impact Ukrainian stats in terms of human rights.


[1]
UN monitoring of abuses

At a press conference in Kyiv on 15 December 2014, UN Assistant Secretary-General for human rights Ivan Šimonović stated that the majority of human rights violations committed during the conflict were carried out by the separatists.[115] He also said, however, that this could not be used as an excuse by Ukrainian forces to commit human rights violations.

UN observers also registered multiple episodes of sexual abuse against locals, mainly women, at the border checkpoints run by both Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian armed groups. The presence of combatants in civil communities also brings up a danger of sexual violence against their population and increase the risk of rape and human trafficking.[116][117]

During 2014 and 2015 the UN Monitoring Mission documented multiple reports about people abducted by pro-Russian armed groups and Ukrainian military forces.[118][119]

source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanitarian_situation_during_the_war_in_Donbas

Second step: are human rights better implemented within Western countries? Yes — neomac

This step does not support your argument. To do so it would have to be possible for all countries to be like western countries, but if the human rights in western countries are bought at the expense of human rights in chattel countries, then it is not. You’d have to demonstrate not only that human rights are better in western countries, but that western countries do not worsen human rights elsewhere in achieving that state. — Isaac

I don’t mind to review my past arguments once again (for the thousand time?), however it wasn’t the reason why I quoted them in the first place. The point was that I can argue for my moral claims only if there is sufficient understanding on how I conceptualise them because otherwise you will likely make outlandish objections. As the one you just made. The question “are human rights better implemented within Western countries?” is a question, not an argument, so you should address it as a question. And that question can be answered affirmatively or negatively independently from the possibility for all non-Western countries to be like western countries. Besides I do not need AT ALL to exclude that human rights in Western countries are bought at the expense of human rights in non-Western countries, maybe human rights institutions can emerge only as a result of zero-sum game (and if you had read my “entire wall of text”, you would have imagined why). So no, I do not have to demonstrate that “not only that human rights are better in western countries, but that western countries do not worsen human rights elsewhere in achieving that state” AT ALL.

is Ukraine more pro-West than Russia? Yes. Asking to join NATO and EU, and be ready to suffer a war against Russia to defend their choice wrt anti-Western rhetoric and hostility from Russia are unquestionable evidences for that. And if this is no evidence I don’t know what is. — neomac

Seriously? A bit of pro-western rhetoric is the gold-standard evidence of a desire to adopt western human rights values?
The human rights record of Ukraine is on record for all to see. You can't bluff your way out of it. Read the reports. — Isaac

Again the question is “is Ukraine more pro-West than Russia?”, the answer can be affirmative or negative independently from your further clumsy objections. That’s why I was reasoning step-by-step to make you follow my line of reasoning to the end instead of jumping in all random directions as you did when you objected to it in the past, and as you are re-doing it now. So it's pretty symptomatic that you can't follow such a simple exercise.
Anyways, being pro-Western for Ukraine means at least what I exactly wrote: wanting to enter the Western sphere of influence through 2 organisations EU and NATO, and the readiness to suffer the consequences for this choice intolerable to the Russians corroborates it.
Said that, even though being pro-West doesn’t equate to the desire to adopt western human rights values, I don’t find that troubling at all, for 3 reasons:
1. The West imposes certain conditions that need to be satisfied before becoming an actual EU/NATO member, so nobody will accept Ukraine if it doesn’t comply enough to Western requirements. Its integration will require time before happening and even after to deeply reform the Ukrainian society (as for all post-Soviet republics).
2. This war proved that Ukrainians have great tolerance for sacrifices, so making the necessary institutional steps to satisfy Western conditions to membership should be a much more tolerable sacrifice.
3. Two potential problems in Ukraine, corruption and ultranationalism, persisted so far due to historical conflicts and ties with Russia: many Ukrainian ultranationalist (including Nazis) are essentially anti-Russian, Ukrainian corruption was abundantly nurtured by past pro-Russian regimes (Russia itself being a renowned example of “mafia state”). So if entering the Western sphere of influence means severing these ties and downgrading such historical tensions, the 2 problems may be more easy to deal with.
And if all that’s not enough to you (to me it is), a 4th reason will most certainly be: nothing in those reports says that Ukrainians can't act differently.

anti-West Russia with a poorer implementation of human rights — neomac

It does not have a poorer human rights record. Again, this is all on record. Read the reports. — Isaac

The claim that anti-West Russia does have poorer human rights record than most Western countries comes from reading the records (as already reported in our past exchanges).

the democracy index is telling — neomac

Democracy is not exhaustive of human rights, not even close. It's one of 30 articles. Usually the one chosen by neoliberals like you to excuse nations for trampling over the other 29. — Isaac

Indeed, that’s not the only evidence I reported. We are just looping all over it again:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/physical-integrity-rights-fkr?tab=chart&country=RUS~CHN~IRN~DEU~ITA~ESP~POL~LTU~ROU~BGR~SVK

Is this enough evidence? If not why not? — neomac

See above. What could possibly make you think that the satisfaction on one out of thirty articles of human rights would be all the evidence needed? — Isaac

Here is a summary for you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Russia

these categories as “ingroup” and “exploitation” (cooperation to exploit an outgroup) moral norms but now prefer Eisler’s names. What do you think? — Mark S

I find Eisler’s names more appropriate:
- “ingroup” is expected to be the antonym of "outgroup" while in your name convention is unexpectedly contrasted to “exploitation” (which according to your definition presupposes the notion of "outgroup" anyways),
- besides "ingroup" and "outgroup" seem to refer to "groups", so they seem to suggest relations between groups, while cooperation can simply hold also between "individuals".
- if we do not stipulate a terminological contrast between "outgroup" and "exploitation" , then when can avoid to inconveniently equate "ingroup" with "partnership", and will leave room for the idea of forms of ingroup's exploitation.

Which do you think communicates better, “marker norms” or “signaling norms”? — Mark S

"signalling" sounds more appropriate and it may fit well with analogous notions used in animal ethology (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_theory)


I'm very much interested in this topic and I'm sympathetic to your views so I hope we can discuss it further but I would like to finish to read Oliver Curry’s Morality as Cooperation

think military supporting Ukraine is morally right — neomac


Yet...

I’m describing and not making moral claims — neomac


Make up your mind. — Isaac

There is no contradiction between those extrapolated claims, because I made both moral claims (like "I actually support the military aid to Ukrainian resistance" and repeatedly argued for in our earliest exchanges even months ago [1]) and claims about how I conceptualise moral claims (i.e. "national security can be a moral imperative" and the like which again are nothing new in our exchanges [2]). And since you have hard time to process them separately, or you are playing dumb, I'll add clarifications which you ignore to re-loop over your clumsy random objections.
Clarifying our conceptual framework to deal with ambiguities and misunderstandings is a form of intellectual cooperation useful to better understand each other (which again is nothing new in our exchanges [3]), if you care to have a fruitful exchange. In addition we are in a philosophy forum so that's the right place to discuss them, as far as I'm concerned.


[1]
I’m reasoning on a step-by-step basis :

• First step:human rights is an acceptable way to identify collective well-being? Yes
• Second step: are human rights better implemented within Western countries? Yes
• Third step: is Ukraine more pro-West than Russia? Yes. Asking to join NATO and EU, and be ready to suffer a war against Russia to defend their choice wrt anti-Western rhetoric and hostility from Russia are unquestionable evidences for that. And if this is no evidence I don’t know what is.
• Fourth step: how likely is that a pro-West country can implement human rights by being within the Western sphere of influence (so within NATO and EU) than by being within the sphere of influence of an anti-West Russia with a poorer implementation of human rights (see first step), if not now in the future? I say it’s more likely, based on historical evidence (see Germany, Italy and Spain after WWII) and ex-Soviet Union countries that joined EU and NATO after the Soviet Union collapse. Also the democracy index is telling (https://www.visualcapitalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/democracy-index-2022-europe.jpg, https://www.democracymatrix.com/ranking): Russian democracy index is lower than any country in the EU and Belarus which is under the sphere of influence of Russia is even lower than Russia, Kazakhstan better of Russia for few points. Is this enough evidence? If not why not?

[2]

No evidence, no 'proof'. — Isaac


No evidence, no 'proof' of what exactly? I was just exposing a conceptual framework.

The requests for 'proof only started when I objected to that position. — Isaac


That's false. Your objection started with: "How? I don't see the mechanism. Representation is definitely an important tool, but that's not the same thing as sovereignty" (https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/746158)
To which I answered: "I didn't equate representation and sovereignty anywhere. I was talking about pre-condition for the implementation of state institutions that support human rights. State institutions, as I understand them, presuppose authoritative and coercive ruling over a territory." (https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/746177)
So no, I didn't ask you for proofs in this case. On the contrary I exposed once again my conceptual framework. You might have objected that it's incoherent or with little explanatory power and consequently I would have asked you for proofs. But such a random objection like "representation is not the same thing as sovereignty" simply means you didn't understand what I was talking about. That’s all. — neomac

[3]

wanting a war to continue — Isaac


Then by your definition I'm not warmongering. I didn't want a war between Russia and Ukraine nor I want it to be continued. I was talking about my expectations about what the Ukrainians want not about what I want. BTW were the Russians warmongering when fighting back the Nazis out of their country in WW2? — neomac

No it isn't. I'm a member of the electorate in one of them, I hold them to account. It matters tremendously what I think they out to be concerned with. — Isaac


I wasn’t questioning the relevance of your moral standards to you nor the relevance of your political choices in a democracy. Again, I am questioning its relevance to establish what individuals, collectives or States are capable of. A part from that, people can surely have all the unrealistic expectations and set their moral standards arbitrarily high as they like, of course. — neomac

I’m describing and not making moral claims — neomac

Then your entire wall of text was a waste of time. If I want 'description' I'll consult an expert, not some bloke off the internet. — Isaac

I'm asking for your moral view. the thing all of us are experts on, the thing for which there is no body of fact to draw on and so no expertise to be gained. What you think is right and why. — Isaac

It wasn't a waste of time because my wall of text is very much part of the "why" i think military supporting Ukraine is morally right. What I described wasn't for the purpose of informing you about facts that require fact-checking and experts' advice. But for the purpose of illustrating to you the conceptual framework that makes intelligible any exchange on morality issues with you or others over Ukraine and any other political issues you may consider. It's essential part of my basic background knowledge (they are my "hinge propositions") and what was still missing in support of my moral claims about the Ukrainian war I argued for many times in our previous exchanges (so there was no point for me to rehash them). They are essential, because if we can't converge enough on conceptual frameworks, you simply do not make sense to me. So these very objections of yours are totally self-defeating. Not surprisingly though.

Partnership moral norms – Parts of strategies that solve cooperation problems between people with equal moral standing. These include heuristics “Do to others as you would have them do to you”, “Do not steal, lie, or kill”, and “Be loyal to your group” which advocate initiating indirect reciprocity. (Cross-culturally moral norms are partnership moral norms.)

Domination moral norms – Parts of strategies to cooperatively exploit an outgroup to benefit an ingroup. These include “Slaves must obey their masters” and “Women must be submissive to men”.

Marker moral norms – Markers of membership in and commitment to a more cooperative ingroup. Preferentially cooperating with members of an ingroup can reduce the chances of being exploited and thereby increase the benefits of cooperation. These markers include “eating shrimp is an abomination”, “masturbation is immoral”, and other food and sex taboos. — Mark S

Where did you get this classification? Is it yours?

How could a government govern if it does not have the means that allow it to govern?! — neomac

There’s no moral requirement for any specific government to govern any specific peoples or land. — Isaac

If that’s an objection to the quotation, it doesn’t make much sense, because the quotation is not even talking about moral requirements. If that’s a moral claim you believe, is it supposed to be self-evident or do you have an argument for it? As far as I’m concerned governments of people and lands can be morally justified, of course. And that’s all I care arguing for (more on this below).

Governing in compliance with some moral commitment still needs enabling means to govern. — neomac

No it doesn't. Clearly some other government could bring about the same committent. If I'm committed to building the biggest sandcastle ever, I can easily step aside and let someone else finish the job. Building the biggest sandcastle doesn't require that I have the ability to build sandcastles, only that someone does. Likewise a government committed to a moral objective does not require that they have the means, only that someone does. — Isaac

That’s a random objection. The claim of mine you quoted is NEITHER stating a bi-univocal relation between governments and moral commitments, NOR logically implying such a bi-univocal relation, NOR suggesting it. In a Western democracy, several governmental administrations with different political leanings can succeed one another, and yet they all may be morally committed to same moral principles like respect/support for human rights and respect/support for democratic institutions, and then govern accordingly. To the extent they do that and the people they rule over morally care about it, they gain moral legitimacy. In Russia, the same territory was governed by an emperor, by a soviet regime, by a post-soviet regime. To the extent they supported shared moral views and ruled people were morally approved it, they gained moral legitimacy.
BTW nobody can easily step aside from commitments taken with people, if those people do not agree or there is a price to pay for that. So it depends on what there is at stake and the trust between involved parties (see my example of the care giver). What's more is that governments have their own social and historical reasons that pre-exist and support specific administrations with or without any specific commitments. Therefore as long as governments are the products of a society, no society changes local governments for foreign governments just because it's possible to do that or test if foreign governments can be better. If it happens this is typically through imposition by the foreign government.

The territory delimits the community and the resources within a government’s reach, the perimeter of its sovereignty. — neomac

So? This clearly has no impact whatsoever on a government's ability to commit to programmes of any sort since borders are always changing. I listed above over 40 major internation changes in border in the last 30 years. In no case did the governments of those countries cease to be able to carry out their objectives in their remaining territory. — Isaac

Right, so Putin could still govern Russia without grabbing Ukrainian land. So why is he doing it? Why isn’t Putin giving all Siberia to China, Putin will still be able to govern Russia without Siberia right? Why Putin needs to govern at all? He could let Biden govern Russia, what’s the problem with Putin? Since you can already guess all answers from the international relation theory you champion, namely Mearsheimer’s “offensive realism”, I’m just getting to the conclusion: political governments are security maximisers over territorial resources wrt perceived threats, so much so that they may even need to project their power outside their land borders, and can do it offensively not just defensively. This is what history and geopolitical theories are teaching us. So the point is not the outlandish observation that government can still be able to govern if they suffer territorial resources losses (after all people can also live in prison or with a revenue below the poverty line, can’t they?), but what precisely history and geopolitics can tell us about states’ expected “securing” dispositions when facing security threats from rival states, their expected readiness to use coercive force to repel invasions and land grabbing, and the price to pay for failing that. BTW we may expect that even suffering land grabbing with little or no economic/logistic/demographic importance can likely trigger coercive responses from states if they perceive their authority threatened, and/or encouraging further land grabbing or invasions (as it likely happens for the smaller territories of the Sino-Indian border dispute).

even if different governments share the same commitments they would still need to secure a territory. — neomac

Why?

All Western, Ukrainian, Russian governments of all political regimes needed to secure their territory against invaders and/or separatist forces in their history. — neomac

This is just bare assertion. — Isaac

Yours is just bare assertion too. If your point is that you need examples backing up my claim, then check wikipedia. That’s basic history trivia which I can leave you waste your time on.

Nonsense. A government is not morally required to carry out all actions it's citizens request. Again, this just obvious nonsense if given even a moment's thought. If the Russian population unanimously voted to bomb a hospital, it would still be immoral for the government to do so and it would still be a war crime. Things are not made right by voting for them and governments are not automatons devoid of moral responsibility. — Isaac

Your objection is evidently grounded on a huge misunderstanding of my claims:
First of all, I didn’t make anywhere the moral claim that “a government is morally required to carry out all actions it's citizens request”. I’m being descriptive in talking about moral behavior, and relativizing the notion of “moral standard” to communities. So with the expression “moral legitimacy” I’m descriptively referring to the possible situation in which the government is committed to support (by means of its governmental functions) the moral standard X shared by the community X within the territory under its control: e.g. say Putin is committed to protect the Russians from annihilation by Ukrainian nazis and Western satanists. This would let Putin gain moral legitimacy among ordinary Russians who believe that Ukrainian nazis and Western satanists are set out to annihilate Russians. And if all the Russian population unanimously voted to bomb a Ukrainian hospital for those reasons, then it would be “morally legitimate” (it would be even if they didn’t vote at all: approving it might just be enough!).
Since the expression “morally legitimate” is ambiguous wrt its descriptive/normative usage, and despite all of my clarifications you can’t process my claims correctly, let’s put it this way: if the Russian population unanimously voted to bomb a hospital, it would be PERCEIVED as “morally legitimate” if the Russian population unanimously voted to bomb a hospital for their own PERCEIVED legitimate moral reasons. “Perceived” means that related moral claims may be right or not, and this epistemic possibility is all I care to maintain at this point of my analysis. But notice that anybody sufficiently mentally sound and convinced that his moral claims are right may in parallel only conjecture that his moral claims are merely “perceived” (i.e. ultimately or likely wrong/unjustified). And precisely because those who are really convinced their moral claims to be right won’t change their belief or falter by simply conjecturing in parallel the possibility of being wrong/unjustified, the word “perceived” may be misleadingly suggesting lack of conviction, or readiness to re-examine moral claims, that’s why we may as well avoid using the word “perceived” in describing moral behavior. In any case, I’m here describing a moral behavior irrespectively of what anybody’s moral claims and convictions actually are (so I don’t even need to exclude the possibility that some may believe the moral duty of a government is to do all people voted for, including destroying hospitals).
Secondly, you offered a decontextualised hypothetical example (“if the Russian population unanimously voted to bomb a hospital, it would still be immoral for the government to do so”) to support your a-priori moral claim, without considering the possible contextual and a-posteriori reasons Russians may have had, to morally justify their decisions. Maybe they have been convinced by the Russian propaganda that the hospital was a cover for stocking biochemical weapons to annihilate Russians, or building a nuclear bomb in an underneath bunker that would certainly have escalated the situation to nuclear world war so bombing the hospital was the lesser evil. One could argue that the decision may still be moral, if moral evaluation is limited to intentions, or immoral if it comprises consequences but maybe excusable by ignorance. Or, else, maybe it wasn’t propaganda at all: some Ukrainian neonazi with the help of Zelensky as a cynical henchman of American evil financial/military/oil lobbies did really stock biochemical weapons in or build a nuclear bomb under that hospital. Would this still be a good moral reason to bomb the hospital at the risk of committing a war crime? Would this be nearly as bad as Americans nuclear bombing Japan (and yet they got away with it)? Or maybe: bombing a hospital was a retortion for terroristic bloody attacks Russians suffered in 10 of their hospitals, so their retorition is even subproportional wrt what they suffered from the Ukrainian nazis. Would this still make Russian bombing unquestionably immoral? You may say yes, others may say no. The point is that real moral cases can be trickier than your a-priori assessments of decontextualised examples suggest, and that people (honestly or dishonestly) disagree over moral standards, over how they apply moral standards in different often unexpected circumstances, over how they assess them in isolation or in comparison with past cases, etc. Refusal to acknowledge this intellectual predicament may lead to outright rejection of opposing views. While acknowledging this intellectual predicament may trigger more civilised discussions over moral reasons for the disagreements. But at the end of the day discussions do not necessarily lead to convergence, they may escalate into heated disputes and can persist even after long hostile arguing. They may split communities or create bitter rivalries, even in everyday life, nurturing resentment and intolerance, or worst, leading to civil wars. Or agreement can be reached at some point but without significant impact on society at large or where it matters, because maybe competing moral views are having greater significant impact on society at large or where it matters. And even the fact that shared convictions about what is morally right don’t have significant impact on society at large or where it matters, can trigger deeply felt personal disappointment and outrage (at worst, along with fear of discrimination, persecution, oppression). Why is that? Why can’t anybody (including Isaac) just blissfully enjoy having intellectually identified what is morally right to do in all circumstances, and contemplating the sheer logically possibility that everybody acts in accordance with it, even in the hypothetical case that nobody acts, has ever acted, or will ever act like this (including Isaac)? After all, as Isaac will sermonize, “oughts” are different from “facts” so who gives a shit if they never match? Or else why can’t anybody (including Isaac) having intellectually identified what is morally right to do in all circumstances, act in accordance with it INDIFFERENTLY from whatever other people’s actually do or believe? Or keep their outrage for themselves? Or live a misanthropic eremitical life if outrage is so intolerable? After all, if one single person on earth is acting according to what is morally right, why should anybody be outraged if there aren’t more people acting morally?
Maybe because moral claims concern also what other people’s do or believe, and/or because PROMOTING morality among people against “moral bankruptcy” (starting with showing moral outrage to protest against immoral people) is part of the morally right things to do. And failing to do that would be immoral. However, the problem is that if discussing, disputing, evangelising, confronting at grass-root level is not enough to promote collective morality or impact wherever it morally matters then, what to do? Maybe one smart thing to do is to get some support from those in power (e.g. asking Western governments to just sanction and diplomatically pressure Russia for aggressing Ukraine, right?), so unite with like-minded people to beg, plead with, pressure, sermonise, lobby governments to be supportive and take them morally accountable accordingly. In other words, there is a pattern that people with certain moral beliefs (you included) are drawn to follow by their own moral reasoning in interacting with governments that can lead to what I was referring to as “government moral legitimacy”.
So, despite the fact that you have such a hard time in processing the anthropological pattern I described and you yourself neatly follow, that anthropological pattern is very much real and related implications as well: 1. Even if moral ought claims and fact claims about society are distinct, still people (you included) may very much morally care if their claimed moral “oughts” actually inform social life de facto, but then considering chances of success may matter very much 2. The desirable moral impact one can have in informing society may be practically better achieved by having those in power (i.e. governments) morally accountable, therefore in condition of responding in compliance with moral standards shared by a ruled community. But then, power may very much matter to moral agents (whatever their moral claims are) when it’s instrumental to promote moral standards by increasing the chances of informing society, and it is therefore morally legitimised by those moral standards. The toughest part (for you to admit, if not even to understand) is that governmental power is essentially grounded on centralisation and capitalisation of scarce resources (arms, money, manpower, knowledge, etc.) which can be easier to be consumed than accumulated. So in order to keep relying on government power any competing moral community must pragmatically ensure that this power is not only consumed but also capitalised, that the ratio between capitalisation and consumption is positive and sustainable in the best interest of the moral community too. Governments will likely reciprocate the interest by finding more appealing those moral views and communities that can ensure them greater possibility of capitalising power (typical dynamics of security demand/supply). So moral communities already competing for incompatible moral standards or issues with rival moral communities, will additionally compete for the government support depending on their tolerance for capitalisation of power by governments, including all sorts of implied costs and risks (like possible abuses by cynical politicians and hijacking by powerful lobbies). On the other side, governments too suffer other forms of competition, on top of the competition between rulers and ruled: namely, the internal power competition for leadership (by leaders and lobbies) within a state government, and the power competition with other state governments. So governments too may compete for the moral communities' support depending on their tolerance for committing to moral communities (typical dynamics of moral legitimacy demand/supply), including all sorts of implied costs and risks for their power capitalisation and capacity of copying with security dilemmas. Conclusion: 1. one way or the other any moral community that morally cares to have a social impact is morally compelled to care for power capitalisation (not just consumption) to the extent it needs to rely on government power to morally promote shared moral views against competing moral views in a context of political power struggles and related security dilemmas. And even if we remove central governments from the equation, but moral communities still need to survive in accordance to their moral standards and in competition with rival moral communities, they will still need to directly engage in struggles for capitalisation of power and related “security dilemmas”, as forms of self-government 2. These are core logically interrelated claims that constitute my understanding of moral behavior. They are logically immune to the random objections you raised (failing to distinguish normative from factual, morally claiming to be right for governments do whatever voters demand). They are transversal to political, moral, ideological views, so by no means favour a-priori my own moral claims wrt rival moral views. They simply point to the fact that our moral claims don’t free float in a social space void of power struggles (between moral communities, governments, political leaders, social lobbies), on the contrary, their chance of informing social life very much depends on such power struggles in all their dimensions. And that’s logically compelling for all those moral views that morally care about informing social life, and therefore acknowledge the importance of increasing the chances of success. For those moral communities who don’t care, I’ll leave them to whatever fate the other moral communities will let them experience.

I argued that “national security” can also be a government's moral imperative (this is true for all types of regime and ideologies). — neomac

No you didn't. You just said it. — Isaac

No, dude, I argued it abundantly (way more than you ever did in supporting your claims and objections). Here is where I summarised the argument:

To understand my point one needs to get one step back. Moral rules like legal rules do not grant compliance by themselves. What’s worse is that differently from any legal system moral rules do not offer a procedure to resolve moral disputes , so a community can rely on central governments that are committed to promote a certain moral code within their sovereign territorial domain. How can governments comply to their commitments ? Through power (coercion, wealth, propaganda, etc.). Securing power within a sovereign territorial domain is how governments can both exist/function and accomplish their moral commitments wrt their people. Notice that these are transversal considerations wrt regime/ideology (communist, fascist, capitalist, theocratic, democratic, authoritarian, etc.).
In other words, governments to gain moral legitimacy (whatever the ideology and regime are) are also morally compelled to pursue/secure power.
And that’s also how the notion of “sovereignty” can ground legal/political relations among states also in moral terms. — neomac

if Western governments believe (and I would add "reasonably so") to secure their sovereignty against Russian threats by supporting Ukrainian resistance, and act accordingly, they are morally warranted. — neomac

Nonsense. A government has no moral right to the territory it governs. All border changes would thereby become immoral. — Isaac

Again I’m describing and not making moral claims. If it helps I could rephrase it as follows: “if Western governments believe (and I would add "reasonably so") to secure their sovereignty against Russian threats by supporting Ukrainian resistance, and act accordingly, they are ‘PERCEIVED’ to be morally warranted by the community that morally approves it.
Here another conceptual claim: governments’ moral rights to the territory are grounded on governments “moral legitimacy”. And a government may have as much moral right to the territory it governs as an individual has a moral right to his owned flat. The normative notion of “sovereignity” is designed to conceptualise such right. And it’s false to claim that all border changes would thereby become immoral. Indeed there might be moral/legal legitimate transfers of territorial rights (e.g. the independent states resulting from Soviet Union collapse), as much as there are moral/legal transfers of flat ownership.

If states can’t act or are rationally expected to not act based on moral oughts as the offensive realism theory you champion would claim — neomac

Nothing about political realism says governments can't act differently. It's a descriptive theory, not a prescriptive one. — Isaac

Sure miracles can happen. Nothing in the standard model of physics says miracles can’t happen.
Yet the standard model of physics is taken to be a descriptive theory of physical phenomena. Related laws of physics rule out as most unlikely those possibilities that contradict such laws.
So the geopolitical theory of “offensive realism” is taken to be a descriptive theory of international relations. Related behavioural patterns of States facing “security dilemmas” rule out as most unlikely those possibilities that contradict such patterns. So when moral views prescribe actions that contradict such patterns they are most likely not going to be followed. Mearsheimer’s offensive realism theory doesn’t predict that Western states will stop military support Ukraine if the Ukrainian casualties or the Yemeni casualties or the zillions of dying African children for famine is morally intolerable by some people. It predicts that even if the Ukrainian casualties or the Yemeni casualties or the zillions of dying African children for famine is morally intolerable by some people, this will most certainly NOT be prioritised over security concerns that led to Western military support of Ukrainian resistance.
At best, one might argue that Western policy is the result of a miscalculation of Western security concerns because Russia is a declining power, while China is a rising power so the West increased security threat which China might profit from, and the like. Therefore the West could have processed better its security (not moral) concerns. On the other side, that argument doesn’t sound very much as a description because it’s a personal assessment of threat perception and response (suggesting related prescriptions), so they shouldn’t be part of a descriptive theory of international relations, right? Or worst, that argument is surreptitiously trying to hide a falsification of Mearsheimer’s “offensive realism” theory of international relations. Indeed, NATO enlargement could very much fit into the offensive realist pattern, if it wasn’t for the fact that “the West’s final tool for peeling Kiev away from Moscow has been its efforts to spread Western values and promote democracy in Ukraine and other post-Soviet states, a plan that often entails funding pro-Western individuals and organizations” [1] (in other words, certain States decide to support certain shared moral values, neglecting all relevant security concerns, contrary to the theory!)
Anyway, to recapitulate, a descriptive realist theory of international relations is not concerned with mere logical possibilities of states acting morally (as much as an empirical theory about human psychology is not concerned about the mere logical possibility of telepathy), instead it’s there to offer us empirical explanations and predictions on how states realistically behaved and most likely will behave, which in turn affects the chances for any moral standards to inform society. So that's why we may want to have reliable empirical theories in the first place, to inform our actions in a rational way and increase the chances for our actions so informed to succeed.
Conclusion: you are championing a theory of international relations that
1 - is predicting that Western governments will most certainly ignore any of your moral arguments/prescriptions in taking their decisions about security matters (Shit!)
2 - is totally irrelevant to morally justify what you claim Western states should do, and that makes perfect sense to you because of the logic distinction between “oughts” and “facts” (duh, right?), and absolutely nothing in that theory says that Western governments can’t act differently (but then why on earth are you championing it?! It’s like me saying: “I champion the Newtonian theory of gravity, but I’m gonna jump off that cliff anyway because nothing in that theory says I can’t fly!”)
3 - is totally relevant to question your opponents views of what Western states should do (ooooh, that’s why you are championing it!), because apparently you are mathematically certain that the already clumsy moves you just made to dodge the theory of international relations you yourself champion are some killer karate moves only you can master. Really impressive.

[1]
https://www.natur.cuni.cz/geografie/socialni-geografie-a-regionalni-rozvoj/studium/doktorske-studium/kolokvium/kolokvium-2013-2014-materialy/ukrajina-a-rusko-mearsheimer-souleimanov.pdf

it’s precisely because, according to your own understanding of international relations, oughts can never inform political action in the international arena that your claims about what states morally ought do in the international arena are irrational. — neomac — Isaac

It's not my claim... It's yours. Here...

I take national security to be the moral imperative of legitimate governments of sovereign states — Isaac[/quote]

I find your comment unintelligible, so until you rephrase it in English, I limit myself to add a few more clarifications to the two claims of mine you quoted.
Concerning the first quotation, as I previously argued, according to the theory of international relations you champion your moral prescriptions will most certainly never inform governments’ decisions about security matters. That’s what we should rationally expect by the theory. As far as I’m concerned, however, I do NOT champion Mearsheimer’s theory of international relations [1], nor his understanding of the interaction between moral and security concerns. That’s why I can argue for the possibility that moral oughts inform political action in the international arena in ways theoretically unavailable to you, and without believing in miracles as you need to do. Indeed, the second claim I made is precisely pointing at the solution of the riddle: only when national security concerns (and power capitalisation! [2]) are taken to be moral imperatives of governments, moral oughts can inform political actions while addressing “security dilemmas”. It’s very much realistically possible that governments act in support of shared moral views, if contextualised and a-posteriori moral reasoning can more “pragmatically” rely on governments’ in-built “security maximising” dispositions, instead of compulsively questioning them as your moral claims do in an a-priori, decontextualised, “idealistic” fashion. In other words, it can be moral for Ukrainians to keep fighting at the risk of sacrificing lives, and it can be moral for Westerners to support Ukrainians’ resistance if both are reasonably expected to effectively address security dilemmas favouring certain shared moral views (like the Ukrainian sovereignty and national identity, the Western countries’ sovereignty and democratic standards of life), despite all the other humanitarian emergencies the rest of the world is facing. Indeed I’m arguing for it and I morally support it (finally, these 2 are actual moral claims/commitments of mine!).

[1]

there are also non-pragmatic normative constraints (i.e. legal, moral) that one doesn’t need to ignore nor dismiss as Mearsheimer would do, like the ones related to the notion of “sovereignty”. — neomac

the goal is “national security” and not “to get hold of and keep as much stuff as I can”. And even if maximising national security would somehow equate “to get hold of and keep as much stuff as I can” under certain circumstances (like the ones prospected by Mearsheimer’s theory of International Relations that you champion) so be it. — neomac

[2]

“Capitalisation” and “power” and “capitalisation of power” must sound all “caca” expressions for exploitation of the working class to you, right?