:up:

Both the article and Mearsheimer's view on regime change in Ukraine (that he shared only days after the invasion - way too early for it to be viewed as a detailed assessment, in my opinion) are directly contradicted by a point Mearsheimer made himself more recently, namely that the Russian troop deployments were far too small to carry out a classic blitzkrieg necessary to facilitate such a thing. He states that almost literally word for word in one of the clips I gave you. — Tzeentch

Mearsheimer in the clips you linked talks about occupying all of Ukraine and imperialism. However at minute 24:20 of your video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qciVozNtCDM) Mearsheimer claims that the strategic objective Russians were aiming at were either capturing or threatening Kiev. He uses the word “capturing”. He doesn’t exclude that “capturing Kiev” might have been their intention. So suck it up and move on.

my point never was that control of the whole country is necessary (nice strawman), but that enacting regime change while holding less than 1/5th with the 4/5ths being occupied by a western-backed, western-trained enemy military is utter fantasy. — "Tzeentch

the entirety of your argument, nay the entire western narrative, hinges on the idea that the Russians went in with a force to destroy the Ukrainian military and occupy all of Ukraine - something which is almost directly contradicted by the facts. — "Tzeentch

I don't see how regime change is even a reasonable option without decisively defeating the Ukrainian military and occupying the vast majority of the country. — Tzeentch

You look confused. First of all, you accuse me of strawmanning you because “occupy all of Ukraine” to achieve regime change is not what you are objecting to me, yet in the same post you claim that my argument hinges on “occupy all of Ukraine”. So no, I’m not strawmanning you. At best, you are strawmanning yourself.
Second, I do not have an equation on how many ground troops are necessary to ensure the success of a regime change in Ukraine. So the quantities you are considering in your arguments (“1/5th with the 4/5ths”, “occupy all of Ukraine”, “the vast majority of the country”) may make sense to support your claims under certain conditions, but not under all conditions (e.g. it depends on how hostile the population is, the contribution from state apparatus insiders, the support of aircraft/rocket shelling, the size of the targeted territory, etc.).

Again I ask you, Russia installs a puppet. What happens to the areas that aren't under Russian control? What happens to the Ukrainian military consisting of hundreds of thousands of men? What happens to western support? Do those things magically disappear?
No. The war would obviously continue and the "regime change" would be completely meaningless in areas that Russia doesn't directly control. — Tzeentch

Even if you want to make the point that their goal was to enact regime change in Kiev, you cannot explain why only a small portion of those forces actually marched on Kiev, and intense fighting over the city never took place. — Tzeentch

Killing off leadership figures is a common method in warfare, which I already explained to you. And it's not obvious at all that killing Zelensky would change anything about Ukraine's political course. In fact, I believe it would change nothing. How much influence do you believe Russia has in Ukraine, outside of the areas it directly controls? Virtually zero. — Tzeentch

You keep focusing on the number of deployed ground troops as if my argument essentially hinges on that. But that’s not what I argued (nice strawman). Russia might have had a complex strategy wrt Kiev (based on different possible scenarios), which include regime change. To achieve regime change ground troops might have not been enough (also depending on how hostile the population would have proven to be), but in addition to that rocket/air-force strikes, possible inside jobs (especially by collaborationists within military/intelligence service favourable to a coup [1]) and killing Zelensky might have compensated. All these conditions are not implausible since they have some support from the available reports.
Detecting intentions from the troop movements on the ground may underestimate the impact of logistic and coordination problems and the equipment losses the Russians suffered.
The West propaganda objection is as good as the Russian propaganda counter-objection.

That's another strawman. I never argued the Ukrainians could have known prior to the invasion that the Russians would not try to take Kiev. The fog of war can make diversionary attacks very effective, and we know for a fact that the Russians employ deception as a core pillar of their military doctrine. The fact that the Russians used 15,000 - 30,000 out of a 190,000 men in their offensive towards Kiev, and the fact that very little heavy fighting seems to have taken place, does not imply the Russians attributed high strategic significance to the capture of Kiev. — Tzeentch

First, it’s not a strawman because you are making now the distinction between prior to the invasion and during the invasion, and I didn’t make this distinction either. I didn’t even exclude that “things may have evolved differently from what initially planned, and still be worth it. I don't deny that.” But estimates about the number of the deployed Russian troops were available very early in March 2022 (while the Russian attempt lasted till end march), so that begs the question: how credible was the Russian threat to the Ukrainians backed by the Americans if the number of ground troops was all the counts and it was evident to all military experts that they were insufficient to capture Kyiv?
Second, the arguments supporting the “diversion” hypothesis have been questioned for several reasons: They are not consistent with the structure of Russia’s military campaign, public statements by Russian authorities, or even a basic cost-benefit analysis. Here for more details: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/23003689/putin-ukraine-russia-donbas-energy-feint
But the point I care mostly about remains the same. So far, if Russians wanted to threaten/capture Kiev as expected (also because without control over Malorossia there is no buffer territory wrt NATO), they failed. If the Russians wanted just to consolidate the Eastern-South, they didn't ensure the geopolitical victory they were after (at minute 1:40:04 of your video “Winning for Putin is putting an end to Ukraine joining the West, joining NATO, joining the EU”).


[1]
Russian intelligence and military agencies are also supporting paramilitary actors in Ukraine to conduct sabotage and subversion. The highest density of Russian-backed units appears to be in eastern Ukraine, where Russia has provided tanks, small arms, mobile artillery, fuel, training, and other aid to separatist rebels.15 Russian forces have helped create, sustain, and fund separatist political parties in Ukraine; established and aided paramilitary groups such as the Russian Orthodox Army and the Night Wolves; and recruited Cossack, Chechen, Serbian, and Russian paramilitaries to fight in Ukraine.16 But this Russian assistance to groups in Ukraine appears to be growing. One use of these groups may be in sabotage and other irregular warfare or “fifth column” activities in the capital of Kiev or in the rear of Ukrainian military forces while Russian conventional forces advance from the east. In addition, the Kremlin has developed plans to install a pro-Russian leader in Ukraine, according to British intelligence, possibly via a coup. https://www.csis.org/analysis/russias-gamble-ukraine

Second, nowhere we have discussed related terminology... — neomac

There's no need for us to discuss it, since those terms are already neatly defined. It's up to you to use those terms properly. — Tzeentch

Prove that I didn’t use those terms properly. You just clarified your understanding of one term: “decapitation is a military-strategic goal that aims to sow chaos in the enemy's command & control, for example by taking out leadership figures and destroying central communication networks.“
But that’s obviously a questionable definition, “decapitation” is neither specifically nor primarily a military-strategic term. As far as I’m concerned, I talked about “the decapitation of Zelensky’s regime”, “The US said it believed that Russia intended to ‘decapitate’ Ukraine's government”, so I was always talking regime change. No goalpost shift.

Why are you using wikipedia as a source? Also, note the claim there: "Stiff Ukrainian resistance sapped the momentum." Where is the proof of that? As far as I can tell the Russians never made a serious attempt at attacking Kiev itself. — Tzeentch

Or maybe Russia failed due to all sorts of miscalculations, even about Ukrainian resistance (https://www.csis.org/analysis/russias-ill-fated-invasion-ukraine-lessons-modern-warfare). Write to wikipedia if you want evidences for its claims.
As I said, I rely on experts’ feedback and mainstream sources accessible to me. If you have legit sources that can debunk the thesis of Russian miscalculations and intelligence failures in the first phase of the war, post them here.

Installing a puppet regime doesn’t need military control over the whole territory. — neomac
The invasion of Afghanistan started with the crushing defeat of the Taliban from which they took years to recover. — Tzeentch

First things first, the puppet regime in Afghanistan didn’t have military control of the whole country, right? Right, so it’s FALSE the assumption that one needs military control over the whole territory to install a puppet regime.
Second, as I told you many times, it’s possible that the Russians didn’t rely just on the efficacy of military action on the ground (backed by rocket shelling and air force), but also on certain weaknesses of the Ukrainian regime backed by the unreliable FSB intelligence pre-war investigation (https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/ukraine-through-russias-eyes) and the likely presence of Ukrainian political/military/intelligence collaborationist (or potential defectors). Early purges on both sides support these hypotheses. Putin’s suggesting an Ukrainian military coup (to replace a “gang of drug addicts and neo-Nazis who have settled in Kyiv and taken the entire Ukrainian people hostage”) would fit well in this scenario too.
That regime change was a likely goal is confirmed by attempts to kill Zelensky. And implied by official declarations: if among the declared objectives there is “denazification of Ukraine” (not part of Ukraine, not 4 oblasts of Ukraine, but Ukraine https://tass.com/politics/1409189) and the government is called “nazi” I don’t know how else anybody can interpret this stated objective other than regime change (even Lavrov and Medvev repeatedly called for regime change in Ukraine).
Since Russia’s launch of a large-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, it has been clear that Vladimir Putin’s announced “special operation” did not go according to plan. Putin’s proclaimed goals of “demilitarizing” and “denazifying” the government of Ukraine—combined with the Russian military posture and performance in the opening days of the invasion—led many experts to conclude that Putin’s original war aims were nothing short of regime change in Kyiv.
However, faced with fierce Ukrainian defense and the West’s crippling economic sanctions, Putin appears to be recalculating his initial maximalist aims. Putin’s efforts to force Zelensky to concede on all demands—lay down arms, forswear membership in Western alliances, and recognize Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the independence of the "republics" in the Donbas—would essentially amount to Ukraine’s surrender, and thus have proven futile.
https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/why-putin-scaling-down-his-political-aims-while-scaling-fight

The difference from the US case however is that Putin could arguably rely on collaborationists in the army/intelligence... — neomac

"Arguably" meaning, in contrived scenarios that you invented specifically to suit your argument, without a shred of evidence given? — Tzeentch

Again, I didn’t invent anything, I gave you the evidence accessible to me. “Arguably” in that sentence means that I can argue that claim based on the evidence accessible to me.

Prof Mearsheimer, a noted political scientist of the University of Chicago, feels that Russia’s aim is not to seize and defend territory in Ukraine (as it could get bogged down in an Afghanistan-like quagmire). The Russian aim is simply to either wreck Ukraine as a functional state or ensure regime change. — neomac


I highly doubt Mearsheimer made that claim. There's no source given and a Google search yielded nothing. — Tzeentch

You don’t think he has designs on Kyiv?
No, I don’t think he has designs on Kyiv. I think he’s interested in taking at least the Donbass, and maybe some more territory and eastern Ukraine, and, number two, he wants to install in Kyiv a pro-Russian government, a government that is attuned to Moscow’s interests.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/why-john-mearsheimer-blames-the-us-for-the-crisis-in-ukraine (March 1, 2022)

What's your excuse now?

I'm not randomly assuming Russian military/intelligence failures, I'm relying on what has been reported by legit sources. — neomac

What makes these sources legit in your mind? They provide no actual evidence to back up their claims, and their claims are counter to what military logic dictates. — Tzeentch

Even if they provided evidences, I might still be accused of being unable to assess the authenticity or the implications of such evidences.
You can’t raise the standards for what constitutes “evidence” arbitrarily high, even more so in the relaxed context of a philosophy forum. Again, I’m an avg dude, and I speculate over the evidences available and computable by me. Therefore if you have better sources than the ones I provided, post them here.

What makes those sources legit? In general, the reputation of the publication platform, the fact they support each other, and the fact that they appear plausible enough wrt my background knowledge.

As I said, I’m an avg dude so I’ll reason over the evidences accessible to me. — neomac

The thing is, you're not actually providing any evidence even when I've been repeatedly asking for it. Newspaper clippings and wikipedia articles are not evidence. Furthermore, you seem to lack the basic foundational knowledge on the topic to detect complete fiction. — Tzeentch

First, you have to clarify what constitutes evidence to you, and you too cite experts (like Mearsheimer)
Second, you can’t set standards for evidence arbitrarily high (e.g. I can’t certainly provide a police dossier with all the material evidences proving beyond any doubt that Zelensky has been subject to 3 attempts of murder by the Russians), even more so in a relaxed context of a philosophy forum.
Third, as I never claimed I’m an expert or even an amateur of military/intelligence field, and made it clear repeatedly, it’s pointless to accuse me of lacking “basic foundational knowledge” in the military/intelligence field. I’m fine with relying on military/intelligence experts’ feedback for that matter. It’s not evident to me you are one, nor even Mearsheimer, for that matter.

In other words, so far, if Russians wanted to threaten/capture Kiev as expected, ... — neomac

Either of those options would have vastly different implications, so I'm not sure why you are treating them as though they are the same.
Threatening Kiev is what actually happened, and it actually ended up with the Ukrainians and Russians entering negotations, which proceeded to a stage where an agreement was nearly reached. — Tzeentch

Because to me, “threatening Kiev” roughly means “threatening to capture Kiev”.
BTW what does “threatening Kiev” mean to you? What did the Russian threaten to do with their troops in Kiev if it was evident to anybody with “basic foundational knowledge” that the Russians were most certainly unable to capture Kiev?

What you're arguing is that the "real" Russian intentions were to capture Kiev — Tzeentch

No, dude, let’s not twist things around at your convenience. I’m talking about what has been officially reported by legit sources about Russian intentions in the first phase. While you are arguing that Putin’s “real” intentions weren’t the ones reported by those legit sources.
As far as I’m concerned, to repeat it once again, I don’t find implausible that Putin aimed at pressuring Kiev to a negotiation. Nor that negotiation might have been possible even without regime change. Nor that Russian troops on the ground weren’t enough to ensure the capture of Kiev all alone. I simply find implausible to claim that it’s unlikely that Russia pursued regime change because of lack of manpower or because negotiation was most certainly the only realistic goal. As I said many times, I don’t think that Russians necessarily counted on the sheer force and size of their troops to make Kiev capitulate. Support from air force and heavy rocket shelling could have also played an important role in wrecking Kiev’s morale or capacity of resistance. At the same time the Russians might have also counted on/expected some inside defection/support to regime collapse. Not to mention that the the poor execution of the first phase of the war makes it more likely that the Russians have tried to achieve something beyond their means. “It’s taken me a while to figure out what they’re trying to do because it looks so ridiculous and incompetent,” Michael Kofman, director of Russian studies at the CNA think tank, said on Twitter of the Russian advance. “The Russian operation is a bizarre scheme, based on terrible political assumptions, with poor relationship to their training & capabilities.” (https://www.vox.com/22954833/russia-ukraine-invasion-strategy-putin-kyiv)

You'll have to come with explanations why many of the facts do not seem to line up with your view. — Tzeentch

What many facts? You just talked about size and movement of the Russian troops on the ground. And “peace talking” isn’t a confirmation against my claims , for 2 reasons: I didn’t exclude that negotiation was a pursued objective (I just argued that Russia might likely have pursued also regime change), an attempted capture of Kiev could have led to peace talks as well.
Now my questions to you. If Russians most certainly didn’t pursue regime change:
- Why did the Russians try to kill Zelensky?
- Why did the Russian troops try to encircle Kiev ?
- Why did the Russians engage in troop battles, if they could simply heavy shell Kiev?

Installing a puppet regime, regime change and decapitation are three completely different subjects. You are shifting your goalposts.
Decapitation is a military-strategic goal that aims to sow chaos in the enemy's command & control, for example by taking out leadership figures and destroying central communication networks. The Russians probably pursued that strategy as a integral part of their military doctrine (so does the US).
The idea that the Russians could pursue regime change in Ukraine by killing Zelensky is just silly. Zelensky would simply be replaced by another pro-Western talking head and literally nothing would change. And we've already discussed the notion of installing a puppet regime without actually controlling Ukraine or destroying the Ukrainian military - outlandish. — Tzeentch

First, you just keep repeating your claims as if you already counter-argued my views in a very compelling way. Which is not the case.
Second, nowhere we have discussed related terminology so you can not accuse me of shifting goalposts because to you those terms mean completely different things. Even more so if I’m less interested in arguing the details of the Russian military plans (in different phases), independently from the geopolitical endgame.
Third, I do not believe that "installing a puppet regime, regime change and decapitation are three completely different subjects". They are all arguably linked as steps toward the same goal. And I backed that with several clues (Putin's support for Yanukhovic as Russian puppet, killing attempts against Zelensky, and possibilities for Putin to conspire with collaborations within the Ukrainian army and intelligence).

You can see the territories the Russian forces occupied during their drive on Kiev, which are now coloured in blue. Urban areas were bypassed, large swathes of open ground were left completely ignored. That's not what an attempt to seize and hold looks like. — Tzeentch

Yes because the Russian failed (and let’s not forget that their military effort on the ground was supported by heavy shelling too). This fact however doesn’t exclude that this could plausibly be their initial aim.
Initially, Russian forces captured key areas to the north and west of Kyiv, leading to international speculation of the city's imminent fall. However, stiff Ukrainian resistance sapped the momentum. Poor Russian logistics and tactical decisions helped the defenders to thwart efforts at encirclement, and, after a month of protracted fighting, Ukrainian forces mounted successful counterattacks.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kyiv_(2022)

They somehow capture Kiev, install a puppet, and the western backing, Ukrainian military and Ukrainian resistance magically go 'poof!' while an 190,000 man army maintains control a population of 41 million in a country that has an area of 600,000 square kilometers? — Tzeentch

Installing a puppet regime doesn’t need military control over the whole territory. Even the puppet regime installed by the US in Afghanistan did NOT have military control over all the territory (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-57933979). The difference from the US case however is that Putin could arguably rely on collaborationists in the army/intelligence (like the ones purged by Zelensky), pro-Russian political parties (that during the war were banned by Zelensky), and an ousted Ukrainian president to be reinstalled if needed. So no my speculation about Russian military goals (at least during the first phase) is not outlandish at all, nor unpopular among Western experts.
Prof Mearsheimer, a noted political scientist of the University of Chicago, feels that Russia’s aim is not to seize and defend territory in Ukraine (as it could get bogged down in an Afghanistan-like quagmire). The Russian aim is simply to either wreck Ukraine as a functional state or ensure regime change. https://thedailyguardian.com/putin-may-be-aiming-to-wreck-ukraine-as-a-functional-state/

Ok, what do you think we know about the Russians' geopolitical endgame?

Do you know more than us? — Tzeentch

Waste of time. I answered that already (and I was already using the first-person plural):

Putin’s endgame
(In Mearsheimer’s words “Winning for Putin is putting an end to Ukraine joining the West, joining NATO, joining the EU” at minute 1:40:04 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qciVozNtCDM) — neomac

You're just assuming colossal intelligence failures took place, without actually having any idea of what Russian intelligence looked like? Odd. — Tzeentch

I'm not randomly assuming Russian military/intelligence failures, I'm relying on what has been reported by legit sources (I gave you some links). If you have legit sources debunking what has been reported, just post them here. Sarcasm doesn't replace a substantive argument. As I said, I’m an avg dude so I’ll reason over the evidences accessible to me.

I don't think the Russian invasion needs to be viewed as a colossal disaster when we take into consideration the Russians went into Ukraine with a "limited aim strategy," which is Mearsheimer's argument.

I think there are strong indications that the Russians went into Ukraine with limited aims. The number of troops they deployed, the terms they presented during the negotations, etc. — Tzeentch

Things may have evolved differently from what initially planned, and still be worth it. I don't deny that.
And mine remain speculations, after all. Yet movement and size of the troops in the battle of Kiev are not strong indications against the idea that Russia might have tried to pursue regime change in the first phase of the war (indeed that is what one could expect under the premises I discussed).
Besides in the video you posted to support your claims, Mearsheimer has claimed:
- At minute 24:20 Mearsheimer of your video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qciVozNtCDM) that the strategic objective of 190K Russian troops were aiming at either capturing or threatening Kiev.
- At minute 1:40:04 “Winning for Putin is putting an end to Ukraine joining the West, joining NATO, joining the EU”
In other words, so far, if Russians wanted to threaten/capture Kiev as expected, they failed. If the Russians wanted just to consolidate the Eastern-South, they didn't ensure the geopolitical victory they were after.

So what else was the purpose of aiming at capturing or threatening Kiev if not regime change? — neomac

Options include:
1) Showing the West the Russian threats were no bluff.
2) Forcing Kiev to the negotiating table, which, we now know, they succeeded in.
3) Creating a diversion for the offensive in the south. — Tzeentch

The only aim I care discussing is 2. Forcing Kiev to the negotiating table, which, we now know, they succeeded in.
First, forcing a negotiation doesn’t exclude regime change. Putin’s request might have been a transition to a pro-West political leadership without bloodshed or detention or persecution for Zelensky.
Second, I don’t need to question the fact that Putin had other options than the decapitation of Zelensky’s regime, or that Putin preferred negotiation with Zelensky over regime change. Either cases do not exclude the fact that Putin ALSO pursued regime change, given that in phase one of the war there were also several Russian backed assassination attempts against Zelensky (https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraine-zelensky-russia-backed-assassination-attempts-report-2022-3?r=US&IR=T)

The pattern of troop movements suggests the Russian drive on Kiev was unlikely to have as its goal to occupy and hold. — Tzeentch

I would prefer to read directly from your source. In general, execution can also be mismanaged and Western military experts have already reported on the poor Russian military performance.
Said that, I’m interested less in discussing the details of Putin’s military tactics and strategy on the battlefield, than discussing the overall status of Putin’s “special military operation” in light of Putin’s endgame
(In Mearsheimer’s words “Winning for Putin is putting an end to Ukraine joining the West, joining NATO, joining the EU” at minute 1:40:04 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qciVozNtCDM)

The idea that Kiev represented the promise of victory is a notion I already dealt with before and you can find most of that exchange on page 309 and page 313 of this thread. — Tzeentch

I also find it plausible that the Russians did not intend to take and hold Kiev, even if they could have. I've already presented arguments why I believe that.

In summary:

- The Ukraine's centre of gravity is not in Kiev, because this war isn't conducted from Kiev. It's foreign support that is keeping this war going. Capturing Kiev would be symbolic, but not decisive.

- With the limited amount of troops Russia has deployed, it is unlikely they intended to spend the time and effort it would require to capture Kiev, when they had areas of strategic significance to occupy in the south.

- It is in Russia's primary interest that Ukraine continues to fight this war themselves. The capture of Kiev and it's C&C facilities could bring a western intervention closer.

- My view is that the drive on Kiev was a show of force and Russia's last attempt at finishing the conflict quickly. By showing they were not bluffing, they could conceivably have made the West back off and forced a renegotiation of Ukraine's position. If this were to fail, which it did, it could double as a diversionary attack to allow Russian forces to occupy the south with less resistance. — Tzeentch

Concerning the first point, Kiev is the political capital if the endgame is to impact Kiev’s foreign politics would obviously be the first place to go. What was military feasible to the Russians and actually pursued is not on me to establish. I can just read what has been reported and reason from there.
Concerning the second, as I said movements on the battlefield (independently from the intelligence/military poor performance) are not the only relevant factor, Putin might have counted also on a network of collaborationist insiders (he also publicly singled his favour for an Ukrainian military coup). Besides Russians tried to assassinate Zelensky and let's not forget the heavy shelling of the capital (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kyiv_(2022)).
Concerning the third, it’s been reported that the Westerners were expecting Ukraine to capitulate soon in the first phase.
Concerning the fourth, your views do not change what we know about the geopolitical endgame of Putin, nor Putin’s and other Russian government representatives’ declarations against Zelensky’s regime, nor Russian deal-breaker conditions for a negotiation. I care discussing what Russians did up until now on the battlefield in different phases wrt these points. Suggesting that military threatening Kiev in the first phase was just to show off their seriousness without being ready and finding feasible to follow through, goes against the logic of “they were not bluffing”. Or else that failing that, they could still exploit the move as a diversion in occupying East-Southern part of Ukraine (as opposed to simply and maybe more conveniently focusing on this part of Ukraine from the start), can’t underplay the relevance of such military failure wrt Putin’s geopolitical endgame.

Besides, you are making the point that the Russians suffered some colossal intelligence failure, so why are you referring to western experts and articles? — Tzeentch

Meaning? I doubt that Russians would be free to acknowledge “colossal intelligence failures” especially if that might involve Putin’s responsibilities. There have been Putin’s purges though: https://www.businessinsider.com/putin-purges-fsb-over-ukraine-failures-bellingcat-expert-2022-4?r=US&IR=T

That's clearly not what Mearsheimer "is confirming". — Tzeentch

Mearsheimer is claiming at minute 24:20 Mearsheimer of your video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qciVozNtCDM) that the strategic objective of 190K Russian troops were aiming at either capturing or threatening Kiev. So what else was the purpose of aiming at capturing or threatening Kiev if not regime change? If the endgame is the political alignment of Ukraine, either there is a regime change or Zelensky's regime surrenders to Russian demands. So regime change was likely an option (and after all there was already an Ukrainian ex-president removed by the American "coup d'etat" to reinstate).

You have no idea what you're talking about if you consider it feasible to install a puppet regime when an enemy force is occupying the vast majority of a country. — Tzeentch

First, it's not on me to consider it feasible. I'm talking about the likely strategic objectives at least of the first phase of the war.
Second, you keep ignoring/dismissing the possible miscalculations of the Russians.
Third, notice also that there was a network of collaborationist within the Ukrainian armee and secret service that could have tried a coup d'etat favorable to Putin. See Zelensky's purges among generals and security Services:
https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/russia-ukraine-latest-news-2022-04-01/card/president-zelensky-fires-two-generals-cASwBg7pfy4FKlh2f25t
https://carnegieendowment.org/politika/87585
Fourth, even Yanukovic was warming up: https://www.republicworld.com/world-news/russia-ukraine-crisis/ex-ukraine-president-yanukovych-asks-zelensky-to-overcome-pride-and-stop-war-with-russia-articleshow.html

Where'd you even get such a notion? — Tzeentch

From different sources, which I can only partly link here.

- Putin himself:
the Russian president struck an uncompromising tone in a Friday address to the Armed Forces of Ukraine (ZSU), describing the government in Kiev as a “gang of drug addicts and neo-Nazis who have settled in Kyiv and taken the entire Ukrainian people hostage.” Putin appeared to welcome the prospect of—If not explicitly call for—a military coup, encouraging the ZSU to “take power into your own hands” and opining that it would be “easier” to negotiate with Ukraine’s top brass than with the Zelenskyy administration.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/can-russia-and-ukraine-negotiate-end-war-200858
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/25/its-not-rational-putins-bizarre-speech-wrecks-his-once-pragmatic-image

- Experts:
The Center for Naval Analyses said that Russia would create a pincer movement to encircle Kyiv and envelop Ukraine's forces in the east, with the Center for Strategic and International Studies identifying three axes of advance: from Belarus in the north, from Donetsk in the center, and from Crimea in the south. The US said it believed that Russia intended to "decapitate" Ukraine's government and install its own, and US intelligence officials believed that Kyiv would fall within 96 hours
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_2022_Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine:_phase_1

It's no wonder your theory hinges on Russian intelligence failures of colossal proportions — Tzeentch

"My theory" hinges on what has been reported by many mainstream outlets:
https://www.ft.com/content/ba440d90-b0ba-4a73-a138-9cb1229b6cac
https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/putins-colossal-intelligence-failure
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a39376114/is-putin-crazy-or-bad-intel/
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20220303-us-experts-militarily-the-russian-invasion-is-a-disaster-so-far

What are you referring to with "losing the conflict over Ukraine"? Russia was already occupying Donbas and Crimea. No soft power was changing that until February 2022. — neomac

Ukrainian alignment is what the conflict is about. Donbas and Crimea did not stop Ukraine from being turned into what Russia deemed a "western bulwark on Russia's borders". That's why it was (or considered itself) losing. — Tzeentch

Ukraine was not within NATO nor EU either. And again until February 2022 it wasn’t obvious that Ukraine would have joined NATO/EU imminently no matter what. No timeline no positive assessment about Ukraine eligibility. Plus the resistance of France and Germany. It’s not even obvious now, go figure

So the war might have evolved in realistic ways that could still be more advantageous to Russia than the current war. — neomac

I don't see the point in indulging in fantasy. Where would you even find the type of information necessary to make a judgement about that? We probably have access to only a fraction of the relevant information as is. — Tzeentch

You do indulge in such counterfactual speculations, when it’s matter to strategically justify Russian aggression of Ukraine. And again my reasoning is still based on known pre-war conditions. So I expect you to reciprocate in the same vain. Instead of throwing random objections.

Are you really implying the Russians were going to install a puppet regime in Kiev while occupying less than 1/5th of the country, with a western-trained, western-backed Ukrainian military occupying the rest, and an angry Ukrainian population to reckon with, with 190,000 troops? — Tzeentch

Yes I do. And also Mearsheimer is confirming it at minute 24:20 Mearsheimer of your video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qciVozNtCDM) where he claims that the strategic objective of 190K Russian troops were aiming at either capturing or threatening Kiev and conquer a large swath of territory in East and South Ukraine. And that is not implausible if one takes into account the Russian intelligence failure I was talking about (among other possible miscalculations, of course).

If you're going to scoff at Mearsheimer and claim knowledge on the subject, don't come at me with outlandish notions such as this one. You're making a fool of yourself. — Tzeentch

The problem is not scoffing Mearsheimer. But that his claims question yours (“It's equally unlikely that with such a small force they sought to both occupy and hold Kiev and install a puppet regime and occupy and hold the southern regions”).
Besides I'm not scoffing Mearsheimer, I’m just saying that if you want to give me military/intelligence lessons, better go directly to military/intelligence input, not to geopolitical academics like Mearsheimer.

So all else equal (in the pre-war conditions) the counterfactual scenario I suggested would have favoured Russia more than it did the ongoing war. — neomac

I disagree, and evidently so did the Russians or they wouldn't have invaded. — Tzeentch

I'm not questioning the fact that you agree with the Russians, I'm just questioning the reasons of your assumptions. Russians may have made miscalculations. And you with them.

That Russia was losing the conflict over Ukraine prior to the invasion when it was primarily decided through soft power, — Tzeentch

What are you referring to with "losing the conflict over Ukraine"? Russia was already occupying Donbas and Crimea. No soft power was changing that until February 2022.

Again I disagree, and apparently so did the Russians.
The longer the Russians let the US train, arm and finance the Ukrainians, the harder the eventual military invasion would be. — Tzeentch

Once again, we are talking past each other. If your reasoning starts with the assumption that Russia was set to start the kind of invasion we see now no matter what, one can then argue what was the best time window for Russia to do so. However I'm questioning that assumption and you yourself assumed that Russian were "still trying to pursue a diplomatic solution". So the war might have evolved in realistic ways that could still be more advantageous to Russia than the current war. Especially if Donbas+Crimea+land bridge were not Putin's endgame. As Mearsheimer says in your video “Winning for Putin is putting an end to Ukraine joining the West, joining NATO, joining the EU” (minute 1:40:04)

It would be more useful if you posted the military expert source, you rely on. — neomac

I already did, with time stamps and all. — Tzeentch

Mearsheimer?! If you want to accuse me of being layman on military/intelligence issues seriously, you better point me at some feedback grounded on documented military/intelligence expertise not at geopolitical academics. I've done my homework on this. Don't even waste your time.

That doesn’t seem to support your claim “It's equally unlikely that with such a small force they sought to both occupy and hold Kiev and install a puppet regime and occupy and hold the southern regions”, it just supports that that military deployment wasn’t enough to subdue the entire Ukraine. — neomac

I think that supports my claim. Mearsheimer explains how controlling a country as large as Ukraine with 190,000 troops is military fantasy, especially considering the expected resistance from the Ukrainian population. He even states he doesn't believe the Russians had any major territorial ambitions in Ukraine for the very same reason. — Tzeentch

You seem confused. Neither I [1] nor Mearsheimer (in that clip) nor you (in that quotation) were talking about "controlling a country as large as Ukraine" or "any major territorial ambitions".


[1]

Russia pursued regime change, denazification of Ukraine. This doesn’t require the occupation of all Ukraine, it requires to take control over Kiev and install a pro-Russian puppet regime (as the US did in Afghanistan) — neomac

With the amount of financial and military support that was flowing into Ukraine before the war, there was no chance of Russia destabilizing Ukraine. Ukraine was rapidly shedding all Russian influence. In terms of soft power the Russians were already on the defensive. That's why they had to resort to hard power and that's the reason they invaded. The idea that Russia could have gotten what it wanted without military means is nonsensical given the gravity of the military invasion that took place, which they themselves must have been fully aware of. In other words, I pretty much exclude the possibility that Russia could have gotten its way in Ukraine without resorting to military means. — Tzeentch

Russia was already engaged in a war with Ukraine in 2014 (so ALREADY destabilising the territorial and political integrity of Ukraine!). However this wasn’t enough to trigger the kind of military aid and sanctions we see now after the invasion of Ukraine. Until the war of 2022 started, the financial and military flow from the US was constrained by 3 factors (type and volume of military aid, lack of wider support from the West), the political pressure from the West was constrained by the fact the Western Europeans wanted to keep their business with Russia (which Nord Stream 2 would have further encouraged) and by the fact that Russia could still pressure the Ukrainian domestic politics due to pro-Russian propaganda and parties. Add to that, the effort that Russia is sustaining now and it seems determined & capable to sustain in the long run could have been invested in consolidating the control of the territories pre-February 2022. So all else equal (in the pre-war conditions) the counterfactual scenario I suggested would have favoured Russia more than it did the ongoing war.
Your objection is nothing more than just questioning the efficacy of all these factors on the assumption that flow of financial and military and soft power would have been enough anyways. That's a cheap objection.

I don’t see how the pre-war “amount of bilateral support” to Ukraine could have rendered the Russian resistance unsustainable in a counterfactual scenario that is way less challenging than the current conflict. — neomac

Because Russia changed the rules of the game when it invaded. In war, soft power goes (mostly) off the table, and in terms of hard power Russia (for now) has the advantage. — Tzeentch

Meaning?

Spare me the apologetics. — Tzeentch

That’s not even an argument. Is it?

Given the fact that the US was never planning to take Russian security concerns into consideration and basically invited war at every turn, certainly inevitable. — Tzeentch

Even if one is generically convinced about this, still Russia could have postponed further the confrontation to its own advantage. The US has already enough domestic and foreign issues to deal with, and these issues over time may have turned into Russia’s favour as they did already once (under Trump).
Besides, it’s claimed that even the US wasn’t sure about the Ukrainian resistance capacity against the Russian aggression. So even for the US it wasn’t obvious that their support to Ukraine would have taken the form it very slowly took as of now. So I don’t see anything as “inevitable” as you seem to do.

The small number of troops at the beginning of the war was likely because Russians didn’t expect the kind of fierce resistance the Ukrainians demonstrated... — neomac

Unlikely, since the Russians were fully aware of the size of the Ukrainian force, and the fact that it was equipped and trained by the US.
It's equally unlikely that with such a small force they sought to both occupy and hold Kiev and install a puppet regime and occupy and hold the southern regions. The theories you're suggesting are basically military impossibilities, though popular among laymen and the ever-churning propaganda machines. — Tzeentch

Another cheap objection. And, also your thesis is popular among layman and ever-churning pro-Russian propaganda machines.
It would be more useful if you posted the military expert source, you rely on.

23:05 - 27:20 discusses the implications of the size of the Russian invasion force.
1:30:40 - 1:32:00 Mearsheimer makes the point that he believes Russian territorial ambitions escalated as the war progressed.
Mearsheimer throughout the lecture actually argues that Russia might not have had any major territorial ambitions at all at the start of the war.
And recent revelations about the peace negotiations that took place weeks into the conflict might actually confirm that. The Russians were willing to make major concessions when they negotiated for Ukrainian neutrality, and it might only be after the negotiations failed that the Russian strategy changed to annexing parts of Ukraine. — Tzeentch

In the first clip Mearsheimer’s is questioning the idea that Russia could conquer the entire of Ukraine. In the second clip Mearsheimer is questioning the alleged imperialistic ambitions of Putin. Neither of these arguments are relevant to counter the arguments that there were intelligence failures on the Russian side that might have compromised their strategic objectives whatever they were.
Said that, I also remark that at minute 24:20 Mearsheimer is claiming that the strategic objective of 190K Russian troops were aiming at either capturing or threatening Kiev and conquer a large swath of territory in East and South Ukraine. That doesn’t seem to support your claim “It's equally unlikely that with such a small force they sought to both occupy and hold Kiev and install a puppet regime and occupy and hold the southern regions”, it just supports the idea that the Russian military deployment wasn’t enough to subdue the entire Ukraine.

The idea that political arguments can be weighed by some kind of objective metric is something most if us left behind in college. — "Isaac

All we can ever do on a site like this is enquire about people's reasons for holding the views they hold. The entire enterprise if pointless otherwise. If you're going to answer "because of some reasons", then we might as well give up here. I'm asking about what those reasons are, I assumed you had some. — "Isaac

I gave you my reasons. And if you don’t feel like counter-arguing them in ways that make sense to me, I don’t care.

If you argue something else, you must be a US fanboy — ssu

From "US cheerleader" to "US fanboy" sounds big improvement though. :wink:

It shouldn't need to be repeated this often, but it appears I've got to say it again...

We're not the ones claiming your narrative is unreasonable. Speaking for myself, I'm perfectly happy with the notion that Friedman didn't mean what he said. It's a perfectly rational theory with good evidence.
You (collectively) are the ones trying to claim our alternative theories are unreasonable.
To prove that claim, it's not sufficient to show your theory is possible. No one disagreed it was possible. You have to show that the alternative is impossible. Not merely that one of the possibilities is that Friedman didn't mean what he said, but rather that it is the only possibility. — Isaac

We have been through this already. Your way of understanding the burden of proof in a debate is hardly intelligible to me. There is something off even in the way you phrase it. You make it sound like if the debate is about possibilities.
Debates that make sense to me should be principled and computationally affordable ways to assess people's arguments and evidences. “Principled” means that there are enough shared (implicit or explicit) criteria to assess if arguments are more or less reasonable, more or less consistent, more or less supported by evidence, more or less pertinent, if quotations are more or less accurate, more or less misleading, more or less pertinent, more or less strong in terms of probatory force, etc. Talking about quotations, one criterium could be: if X is known to have made seemingly incompatible claims over the same subject, then mentioning only one of the two just because it is good enough to support my views should be an invalid move. Example: Putin is reported saying (A) “The breakup of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20th century” but also (B) “Whoever does not miss the Soviet Union has no heart, whoever wants it back has no brain”, so knowing this it would be rationally questionable for me to argue “Putin probably wants to somehow restore the Soviet Union because once he said (A)’” knowing that Putin also claimed (B).
The same holds for G. Friedman’s quotation.

Relevant mostly to neomac's style of nonsense, but many other US fanboys here — Isaac

Moralistic rants (like the one you posted) aren’t rationally compelling to me as long as they fail to address the real issue: the relation between morality and power (as I myself tried to address in my infamous “wall of text”, https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/775801).
The problem is not if we can share or emotionally relate to the claim “X morally ought to do Y” but how we can ENSURE that “X does Y”. The former is not necessarily a big deal. The latter is where things can get really messy beyond anybody’s intentions and expectations, or capacity of offering a realistically better alternative.

There is a misunderstanding. — neomac

The only misunderstanding here is that you seem to believe babbling on about cognitive dissonance is going to help your case any. — Tzeentch

Indeed, your cognitive dissonance helps better understand your views about the relation between the geopolitical dimension and the moral dimension, the way you process responsibility attribution, and certain intellectual weaknesses like conceptual ambiguities in your geopolitical analysis (e.g. moralising amoral geopolitical agents), confirmation bias (e.g. overlooking the pros of the Pax Americana while highlighting the cons) and a posteriori rationalizations (e.g. the “inevitable” consequences of the American hubris like Putin waging war against Ukraine).

The problem is the one I have described earlier: the U.S. was in the process of turning Ukraine into a U.S. ally on a bilateral basis, completely circumventing NATO.

The Germans and the French had no power to stop that. — Tzeentch

Sure, but I considered that possibility in the context of what happened after the war. Russian military operation offered a more convenient pretext to whatever solution (inside or outside NATO) the US prefers. However if the whole point of the American initiative was to unite the West against Russia (or decoupling Europe from Russia), bilateral solutions prior to the war may have not been as useful to that effect (see the Budapest Memorandum), not to mention that they would have looked more risky since the limits of Russian military capacity (or performance) weren’t as evident as they are now.

Yet even in the current conditions Western Europeans are still reluctant to discuss about NATO membership for Ukraine. — neomac

With the current condition being large-scale war between Russia and what is basically a NATO proxy, their opinions are even more irrelevant than they were in times of peace. The European powers are a bunch of suckers, piggybacking on the U.S. defense budget and apparently believing that will not completely wipe out their bargaining power. They're essentially U.S. vassals given the illusion of relevance. — Tzeentch

Your conviction seems based more on your moral outrage than on compelling evidences or logic.
Turkey threatened to veto Sweden joining NATO. So French and Germany could do the same for Ukraine (they were already opposing it).
To me, the point is not that they are irrelevant to let Ukraine join NATO (they may even look for a compensation from the US at this point) but that the evolution of the war is increasingly compromising their hopes to recover the business partnership with Russia as soon as possible at the end of the war, or to pursue their security system more autonomously from the US.

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 ... — neomac

With the amount of bilateral support it was receiving from the U.S., I would pretty much exclude that possibility. — Tzeentch

Not sure to understand what you are talking about here. In the counterfactual scenario I suggested, first, Russia would have been on the defensive (which is less costly than the offensive).
Second, the constraint on the type of military equipment sent to Ukraine would more likely have been still preserved (see the debate over non-lethal weapons).
Third, if Russia didn’t start a war, then it could have kept messing with the Ukrainian democracy through pro-Russian parties.
Fourth, Ukraine is receiving now even greater support (not only from the US) but Russia was able to occupy even greater territory (imagine if Russia focused on Donbas and land bridge from the start!) and it’s set to continue an attrition war “as long as it takes“, so I don’t see how the pre-war “amount of bilateral support” to Ukraine could have rendered the Russian resistance unsustainable in a counterfactual scenario that is way less challenging than the current conflict.

I’m not sure to understand why you keep talking about “coup d'etat” supported by the US. — neomac
We've got U.S. officials admitting to sending Ukraine billions of USD of support prior to 2014, and to being deeply involved in constructing the post-coup government in Ukraine.
Clearly the U.S. was involved, supported the coup and, as I said earlier, I am still entertaining the hypothesis that the U.S. largely orchestrated it. We know the U.S. is capable of such things, and its fingerprints are all over it. — Tzeentch

First, let’s clarify the terminology here: to me “coup d'etat” typically means a violent/illegal overthrow of a regime by institutional figures like politicians and military (e.g. Trump backed US capitol riot can be accused of being an attempted coup d’etat). “Revolutions” are typically violent/llegal overthrow of a regime but stemming from ordinary masses.
Second, Maidan Revolution was a popular revolution. And as far as I know no Ukrainian politicians/military plotted to forcefully remove Yanukhovic. Indeed, Yanukovych signed a transition deal with Ukraine opposition brokered by Russia and the European Union (https://www.politico.eu/article/yanukovych-signs-transition-deal-with-ukraine-opposition/).
Third, the revelations about Victoria Nuland are not enough to support the claim that the US participated in a coup. The US supported the popular revolution and pro-European political candidates, but they may just have lobbied and supported campaign/propaganda to amplify or direct consensus over certain politicians (even the American domestic politics works that way). It would be different if you could provide compelling evidence that the US (intentionally) financed the armed revolutionaries (as the Americans did in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay_of_Pigs_Invasion).
But even in this case, talking about “coup” and “orchestration” doesn’t seem to me more than an attempt to mount a preconceived polemic dismissive of the pro-Western Ukrainian movements, as if the Ukrainians didn’t have enough domestic reasons to be deeply dissatisfied with Yanukhovic and Russian interference and revolt (compare it with the recent revolts in Iran).

A war of this magntitude requires planning and preparation, obviously. Besides, they did not have the power of hindsight and did seek to exhaust the alternatives. Even late into 2021 the Russians were still trying to pursue a diplomatic solution. — Tzeentch

Nothing so “inevitable” then.

Seems like a rather weak article to me, that presupposes the Russian invasion was a complete failure. While that seems to be part of the western narrative, I see little evidence to suggest it is true.
The Russians invaded Ukraine while outnumbered, with a force that was way too small to occupy all of it. This leads me to believe that the territories they occupied in east and southern Ukraine probably roughly coincide with the initial aims of the invasion.
Mearsheimer makes that point in detail. — Tzeentch

Russia pursued regime change, denazification of Ukraine. This doesn’t require the occupation of all Ukraine, it requires to take control over Kiev and install a pro-Russian puppet regime (as the US did in Afghanistan). So far Russia tried but failed this objective. Along with the objective of demilitarization (or neutrality). Ukraine is getting more pro-Western and its chances of joining the West have arguably increased thanks to the war started by Putin.
The small number of troops at the beginning of the war was likely because Russians didn’t expect the kind of fierce resistance the Ukrainians demonstrated (due to the Russian intelligence failure).
Concerning Mearsheimer’s video, it’s too long. It would be easier if you specified at what point of that video Mearsheimer is offering arguments in support of your belief that "the territories they [the Russians] occupied in east and southern Ukraine probably roughly coincide with the initial aims of the invasion".

Kommersant reports G. Friedman claiming "Russia calls the events of the beginning of the year a US-organized coup d'état. And it really was the most overt coup d'état in history." And at the next question: "Do you mean the termination of the agreement of February 21 or the entire Maidan? Together. After all, the United States openly supported human rights groups in Ukraine, including with money. And the Russian special services missed these trends. They did not understand what was happening, and when they did, they failed to take measures to stabilize the situation, and later misjudged the mood in Eastern Ukraine."
To recapitulate, G. Friedman was commenting a Russian claim in Russian own terms. And at the next question G.Friedman explains the nature of the US support. In relation to that interview (not Sputnik, "On a visit to Russia, I told the business journal Kommersant that..." [1]), G. Friedman is saying that his claim was "...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."
To recapitulate, G. Friedman's belief is that there was no "US-organized coup d'état", and therefore he expressed his skepticism through irony.
So if the Kommersant transcript is accurate (G.Fridman's conditional form is indeed missing), either G. Friedman actually believed that the Maidan Revolution was "the most overt coup d'état in history" and later he retracted his own claims, or G.Friedman never thought the Maidan Revolution was "the most overt coup d'état in history" but he expressed his own belief though irony (G.Fridman's conditional is maybe supposed to clarify why he expressed himself in Russian own terms).

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/george-friedman-russia-is-winning-the-internet-2016-4?r=US&IR=T

full interview — Isaac

Whose accuracy has been questioned by George Friedman himself. If you prefer to believe the Russian source over George Friedman's feedback, that's all on you.

↪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

.

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
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OCTOBER 7, 9, 22, 28, 30 AND NOVEMBER 5, 1997
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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.

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.
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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.

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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.

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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.
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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.
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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.