Does anyone live under the illusion that Russia was not going to eventually invade Ukraine regardless of NATO expansion into other nations? Are we to believe that Russia really thought a NATO protected Ukraine might one day invade Russia despite the Russian nuclear arsenal and so this defensive move became necessary now? — Hanover
Putin is fighting the infectious disease of Democracy, making this war inevitable as long as self rule is what the Ukrainians want. The only way for Ukraine to have avoided this war was to abandon democracy and submit to Putin. What backed Putin into a corner is that his country sucks and no one wants to be a part of it. — Hanover
Why don't specifically tells us how the US overthrew the Ukrainian government.And what exactly are Russians to believe when the US overthrew the Ukrainian government in 2014 — Benkei
Both are speech acts. So evidently they can be equated. If they're dissimilar in some way significant to your argument then you'll have to state it. God knows why you feel the need to resort to arguing by Delphic aphorism.. Just state your case for Christ's sake. — Isaac
They are dissimilar in that one is public and the other private. I thought this would be obvious. — Olivier5
Just check how close the Finnish border is from St Petersburg and Moscow.Finland and Sweden joining NATO aren't really an issue; former Warsaw Pact members sharing a border with Russia appear to be. — Benkei
And how many wars can he handle? And aren't we forgetting that his most trustworthy ally, Belarus, just had a year ago huge demonstrations against the Lukashenko government, so that country isn't as firm either... and really isn't at this time ready to go and assist in a war it has absolutely no desire to participate.So if Russia is serious about its "sphere of influence" any move by NATO to include these countries will likely result in another war. Putin has shown to be prepared to do what he said he'd do. — Benkei
Here's a summary. — Benkei
Historical events aren't monocausal — ssu
So what? — Isaac
The only thing which is all Putin is that he surely made the choice to invade Ukraine.So "this is all Putin" would be a mistaken argument here. — Isaac
Actually it does. Finnish airspace is what worries Russia. The Soviet Union inquired as late as in the 1970's from Finland if they could take care of Finnish Air Defence and put some SAM-bases in Finland. Our leadership politely declined. And even Imperial Russia was worried back then about an invasion by sea of the Russian Capitol, and that's why the built the Peter the Great's Naval Fortress on both sides of the Gulf of Finland in the start of the 20th Century. It's totally the same line of "sphere-of-influence".the stated sphere of influence for decades doesn't include them. — Benkei
“It is obvious that (if) Finland and Sweden join NATO, which is a military organisation to begin with, there will be serious military and political consequences,” Sergei Belyayev, head of the Russian foreign ministry’s European department, told the Russian news agency Interfax.
Benkei. That is exactly what I meant. Basically it's the Nuland Pyatt taped phone discussion and then saying that this is improper thing to do. And nothing else.
So where's the evidence that the US created the EuroMaidan protests, manufactured the students on to the streets? Or similar issues?
When you say that "the US overthrew the Ukrainian government", there really has to be that the US has been the major cause of the overthrow and without it, the coup wouldn't have happened. What in that article is said is in no way something like Operation Ajax which really was a US & British funded overthrow of a democratically elected government. — ssu
Because a private conversation does not make it more difficult to sign a peace deal, not the same way as a public speech may do. What is private does not feature in peace negotiations, and cannot play any role there. — Olivier5
The only thing which is all Putin is that he surely made the choice to invade Ukraine. — ssu
What is lacking is that Putin would be saying that we are an artificial country, so I guess that's promising. — ssu
If a Member State is the victim of armed aggression on its territory, the other Member States shall have towards it an obligation of aid and assistance by all the means in their power, in accordance with Article 51 of the United Nations Charter. This shall not prejudice the specific character of the security and defence policy of certain Member States.
Commitments and cooperation in this area shall be consistent with commitments under the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, which, for those States which are members of it, remains the foundation of their collective defence and the forum for its implementation. — Article 42(7) TFEU
That's a good start of us agreeing on the picture. You do understand the difference between "in 2014 the US overthrew the Ukrainian government" and "in 2014 the Ukrainian government was overthrown by a revolution eagerly supported by the US".I'll rephrase to “inappropriately and illegally affected the internal politics of a sovereign nation". You know the exact same shit those powers did across the world during the cold War? Also, to be complete it must be noted Russia was playing the same games at the time. — Benkei
I would put it even earlier, even if you are correct that the fault lines appeared in the Orange revolution. In a more broader sense the NATO war in Kosovo, which was a province, not a Republic of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, was the final tipping point for Russia that broke the camel's back in NATO-Russia relations. That happened in 1999. And I think that is very crucial part as is the first and second Chechen wars, that started to get also former Soviet countries to be worried about Russia's behaviour.Point being, the war about Ukraine was being fought by Russia and the US since probably 2004. — Benkei
Yeah. Even if there's a clause to help fellow EU member states, I wouldn't count on it. Never underestimate the fear of WW3. So it's not so bleak as in the 1930's when people knew that war was coming, not if, but when. Yet there's many ways to pressure countries in our time of hybrid attacks. Like you could start a blockade and not call it a blockade and deny it's an act of war. Perhaps you call it just a "Naval Quarantine". Or something. But those are hypotheticals.I guess what's promising is your membership in the EU. — Benkei
Does anyone live under the illusion that Russia was not going to eventually invade Ukraine regardless of NATO expansion into other nations? Are we to believe that Russia really thought a NATO protected Ukraine might one day invade Russia despite the Russian nuclear arsenal and so this defensive move became necessary now?
If the driver for the war is the reestablishment of a Russian empire of the likes of the former USSR (which i think it is), then the war had to be fought not just prior to Ukraine entering NATO, but prior to Ukraine breaking all ideological ties to Russia.
The window to seize Ukraine was closing through a potential NATO alliance, an EU entry, or just through continued liberalized democratization of Ukraine. If Russia wished to reestablish its past glory, it had to act before it lost all its potential prey to the protection of the West.
The problem is that Putin is learning is that the window was more shut that he thought it was. The fierce Ukraine resistance is based upon its belief that it is truly autonomous and not, as Putin would suggest, a group a Russians stranded in a Westernized state. Ukrainians stand with the full belief Russia is an invader and the West is a protector, indicating Russia is in a weaker position than maybe Putin appreciated.
This is just to say that whether NATO signaled it was expanding, or even if it signaled it was contacting (as Trump would have had it in his America first protectionism), Putin had to act now or forever lose Ukraine to the West.
Putin is fighting the infectious disease of Democracy, making this war inevitable as long as self rule is what the Ukrainians want. The only way for Ukraine to have avoided this war was to abandon democracy and submit to Putin. What backed Putin into a corner is that his country sucks and no one wants to be a part of it. — Hanover
For this to work, you have to show it's reasonably possible for Russia to effectively occupy Ukraine. I don't think this is the case. Maybe Eastern Ukraine but then if Mearsheimer and Kissinger are to be believed only true neutrality would've seen them survive as independent countries. — Benkei
And what exactly are Russians to believe when the US overthrew the Ukrainian government in 2014 and has an outsized influence on NATO and a proxy war between Russia and NATO/USA may have been going on since then? — Benkei
This isn't some democracy vs. autocracy battle. But nice example of US propaganda I suppose, let's pretend it's about ideals when we all know another game is being played. There's a reason NATO chose the expansion in certain countries and that reason isn't benign. — Benkei
It's a distinction without much of a difference. Yemeni civilians are being killed with US weapons and the US is profiting from them being killed. Whether the support is direct finance or sweetheart weapons deals doesn't mitigate the ethics of the situation a whole lot, does it? — Baden
Turning now to the question, there are plenty of supremely confident outpourings about Putin’s mind. The usual story is that he is caught up in paranoid fantasies, acting alone, surrounded by groveling courtiers of the kind familiar here in what’s left of the Republican Party traipsing to Mar-a-Lago for the Leader’s blessing.
The flood of invective might be accurate, but perhaps other possibilities might be considered. Perhaps Putin meant what he and his associates have been saying loud and clear for years. It might be, for example, that, “Since Putin’s major demand is an assurance that NATO will take no further members, and specifically not Ukraine or Georgia, obviously there would have been no basis for the present crisis if there had been no expansion of the alliance following the end of the Cold War, or if the expansion had occurred in harmony with building a security structure in Europe that included Russia.” The author of these words is former U.S. ambassador to Russia, Jack Matlock, one of the few serious Russia specialists in the U.S. diplomatic corps, writing shortly before the invasion. He goes on to conclude that the crisis “can be easily resolved by the application of common sense…. By any common-sense standard it is in the interest of the United States to promote peace, not conflict. To try to detach Ukraine from Russian influence — the avowed aim of those who agitated for the ‘color revolutions’ — was a fool’s errand, and a dangerous one. Have we so soon forgotten the lesson of the Cuban Missile Crisis?” — Chomsky
Financing shows a vested interest in the outcome. Selling arms show opportunism. It's a distinction with a difference, ethically speaking. — Janus
https://www.e-ir.info/2020/04/30/noam-chomskys-views-on-russian-foreign-policy-a-critical-analysis/In view of this, a problem with Chomsky’s tough opposition to NATO’s eastward enlargement of the 1990s—apparently a serious foreign policy question—is that the enlargement entirely matched public opinion. In the late 1990s, Americans and Western Europeans as well as Czech, Polish and Hungarian citizens were supportive of NATO’s expansion that eventually happened in 1999.
It's his rule that sucks. Many Europeans would just love to have a calm, peaceful and prosperous Russia, where entrepreneurs like Sergei Brin would stay and innovate new things. We don't have that with Russia. And many are eager to point out that Russia never has had democracy. Or when it has, sort of, it has resulted in a dictatorship later.Putin is fighting the infectious disease of Democracy, making this war inevitable as long as self rule is what the Ukrainians want. The only way for Ukraine to have avoided this war was to abandon democracy and submit to Putin. What backed Putin into a corner is that his country sucks and no one wants to be a part of it. — Hanover
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