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Notes -
To anyone who has discussed the issue with pro-Ukraine people.
Why do people support Ukraine fighting against Russia, with a strange militaristic fervor, instead of supporting surrendering / negotiating peace?
Anglin makes the points that:
-the war is severely impoverishing Europe due to high energy costs
-the war is destroying Ukraine ( population + territory / infrastructures / institutions)
-continuing the war increases the chances of a world war
Is it cheering for the possible destruction of Russia?
Something to do with the current leadership of Russia, anti-LGBTQ, pro-family policies?
Is it about the 1991 borders of Ukraine, issues with post-Soviet Union border disputes?
Notion that 'if we don't stop Putin now he will never stop no matter what'? Is it something about broadly standing up against aggression of one state vs another, supporting the 'underdog'?
The issue with that one which seems to be central to Alexander's March 22 post is that there isn't much that seems capable of stopping Russia.
Sending another 100k Ukrainians to the meatgrinder for that end seems a little bit harsh coming from people with very little skin in the game.
Just signaling what they are told is the correct opinion?
Is it about saving face, sunk cost at this point?
What would be the best case scenario for a Ukraine/State Department victory?
To my understanding, Putin is not the most radical or dangerous politician in Russia, and an implosion into ethnicity-based sub-regions would cause similar problems to the 'Arab Spring'. Chechens for example would not appear very West-friendly once 'liberated' from Russia.
Not only that, but economic crisis in Europe could generate additional security risks.
Pro-Ukrainians don’t usually grapple with the hard issues that make Ukraine a unique and complex case.
America meddling in Ukrainian elections. America promoted an insurrection in the Ukrainian capitol, changing the results of their presidential election, by funding fake news media that pushed debunked stories. (The irony should not be lost on us.)
NATO expansion onto the doorstep of Russia, the enshrining of NATO membership into the Ukrainian constitution, and joint naval drills and training for when membership became safe.
The cultural continuity between eastern Ukraine and Russia
The soft “cultural genocide” of indigenous ethnic Russians in the east of Ukraine via oppression on Russian-language small businesses and journalists, forcing them to speak Ukrainian in shops, publishing in Ukrainian on the front page whether offline or online.
The will of the people of Crimea to join with Russia in 2014, not just evidenced by their election but by our own government’s polling done by the the broadcast board of governors. This was unacceptable to Ukraine.
An obvious hypothetical is, what would we do if Cuba decided to host Russian nukes? How about if Canada joined a “defensive” alliance with China? We would obviously do the same thing that Russia is doing with Ukraine. When a rival superpower uses corruption and media propaganda to influence elections of your neighbor, which results in a push toward joining their military bloc, you take action. It’s that simple.
If you support America’s exclusive hegemony, this is probably a good idea (fuck Russia!). If you support Western civilization, this is probably a bad idea.
Because none of that is factual.
West had limited involvement in maiden. It was mostly their own decision. Probably because they look west and Poland is getting rich and they look east and there’s a bunch of poor peasants
nato isn’t a threat to a nuclear power. And as this was has proven Ukraine has no choice but to join nato be an independent country
there’s some truth to suppression of Russian culture
Russia has at no point offered Crimea or the Eastern regions independence. Russia at no point has had a goal of less than regaining the all of Ukraine. Those regions were used as attempts to interfere with Ukranian politics and eventually reestablish control of kyiv
Not all countries get to control their neighbors. If we stop with an assumption that every country gets to dictate terms of their neighbors then every country would be at war constantly trying to establish that. Russia is clearly NOT capable of projecting force outside their borders anymore.
looking at history theirs a huge difference between being in American sphere of influence and in Russias sphere. Russians sphere well has things like Holodomore happen to them. The American sphere even when we do bad things has limited bad things happen to the people of the country. One can look at population charts and places like Iraq/Afghanistan barely see population drops and then they boom, while places like syria or Ukraine see huge pop drops when Russia gets involved.
Also saying something is a complex case and your opponents don’t think about those things isn’t true. We do think about those things. We just don’t find those as dominating factors.
You write
and then almost immediately
Which fraction of pop of Russia involved in agriculture, what do you think? It's not a first time you throw 'peasants' just for fun.
Not referring to being farmers. But a more general being poor.
I can just use Russian own propaganda to justify my position. They literally tell us their people are
poor.
https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1604548265802096641?s=46&t=cJUMoctDB-RQWpQq-S5_qQ
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