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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   33031 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 19, 2023

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In practice, neutrality would have meant that Ukraine will always remain weaker than Russia and can be invaded at any time. Russia would just have to wait for a time where NATO is occupied somewhere else. Russia violated the Budapest memorandum and the Minsk agreement. How could Ukraine trust them to not invade them?

Moreover, the fact that Ukraine is or is not in NATO is not very relevant for the security of Russia. They are American nukes in the baltic countries, so the threat would not be any bigger. On the other side, Russia would still have nukes, so the invasion risks aren't any higher. So if Ukraine joining NATO does not change anything for Russia security, you have to find another reason why it matters to them. The only thing Russia can do if Ukraine is "neutral" but not if it is in NATO is invading them.

has destroyed the country

No, the invasion has.

has cost enormous sums of money

The invasion has. The US are not responsible for it.

has wasted American influence in Ukraine

Are you kidding? American influence is stronger than ever in Ukraine.

has pressured Russia into developing better drone technology

No, their invasion has pressured them to do so.

has finalized the alienation of Russia from the West

Once again, it's their choice to invade Ukraine that has alienated them. Even after 2014 the west was totally OK negotiating with Russia. Have you heard about Nord Stream 2?

has influenced Arab nations into cozying with Russia

They always did... They are not democratic countries, they have an interest in helping authoritarian regimes. It has not much to do with Ukraine.

and all we get in return is some dead Russians

And the reassurance that you won't abandon your allies, which was in doubt after the Afghanistan retreat.

has pressured Russia into developing better drone technology

No, their invasion has pressured them to do so.

What drone technology? The technology of buying them in Iran, repainting them and pretending it's Russian? I think they had this technology before.

The idea that one is not threatened by a neighboring state because there are other neighboring states unaligned with Russia doesn’t make sense. I am not threatened by five enemies because I have four? But it makes especially little sense given: the important of flat eastern Ukraine for invasion, and the importance of the Black Sea for Russia. America may very well have been threatened by the Saudis funding radical Islam, but that doesn’t mean they can just blow up Saudi Arabia. Instead we settled on lesser Arab countries.

neutrality would have meant that Ukraine will always remain weaker

Ukraine is small, it will always be weaker, but now it will be destroyed. This argument doesn’t hold up to either the predictions made years before (they will be annihilated), or the present data (look at the birth rates). “I will either attempt to be more significant than I am or be destroyed” is a recipe for narcissistic ego death.

Russia violated the

NATO violated the promise not to expand east as part of the negotiations involving German reunification.

No, the invasion has.

Yes, the invasion that was promised for years because of the sequence of actions that NATO + NATO-influenced Ukraine took. This is like when the Mongels invaded Iraq and destroyed Baghdad after Baghdad slew their emissaries. Sorry Baghdad, you don’t get to “be sovereign” against the Mongols, just like Cuba and Iraq don’t get to “be sovereign” against America. This isn’t how reality works, and indeed it has never worked like this in the whole history of nations. Cause and effect is a much clearer way to understand what is best for America and/or Ukraine.

Ukraine is small, it will always be weaker, but now it will be destroyed

"Destroyed" is a relative term.

Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania are much smaller and weaker than Ukraine, but Putin has to play nice with them, because they're in NATO. If you were Ukrainian, and you didn't know that you would be invaded, wouldn't that be attractive to you?

The idea that one is not threatened by a neighboring state because there are other neighboring states unaligned with Russia doesn’t make sense. I am not threatened by five enemies because I have four?

Let me rephrase it: Ukraine joining NATO does not improve significantly NATO capabilities regarding Russia. I'm sorry, but the idea of a land invasion through Ukraine is ridiculous. It would mean a nuclear war. We are avoiding to send troops to Ukraine to avoid a nuclear conflict, but somehow we would invade Russia? And even if we wanted to take the risk, it would make more sense to attack from the baltic states as they are a lot closer from Moscow and Saint Petersburg than from Ukraine.

Ukraine is small, it will always be weaker

No, it won't be weaker if it has stronger allies. Russia would never have dared to invade Ukraine if it was a NATO country. And the birth rates mean nothing, as they can change fast. Russia also has declining birthrates, so the population ratio might very well be constant.

NATO violated the promise not to expand east as part of the negotiations involving German reunification.

The Russian propaganda says so, but until "they told us" becomes an international treaty, it's meaningless. If those promises even existed, they were never part of a formally approved treaty. No country has ever felt bound to respect oral promises of former leaders. It is just insane to claim they should. But even assuming that those promises were formally made and broken, I don't see your point. My argument was that Ukraine could not trust Russia security guarantees because Russia violated its security guarantees toward Ukraine twice. Are you claiming that Ukraine should actually believe Russia because NATO also broke some of its promises? It makes no sense at all.

Russia also has declining birthrates, so the population ratio might very well be constant.

No it wasn't constant. In 1991, it was 3:1 but it soon became 4:1, as Ukraine both had less TFR and negative net migration. Russia's ethnic minorities (esp. Muslims) have greater TFR.

The future is not always like the past.

Again the bunch of tired claims about NATO threat refuted so many times

https://youtube.com/watch?v=wjU-ve4Pn4k&t=1081

https://youtube.com/watch?v=FVmmASrAL-Q

It is beside the general point of the discussion in which I mostly agree with you but it is interesting how these videos while emphasizing agency of countries in Eastern Europe don't extend it to Abkhazia, South Ossetia or Transnistria mirroring the pro-russian talking point that foreign support equals foreign rulership.

I wish I knew more about leadership of those state-like formations. LDNR was lead by people directly affiliated with Kremlin, or unruly warlords who were eventually killed. More than half population there saw their future in Ukraine. But South Ossetia, and especially Abkhazia look much more autonomous. Of course, it doesn't cancel the fact, that a lot of ethnic Georgians were murdered or driven out, just like in LDNR — thus changing the general attitude of people there, and the ethnic composition. And Transnistria is probably somewhere in between LDNR and Abkhazia in terms of agency.

You can refute it as many times as you like. The promises of NATO to Russia are, by this point, worth nothing, even if the West wasn't openly discussing partitioning Russia.

Do you want to provide your ideas instead of linking to YouTube videos?

I have no desire of typing 5000 words, if everything can be found in the linked videos, or on Wikipedia, or wherever. Just put in on 2x. Arguments you present are not new, and the refutations of them are ubiquitous.

Damn, that's unfortunate, because I actually read multiple refutations of your position on TruthSocial. Your arguments are not new and have been defeated comprehensively elsewhere - but I have no desire of typing 5000 words (sic), so you'll just have to take my word for it.

Provide it then. I provided the links, you didn't provide those masterful refutations from TruthSocial.

Right, I’m obviously not going to watch a random YouTube video, but here’s the archival research of a top institution in foreign policy studies

https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2017-12-12/nato-expansion-what-gorbachev-heard-western-leaders-early

U.S. Secretary of State James Baker’s famous “not one inch eastward” assurance about NATO expansion in his meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on February 9, 1990, was part of a cascade of assurances about Soviet security given by Western leaders to Gorbachev and other Soviet officials throughout the process of German unification in 1990 and on into 1991, according to declassified U.S., Soviet, German, British and French documents posted today by the National Security Archive at George Washington University

Not once, but three times, Baker tried out the “not one inch eastward” formula with Gorbachev in the February 9, 1990, meeting. He agreed with Gorbachev’s statement in response to the assurances that “NATO expansion is unacceptable.” Baker assured Gorbachev that “neither the President nor I intend to extract any unilateral advantages from the processes that are taking place,” and that the Americans understood that “not only for the Soviet Union but for other European countries as well it is important to have guarantees that if the United States keeps its presence in Germany within the framework of NATO, not an inch of NATO’s present military jurisdiction will spread in an eastern direction.” (See Document 6)

Afterwards, Baker wrote to Helmut Kohl who would meet with the Soviet leader on the next day, with much of the very same language. Baker reported: “And then I put the following question to him [Gorbachev]. Would you prefer to see a united Germany outside of NATO, independent and with no U.S. forces or would you prefer a unified Germany to be tied to NATO, with assurances that NATO’s jurisdiction would not shift one inch eastward from its present position? He answered that the Soviet leadership was giving real thought to all such options [….] He then added, ‘Certainly any extension of the zone of NATO would be unacceptable.’” Baker added in parentheses, for Kohl’s benefit, “By implication, NATO in its current zone might be acceptable.” (See Document 8)

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2014/11/06/did-nato-promise-not-to-enlarge-gorbachev-says-no/

We now have a very authoritative voice from Moscow confirming this understanding. Russia behind the Headlines has published an interview with Gorbachev, who was Soviet president during the discussions and treaty negotiations concerning German reunification. The interviewer asked why Gorbachev did not “insist that the promises made to you [Gorbachev]—particularly U.S. Secretary of State James Baker’s promise that NATO would not expand into the East—be legally encoded?” Gorbachev replied: “The topic of ‘NATO expansion’ was not discussed at all, and it wasn’t brought up in those years. … Another issue we brought up was discussed: making sure that NATO’s military structures would not advance and that additional armed forces would not be deployed on the territory of the then-GDR after German reunification. Baker’s statement was made in that context… Everything that could have been and needed to be done to solidify that political obligation was done. And fulfilled.”

Gorbachev continued that “The agreement on a final settlement with Germany said that no new military structures would be created in the eastern part of the country; no additional troops would be deployed; no weapons of mass destruction would be placed there. It has been obeyed all these years.” To be sure, the former Soviet president criticized NATO enlargement and called it a violation of the spirit of the assurances given Moscow in 1990, but he made clear there was no promise regarding broader enlargement.

Also

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/feb/28/candace-owens/fact-checking-claims-nato-us-broke-agreement-again/

https://www.rferl.org/a/nato-expansion-russia-mislead/31263602.html

But that sums it up:

"That is because it fits so well with the picture that the Russian leader seeks to paint of an aggrieved Russia, taken advantage of by others and increasingly isolated -- not due to its own actions, but because of the machinations of a deceitful West," Pifer said.

As the link said, this promise never materialized into a formal written treaty. A verbal promise from US Secretary of State James Baker obviously has the maximum validity period of James Baker being the US Secretary of State. No future administration could be expected to bound by such verbal promise, made to the ex-president of a dead country.

What was put into writing was Russia's guarantee of recognizing the independence and sovereignty of post-Soviet countries and the inviolability of their borders, which Russia then proceeded to violate numerous times in the coming decades.

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