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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   35350 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 26, 2022

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Thanks to the US, Western Europe has been pushed into a proxy war against their energy supplier.

No this is still very much thanks to Russia, the US may benefit from this, but Russia chose to launch this utterly idiotic and needless invasion in the first place.

But for the encroachment, coup, and 8 years of shelling rebel oblasts, the invasion probably wouldn't have happened.

Like most wars, this one is not mono-causal. We can certainly blame Hitler for invading the Sudetenland, but we can also blame the Allies for creating the conditions that would lead the Germans to rally behind a strongman.

But for the encroachment, coup, and 8 years of shelling rebel oblasts, the invasion probably wouldn't have happened.

Like most wars, this one is not mono-causal

This one absolutely is, it stems entirely from a Russian inability to face reality and accept that it is no longer a great power and that Ukraine is no longer inside its orbit. If Russia was serious about the whole "multi-polar world" thing they would have recognised that their best bet was becoming part of Europe, instead they launched a war that will impoverish Russia and Europe, strengthening China and the US.

You think that Russia would've invaded Ukraine in Feb 2022 if Yanukovych had never been deposed?

Why would they bother?

Without the coup, there would have been no rebel oblasts. With those oblasts continuing to participate in elections there probably would have been no government elected that would seriously entertain the idea that Ukraine join an anti-Russian military alliance.

On Russia and Europe: Gorbachev, Yeltsin and Putin have all floated the idea of Russia joining NATO. No one in NATO has ever appeared to like that idea, with American Presidents and Secretaries of State dismissing it. It was the Americans that pledged there would be no NATO expansion into former Soviet states after the fall of the Soviet Union, "not one inch eastward." That was obviously a pledge broken, and not even in response to any Russian hostilities.

I'm American and I can't make any sense of our foreign policy strategy in regards to Russia. It all seems like dick-waving with potential nuclear consequences. What do we even get if we "win?"

The Soviets talked about joining NATO as early as around the time of its foundation. Their idea though was to either exclude the US from NATO or to require unanimous agreement for any NATO action, either way gutting NATO.

Putin did indeed at one point talk about joining NATO. He asked when they would be invited to NATO. Was told that it didn't work that way that countries applied to join. Then Putin said "Well, we’re not standing in line with a lot of countries that don’t matter.’”

In addition to not wanting to follow the process, I'm not sure Russia would really want to be in an alliance where another country was the dominate member (Russia would be 2nd in population, and military strength, 3rd in PPP GDP, and 7th in nominal GDP).

And I'm not so sure it would have qualified for membership -

While there is no membership checklist for interested nations, NATO has made clear that candidates for membership must meet the following criteria. Interested nations must:

Uphold democracy, including tolerance for diversity;

Be progressing toward a market economy;

Have their military forces under firm civilian control;

Be good neighbors and respect the sovereignty of other nations; and

Work toward interoperability with NATO forces.

https://1997-2001.state.gov/regions/eur/fs_970815members.html

The first and 2nd to last points have been questionable at best for years and has become more so lately. And I'm not sure Russian leadership would care to change the way their military operates to fit with the last point.

Uphold democracy, including tolerance for diversity;

Be good neighbors and respect the sovereignty of other nations

It's a relief to know Ukraine and the United States will never join NATO.

Some sort of argument can be made about the US. I don't think its as strong as the people normally making the argument would claim, but on respecting sovereignty it isn't nonsense, there is a real argument there. Less so on the democracy question.

Ukraine? Maybe its just because they haven't had a lot of time or a lot of power as an independent country but they haven't done much in the way of infringing on anyone's sovereignty. As for democracy they are far more democratic than Russia, corrupt maybe but a solid democracy, at least until after they were invaded and large sections of their country occupied by a foreign power (when they outlawed pro-Russian parties as traitorous)

Calling Ukraine a solid democracy post-Maidan (let alone post-banning political opposition) is a joke. I'll concede the US, flawed as it is, should still qualify as one -- but for the US I was really poking at the whole "sovereignty" bit.

Ukraine had several free and fair elections post Maidan, and those elections actually determined who got to run the government.

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