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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   26919 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 15, 2024

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Strelkov was important in 2014, but pretty marginal in 2022. Putin alone was indeed the main instigator of the war. Nothing had changed in 2022 in terms of Ukraine's ability to join NATO, as the US refused to let them in as it had for the previous 8 years. Putin just woke up one morning and decided he wanted an invasion, and the rest is history.

Strelkov was important in 2014, but pretty marginal in 2022.

Strelkov started the chain of events that bubbled up to the war. It's a much bigger point: Putin didn't "just woke up" and create a war, there was already a war. It was started by other individuals, and Putin actually refused several earlier opportunities to escalate the war the way he did in 2022. The situation changed in 2022, which precipitated Russia's direct invasion. You can actually admit all of this without wanting Russia to win, or having to change any of your other opinions.

Nothing had changed in 2022 in terms of Ukraine's ability to join NATO

This is blatantly not true: The US refused to make a guarantee to Russia that Ukraine would not join NATO.

Strelkov started the chain of events that bubbled up to the war.

You're talking about 2014 here, right? If so, then sure, that checks out.

Putin didn't "just woke up" and create a war, there was already a war.

There was the frozen conflict that had been bubbling since 2014, but 2015-2021 was massively different from the invasion in 2022. There was little reason that status quo couldn't continue for another decade at least from the West's perspective, but then Putin decided he was unsatisfied with the state of affairs and that's how the invasion came to be.

I'm not saying there was no conflict prior to 2022. I'm saying the massive invasion itself that happened in 2022 was Putin's doing.

I don't think we're disagreeing on this point.

This is blatantly not true: The US refused to make a guarantee to Russia that Ukraine would not join NATO.

This was not a change, at least on the US's part! The US didn't let Ukraine join NATO, but they didn't rule it out either, same as 2015-2021. The US wanted to kick the can down the road some more (or indefinitely) by keeping Ukraine in limbo, and it was Putin who said that wasn't good enough now.

This is blatantly not true: The US refused to make a guarantee to Russia that Ukraine would not join NATO.

This is untrue. Offers that Ukraine would not join NATO were made and duly ignored, on grounds that the US would not make unamendable changes to the US Constitution that were beyond the US Executive's ability to offer in order to meet the level of Russian demands for what a legal guarantee would consist of, which entailed requirements that no future legislature or executive could change their position on.

As the ability to prevent future administrations for reconsidering a policy, a legislature proposing a law, or constitutional amendment from reversing an amendment would require a level of legalistic restriction that the US has never negotiated in its history, and which the Russians have never negotiated upon themselves, it was a notably new and novel proposal for Russia's concerns on how an already vetoed state would not enter NATO. (It was also a unilateral demand as Russia reserves the sovereign right to walk away from treaties they sign, and had done so repeatedly in contemporary history at the time.)

Of course, these demands were also made when Russia had already was in the midst of the final operational preparations for the invasion, and was in the process of generating casus belli justifications and justification narratives, so the sincerity of the Russian interest in the specific demand is highly suspect given their familiarity with US government structure, and the concurrent demands for NATO withdrawals from former warsaw pact states as equally unrealistic demands that served little role other than to say that it was the Americans who refused to negotiate in good faith.

Putin just woke up one morning and decided he wanted an invasion, and the rest is history.

I watched people predict this war at roughly this time well over a decade ago, so no, I'm pretty sure Putin didn't just wake up one morning and decide he wanted an invasion.

I'm talking about proximate causes. The long term reasons for competition between Russia and the West exist, and anyone can trot out Mearsheimer if they want the Russian view, but for the immediate causes of the war there wasn't really anything other than Putin. There was no reason he couldn't have kept it a frozen conflict for another decade.

These unfortunately are the kind of replies you get from people who haven't been paying attention.

Antagonistic. You have been warned 3 times before:

5 day ban.

If you're implying I haven't been paying attention to the Ukraine war, you're very mistaken.

I think he's implying you paid no attention to the Ukraine and Russia in the years leading up to the war.

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