A bit of a dissenting view - I condemn Putin’s actions and am extremely concerned about the after-effects. At the same time I think broadly dismissing, intentionally or not, the underlying concerns behind this craziness is an error that the Western leaders have been doing for many years.
P.S. Sorry if I come up as combative, not my intention at all. I assume I can be ruthless to ideas and arguments, and respectful to all people at the same time.
Hard to justify Russia’s actions, no matter the point of view, IMVHO.
Agreed. Putin’s actions seem to be a political and strategic misstep which when combined with his all-over-the-place speech might indicate that his political wits might be waning.
The humanitarian crisis potential behind this is enormous, even worse than the Yemen situation, which is the biggest civilized world disgrace that we currently have ongoing. Let’s hope it doesn’t escalate into that or something more than that.
However it feels like the discourse (not just here) has conflated two separate points - number 1, Putin’s current actions which are appalling, and number 2, Russia’s long-standing concern about NATO expansion going back to 1990 and the Gorbachov-Baker discussions where assurances were given to the USSR.
Point number 2 unfortunately cannot be dismissed or swept under the rug or influenced by economic sanctions anymore.
Putin has d*** to say about other countries joining international organizations. All of those countries are sovereign nations and can decide whatever they want, without asking for permission lol.
That’s not a very mature view of geopolitics in our present. The exact same argument applies to the Cuban missile crisis and you can easily devise a number of other potential state actions that would be allowed by international law, but which you might feel compelled to condemn.
If you don’t believe that there are forces at play outside of the ones applied via the levers of international law, I present to you the international stance on Taiwan’s status as an entity, and that mess has been the status-quo for half a century.
The Russian people could use the opportunity to understand why their neighbours would rather ally with NATO than Russia and maybe come to the conclusion that their government stinks and need to change it.
I think this is a weak argument, that mostly appeals to emotion.
People want to align themselves with the western sphere of influence for mostly socioeconomic reasons and once they do that aligning with the related military pact is a much lower mental hurdle. Many countries do that despite, not because of the mostly US-lead hawkish view of the pact on power projection.
I don’t think there is a comprehensive poll of the attitudes towards NATO’s actions and Russia’s actions (before this week), but my bet would be that the numbers would have been similar and would have showed the negative sentiment dominating.
Same distance from Kharkov/Kiev to Moscow can be had from all Baltic States who are already members of NATO
This is not really an argument though, is it? Having Ukraine join NATO only increases the exposure from Moscow’s point of view, and increases it significantly. Military capabilities involve both quality and quantity very much.
In terms of purely practical differences, the Baltic states cannot support the same potential deployment envelopes as Ukraine because they are much smaller in terms of area, population, infrastructure capabilities, etc.
US Defense committments or NATO participation does not require stationing of strategic missiles or balistic missile defense. It does not even imply stationing of troops.
The US did not, and would never, put any strategic assets on Taiwan; that would be a declaration of war. Similarily that the Sowiet Union made it clear that it would defend Kuba (which was and is ok for the US) and the positioning of missiles was an entirely different topic.
I don’t think this is a good analogy at all. The US doesn’t even recognize Taiwan as a state, and won’t have any internationally-recognized reason to station military assets in Taiwan. This is not the case at all with Ukraine if Ukraine joins NATO - once that happens, NATO won’t need any sort of internationally-recognized approval even if only for looks to station troops, assets, perform military exercises, etc.
