HackerNews has a weirdly pro-Russia bent, at least in these comment sections. People talking about how NATO "shouldn't expand" (why not, if the nations involved want to join a voluntary pact?) and how Crimea is and has been Russian, even though the Russians invaded and conquered it in the past decade... Really odd. Not just making arguments against US involvement but flat out repeating false, pro-Russian propaganda.
> People talking about how NATO "shouldn't expand" (why not, if the nations involved want to join a voluntary pact?)
Ok, I have no "pro-Russia" bent at all, I think they are to blame in this whole story as their concerns could've been addressed by diplomacy like most European leaders have been trying to say... but do you really not know why Russia doesn't want NATO to expand to Ukraine and how it might think war is a justifiable way to stop that from happening? And if that's the case, how it might be prudent of NATO to avoid expanding or insinuating it might do so, to avoid making things even worse than they've already been (with Krimea and Eastern Ukraine in a war situation for several years)?
It's hard to do so, but try to imagine yourself being a decision maker on the Russian side. Seeing an extremely important, historically aligned neighbour that has a very large, geographically un-obstructed border with you, and who can block your access to extremely important maritime routes, trying to join a military alliance who sees you as one of their main enemies.
While I may not agree with the Russians, I can absolutely understand why they think war is justifiable and I can totally see how NATO nations should do everything it can to avoid this war, they have nothing to lose, while Russia has a lot at stake... sometimes, it's a wise move to back off your expansion to avoid loss of life and making the situation much, much worse (imagine a world with Russian-occupied Ukraine for years to come)... when it all could've been avoided by a mostly symbolic back off as the Russians demand (symbolic because there was very little hope for Ukraine to actually join NATO in the near future, to my knowledge).
GP:
>> People talking about how NATO "shouldn't expand" (why not, if the nations involved want to join a voluntary pact?)
You:
> but do you really not know why Russia doesn't want NATO to expand to Ukraine
Why would Ukraine want to align with NATO instead of the country that just invaded it?
> While I may not agree with the Russians, I can absolutely understand why they think war is justifiable
Why?
> it might be prudent of NATO to avoid expanding or insinuating it might do so, to avoid making things even worse than they've already been
Sounds like appeasement to me
> when it all could've been avoided by a mostly symbolic back off as the Russians demand (symbolic because there was very little hope for Ukraine to actually join NATO in the near future, to my knowledge).
It's hard to communicate, it seems, when people seem to do all they can to not understand the other side. (talking not only about this exchange, by the way).
Your quotes of me are disingenuous.
OP asked why NATO shouldn't expand. I answered that doing so will surely trigger a war, as Russia made clear already.
> Why would Ukraine want to align with NATO instead of the country that just invaded it?
I suppose you mean "wouldn't", and I would agree that they want to align with NATO as the current government is very anti-Russia (notice that Ukraine goes back and forth on this, it's not always the way it is now). But what a country wants is not always what they can do. I am sure Georgia would love to join NATO too and make sure Russia never invades it again... but is NATO willing to go to war with Russia over Georgia? Or over Ukraine? The answer is no. NATO already said so: they will not support Ukraine militarily if Russia invades.
So the real question is whether it's worth letting Russia invade Ukraine simply because NATO cannot meet the Russian demands to say Ukraine will not join NATO.
> The why go to war over something symbolic?
You must've misread something... NATO meeting the Russian demands would be symbolic in my understanding (again, because NATO didn't have concrete plans to let Ukraine join it... Russia just wants NATO to make that official - a mostly symbolic act). But NATO not meeting this demand will cause a war for sure, which has nothing symbolic about it. Children will die (have you seen the faces of the soldiers on the front line, FFS they are children, 18 yos).
They are not going to war. They just expand their presence on the borders to make a point. If NATO feels menace with those deployments, they are expected to understand that Russia feels the same. If NATO is not making commitment on paper not to expand and to scale down their current presence, Russia will not make commitments to stop those annual military exercises they have been doing for years.
Yes. They remain valid as a way of thought for many Russians before the war and should be kept for history. Hardly anyone in Russia was considering real war as a possibility, so when Putin made the orders it came as a deep shock. Before the recognition of separatist territories, his strategy seemed at least rational if wrong. He could be understood, even if his actions were not approved.
Not anymore. I do not know when this transition happened, when the last red line was crossed by him in his mind, but now it is total uncertainty. Whatever he planned with this invasion, his calculations are so obviously mistaken, that it is hard to understand how this decision was made at the first place. It will not help Russia to achieve any long term or short term goals and it will jeopardize his own rule. Now he is certified crazy. And this is scary as shit.
Maybe US corporate media, owned and controlled by 1% heirs, has a particularly imperial bent, wanting to expand the American empire even farther, in this case US tanks and missiles alongside Ukraine's long border with Russia (which incidentally is filled with Russian speaking ethnic Russians who do not want this). US media is also filled with beneficiaries and think-tankers from the military industrial complex president Eisenhower talked about. The interferers in European affairs George Washington warned about. Anne Applebaum, quoted in this thread, is an un-American, anti-American who wants confrontation with Russia for whatever psychological or political reasons. With the average inflation-adjusted US hourly wage below what it was a half century ago (even before Covid), with a country racked with Covid, the US should not get dragged into a military adventure on Russia's border. Let the Europeans deal with the diplomatic niceties, the US should stay out.
I mean part of it could be that lots of us have actually been to Russia (I fit in that category) or are Russian. We don’t need to rely on third party sources to tell us how to think. I’ve also been to China and it’s so much worse but the US propaganda machine loves China, in fact we’re watching them trivialize a country that places minorities in concentration camps on primetime TV.
Doesn’t seem odd to me at all. The media has lost credibility and our government is morally bankrupt.
What about the American propaganda that the government doesn’t spy on its citizens, because if it weren’t for Russia the person who brought that to light would be sitting in a jail cell instead of taking interviews.
You don’t have to be pro-Russian or pro-Putin (two different things!) to be critical of the current US and NATO policy. When Germany was cautious about reacting to Russian military deployment on Ukrainian border, Americans started calling its important NATO partner as unreliable. Europe may have different perspective on what is going on and how to resolve the crisis. In an equal partnership everyone has the right to speak and and common policy is developed through consensus rather than by one partner dictating to others what to do.
Russian government did a lot of wrong things, by fueling a civil war in a neighboring state and covering up war criminals that have shot a civil airplane. It does not mean they are going to go to war that will not help them to achieve anything meaningful. Also, it is a fallacy to assume that anyone calling US government statements a warmongering and wrongdoing is repeating pro-Russian propaganda (after all, those statements are simply opinions and interpretations - current administration never presented Russian invasion as a matter of fact). The very same facts presented by US intelligence can be interpreted in different ways, and even Ukrainian government sees them differently than United States.
The US interpretation is doing more harm than good: stocks are falling, flights are being cancelled and brain drain from Ukraine is accelerating. Should we blindly trust them or at least try to do some homework to verify their claims and approaches?