[conradev]

John Mearsheimer has a really great video from 6 years ago about Ukraine that I found fascinating: https://youtu.be/JrMiSQAGOS4

Basically, he thinks the west precipitated the crisis by pushing to have Ukraine join NATO, and he thinks it should remain a buffer state between NATO and Russia

[jcranmer]

> he thinks the west precipitated the crisis by pushing to have Ukraine join NATO

NATO doesn't want Ukraine to join NATO (at least, not for the foreseeable future). That's why, even now, when Ukraine is more or less begging to join NATO, NATO has done diddly squat to do so.

A lot of the pressure to join NATO within Ukraine has increased since Russia invaded Georgia and then Crimea. Russia only has itself to blame for the fact that its neighbors are terrified of Russia violating their territorial integrity and want to run as fast as possible from its sphere of influence.

[sudosysgen]

That's really not true. The US put massive pressure on NATO under Bush Jr for Ukraine to join NATO, but Ukraine eventually faltered. They formalized a position that Ukraine was able to join NATO, and put a lot of pressure on France and Germany so that it would be that way.

Eventually, Euromaidan happened and Ukraine tried to cash into those overtures, but the West wasn't ready to back it up.

[rdtsc]

That’s the Georgia playbook as well. They encouraged Georgia to fight the Russians. Georgians lost territory and lives and the American and Western allies shrugged and said “oh well, that’s unfortunate”.

[rosndo]

Your comment implies that Georgia might have had better ways out of that situation, that’s probably not true.

[foverzar]

Trying to solve an ancient ethnic conflict by force was definitely not the best way to go.

Expecting that western countries will start a third world war just to help you get rid of all those inconvenient Russian peacekeepers was simply stupid.

It seems to me that people often seem to forget that Georgia was never a "good guy" in that conflict: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgian–Ossetian_conflict

[rdtsc]

> Your comment implies that Georgia might have had better ways out of that situation, that’s probably not true.

Georgia was pushed and encouraged by Western allies which then turn away and abandoned it.

[irthomasthomas]

NATO cannot admit any country that is involved in active combat. Otherwise it would automatically trigger article five, and doom the world to nuclear armageddon. Even the Bunker Boys in New Zealand may not survive all-out nuclear war with thousands of atomic and super-atomic bombs going off at once.

I would lean toward avoiding that situation, if possible.

[gus_massa]

Nuclear winter is apparently not so extreme as initially thought https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter#Criticism_and_d... Anyway, it would be nice to not try it.

[I'm not in a bunker, but in case of a global thermonuclear war I hope everyone forgets to nuke Argentina.]

[irthomasthomas]

How many times have they run the experiment of detonating ~10,000 atom bombs at once?

[jcranmer]

How many atomic bombings have resulted in stratospheric soot injection? The answer, I believe, is 0, even including the two atomic bombs that were dropped on populated areas. Major conflagrations that result in stratospheric soot pumps are extremely difficult--the Kuwaiti oil fires didn't manage that, and that involved literally setting oil wells ablaze uncontrollably.

Without stratospheric soot injection, there's no global climate impact except on very short terms. Even with stratospeheric soot injection, well, look at how severe the global cooling following Pinatubo was: we'd reverse global warming since 1850... for a year or two.

(Like GP, though, I'm not keen on actually testing this hypothesis in real life.)

[irthomasthomas]

How do you know that soot injection and nuclear winter are the only possible side-effects from detonating all the bombs at once? We are still frequently surprised by experiments in chemistry and physics that produce weird results when scaled up. The Quantum Hall effect, for an example off the top of my head.

[akvadrako]

Even if not exactly joining NATO, there is an attempt to create close military ties:

The Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP): "Berlin plus agreement" from March 2003, which allows the EU to use NATO structures, mechanisms and assets to carry out military operations if NATO declines to act.

The European Defence Agency (EDA): established in July 2004 and is based in Brussels. It supports the EU Member States in improving their military capabilities in order to complete CSDP targets as set out in the European Security Strategy.

The European Union–Ukraine Association Agreement (EUUAA): The agreement commits both parties to promote a gradual convergence toward the EU's Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) and European Defence Agency (EDA) policies.

[jaybrendansmith]

I see a lot of opinions here that seem to want to a) blame the current administration, b) blame NATO for the current threat of war. That's like blaming the victim in an abusive relationship as nobody in the west wants war. What these opinions miss are the following relevant facts: 1. NATO has consistently pushed back on Ukraine's interest in joining NATO for fear of the geopolitical impacts, specifically Russia. 2. Ukraine has become steadily more European and less Russian in the last decade, and has slowly been falling away from Russia, both culturally and economically. This is Putin's last-ditch attempt to keep Ukraine in the Russian sphere of influence. It is destined to fail, because the Ukrainian people have started to move on, although there is a very large, aging contingent of former Soviet, pro-Russia people who don't like what has been happening from a cultural standpoint. However the best way to tell where a country is going is to ask the youth. They often speak English and would prefer to be a modern democracy. We in the US at least should continue to do what we've done for 70 years and work for democracy with all the tools at our reasonable disposal. The world largely moving to democracy did not happen by accident.

[vernon99]

#1 is simply and absolutely not true. See Buharest summit of 2008, where NATO explicitly welcomed Georgia and Ukraine aspirations to join. Current state of affairs in both countries is a direct result of that.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Bucharest_summit

[jaybrendansmith]

"The Alliance did not offer a Membership Action Plan to Georgia or Ukraine, largely due to the opposition of Germany and France." ... "Russian President Putin was pleased about the alliance deciding not to invite Georgia and Ukraine to the Membership Action Plan at least for the time being."

[vernon99]

“agreeing that "these countries will become members of NATO"”

[rosndo]

> Basically, he thinks the west precipitated the crisis by pushing to have Ukraine join NATO

This is a downright lie. Anyone who follows NATO knows that there has been very little desire to allow Ukraine to join.

[sudosysgen]

It's really not. NATO doesn't want Ukraine now that Russia is serious about opposition, but in the 2006-2009 the US was fighting really hard for Ukraine to join NATO despite opposition by France and Germany. Eventually Ukraine had a change of mind, but not before NATO formally stated Ukraine was welcome.

The move away from NATO/EU ambitions was unpopular domestically in Ukraine and led to Euromaidan, after which it turned out that NATO and co. weren't willing to back up their posture anymore.

You should listen to the talk by Mearsheimer, it's very instructive and interesting. There is a reason he is such a respected mind on geopolitics.

[fmajid]

The US is not the same thing as NATO, even if it is the leading country in it.

[calyth2018]

Oh please, US would push back against UK's .280 British small arms cartridge[0] for NATO harmonization, despite there was already ample testing shown that the more powerful 7.62mm cartridge was nigh-uncontrollable in automatic fire. Only for the Vietnam war to demonstrate the deficiencies of 7.62NATO, and then US and NATO adopted 5.56mm, proving the initial UK testing right.

If the US can make all its members adopt a small-arms cartridge despite it not being particularly ideal, the separation between the US and NATO is merely a facade.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7.62%C3%9751mm_NATO#T65_series...

[sudosysgen]

The US exerted enough pressure over NATO that it's policy became NATO policy in that case.

[unclebucknasty]

The only way this argument makes sense is if Ukraine's sovereignty is not acknowledged.

[sudosysgen]

That's not true. It's not just up to Ukraine to join NATO, it has to get approval for it. Beyond that, the US directly and blatantly meddled in Ukrainian affairs to make that happen.

[unclebucknasty]

It's true. Even your comment suggests Ukraine is not a sovereign nation, else you'd acknowledge they are free to join any alliance they wish.

[sudosysgen]

But they're not free to join NATO, are they? They need approval of all member states to do so. Last time they tried, France and Germany almost prevented them from joining. If they are free to choose NATO, why aren't they a member right now? Why aren't they a EU member? Why isn't Turkey a EU member?

[calyth2018]

https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300259933/not-one-inch

M. E. Sarotte wrote a whole book on it.

I haven't finished reading the whole thing, but it starts with the fall of the Berlin wall, and reunification, where US and Germany figured that it was possible to have their cake and eat it - Soviet troops out of East Germany, NATO being allowed to stay, Warsaw pact falling apart, and NATO enlarging as a military alliance instead of pan-european (Atlantic to Urals) security arrangement. Russia was at its very weakest, and not in the position to object much; plus missteps by Gorbachev and Yeltsin contributed to enlargement.

You've got Yeltsin wanting Russia to join NATO, back when US enjoyed quite a bit of good will, only for them to slowly realize that plans like Partnership for Peace is meant to enlarge NATO; the US is not going to let Russia join NATO, despite some wishful-thinkng; NATO membership being dangled in front of Ukraine to encourage them to return the soviet era nukes back to Russia or have them destroyed; NATO's enlargement policies is basically neo-containment of Russia at the get-go...

I'm sure it's only going to get more colourful as the book goes on.

In any case, it's rather disingenuous for US and NATO to dangle membership to Ukraine. They know even in the 80s and 90s that Russia would strongly object to a military alliance that has Article 5 in it, not to mention a NATO member state would generally be required to have foreign troops and weapons (among other things nukes) on their soil. At the end of the day, US is probably not going to risk nuclear war over this, but at the same time, it just keeps using Ukraine to try and stick it to Russia. Regardless of what Ukraine's wishes actually are (and it's more diverse than the media generally likes to portray), realistically it's not something that Ukraine has the only say in the matter - US will continue to find any which way to further is neo-containment aims; Russia would continue to oppose that.

[PedroBatista]

What I fear for folks who watch that video, is they leave with the perception ( most came in with ) that peaceful Putin's Russia was minding their own business and one day there comes big bad NATO bully taking over the "buffer states".

At least from the late 90's on, those countries knew what's up and they tried to assure their chances of survival. OF course there are multiple interests as always but after a World War and 50 years under communism can you blame them?

The Cold War never ended, its just that one side was temporarily out of commission and the geniuses from the other side just stopped caring.

Just hope this "Ukraine is West's fault" doesn't turn into some realpolitik's version of affluent white guilt.

[ivan_gammel]

Well, it is a bit more nuanced. In 1990s there was a surge in various nationalist movements in ex-USSR republics trying to establish national identity on ethnic grounds. In some countries this resulted in armed conflicts with ethnic cleansings. In others minorities were discriminated or pushed to severe their historical and cultural ties. “Alien” passports in Latvia and restrictions on teaching of Russian language in Ukraine were the most notable examples. Russia traditionally protected Russian minorities in Baltics and Ukraine, which resulted in tensions between the countries. Indeed, when you build an ethnic national state and ignore large minority with ties to a nuclear superpower, you may be worried about survival. Whether ethnic national state should be a thing in XXI century is another question (maybe we should also ask Belgians about how do they feel about speaking French).

[laacz]

I am a firm believer in hat it was NEVER about protecting russians abroad. I'm from Latvia and might be biased, but evidence points that they have other reasons behind their continuous aggression.

[jacquesm]

Spot on. My heart is with you (have family in Latvia).

[rapsey]

A president with a poor approval rating and a war machine left without a war to fight make fast friends.

[hogrider]

Making it neutral would truly be the best outcome for everyone.