[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"”