I truly hope the same measures will be taken against US or other nation's acts of aggression in the future. e.g. Yemen, Afghanistan,Iraq. This is a great precedent to set.
How can they distinguish good from bad justifications for aggression? Russia's current actions seem to be at one extreme, while, say, responding to an attack from another government would be on the other extreme (barring extenuating circumstances), while the US usually has an (ostensible) justification somewhere in the middle.
Afghanistan after 9/11 is a good of example of something that was hard for another western nation to argue against the justification for starting (how it went is another story).
> How can they distinguish good from bad justifications for aggression?
On a case-by-case basis. As you note, the international community probably wouldn't have reacted against the US regarding Afghanistan (and probably should have regarding Iraq).
Be aware that most people cannot read Chinese or Russian, and as such their whole world perspective is fed by an one sided narrative.
I suggest you listen to these[1][2] talks, and Putin's speech[3] on NATO expansion in Munich in 2007. Pozner[1] pointed out that up to 2007, Putin really tried to be friend with the West, including asking to join NATO.
I made no reference to good aggression, only justifiable aggression. Even then, while it would be fine to form an argument that no such thing exists, it's unrealistic to despise the man who returns a punch.
As for Russia's reasonable concerns about the West and the nigh-impossibility of objectively or thoroughly observing foreign points of view - both are true and important, yet neither serve in the least to justify attacking Ukraine's capital.
According to this person he didn't ask to join, he asked why he wasn't asked to join, and wanted to skip the process that countries-that-don't-matter have to go through.
> Putin's speech[3] on NATO expansion in Munich in 2007
Ukraine would never had joined NATO because it was an active war zone anyways. Putin didn't have to do anything to avoid Ukraine joining NATO.
Listening to his current explanations for the invasion doesn't make him sound like a good guy no matter the language or the perspective.
> Putin really tried to be friend with the West
And relations were relatively good until he decided to invade Ukraine, he just severed every diplomatic bridges and every single chances of progress for the next decades(s).
Putin's not the Devil but he clearly is the aggressor here. Ukraine was a sovereign state with a democratically elected government. You'd be hard pressed to use the "b-bu-but it's both sides" rhetoric here.
>Ukraine would never had joined NATO because it was an active war zone anyways.
It does not prevent NATO from supplying weapons and training the Ukrainian army. The US reconnaissance planes have conducted regular patrols over Ukrainian territory. The British even tried to build naval bases in Berdyansk and Ochakovo. And with active and heated territorial disputes it's easy to see a hypothetical scenario of Ukraine trying to re-capture Donbas and Crimea by force after it felt it's sufficiently strong or Russia is weak enough, like Georgia tried with South Osetia.
>And relations were relatively good
I suggest watching the following videos if you want to learn about alternative points of view:
That sounds great until you figure out that Putin has a reason for everything. The problem is not so much Putin, or even his viewpoint that Russia doesn’t feel safe (I can even see the merit of such a stance) , but the fact that is that he is not accountable to his people.
If he was a normal president and with a functioning democracy, I doubt we would even be at the current situation. I saw the videos of Putin with his advisor (the Spy chief) and that was an exercise in “tell me what I want to hear.”
Being accountable to the people didn't stop the leaders of the US from engaging in plenty of acts of agression and territorial expropriations these past 230 or so years.
And I wouldn't be terribly surprised if most Russian voters will end up approving of the invasion provided Russian casualties and costs don't get too high.
That’s not the point really I tried to make (sorry if I was being unclear). I have a choice to (try at least) vote out the president who starts wars if I don’t agree with it. I could protest freely and massively on the streets. There is no such option in Russia. If I was a Russian citizen that fact alone would be cause for concern.
The US leaders are way more reckless than Putin. The difference is, as pointed out in the lecture in one of the videos, that it's in a incredibly secure position in an unipolar world.
US foreign policies have been a series of failures without any real consequence save for 9/11. No one is gonna sanction the US nor start a war with it.
The us attacking Iraq on false pretenses was clearly unlawful. Afghanistan is different, but would appreciate other views. Tthe country (and bin Laden and others) were clearly behind 9/11. Do you see it as possible for there to be a legal or lawful war between countries when one attacks the other?
Saudia Arabia attacking Houthis and Yemen seems like a clear illegal action. At least the ongoing attacks.
It is dark comedy indeed to see Russia’s apologists defend their actions with whataboutism about the US war in Iraq. Guess what, we think that one was illegitimate too. Good work throwing the Ukraine invasion on the pile of unjust wars. Bush and Putin can sing a Nuremberg duet together.
Imagine Russia ousted Treudeuo for crimes against peaceful protestors (freezing bank accounts without trial etc) as occurred this month in Canada. He then sends weapons and trainers to Canada to build up resistance and military installations in Canada, perhaps even offering a treaty for Canada to join Russia as military defense allies. This is basically what the USA/Europe did in Ukraine in 2014 (McCain and company was there and USA spent 5B on NGOs overthrow democratically elected leaders of Ukraine and helped install pro US gov).
100x civilians died because of the war in Afghanistan, which was mainly planned in the US. Looking forward to disagreeing with your Afghani twin about the justification for invading and occupying the US for 20 years.
Please stay on topic. I'm arguing that the war was justifiably initiated because the US was responding to an attack that killed ~3,000 of it's citizens.
I thought I was. It's not justifiable to bomb and invade a whole sovereign nation to capture a few criminals. Especially if that nation is willing to negotiate their extradition for a fair trial. Just like it would not be justifiable for Afghanistan to bomb and invade the US now because a few criminals "tortured some folks" and killed 1000s of its citizens who had nothing to do with 9/11.
The US was in Pakistan right after 9/11 though, marines and staging bases and everything. They didn't invade, because they had assets already there and Pakistan let more in.
Afghanistan after 9/11 is a good of example of something that was hard for another western nation to argue against the justification for starting (how it went is another story).