Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by prox 1573 days ago
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.”

1 comments

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.