[frankharv]

Moral mistake to stand up to a bully?

That is the only reason NATO still exists.

We literally paid hundreds millions of dollars to prop up Russia and their nuke labs during Yeltsin.

Look what it got us. We should have snuffed them out like cockroaches. Instead we let them live. To our detriment.

We needed to keep the boogeyman alive.

[s1artibartfast]

You have to reconsider who is the bully given the number of countries invaded, governments toppled, and civilians killed by the US in the last 30 years.

The US takes the cake in all categories, but of course we aren't a bully, all the people we kill were the bullies. We are the strongest so we define who is a bully or not.

>We should have snuffed them out like cockroaches. Instead we let them live. To our detriment.

yeah, you really sound like the good guy here

[Seb-C]

The difference is that the US does not conquer, colonize, or annex the territories where they fight. It's even quite the opposite, since they usually try to give them freedom, independence and long term stability (with variable success and moral standing, but still)...

[s1artibartfast]

If that is how you feel about the US motivations and results, then I don't think we will be able to see eye-to-eye on these more specific issue.

I have a much more cynical view of US military interventions, in which they are largely self serving. The ideas of freedom, independence, and stability are platitudes to sell the war, are rarely align with the outcomes for the people in those countries.

The US did a good job of building liberal democracies after WWII, and perhaps up to the Vietnam war. If you look at countries in the last 50 years, the outcomes for the countries the US went into is quite poor.

[chii]

The whataboutism is heavy. The USA aint no saints, but that doesn't absolve putin's invasion. "They did it first, so we should be allowed" isn't a defensible justification for war.

[s1artibartfast]

I'm not absolving anyone. It is a fucked situation.

The hypocrisy of people saying they "should have snuffed them out like cockroaches" after 50 years of US atrocities is just astounding.

Russia is a bully, but the US is 10x worse. Ukraine is the looser here.

The US intentionally played them like a pawn and use their lives to get more leverage against Russia.

[frankharv]

I am sorry for the tone of that offensive sentence. Perhaps I should have expressed the feeling in a more diplomatic wording. We did have them against the mat and let them up. Howz that for a PC version. There was cold war and we could have defeated the opponent. Instead we funded them.

[s1artibartfast]

>There was cold war and we could have defeated the opponent.

What does that mean in concrete terms? An invasion and occupation of Russia after the fall of the USSR? An extermination of the Russian people?

What would a more complete defeat looks like?

[CRConrad]

> >There was cold war and we could have defeated the opponent.

> What does that mean in concrete terms?

A thorough de-Communistification and collective education into the principles of democratic government and statehood, like the de-Nazification of (West) Germany after WW2.

> An invasion and occupation of Russia after the fall of the USSR?

Would have been preferable, yes; mainly because it would have been required for the above. Which would have meant that under the watchful eyes of a (comparatively enlightened) occupying force, Communism would have been far less likely to be replaced by a kleptocracy -> oligarchy -> neo-Soviet pseudo-fascist rule, which is what we've seen play out in Russia over the last thirty years. (Hm, about one decade per stage of this evolution?)

> An extermination of the Russian people?

If you absolutely want to be ridiculous, go ahead and be ridiculous. Not that comments like that make anyone more negative to the idea, you know.

> What would a more complete defeat looks like?

Pretty much anything would have been preferable to what the Russian people have become: The same as they have always been, a willing herd for autocrats to rule and use.

Isn't it about time for the Russians, too, to try something other than authoritarian rule for once[1] in their thousand years of history? If they can't even catch up to the seventeenth century, what use does the world really have of a "Russian people"? The Golden Horde and the Aztecs are also gone, and nobody seems to be missing them much.

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[1]: For a bit longer than the two single decades of dithering chaos under, uhm, Kerensky? and of kleptocratic free-for-all under Yeltsin.