[rayiner]

I don’t think the invasion was justified per se, but I think it was a predictable outcome of what the west was doing.

The fact of “civilian losing their lives” is where I think creates the differences in views. For many people, especially Americans, they can’t get past that or put the body count in perspective. Others, and I think this includes much of the non-western world, are more like “well people die, what’s special about this?” I don’t say that to be callous, my point is that 50,000-100,000 people die annually in state based conflicts, and everyone morally triages them, and that can produce different results.

UNHR estimates 2,000 civilian deaths so far in Ukraine. That was a typical number for (1,500-3,500) for civilian deaths in Afghanistan each year for the past decade. And you probably didn’t post anything about it on your Facebook, right?

So let’s get past deaths. What’s happening in Ukraine? The 20th century conflict between the “first world” and the “second world”—a conflict so epic that the terminology has become part of our vernacular—ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. When empires collapse they don’t just vanish. There was an informal agreement among all involved that the west would leave Russia its space. Remember, we were fighting against the Soviets in places like Korea and Vietnam. So giving them a buffer in Eastern Europe against NATO was a good deal. Maintaining buffer states to avoid conflict between major powers is a centuries old practice rooted in pragmatic considerations.

So what happened? NATO reneged by gobbling up Eastern European countries and pushing ever closer to Russia’s border. Russia sees NATO encroaching closer and closer to their border, flirting with allowing membership of a country in Russia’s border. What were they going to do?

[jacquesm]

> I don’t think the invasion was justified per se

No kidding, glad we got that out of the way.

> I think it was a predictable outcome of what the west was doing.

Aka the 'Mearsheimer' doctrine. Which is patent nonsense, but it gives cover for what you apparently want to believe.

> NATO reneged by gobbling up Eastern European countries and pushing ever closer to Russia’s border.

NATO didn't gobble up anything. The countries that joined NATO did so because they were scared shitless of Russia re-invading them at some point in the future, because all the signs were pointing in that direction and none of these countries felt like becoming the next Belarus. NATO doesn't 'gobble', no country was ever forced to join NATO that did not want it, but Russia does.

Those countries have to date been proven right on four occasions where other countries, not in NATO were attacked rather than them, and there is a fair chance that if Ukraine had joined NATO before the 2014 invasion that that would have never happened to begin with.

[rayiner]

> Aka the 'Mearsheimer' doctrine. Which is patent nonsense, but it gives cover for what you apparently want to believe.

I’ve never heard of Mearscheimer until my dad sent me a video. I think his general view aligns with ours. I don’t need “cover” for anything my opinion is quite common. I also took a bit of international affairs and European history in college so I’m not starting from scratch here.

> NATO didn't gobble up anything. The countries that joined NATO did so because they were scared shitless of Russia re-invading them at some point in the future, because all the signs were pointing in that direction and none of these countries felt like becoming the next Belarus. NATO doesn't 'gobble', no country was ever forced to join NATO that did not want it, but Russia does.

NATO had every right to say no and should have said no. These little countries shouldn’t be affecting the balance of world power.

> Those countries have to date been proven right on four occasions where other countries, not in NATO were attacked rather than them, and there is a fair chance that if Ukraine had joined NATO before the 2014 invasion that that would have never happened to begin with.

I think if NATO had rejected admission of other Eastern European countries the war would never have happened either.

[jacquesm]

> I don’t need “cover” for anything my opinion is quite common.

Yes, but it being 'quite common' doesn't necessarily mean that it is right.

> I think if NATO had rejected admission of other Eastern European countries the war would never have happened either.

Putin seems to disagree with you there. He's been dreaming of a USSR revival since the day the SU collapsed and he's on the record about that. Note that all of the countries that did not join NATO when they could have by now been attacked or have been threatened with an attack. And two of them have been bombed back into the stone age with untold loss of life.

[implements]

> So what happened? NATO reneged by gobbling up Eastern European countries and pushing ever closer to Russia’s border. Russia sees NATO encroaching closer and closer to their border, flirting with allowing membership of a country in Russia’s border. What were they going to do?

Nothing. NATO isn’t something akin to the Soviet Union - a collection of client states politically and militarily dominated by a single country styling itself an expanding imperial power - it’s a simple mutual defence pact.

It’s reasonable for Russia to object to theatre range nuclear missiles and specific military systems on its borders, and that’s the sort of thing treaties between NATO and Russia should cover - but it’s entirely unreasonable for Russia to argue that Ukraine should not have the capacity to defend its borders from invasion, that this from NATO membership constitutes an intolerable military threat - it simply doesn’t, nor in the modern era are countries allowed to dictate neutrality to their neighbours as a condition of their own security.

[mickotron]

If your country/city was being shelled, you wouldn’t have the luxury of turning this into an abstract intellectual exercise.

What happened in Afghanistan was devastating and horrific.

You think because I’m a Westerner that I have “picked a side” and look past our own crimes. I don’t.

Russia also reneged. They agreed to protect Ukraine’s borders and sovereignty.

[arnvald]

As a citizen of a country that joined NATO in the late 90s, I really believe that if we didn't join NATO, we'd be on of the targets right now.

NATO didn't force us to join, we asked for it, as an independent country which suffered a lot for centuries.

All the "NATO provokes" Russia are garbage, because they remove us, the countries that decided to join NATO, from the equation. We acted in our own interest, to protect ourselves from Russia and free ourselves from Russian influence. We didn't plan to "push against the borders of Russia", we planned to protect ourselves, and today more than ever I believe we were right to do so.

[slibhb]

I agree that NATO and the US made decisions that led to the war in Ukraine.

But that's a causal question, there's nothing moral about it. It's like saying someone who walked through the bad part of town and got mugged made a bad decision. But morally speaking the mugger is in the wrong, Russia is in the wrong. Ukraine, a sovereign state, is allowed to flirt with joining NATO or enter trade agreements with the EU. Besides, somewhat ironically, Ukraine would have no reason to join NATO if the Russia wasn't an ever-present threat to Ukrainian sovereignty.

People are just talking past each other. Realists aren't making moral prescriptions and moralists are worried about right and wrong, the violations of sovereignty and the body count. Both perspectives are necessary. Moralism can't guide foreign policy completely but it can't be totally absent. Reasonable people can disagree about the right mix.

Like the grandparent poster noted, it is strange and irritating that realists are being shouted down as "Russian agents" by mindless moralists.

[psyc]

I think it's a lot harder to explain this to people after they've had it hammered into them that "victim blaming" is really bad, and you must never do it or appear to be doing it. There's a context in which it is. But there's another in which that line of thinking falls apart. For the purposes of the victim during the attack, the attacker might as well be a zombie. They're not your fellow human that you can have a chat with and teach them to empathize with you, at least not in that time and place. You could also shout at them during the attack, "This is your fault, not mine!" but I don't see what good that does.

I actually used to think this when I was four years old. That if a burglar broke in, I would simply talk to them and explain what they're doing is wrong.

[rayiner]

I think this is all correct.

[timeon]

> giving them a buffer in Eastern Europe

This is so surreal. Like trading with colonies. You really thing that people in Eastern Europe should not have say in this?

This whole point is not rooted in reality because Ukraine was not joining NATO. It was not possible for them. They were maybe going to join EU. Even after invasion it seemed like real option but this is now probably not going to happen as well for different reasons (diplomatic relations between Ukraine and some EU countries).

So this invasion has nothing to do with NATO. "Buffer states" are not going to change situation between Russia and NATO. Putin has nukes - he does not really cares about NATO.

[mongol]

> Russia sees NATO encroaching closer and closer to their border, flirting with allowing membership of a country in Russia’s border. What were they going to do?

They could recognize that joining NATO is a ultimately the choice of the states that choose join NATO, and respect that. It is that simple.

[jacquesm]

Technically, joining NATO is not the choice of those countries alone, but also of those countries already in NATO. But principally, the freedom to apply to join should be granted to any sovereign country. And that's exactly the problem: Russia doesn't see a whole lot of countries as sovereign but as 'temporarily misplaced'.

[mongol]

Yes that is true. The application needs to be confirmed. But it is not the business of any country other than the ones in the club and the country that applies.

Russia behaves like an abusive parent that says that their adult daughter cannot hang out with her friends.

[dropit_sphere]

>They could recognize that joining NATO is a ultimately the choice of the states that choose join NATO, and respect that. It is that simple.

Empirically, it's not!

[KuiN]

> UNHR estimates 2,000 civilian deaths so far in Ukraine

This number is nowhere close to being accurate. UNHCR "believes that the actual figures are considerably higher" [0]. More than 900 dead discovered since the liberation of the areas around Kyiv [1]. And we've not yet had the opportunity to count the dead in Mariupol, or Russian controlled areas.

> And you probably didn’t post anything about it on your Facebook, right?

Millions in the West spoke out with horror and revulsion at the death tolls in the 9/11 Wars.

[0] https://www.ohchr.org/en/news/2022/04/ukraine-civilian-casua... [1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/15/number-of-civi...

[jacquesm]

Here is what they write below that figure:

"OHCHR believes that the actual figures are considerably higher, as the receipt of information from some locations where intense hostilities have been going on has been delayed and many reports are still pending corroboration. This concerns, for example, Mariupol and Volnovakha (Donetsk region), Izium (Kharkiv region), Popasna (Luhansk region), and Irpin (Kyiv region), where there are allegations of numerous civilian casualties. These figures are being further corroborated and are not included in the above statistics. "

But that somehow didn't make it into the quote by the GP.

[rayiner]

> Millions in the West spoke out with horror and revulsion at the death tolls in the 9/11 Wars

Those were of course much higher. I’m talking about the annual death tolls after 2010 when everyone in the west thought that the war was long over.

[philjohn]

Except Gorbavhev himself has said there was no such agreement, and you ignore that there are already NATO nations on the Russian border.