[bpodgursky]

I don't accept that you can make this case:

"Why did you, W, goad X into expressing their sovereignty against Y? Didn't you know that Y would react with violence? That makes W the bad guy"

No, Y is always on the wrong side; you can't use the threat of violence and then claim via realpolitik that the other side was in the wrong. "Moral high ground" means you act out of principle, not political convenience. In this case, Ukraine didn't want to be in the Russian sphere, so we supported them.

And now yeah, the US is paying a lot of money and inconvenience to support Ukraine. Gas will be more expensive, we're spending tens of billions on weapons. But that's because it's the right thing to do; not every decision is a realpolitik game about maximizing revenue from vassal states (which I hope Russia will learn someday).

[ginjas]

what I meant for the goading part was this:

Ukraine has self interests. Everyone has. But not everyone can actualize those, due to reality. The reality is that Ukraine neighbours a powerful hegemon.

Since international relations are anarchistic (due to not being a supra-entity that has authority over states [authority!=international courts bullsh*]), Ukraine hasn't any right (to its sovereign, that does not exist) to be sovereign. It has to go out and look for itself.

Ukraine thought that had the US/NATO back, that made it act in a more reckless way (kind of when you rely on your big brother type stuff). It escalated 'till it decided it wanted to join NATO. It was goaded.

>you can't use the threat of violence and then claim via realpolitik that the other side was in the wrong.

who says? That's your problem. You lack the 'anarchistic' framework of geopolitics.

Now, realpolitik-wise, Ukraine's self-interests (of being more independent of Russia thru NATO) did clash with Russia's self-interests of being safe (and probably made Russia have a expansionary Casus Belli).

I feel that the US triggered and amplified the war, thru regime change in Ukraine (yep, maidan was a coup), recognizing aspirations of UA to NATO, making Zeleskyy too comfy to be more harsh in negotiations (where he had no leverage, cuz Ukraine's power small vs Rus.), ultimately resulted in unnecessary deaths, just for the purpose of sphere of influence expansion.

>so we supported them.

Even if it's reckless and could trigger something like this?

Also, I will play the 'reversed roles card' again. This time with a REAL example. Cuba. Was. The. Same. Thing.

That's why this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods and this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monroe_Doctrine.

US has the same pattern as Russia. It's actually incredible how close these are.

[CRConrad]

> clash with Russia's self-interests of being safe

They clash with Russia's perceived self-interests of being safe, yes. The problem is, Russia defines "being safe" the same way it always has, under the General Secretaries of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and all the (other) Tsars before, going right back to when the Grand Duchy of Muscovy emerged from vassalage to the Mongols: by distance of their borders from Moscow. And the distance they want is at least up to Warsaw, Vienna and Sofia, but preferably Berlin or Paris (or, better yet, Lisbon).

That kind of clashes with the current world order, where there are quite a lot of currently sovereign nations in the way, which would have to be subordinated to Moscow – or basically just wiped off the map – to give Russia what its leadership wants.

What you're advocating is in effect that this is how it should be, because Russia is "a great power". (Newsflash: So were Germany and Japan in 1939. And, to compare with Russia's current equal in GDP, Italy.)

A more rational solution would be that Russia updates its concept of "being safe" to at least the 20th century. (Or, hey, one that worked for at least some countries even in the 19th: Don't be an asshole to anyone, then nobody will want to attack you.)

> yep, maidan was a coup

I've found that to be rhe most infallible heuristic on social media for – oh-so-coincidenctally – the last third of a year: Calls Maidan a "coup" → is a Putler-propagandist troll.

> UA ... NATO ... Zeleskyy [yadda yadda] ultimately resulted in unnecessary deaths

Oh, that's funny. And here I thought it was Putler's unilateral decision to start a war of aggression causing all those deaths.