[rayiner]

This is fallacious neocon reasoning. Countries are always looking to expand their borders, for many reasons. Few of them are Nazi Germany. What Russia is doing now is much closer to what Bismarck did in unifying Germany or Garibaldi did in unifying Italy. Or what Iraq tried to do with Kuwait.

Would it have been justified for Europe to intervene militarily when the US wrested California and Texas from Mexico? Maybe or maybe not, but it certainly wasn’t the first step in the US taking over the world.

[FuckButtons]

No, it’s nothing like German or Italian unification. That’s ahistorical nonsense.

In both of those cases there had been decades of nation wide, protests, insurrections and guerilla movements in favor of creating a sovereign nation to prevent domination by foreign powers, Austria in the case of Italy and France in the wake of napoleon for the minor German states.

In Ukraine there has been a decades of nation wide protests insurrections and guerrilla movements in favor of creating a sovereign Ukrainian nation so that they will no longer be dominated by Russia.

Putin is not garibaldi, he is not unifying a people who have shown they want to be part of some wider national project, he is an imperialist.

[rayiner]

You think Germans and Italians all wanted to be part of a single nation? Bismarck and Garibaldi marched with armies. So did the U.S. You think Mexicans wanted to be part of the U.S.?

Putin obviously has expansionist aims. But regional expansionism is widespread, and rarely something countries on the other side of the world need to be involved with. Kuwait certainly didn’t want to be part of Iraq, but that wasn’t any of our business either. Same for South Korea and south Vietnam.

[mpalmer]

As long as we're talking about fallacious rhetoric, you set the bar at a country having to "be" Nazi Germany, instead of just having similar expansionist goals.

You avoid mentioning NATO and the reasons Putin views it as a threat, probably because it would undercut your claim that there are no worthwhile parallels to WWII here.

[rayiner]

My point is that “Nazi germany” is a small subset of “expansionism” and the latter is widespread and mostly none of our business. Borders shift. It’s not America’s job to police whatever borders happened to exist at some arbitrary point in time all over the world.

[mpalmer]

> [expansionism] is widespread and mostly none of our business.

I know you understand how alliances work, so I'm really fascinated that thus far you appear to be studiously avoiding mention of the most consequential alliance in history, one which happens to have significant bearing on US involvement in the war in Ukraine.

[rayiner]

“Alliance” is just code for “Team America: World Police.” If everyone is our “ally” then we are just the world’s border police. Our real allies are the UK, Canada, France, Germany, and Japan. None of those countries are endangered by Putin. They were also not endangered by Iraq invading Kuwait, communists taking over Vietnam or Korea, whatever happened in the Balkans in the 1990s, and all those events that led to mistaken wars over the last 70 years.

[mpalmer]

Our "real" allies don't include NATO signatories? Germany isn't threatened by Russia?

Absolutely hilarious and ahistorical. Anyone playing the silly rhetorical games you're playing isn't trying to convince anyone with reasoned arguments.

[rayiner]

Most NATO members are not real allies. Turkey or Greece or Slovenia could fall into the ocean and it wouldn’t materially Americans. NATO had a purpose once, but it’s just become a vehicle other countries to outsource their defense to the U.S.

You want to talk about history? How about: for 70 years American interventionism has resulted in an unbroken streak of mistaken wars that have sapped America’s wealth. Thats where your definition of “ally” has gotten us.