[_djo_]

> I don't disagree with any of that. But you didn't deal with the "why is there an active land war in Eastern Europe?" question; which is what Chomsky was picking at to get to the NATO expansion point.

Fair enough. To answer that, I’d say the actual trigger wasn’t NATO but the EU, and Ukraine wanting to join it and move out of Russia’s sphere of influence. This was coupled to a wave of new leadership who wanted a more western and central European alignment. That’s what the Maidan was all about, when Yanukovych unilaterally refused to sign the European Union–Ukraine Association Agreement and brutally cracked down on the resulting protests.

That desire for closer ties with western and central Europe played out economically too, with the Ukrainian tech sector in particular being promoted as an outsourcing hub for European companies and holding conferences like Devoxx.

Russia invaded because it knew it either subjugated Ukraine now, while it was still relatively weak but growing fast, or it lost the opportunity altogether. And in Russian strategic thought the idea of not being able to control Ukraine, which they see as an integral part of Russia, is anathema.

> The reason the US often doesn't bother with a might-makes-right response is because it isn't effective, not because they're purposefully holding themselves back from useful options. It is more effective to have the rule based order where, famously, the US makes the rules and gives the orders.

On some level, sure, but as China’s rise has shown the rules based order does not prevent competitors from rising up and eventually eclipsing US power. While the rules based order allows the US to use economic coercion, it also allows China to do the same.

A might-makes-right approach can be effective, but it can also lead to world wars which are immensely destructive and which the US wants to avoid.

It’s not just the US though, the EU is similarly in favour of substituting diplomacy and trade for military power.

[roenxi]

Well, point 1 is NATO and the EU are almost the same entity. Difference of sets and there are only a couple of countries left. The non-EU NATO countries are generally involved in the war (maybe not Turkey? I don't keep an eye on the Turks).

Point 2 is more an observation. Russia is currently taking significant casualties - we don't really know how many - from Ukrainian forces armed with NATO weapons, NATO ammo, NATO intelligence, NATO training in some cases. These NATO activities are being done in service of NATO strategic concerns and appear to be coordinated through NATO headquarters. The CIA - most certainly not an EU institution - has 12 bases in Ukraine [0]. Biden is the person who turns out to have the authority to green light strikes on Russian soil [1]. It would appear superficially that Ukraine is going to join NATO [2].

If the trigger was EU expansion then the Russians made a pretty basic mistake and should have hired Chomsky as a military advisor to warn them about the rather obvious threat to Russian interests posed by NATO and its expansion. Putin obviously figured out that mistake fairly quickly because I'm pretty sure I've read about him talking about NATO in a couple of speech transcripts. The threat to them is NATO #1, EU #several - taking its spot in the queue with China, Russian winters, and coups and whatever other problems might materialise for them in a decade's time.

> A might-makes-right approach can be effective, but it can also lead to world wars which are immensely destructive

That doesn't sound effective. Effective is getting what you want with minimum fuss.

[0] https://www.yahoo.com/news/cia-maintains-12-secret-bases-212...

[1] https://edition.cnn.com/2024/05/30/politics/biden-ukraine-li...

[2] https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/us-secretary-state-blin...

[_djo_]

NATO isn’t the only supplier to Ukraine, and NATO has no command authority over Ukraine and its forces. The idea that this is a ‘NATO’ proxy war is ridiculous and denies the agency of a democratic nation.

The US could only green light strikes on Russian territory with American-made weapons like ATACMs, it had no authority over those supplied by others or produced by Ukraine. This is clearly shown by the fact that Ukraine was hitting Russian territory using its own domestically produced drones long before the US gave the green light to do the same (albeit only in Belgorod) using US weapons.

This isn’t unique to the US: Countries routinely place limitations and restrictions on the uses of their weapons as a condition of sale, especially Western countries. For instance when Switzerland sold Pilatus trainers to South Africa it required a legal commitment from South Africa to never arm them and use them in combat missions. Countries also usually forbid retransfer or resale without their permission. These are often stipulated in the End User Certificate.

Putin and other Russian officials have made many claims to many audiences, often contradicting each other. But when you analyse the most consistent and those that align most consistently to codified doctrine you’ll find that it’s all about Russian hegemony over the former USSR territories, and its revanchist aims to regain lost power. Once again, former empires have no right to their former colonies, and that includes Russia regarding Ukraine.

Ukraine was not anywhere near close to joining NATO in January/February 2022, its request for admission was stalled and key NATO countries had made it clear that it wasn’t going to go anywhere. Ironically, it’s Russia’s invasion that provided the impetus for the Ukrainian accession to NATO to move forward, even though it’s still a long way away.

Joining the EU was much more likely and was a key foreign policy goal of the Ukrainian government before Russia invaded. It remains one now.

As for the US, its economic and political power is declining much faster than its military power. If it really was such an imperialist state it would seek to use that military power to restore its economic and political power, aiming for full hegemony rather than just influence. It doesn’t because American society would not support that kind of approach, having moved past the age of annexation by force.

[roenxi]

Alright. So just jumping back to "why is there an active land war in Eastern Europe?"; is it fair to characterise your position with these 3 points?

1) Russia was worried about EU expansion into Ukraine [0].

2) They've invaded Ukraine and are encountering heavy resistance from the EU.

3) The US is barely involved in either of the other 2 points.

Because it doesn't look like an EU war effort to me. It looks like a NATO effort. Russia seem to be talking about the NATO-ish aspects of the struggle when they try to justify themselves and the bulk of the materiel seems to be being directed by the US if the stats are to be believed. The US aren't bit players in this one [1].

I'm not seeing a strong counter to my basic understanding of the situation (which is pretty close to what Chomsky seems to have come to). It looks like a "Russia were worried about NATO expansion in Ukraine and discovered their worst fears being realised when they tried to resist said expansion militarily" situation. I'm not seeing a strong argument here for why Chomsky should have come to a different opinion, it seems to rely on the EU having an independent military presence that they just don't have.

> NATO isn’t the only supplier to Ukraine, and NATO has no command authority over Ukraine and its forces. The idea that this is a ‘NATO’ proxy war is ridiculous and denies the agency of a democratic nation.

Why would Ukraine's form of government have anything to do whether this is a proxy war? They are democratic, they have agency, and this is still a NATO proxy war. If NATO wasn't involved Ukraine would have folded in the first month and the conflict would have ceased years ago.

[0] Although I am still a bit confused about why this is supposed to be a misread by Chomsky or myself; the only major difference I see between the EU and NATO is whether the US is involved. And I obviously think the US is involved.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-62002218 - BBC thinks the US supplied 5x the amount of stuff as the next biggest supporter of Ukraine, for example.

[_djo_]

No, that's not an accurate characterisation. You're confusing the cause and the response. That the support to Ukraine has been predominantly US-led, in no small part because it had stockpiles that Europe does not, does not tell us anything about Russia's motivations for invading a sovereign neighbour. It's also possible for countries to support what they consider an ally without it being a 'proxy' war. For it to be a proxy war would require that NATO caused the war, but all the historical evidence shows that NATO countries like the US, France, the UK, Germany, and others spent months in advance of Russia's invasion trying to convince Putin not to invade. There's even a video of one of Macron's phone calls to Putin where he begs him to agree to a diplomatic summit that could find an alternative to war.

Chomsky's view, and I'm guessing yours too, is that NATO should never have expanded, that NATO's expansion was a move intended only to provoke Russia, that Russia had the right to not have NATO on its borders, and therefore that Russia's invasion of Ukraine is justified and understandable.

Yet none of those are accurate, as I've shown, but I'll address them again in brief below:

1) NATO was expanded only with initial great reluctance and the constant lobbying of Eastern European and Baltic nations in particular, who had good reason to want to be part of a defensive security alliance. However, and most importantly, Ukraine was nowhere near joining NATO and certainly was not moving closer to it in January/February 2022. There was, in fact, no activity being undertaken by Ukraine that could possibly be considered a clear and imminent threat to Russia in any form.

2) The expansion was conducted cautiously, with strict limits placed on what forces could be forward-deployed near Russia, adding Russia as a Partnership for Peace member, creating the NATO-Russia Founding Act and with it the permanent NATO-Russia Council, and creating additional official liaison offices to provide the Russians with visibility into and reassurance about NATO's operations and intentions.

3) Sovereign countries are free to join whatever security alliance they want to, it is a fundamental concept of sovereignty that countries should have their own foreign policies. Therefore Russia has no right to prevent its neighbours from joining either the EU or NATO. To grant Russia a veto over that would be to accept an undemocratic imperial hegemony of the type that existed decades ago. Of course, Russia is free to use its own foreign policy instruments in response, by isolating, sanctioning, demarching, etc a neighbour that does something it doesn't like, but that's as far as it can go.

4) Obviously, given all the above it's ludicrous to claim that Russia had any kind of justification in invading Ukraine, or that its decision to do so can be viewed as an understandable or reasonable one.

But sure, if you still want to argue that it was 'because of NATO', then you have to accept that Russia chose to invade Ukraine not because it was about to imminently join the alliance in the next few months (because it was years and years away under the absolute best case scenario) but to avoid the mere possibility of it joining NATO some point in the future. That's no less unacceptable and illegal, and it doesn't make it more understandable.

Would you accept the US invading Venezuela because it was concerned about that country's close alliance with Russia and substantial re-armament using Russian weapons?

[roenxi]

That 1) is full of holes. It is 2024, only 2 years later, and Ukraine is awash with NATO gear and as mentioned the official position of the US State Department is saying they're going to be part of NATO. They were clearly on the verge of integrating with NATO if not already doing so and close to the point where Russia was out of options. If the Russian military had waited any longer there wouldn't have been anything they could do and realistically they made a massive error not invading back in 2014 when their losses would have been much smaller. To see "nowhere near joining" we can look at somewhere like Georgia. That is a country that is nowhere near joining NATO. Russia invades in 2008. They got no support and today, nearly 20 years later, they are still not part of NATO (although they are getting there). The invasion was over and done in 16 days; night and day compared to what is happening in Ukraine.

I don't have a position on 2 and 3 although they seem pretty reasonable. 4 I mostly agree with - the caveat to that is the last part. Russia's decision to invade is easily understandable and reasonable. We can see what NATO was planning on doing to them based on what is currently being done. If they didn't act now they'd lose their chance and the US would probably start setting up missile banks along the Russian border at some point. Realistically that might still happen, it looks quite bad for Russia right now.

This war has cost Russia a number of troops that, while difficult to estimate, is probably measured in 100,000s. Their opposition is entirely sustained by NATO logistics. Going in to the war Putin, on behalf of Russia, basically started the speech with "I am referring to the eastward expansion of NATO, which is moving its military infrastructure ever closer to the Russian border" [0]. This theory that Russia was motivated by internal conditions to Ukraine and no broader strategic concerns requires them to be ignorant of the biggest military threat to them, which turned out the be on the verge of materialising, while simultaneously pretending to be motivated by it for political reasons. It is a much more reasonable view to accept that in their military action they are probably motivated by the single biggest military threat they are facing. The one they publicly identified and that is a very realistic concern given what then happened.

We have a reference here, which is the US invasion of Iraq. It was appalling, unprovoked and the US encountered no real resistance from the rest of Asia who accepted that sometimes the big players just attack the small ones. The fact that the response in Ukraine is so different is a dead giveaway that NATO was provoking the conflict. Otherwise there isn't a reason for them to be involved. We've had more than 100 wars this century [1] and the NATO involvement and escalation of this one stands out as unusual.

And on some minor points:

> For it to be a proxy war would require that NATO caused the war

I don't expect that to be correct, but it turns out that a proxy war technically requires one of the actors to be a non-state actor [2], so I can only agree that this isn't a proxy war. But the US is using Ukraine as a metaphorical club to kill Russians.

> Would you accept the US invading Venezuela because it was concerned about that country's close alliance with Russia and substantial re-armament using Russian weapons?

Something like a reoccurrence of the Cuban missile crisis? I'd expect the US to respond with extreme violence if Russia didn't back down as soon as possible.

[0] http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/67843

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars:_2003%E2%80%93pre...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_war

[racional]

They were clearly on the verge of integrating with NATO if not already doing so and close to the point where Russia was out of options.

Sorry, but this plainly nonsense.

The only way you could say they were "on the verge of joining" would be if NATO had indicated that intended to offer Ukraine an official invitation to join, via a formal step known as the Membership Action Plan. But that's been famously on hold as far back as the Bucharest Summit in 2008. It was really a very big deal at the time that both Georgia and Ukraine were specifically asking to be offered MAPs, but ultimately said "no" to both countries -- largely because France, Germany and (you really won't like this) the United States were all opposed, and this in turn, out of a desire to not upset Russia.

Of course there's also been a song and dance going about Ukraine eventually, some day joining the alliance, and yes Ukraine has an article in its constitution about wanting to join some day. But the whole point of these actions is they have been second-tier, rear-guard manoeuvres. Which if anything simply underscore the fact that the fundamental decision regarding Ukraine's status was made in 2008, and that since then there have been no major motions in process to reverse that decision.

It's simply not the case that they were "on the verge of joining, if not already doing so" in 2022. Or that the Western powers were on the verge of taking any action that was an imminent threat to Russia at the time. And far from being "out of options" -- by any pragmatic assessment of the situation, Russia already had a successful containment strategy in place in regard the issue, attained by purely diplomatic means.

But of course they chose to invade anyway, for reasons that never had anything to do with NATO in the first place.

[_djo_]

> That 1) is full of holes. It is 2024, only 2 years later, and Ukraine is awash with NATO gear and as mentioned the official position of the US State Department is saying they're going to be part of NATO. They were clearly on the verge of integrating with NATO if not already doing so and close to the point where Russia was out of options. If the Russian military had waited any longer there wouldn't have been anything they could do and realistically they made a massive error not invading back in 2014 when their losses would have been much smaller. To see "nowhere near joining" we can look at somewhere like Georgia. That is a country that is nowhere near joining NATO. Russia invades in 2008. They got no support and today, nearly 20 years later, they are still not part of NATO (although they are getting there). The invasion was over and done in 16 days; night and day compared to what is happening in Ukraine.

As the other poster mentioned, Ukraine and Georgia were both denied Membership Action Plans at the 2008 NATO Bucharest summit, meaning they weren't even on the first rung of the process to join NATO. In 2021 NATO made some positive noises but still refused to offer Ukraine a MAP, even though Russian troops were massing on Ukraine's border.

It also takes years to be able to join after a MAP starts, and most importantly a MAP is not a treaty with any legal power: Joining one doesn't guarantee membership and the process can be stopped at any point. So even while Russian troops were massing on Ukraine's border and threatening to invade NATO wasn't ready to formally move closer to a Ukrainian accession beyond some encouraging words. Nearly all of the military support to Ukraine came after it was invaded, not before, and it was committed because NATO quite understandably reasoned that if Russia was willing to invade Ukraine without legal justification or provocation it would not stop there, but would try to go for Moldova and other countries next, significantly changing the strategic picture of Europe for generations. Supporting Ukraine is a defensive action.

The idea that Ukraine joining NATO would've meant US 'missile banks along the Russian border' is ridiculous, given that none of the other NATO members that border or are near Russia received US missile banks. As I said, NATO was very careful to limit both the quantity and type of equipment that it would deploy in new members, restricting them to purely defensive measures such as the NATO air patrols over the Baltics.

Putin has also quite clearly stated on numerous occasions that he considers Ukraine statehood a myth and that it's really a breakaway province of Russia.[0]

Finally, even if Ukraine was about to join NATO, that gives Russia no right to invade it. I don't understand why you seem to believe that it would.

[0]https://time.com/6150046/ukraine-statehood-russia-history-pu...

[htfu]

The issue with what you write is that it's most all nonsense. Your core thesis doesn't pass the smell test at all.

Because you utterly ignore Finland. It's less that it's not NATO and more that it literally can't be. Why would Putin drive them into NATO if having NATO neighbors (which, besides, was already a fact anyways) is such a threat?

He views it as his rightful property, and that's that.