[_djo_]

You're mixing up cause and response, once again, and ignoring the timeline of events.

> There has been order-of-magnitude 100 billion dollars worth of NATO gear provided to Ukraine with the express purpose of killing as many Russians as possible, let alone the intangible value of various forms of aid provided (things like intelligence are hard to assess). "Hehe, well we didn't file the proper paperwork" isn't exactly the sort of response that is going to get a good result. > I doubt the Russians are worried about whether the US followed its own self-imposed process of officially declaring the alliance. They're worried about the network of countries that the US is building up with the fairly plain purpose of destroying the Russian military followed by regime change. They respond to threats when they detect them, not when the US or whoever decide to officially declare that the threat is being made.

Many countries, just not NATO, have sent weapons and other resources to Ukraine for it to defend itself against the Russian invasion, and to deter further Russian incursions or invasions beyond Ukraine. They were not sending those quantities in advance of the war.

Had Russia not invaded Ukraine in February 2022 two things would be presently true: First, it would not have lost all that military personnel and military equipment, and, second, Ukraine would still not be in NATO. Once again, Western countries spent months trying to convince Russia not to invade, as they expected Russian forces to swiftly overwhelm Ukrainian forces and take over the country. It was only when Ukraine put up better than expected resistance and repelled the attempt to take over Kyiv that Western countries began supplying it in earnest.

> The presence of all those members is why I think it might well happen. NATO has the real estate and doesn't seem worried about escalations. Why not? NATO seems to be pretty firm in their belief that a good offence is the best defence; I think technically we've never seen them fighting defensively? Although I maintain de-facto that what seems to be happening in Ukraine is the defence of a NATO country.

Now you're just speculating. The actual history of NATO expansion, its actions, and the restrictions it has openly placed on forward deployment of forces have shown it to be very concerned about escalations and about Russia's fears.

> Can you name a war where the invader had a right to start it? This is war! The people purposefully starting wars are almost uniformly monsters clothed in human flesh. The best case is that they are monsters in an age of other monsters. If there are exceptions to that none spring to my mind.

Yes, the coalition attack on Iraq in 1991 to repel its forces from Kuwait is one example, but there are others. You should read up on jus ad bellum and how it applies.

[roenxi]

80s? NATO expands. 90s? NATO expands. 00s? NATO Expands. 10s? NATO expands. 20s? NATO expands. Russia at peace? NATO expands. Russia at war? NATO expands. Russia tries anything, including diplomacy? NATO expands. Only the neutrality of Switzerland prevents me from drawing a line through NATO from the Russian border to Spain.

The pattern here is not "oh Ukraine wasn't going to join up until the Russians invaded". The pattern is NATO expands. The preponderance of evidence in the NATO response to the Ukraine invasion - and the flow of history - suggests that the US has its sights on integrating Ukraine into NATO and was probably in the process of it.

> Yes, the coalition attack on Iraq in 1991 to repel its forces from Kuwait is one example

The audacity. You spend a thread whinging about Russia panicking because the US is organising all of Europe against them [0], then as a counterexample you pick one of the US's invasions of the Middle East (of Iraq no less, those poor people) as your example of a justified war?

What is the criteria here? US aggression is OK? A quorum of European interests justifies any invasion? It is OK if we do it to brown Muslims but not white Christians? There is no jus ad bellum to be found in the US expeditions into the Middle East; they've been a disaster for the region and the world. And any time you end up siding with the Saudis it is bad news for any sort of principled approach.

[0] Which, I mean, fair enough what Russia is doing is awful but let's aim for some consistency here.

[mopsi]

> The pattern is NATO expands.

NATO is not a loaf of rising bread that expands on its own when left on a windowsill. My country is in NATO because I voted for successive governments that set it as their top priority, because I believed then and I believe now that tight cooperation with likeminded countries is the best way to deter another Russian invasion (we've had 40+ of them in recorded history).

And this is the universal view in Europe as of 2024. No country in Europe can afford on their own what Ukraine has been through, and this makes military alliances essential for national security. Even Sweden with its 200+ years of neutrality ditched it as soon as Russia invaded Ukraine. Ukraine is by now a cautionary tale of naive belief in diplomacy (Helsinki Accords; Budapest memorandum; etc) without a big stick to back it up.

Conspiracy theories about the US turning Europe against Russia are completely redundant. When it comes to national security, no responsible government in parts of Europe closest to Russia can afford to stay out of NATO. If you were the prime minister of Finland, why would you not do everything you could to join NATO and enter the mutual defense pact seeing how Russia behaves in Ukraine?

For a very long time, both Finland and Sweden had a deep belief that skillful diplomacy could prevent a war with Russia, but what do you do when Russia starts blasting that your country doesn't exist?

[roenxi]

> If you were the prime minister of Finland, why would you not do everything you could to join NATO and enter the mutual defense pact seeing how Russia behaves in Ukraine?

Yes. My whole position in this thread has been that countries tend to do things for the obvious reason, I'm not sure why people keep expecting me to disagree on points like that. Everyone wants to be in NATO. Even Russia probably wants to join NATO. But that doesn't change the fact that the US was provoking Russia by signing everyone up and the US acting on that expansionist urge in Ukraine seems to be the major driver of this war.

[mopsi]

> But that doesn't change the fact that the US was provoking Russia by signing everyone up and the US acting on that expansionist urge in Ukraine seems to be the major driver of this war.

???

But that's exactly the opposite of what happened. Ukraine and Georgia desired to join the NATO like everyone else. The US, Germany and a handful of others dashed those hopes in 2008 due to Russian pressure. This lowered the risk for Russia and they immediately invaded Georgia, and a few years later Ukraine, and expanded the invasion in 2022 after they saw the shameful retreat from Afghanistan as a further sign of US' weakness and unwillingness to support their allies.

Not American expansionist urge, but the utterly short-sighted belief in "we must not provoke Russia" is how we got here. Russians are not provoked by strength, but by weakness. Belief in enemy's weakness enables dangerous illusions like "3 days to Kyiv".

[roenxi]

> The US, Germany and a handful of others dashed those hopes in 2008 due to Russian pressure.

That is a ruse on the part of the US and I don't know why anyone expects it to be taken seriously given what we see post 2022. NATO considers Ukraine to be part of their strategic territory. They're dumping 10s to 100s of billions of dollars into Ukraine's defence. They've claimed to have been a part of killing something like 300,000 Russian soldiers. They're explaining to anyone who'll listen that the relationship will be formalised as soon as possible. It looks like they've been working on this for years prior to the invasion in fact - unless you believe that the NATO military planners are so incompetent they didn't have contingency plans for Russia invading Ukraine. There is even the obvious pattern of behaviour on the part of the US here regarding NATO expansion.

The hopes of Ukraine were never dashed.

[mopsi]

> They're dumping 10s to 100s of billions of dollars into Ukraine's defence. They've claimed to have been a part of killing something like 300,000 Russian soldiers.

This has come only after years of war against Ukraine and refusal by Russia to take any offered exit ramp.

When Russia first invaded Ukraine in 2014, Obama refused to provide lethal aid to Ukraine. After Russia launched the full-scale invasion in 2022, the US infamously offered Zelensky a ride and not ammo. Countries like Germany were openly mocked for providing only 5000 helmets. It took approximately half a year before any considerable aid began to appear in Ukraine. They got their first American tanks (only 31 provided so far) full year and a half into the war.

NATO countries and other allies have consistently dragged their feet and done too little too late. This allowed Russia to recover from the initial shock, and their armed forces are larger than at the start of the war. This year, they are forming two new armies that are larger than the ground forces of UK, France, Spain, Germany, Netherlands, Poland, and a number of other countries COMBINED.

Instead of a conspiratorial ruse, European governments have finally recognized that Russia is a rapidly growing threat to entire Europe, and that's why they started to pour a lot of resources into Ukraine starting around fall 2023, and into rebuilding their own militaries. Russians are wiping one Ukrainian town after another from the earth with no indication of stopping anytime soon. At worst, we can expect a second front launched from Belarus against Poland and Lithuania.

> unless you believe that the NATO military planners are so incompetent they didn't have contingency plans for Russia invading Ukraine

It is very obvious that there were no serious plans for such turn of events. Many NATO countries, including mine, were caught by surprise and have had to provided military aid to Ukraine at the expense of own security from readiness stocks that cannot be replenished for many years to come, but might be needed to fulfill NATO obligations, should Russia broaden the war.

Not only were NATO countries unprepared, but several key countries didn't even believe such development could be possible at all. The chief of French military intelligence was infamously fired over inadequate assessments related to Russian invasion of Ukraine.

> The hopes of Ukraine were never dashed.

Yes they were. Even today, nobody is willing to give any firm commitments. At the last NATO summit, Biden refused to support NATO invitation for Ukraine and instead lobbied for a vague "Ukraine will become a member of NATO" statement without any specified date, to great frustration of Ukrainians.

The story you are trying to spin is the polar opposite of observable reality.

[riehwvfbk]

So if the justification is a lie (as it was in Kuwait) that makes it OK? Gotcha!

[_djo_]

Which part was a lie?

Here's the UN Security Council resolution that authorised the invasion. It's quite clear on the reasoning, the justification, and the mechanisms.

https://undocs.org/Home/Mobile?FinalSymbol=S%2FRES%2F678(199...

[riehwvfbk]

The whole "babies thrown out of incubators" thing for one.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony

This was the basis for manufacturing consent for the invasion. What you are linking is simply the after-the-fact legalese.

[_djo_]

It’s a remarkably insular and US-centric view to believe that that story was the reason the United Nations Security Council voted to eject Iraq from Kuwait. It was a piece of propaganda that merely had some air play in the US and which, while it may have been convenient to the US and Kuwaiti governments for the support of the US population, was not the strategic reason for any of the nations involved.

Fortunately we have plenty of primary sources to validate this, from the minutes of UNSC minutes to statements by various heads of government at the time. All make it clear that the war was authorised because Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait was not only blatantly illegal but destructive to the international system. That story didn’t form any part their rationale.

[riehwvfbk]

That particular Security Council decision was entirely driven by the US though, including getting the Saudis to pay 1B USD to the ailing Soviet Union to buy their Yes vote (and by then it was already in the final stages of Perestroika).

I wonder what your justification for Saddam's invisible WMDs is. That lie was not invented by someone at the Pentagon?

[_djo_]

Again, such an arrogant US-centric view. You do realise that other countries have agency too, right?

The idea that the US drove the Saudis to lobby the Soviets is absurd: The Saudis were independently lobbying everyone they could because all signs were that the much more powerful Iraqi military would invade them next in order to gain control of much of the world’s oil supplies. That’s why the first coalition response was to form Desert Shield to protect Saudi Arabia from an Iraqi invasion.

34 countries took part in the military operation to push Iraqi forces from Kuwait, which they had invaded without any legal justification at all. The operation was clearly and unambiguously authorised by the United Nations Security Council. It’s as clear an example of Jus ad Bellum in the modern era as you could hope for. And you still aren’t satisfied.

As for your last sentence, you’re conflating events thirty years later. It’s irrelevant to a discussion about whether the 1990 UN-authorised ejection of Iraqi forces from Kuwait was legally sound and justified.