[throwaway290]

Using diplomacy and business is good because it leads to LESS DEATH. And anyone can use it. Especially Moscow which had a ton of influence in post soviet space. It was free to be nice and negotiate with Ukraine and get policies good for both but it decided it's beneath it.

It's a choice not a "need". It's a revealing choice. Implying Russia "needed" to annex a country is very revealing too. Like if they don't have enough land and or resources already. You know how sparsely populated it is?

[ludston]

"Need" is obviously being used to refer to capability to execute interests here, and not requirement for survival. The US didn't need to have the cia help oust the Australian government in the 80s, nor did it need to install sympathetic governments across south America for the sake of its mineral companies, but it did it anyway. Russia does not have international mineral businesses with the capability to operate in these places in the same way the US does. Ethics of death only comes into it insofar as if the US did claim territory, it suddenly becomes responsible for the well being of the people living there, which it avoids by privatising the exploitation.

[SR2Z]

This is ridiculous. Someone with an actual, literal boot on their neck will hear your spiel about exploitation and laugh as much as they can manage.

The US is a state, and like all states it's a sociopath. The reason it's better than others is because it resorts to force later and less often than other states.

It is unironically better this way; your argument implies that having robust systems of law, transnational corporations, and global trade are somehow just as bad as a war of conquest.

That's nuts.