[tim333]

I don't agree on the Russia Ukraine motivations. Ukraine is not part of NATO and was not going to become part of NATO. There were already two NATO countries bordering Russia near Moscow and St P if NATO had wanted to invade which they had no thoughts of doing. Russia lies constantly on this stuff. I think they basically regarded Ukraine their land as part of the Russian empire they were restoring.

[somenameforme]

It's not about immediate intentions, but about strategic options. Imagine Russia decided to form a military alliance with Mexico with the expected intention of deploying weapons on the Mexican border. If Mexico agreed to this, it would take approximately 0 seconds before the US invaded them under some whimsical pretext (drug gangs probably) and overthrew their government to prevent this. In fact this is, more or less, what the Cuban Missile Crisis was where we were willing to bring the world to the brink of nuclear annihilation over it, and that was an even lighter weight version of this event since there isn't even a land route from Cuba to the US obviously!

But in this scenario would you think Russia deploying weapons in Mexico is a precursor to them invading? Or that the US would be worried about that? Obviously not. Neither was Cuba. But it gives an adversarial power a tremendous strategic edge, while you get less than nothing out of it since it reduces your 'power' in the relative strategic balance of countries.

[mopsi]

  >  Imagine Russia decided to form a military alliance with Mexico with the expected intention of deploying weapons on the Mexican border.

It would be a very foolish idea, because it's no longer the Napoleonic era. Concentrating your forces close to adversary's border makes them easy targets for destruction by long-range artillery and airstrikes. The Finnish chief of defence forces recently made the same remark when the Russians moved their weapons closer to Finland for intimidation: "It only makes them easier for us to destroy."

  > In fact this is, more or less, what the Cuban Missile Crisis was

Not at all. The Cuban missile crisis was only about nuclear missiles. The USSR continued to provide a large number of conventional weapons to Cuba, including submarines and fighter jets, until it collapsed in 1991, without any of your invasion fantasies coming true.

See this photo: https://www.jetphotos.com/photo/11312641

It is a Soviet-built MIG-23 fighter jet carrying Cuban insignia. MIG-23 first flew 5 years after the missile crisis and the first batch was delivered to Cuba in 1978.

[dragonwriter]

> It's not about immediate intentions, but about strategic options. Imagine Russia decided to form a military alliance with Mexico with the expected intention of deploying weapons on the Mexican border.

The problem with pretending this analogy is relevant as a justification (or at least an "other people would have one the same thing" argument, which isn't really a justification to start with) of the Russian invasion of Ukraine (besides the fact that it relies on dubious assumptions about a counterfactual) is that the only reason Ukraine resumed its long-abandoned pursuit of relations with NATO was a direct result of the invasion by Russia in 2014.

[somenameforme]

Ukraine had been striving repeatedly to join NATO until 2010. That's when Yanukovych, who generally leaned more East than West, took power. Ukraine dropped its NATO ambitions under his leadership and re-affirmed themselves as a neutral state. Then he was overthrown, in an action directly backed by the US with John McCain, Victoria Nuland, and others literally on the ground in Ukraine giving speeches and riling up protesters come rioters, almost certainly with further black ops organizing going on behind the scenes.

Following Yanukovych's successful overthrow figures favorable to the US/UN/EU, including those hand picked by Victoria Nuland in her leaked conversation, ended up in power. In fact the person Nuland hand picked for Prime Minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, was one of the authors of Ukraine's initial formal request for a membership action plan from NATO.

Can you tell me that you genuinely think that if Russia hadn't annexed Crimea (which happened after all of the above) that Ukraine would have chosen to stay "neutral" in this context? And I put neutral in quotes because what does that even mean when one bloc is driving the successful overthrow of democratically elected leaders and hand picking new ones? Imagine Lavrov et al were on the ground encouraging pro Russian protesters to topple the Ukrainian government (alongside comparably likely black ops organizing behind the scenes), they ended up successful, and then leaders hand-picked by him end up in power. Is that somehow still just Ukraine deciding their own fate?

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine%E2%80%93NATO_relations

[mopsi]

There's a huge problem with this narrative. The Russian government's public tender database shows that they ordered the production of campaign medals for the invasion of Crimea months before any of this happened. Oops.

[tim333]

I still think Ukraine wasn't primarily about Russia's military security though. I mean the US/Nato could stick missiles in Estonia if they wanted.

It may have been about political security. If Ukraine which is basically at least part Russian had become a prosperous democracy on Russia's doorstep it would make it harder for Putin to justify his autocracy. In fact that one may come to pass.

[somenameforme]

It's not about missiles in this case. That's a strategic battle that Russia has largely already lost, though the advent of highly capable ICBMs/MIRV/etc with hypersonic maneuvering also makes vicinity less relevant in modern times. In this case it's about a land route for invasion and subsequent logistics. There are already NATO countries bordering Russia, but the land between them is extremely unfavorable - swamps, forests, and so on. It's simply not fit for what would be a large scale conflict.

Invasion into Russia would ideally go through Belarus, which is part of the reason that Belarus is such a critical ally for Russia, and now even hosts their nuclear weapons. Since that's not possible, the second best route (and third and forth and...) is through Ukraine, likely towards Kursk or Belgorod.

There's even something of an equal but opposite here on NATO's side - the Suwalki corridor [1]. It's a narrow stretch of land between Belarus and Kaliningrad (a Russian exclave) that, if controlled, would cut off the Baltic states from NATO. So if war ever breaks out between NATO and Russia, it would be a key strategic point and unsurprisingly, it's been heavily fortified by NATO - there are even hundreds of American troops there.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suwa%C5%82ki_Gap

[mopsi]

The idea of an invasion of Russia from Europe is utter nonsense and completely detached from reality. Tell it to Russian military experts and you will get sighs and eyerolls in response. Not even Russian military exercises like Zapad simulate such a scenario. On the ground, the border remains completely open - you can walk straight into Russia (and lost mushroomers often do so by accident) because there isn't even a chainlink fence or a cleared sand strip marking the border.

Contrast that with the European countries that actually fear an invasion: they are preparing bridges for demolition, scouting suitable areas for minefields, digging anti-tank ditches, installing reinforced pillboxes and bunkers. Last week, Latvian media reported that the government is even considering tearing up railways near the Russian border to slow the invading force.

The scenarios the Russians are preparing for include, for example, mass unrest in Belarus that would lead to Russia invading the country to keep its dictator in place, like they did in Czechoslovakia in 1968 and in Hungary in 1956. In 2020, this almost happened in Belarus over fraudulent elections and mass protests that were ultimately suppressed without requiring a "brotherly military intervention" by Russia.

[SideburnsOfDoom]

> Imagine Russia decided to form a military alliance with Mexico ... it would take approximately 0 seconds before the US invaded them

Not this shit again. It's always the identical boring talking points from the Moscow trolls.

e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46008641

[wqaatwt]

> military alliance with Mexico

Ukraine never did that.

> it would take approximately 0 seconds before the US invaded

Very unlikely.

Also Mexico wasn’t never exactly that aligned diplomatically and politically with the US to begin with.

Russia on the other hand views that it has some inherent right to subjugate and dominate all of their neighbors and turn them into puppet states if not outright annex them.

> In fact this is, more or less, what the Cuban Missile Crisis

In fact this is outright drivel. The US hardly viewed Russia as their actual opponent before 2014-22. Remember Romney- Obama debate (and Obama generally bending over backwards to appease Putin most of the time).