[mightyham]

Except it is literally is just rational geopolitics. The story of the Russian invasion of Ukraine is not just a single whimsical choice by a mad dictator. There has been a decades long encirclement campaign by NATO which ultimately pushed too far. That's not to say that states joining NATO did not do so willingly and of their own accord, but that it played into a larger struggle for influence that disadvantaged Russia on the world stage.

The moral dimension is also completely illusory. Ukraine is fighting a war of attrition that's funding is due to the same cold-hearted power politics that Russia subscribes to. It greatly benefits the US and EU to keep Russia in an expensive, resource-intensive, prolonged military engagement. Put another way, the US is knowingly sacrificing Ukrainian lives and infrastructure because it gives us more power; however, at the end of the day we get to drape our actions in nice sounding rhetoric about supporting national independence even though that is merely accidental. Not to mention that the Ukrainian government has legitimately persecuted Russian-speaking minority populations in the country. Obviously, this has very little to do Russia's actual motivations for the war, but the point is the Russia's actions also have accidental good effects.

[ninkendo]

So let me see if I understand your argument here.

Ukraine wanted to join NATO because it sees Russia as a threat (I dunno, maybe because Russia had just invaded Crimea and "annexed" it).

Russia's response is to invade Ukraine, slaughtering countless civilians, and has stated that it wants to take more territory around other former-soviet states.

And your reaction, to a country exercising its sovereignty, and another country invading it as a result, is "yup, that's just politics for ya"? That countries have the right to invade other countries if they feel disadvantaged by their neighbor's decisions?

[mightyham]

No, you clearly don't understand my argument.

Ukraine didn't just disadvantage their neighbor. In international affairs, red lines are a common tool for expressing acceptable bounds of negotiation. Russia made it very explicit that if Ukraine joined NATO there would be conflict. We live in the real world, and "sovereignty" is not real; nations are not unconstrained agents that can do whatever they please. They have to weigh the effects of their actions and be willing and capable of defending the consequences. This has been true for all of human history, has never changed, and likely never will. You simply deluded yourself into thinking otherwise.

I will also add that in the modern world, peace has largely been maintained because the value of international commerce is much greater than the value derived from conflict. Economic integration is the best recipe for enduring tranquility. However, the US has pursued broad economic sanctions against Russia since the annexation of Crimea, all but ensuring that an invasion of Ukraine would be a profitable (or at least not harmful). In other words, the United States miscalculated, overplayed it's hand in pursuing a containment strategy against Russia and ultimately invited violence.

[ninkendo]

Please look up "victim blaming" and understand how it applies in this context. If Islamic terrorists say "if you depict Muhammad, we will attack you", and someone depicts Muhammad and are attacked, we don't say "wow, they really shouldn't have depicted Muhammad, this is their fault". We say "wow, those terrorists are awful." Russia's red lines were never acceptable in the first place, and their existence does not justify war crimes.

> However, the US has pursued broad economic sanctions against Russia since the annexation of Crimea

Oh those poor Russians, they can't even violently annex neighboring territory without getting sanctioned. I feel so bad for them. We should have just uttered "tsk, tsk" and kicked them out of the olympics. That'll teach 'em!

No, the "economic tranquility" was the period after the Soviet Union fell and the entire western world was welcoming Russia in with open arms, and the economic integration was well under way. Until Putin came in and decided "no, I like things the way they were" and has been trying to bring back the USSR ever since. He doesn't want any economy he can't directly control by force. You think Putin wants economic integration? He wants his soviet union back.

None of what you're talking about is "politics" unless you think Russia actually has a leg to stand on with any of this. They don't. They never have. They're the aggressor here and none of the "warnings" they gave justify any of this.

[mightyham]

I love the example you gave because it is demonstrative of one of the most important distinctions between your moral language and the language of geopolitics. If a Muslim attacks someone in a western country, then they will have violated a law. The recipient of the violence is a victim of an infringement of rights garunteed by the government which has authority through the social contract. On the world stage, there is no higher authority, rights, or laws. What you have are a set of nations, which by definition, are agents seeking to secure prosperity for themselves. Ukraine has certain objectives to secure their prosperity like, procuring a large conventional military or nukes so that they can defend their borders. Russia also has certain objectives that secure their prosperity, like maintaining access to the black sea and building natural gas pipelines into Europe. When these nations have objectives that conflict there are only two options: compromise or war, that's it, that is the reality. In this case neither side wanted to compromise, so there was a war.

It's also important to note that this conflict is not one-sided. Ukraine has dedicedly become a proxy for US and European power projection. This is not a genocide or some other form of needless violence. This is a classic example of powers butting heads and all parties refusing to take de-escalatory actions.

[ninkendo]

> I love the example you gave because it is demonstrative of one of the most important distinctions between your moral language and the language of geopolitics. If a Muslim attacks someone in a western country, then they will have violated a law.

Lol so we can only pass judgement on something if there exists a law that it violates, and an authority that can prosecute it. If there’s no ability to prosecute something, it must be fine, just fine!

> On the world stage, there is no higher authority, rights, or laws. What you have are a set of nations, which by definition, are agents seeking to secure prosperity for themselves.

> This is a classic example of powers butting heads

I keep imagine you looking at Hitler’s actions in the 1930s and concluding “there’s no higher authority than nation states, so this is all just geopolitics, powers butting heads” and refusing to make a judgement on good vs bad.

Maybe a good checksum on your world views is “if it results in what Hitler did being fine, maybe I need to reevaluate”.

--

I'll edit this to add: You bring up "distinctions between [my] moral language and the language of geopolitics"... that's what the whole objection to Kagi's founder is about. Confusing geopolitical decision making like "what should U.S. foreign policy be, if we want to maximize the chance of peace", and moral judgements, like "is invading your neighbors to get what you want ok", is the very thing Kagi's founder is doing that I find objectionable. Because you should be able to pass a moral judgement on an action without conflating that with whether the U.S. and its allies made the right strategic moves. It doesn't matter that Russia signaled their actions in advance, it's still not ok to invade another nation. One should be able to clearly see this to be true, and not just sweep it under "it's just politics." Calling it politics is both strictly speaking true, and also a cop-out, because you get to avoid actually making a judgement about whether you think it's right. Kagi's founder did that, and you're doing that here.

[mightyham]

This is just idiotic equivocation. The difference between Russia and Hitler is that Russia has legitimate national security concerns, for instance, not letting the world's largest military alliance (NATO) which is antogonistic to them, build defense infrastructure along their border, or choke off their ability to have a navy. The Nazis made no attempts to conceal the fact that one of their main national objectives was to invade eastern Europe and create a colonial German empire. Clearly you can see these two things are not the same, right?

[mghackerlady]

I feel like even this simplifies the issue somewhat. While we can argue for days on whether or not this war is justified in any way, anyone with any glimpse of sanity can see that this is not an appropriate reaction to any such circumstances that may have contributed to the war. That's not to mention the actions of the russian military itself

[falsemyrmidon]

This reads like some of that covert Russian election influence they're so fond of.

[mightyham]

Or just an American with an realist perspective on foreign affairs...

I loathe the charge that if you have any nuance and think the war is not ENTIERLY Russia's fault, then you must be brainwashed by propaganda.

[jasonlotito]

No. Russia invaded Ukraine. And while it wasn't a single whimsical choice, blaming NATA wrong. This was the mad dictator, and trying to cast blame on anyone else is the same as accepting the blame yourself.

[cantalopes]

Spoken like a true russian troll

[Eupolemos]

No.

> The moral dimension is also completely illusory. Ukraine is fighting a war of attrition that's funding is due to the same cold-hearted power politics that Russia subscribes to.

Blatant gaslighting. Ukraine is defending against an invasion. Russia has said it wants to go further and take what it can of Europe, states that the Baltics aren't countries and threatens us all with nukes on a daily basis.

In Europe we defend ourselves by funding Ukraine.

It is super simple; Russia attacks when it is strong enough and takes what it can.

We tried living in peace, we believed in it. We basically got rid of our armies in Europe, since everybody knows how to live in peace. Except Russia.

We will not make that mistake again.

[mightyham]

> everybody knows how to live in peace. Except Russia.

Talk about an extraordinary case of recency bias. Cheap shot, I know, but I had to make it.

Europe currently defends itself because that's all it CAN do. They abandoned their armies because the continent outsourced defense spending/industry to the United States and Russia following WWII.

[Eupolemos]

> They abandoned their armies because the continent outsourced defense spending/industry to the United States and Russia following WWII.

We outsourced our defense spending to Russia?

Are you incapable of embarrassment over your own level of ignorance?

[mightyham]

Are you purposely being obtuse? Eastern Europe was a protectorate of the USSR for a large portion of the last century.

[MYEUHD]

> We basically got rid of our armies in Europe, since everybody knows how to live in peace.

Wrong. The UK and France have several military bases in the middle east, thousands of kilometers away from home.

The NATO invasion of Libya is an example of how Europeans "know how to live in peace"

[Lord-Jobo]

This is so hilariously stupid, the invasion of Ukraine is so completely impossible to defend that all of these talking points smell like a third grader wrote them. In a rush, at the beginning of class.

“The moral dimension is illusory“

Yeah maybe if you glue your eyelids shut and pretend millions of dead people are actually totally fine, and definitely WORTH expending for… wait what is it that Russia has gained from this invasion?

Disgusting effort, I hope you never have control over a single ounce of power.

[WarmWash]

Bro watched a hot take youtube video and now is a geopolitical genius.

[mightyham]

Unfortunately, being smart is a natural talent ;)