Warrants for Putin

[Joel3102]

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

This whole war is about Ukraine joining NATO. That is Putin's red line. Putin made this line clear many years ago. But the US did not take him seriously and kept pushing. Now we have war.

It’s a chicken and egg. Do you think it’s possible that if NATO never expanded post Cold War they would’ve invaded more neighbours than otherwise? 

[Danioover9000]

@Girzo

1 hour ago, Girzo said:

I think it's not about NATO. The war would have happened even to stop the process of Ukraine possibly becoming the EU member.

It's mainly a conflict about loosing power over Ukraine and not military imbalance. Ukraine has ports and natural resources and farmlands and russian gas infrastructure.

It's as much a conflit about trade as about military and political power.

 

   There's definitely more to Russia's motives if we correctly contextualize this situation:

   However, I agree with main motive that @Leo Gura provided: Putin made clear Ukraine should never join NATO, or else. The USE kept pushing, we must accept and not deny that the USA and even some European countries are partly to blame here, for triggering Putin into war.

   If I was in a neighborhood, had some bad relations with some, and they kept asking my next door neighbor to join the bad neighbor coalition and make them think it's i9n their best interest, that is threatening to me because they want more and more of my property in the future, and my family's property and livelihood, to me, is under threat. I already warned next door don't be friendly or join alliances with those bad neighbors, Or I'll break down your fences and push my property line 5 more feet claiming some of yours and then some, and threatened the bad neighborhood alliance to back the fuck off. They didn't listen, well, they fucked around so now they'll find out how far I'll go to protect what's mine.

   Can you understand and empathize with my point of view?

[Vrubel]

6 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

This whole war is about Ukraine joining NATO. That is Putin's red line. Putin made this line clear many years ago. But the US did not take him seriously and kept pushing. Now we have war.

Nato was kinda pussyfooting with Ukraine but besides that, I don't know what's the point of blaming America. That's fucking insulting to the Ukrainians heroically fighting, they take full responsibility for paying the price of manifesting their will. It's simple: being with the west= freedom and future, with Russia=non-freedom and stagnation. America gave Ukraine a fighting chance by training its army after 2014, if that didn't happen, Ukraine would have been a bitch of geopolitics. Sacrificed for "geopolitical balance".

This whole war has undone me from a lot of stage-green sentiment about war. Now I have immense respect for all the people in history that fought for their independence and even existence on the basis of higher ideals. Americans are absolutely fucking right to idealize Washington as are Russians their victory in ww2 and the French their revolutions. All of these people gave their lives so future generations would live under a better system or simply just live, that alone commands enormous humility and respect from current generations. 

Ukraine in not only fighting in self-defense in the most literal sense (not some more abstract geopolitical sense.) They are also fighting for higher ideals and values than the old Russian/Authoritarian/Soviet ones.

Edited April 6, 2023 by Vrubel

[Blackhawk]

7 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

This whole war is about Ukraine joining NATO. That is Putin's red line. Putin made this line clear many years ago. But the US did not take him seriously and kept pushing. Now we have war.

I don't think the war is about that.

Putin wants Soviet Union back and he thought it would be easy to take Ukraine since it's not in Nato.

The war in Donbas since 2014 made it impossible for Ukraine to join Nato, because Nato doesn't accept new members who are in conflict. Russia could have continued with the Donbas war forever and that way forever prevented Ukraine from joining Nato. Russia could also have done something smaller than a full scale invasion, but like I said, the Donbas war was enough.

So there's no reason at all to launch a full scale invasion if you just want to prevent Ukraine from joining Nato.

[Guest Tobia]

On 5/4/2023 at 0:28 PM, Leo Gura said:

These are the problems I see with this whole multi-polar world theory. Not all the poles are equal in moral development.

@Leo Gura  multipolarity is not about Russia or China dictating the rules.

Multipolarity means that Russia, China, India, Brazil, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Iran, South Africa are increasingly hard to bully and they demand to be treated as equals by the US.

They demand that their core interests be respected and no longer tollerate bullying. They no longer accept to be looked down upon with a paternalistic, moralistic attitude

The moment they stop using the US dollar to trade, it's the moment where the unipolar world ends because you can no longer threaten them with sanctions or exclude them from the international community.

 

[Israfil]

1 hour ago, Vrubel said:

 It's simple: being with the west= freedom and future, with Russia=non-freedom and stagnation.

It's not that simple, actually. Russia and Ukraine share a lot of cultural and historic backgrounds. The whole point is that countries must have the right to self-determination and sovereignty. The West in general frequently stifles the development of many countries by interfering with processes that lead to it. 

Ukraine hesitated to join the EU because its population is comprised of many Russian people and Ukranians with Russian families and economic partners. The request of cutting ties with Russia doesn't simply mean "don't buy or sell to Russia", it means not interacting with people very close to them. Life's aspects are closely intertwined and the interests of Europe and the US shouldn't supersede Ukranian ones if you're talking about their politics, their economics, and their lives. This whole pressure to give "freedom and democracy" to Ukraine just led to a lot of foreign intervention and blood on the ground. 

As Alan Watts once said, the US goes around the world saying "You better be democratic, or we'll shoot you!".

[Vrubel]

32 minutes ago, Israfil said:

As Alan Watts once said, the US goes around the world saying "You better be democratic, or we'll shoot you!".

It's Ukraine's free will to join the West. Russia is the one shooting for not doing as they say.

My family is from Russia so I actually had a lot of pro-Russian bias (and in a sense still do). Honestly, I care more for Russia than for Ukraine. I actually had resentment for Ukrainian nationalists but this war has put everything in perspective, also for many Ukrainians with a Russian bias as well. The facts on the ground show that Ukraine is mountains higher than Russia in its values and manifesting virtue. Russia is corrupted by a big fat (wounded) imperial ego. Otherwise, Ukrainians and Russians are of course very similar in mentality.
 

[John Paul]

13 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

This whole war is about Ukraine joining NATO. That is Putin's red line. Putin made this line clear many years ago. But the US did not take him seriously and kept pushing. Now we have war.

Russia doesn’t get to set boundaries or get taken seriously. And now we can see their true face again. They are scum and now they are going to crumble.

[Hardkill]

13 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

This whole war is about Ukraine joining NATO. That is Putin's red line. Putin made this line clear many years ago. But the US did not take him seriously and kept pushing. Now we have war.

But how do we know for sure that Putin wouldn’t have invaded Ukraine anyways even if NATO didn’t continue to expand eastward?

Also, Putin’s statement about Ukraine needing to be “de-Nazified” was just a pretext for invading Ukraine. So, how do we know that Putin hasn’t been using the notion of Ukraine joining NATO as just another pretext for invading Ukraine?

Hitler used the notion of the blaming the Jews, non-white people, Communism/Socialism, and every other developed country in the world for all of Germany’s problems as pretexts for world domination.

 

Edited April 6, 2023 by Hardkill

[Jwayne]

The way the defense (i.e. war) industry, which has a lot of political clout, looks at it is there is no use in developing and possessing cutting-edge military technology if you're never going to test them in live situations. The USA historically - and presently - is hundreds of billions of dollars ahead of its rivals in military spending. It is a sum far more than necessary for protecting its homeland (e.g. the amount other nations spend). The USA spends enough to control the opposite side of both oceans and to even have the means to extend its force into the lands beyond that (as demonstrated dozens of times over the last century).  

The only reason to enact this policy was originally expressed in terms, since gone out of favor with intellectuals, of 'manifest destiny' and in things like the Monroe Doctrine. The idea is that the American (at least certain white landholding ones) is a unique breed of individual who has reached a higher summit of moral, intellectual, psychological and spiritual (historically Christian) development and thus has a burden to, what amounts to, an epistemic-cultural imperialism of the world, and that's enforced through outright military and economic pressures. 

That the United States sees itself as possessing a higher moral authority (i.e. American exceptionalism) and thus can't help itself but to undermine and intervene in the self-determination of others, hasn't changed one bit. What is changing is its unipolar hegemony over violence.

Multipolarity is the relative decline of American influence. Specifically, north-east Asia is an extremely culturally rich and now economically prosperous pole of geopolitical significance that is also growing in military parity (particularly China). And its building a very impressive trade and infrastructure network in the One Belt One Road project which is re-shaping the faith the developing world had in neoliberal economics.

OBOR represents an alternative model of economic growth that's being very well-received, and delivers real results (in terms of tangible industry and infrastructure) and its not done in USD. That is a current, measurable outcome of multipolarity which is nothing but dialectics applied to geopolitics.

Edited April 7, 2023 by Jwayne

[Girzo]

15 hours ago, Israfil said:

It's not that simple, actually. Russia and Ukraine share a lot of cultural and historic backgrounds.

And Ukrainians share cultural and historic backgrounds with Poland, who is a member of the EU. Why favourize one-side of the conflict.

There's no balnce between perspectives there. Integrating with the EU is the more popular option among Ukraine's people from what I know.

[Husseinisdoingfine]

On 3/29/2023 at 10:03 PM, Leo Gura said:

The war crimes happening in Ukraine are nuts. These Russians have no respect, honor, or professionalism. These are not professional soldiers. Which is why I call them barbarians.

 

[kray]

I think overall, the invasion and imperialistic endeavors of Putin is backwards and horrible, but from a non-biased sense, the sentiment makes sense from a geopolitical and cultural perspective.

From a geopolitical perspective, Putin has access to warmer ports by the Sea of Azov in crimea, allowing for better trade options. But most importantly from a cultural perspective, it’s about a reunification of cultures.

Prior to the dissolution of the Soviet Union, there was never a separate Ukraine or a separate Russia, and there was never a distinction between Ukrainian and Russian people.

They were always the same people and the same culture with small difference in language. It’s one thing if Russia wants to acquire a sovereign nation like Azerbaijan, whom are nothing like the Russians genetically or culturally. But with the sentiment of acquiring Russia, it’s more a kin to reintegrating a lost central piece of their culture, their nation, and their former great empire.

When the Vikings started Kievan Rus, the capital and heart of the culture of the empire was Kiev. Kiev was the first major and central Russian city. And the key population at the time were known as the Rus people. This is the root term for “Russian” today. So the original Russians, the Rus people, consisted of Russians and Ukrainians. The Ukrainians are as much Russian as the Russians are them selves. 

Now obviously in a modern context that gives no justification of for aggressive offensive move into Ukraine. That gives no justification to kill and rape innocent Ukrainians. However I do think the constant demonization of Russia was a part of the problem. When you constantly demonize a bear, it’s more than likely going to be provoked and attack. However if you respect a bears space, it’s “terms” things are much likely to go smoother. All the west has to do is respect Russia’s terms and conditions, and give Russia the full confidence. This will make the Russia-west relations all that better. 

In an ideal world, Russia should not aggressively go into Ukraine, but rather make a deal. This also means Zelenskyy has to be more adjusting. Allow russia to acquire some territories in the parts of Ukraine they desire, but also allow Ukraine to be its own nation and a nato ally and member.

I also don’t know how possible this would be, but creating a Slavic Union of nations, such Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, etc. would be a healthy way for all these countries of maintaining a stable relationship not only with the us and west, but Russia as well. In turn, Russia should give up some of its Asian territories such as Chechnya, Dagestan and the like of which as those territories were acquired through colonial conquest and never an important role to the Russian identity. Russia also needs to pay reparations to these hypothetical new nations for the genocide and brutality they faced from the Russians (read about the circassian genocide):

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

I know this was pretty long, but I feel like all the points above are, in my view, a way to stabilize everything going on in Eastern Europe and Russia. I see the best way out as a win win situation.