why is NATO a threat? Has NATO ever started a conflict, seized territory, or imposed sanctions? Genuinely asking, I pretty ignorant here.
Russia says Ukraine talks hit 'dead end', Poland warns of risk of war
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Re: Russia says Ukraine talks hit 'dead end', Poland warns of risk of war
#12USA annexes Hawaii, no one bats an eye. Russia annexes Crimea, everyone loses their minds.
Re: Russia says Ukraine talks hit 'dead end', Poland warns of risk of war
#13It's funny when the aggressor is "negotiating" to attack or not. The biggest bully in the region feeling "threatened" by its neighbours seeking any possible way to protect themselves from it. Like a government-level "Why are you hitting yourself?"
It's one of the oldest tricks in the book. Remember that Russia invaded and annexed Crimea "to save Russian citizens".
Re: Russia says Ukraine talks hit 'dead end', Poland warns of risk of war
#14I fully support the sovereignty of Ukraine, but I understand the Russian position from watching Prof. John Mearsheimer lectures, particularly this one: Why is Ukraine the West's Fault? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrMiSQAGOS4 John Mearsheimer John Mearsheimer is an American political scientist and international relations scholar, who belongs to the realist school of thought. He is the R. Wendell Harrison Distingui…
You can't support the sovereignty of Ukraine while also supporting Russia's hegemony over Ukraine. Ukraine has the right to defend itself against Russian aggression and to seek alliances which can help to that end. The Russian autocracy views democracy as a threat. This is really no different than Germany, prior to WW2, seeking to dominate the countries around it. Some of those countries had ethnic Germans living the…
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Re: Russia says Ukraine talks hit 'dead end', Poland warns of risk of war
#15I don't blame Russia's stance. I blame the cold war and the US's two pronged approach to most diplomacy matters. NATO was formed to halt the power of the soviet union. once the soviet union fell. NATO should've been disbanded. anyone with a pea of a brain would've seen the consequences of not abandoning nato, and now we're about to pay for those mistakes.
Remember that we were in a similar situation in 2014. And at that point it was about the EU, not NATO.
Since then Russia has invaded annexed part of Ukraine.
So no one observing this should be fooled to think that NATO is really relevant at all. The NATO talk from Russia now is chosen as an impossible demand because they know it’s impossible. It’s used to be able to point fingers and say “look, they are being unreasonable”. The audience is domestic.
Whether NATO should be disbanded or not isn’t exactly a point on the agenda, nor is it fair to say that Ukraine (not a NATO member) has any responsibility in it.
What should Ukraine do here? promise to never join NATO? At gunpoint? In what way does that respect the sovereignty of Ukraine? (The same way it’s borders are respected apparently).
Re: Russia says Ukraine talks hit 'dead end', Poland warns of risk of war
#16It's funny when the aggressor is "negotiating" to attack or not. The biggest bully in the region feeling "threatened" by its neighbours seeking any possible way to protect themselves from it. Like a government-level "Why are you hitting yourself?"
Crazy idea of the day: why not offer NATO membership to both Ukraine and Russia? Then if either side attacks the other, all the other members are obligated to defend against the aggressor. Entangling alliances are like abstraction. The only thing that solves it is more of it.
it was floated up 30 years ago https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/dec/31/russia-assoc...
Re: Russia says Ukraine talks hit 'dead end', Poland warns of risk of war
#17I don't blame Russia's stance. I blame the cold war and the US's two pronged approach to most diplomacy matters. NATO was formed to halt the power of the soviet union. once the soviet union fell. NATO should've been disbanded. anyone with a pea of a brain would've seen the consequences of not abandoning nato, and now we're about to pay for those mistakes.
Absolutely. and this is a view shared by prominent US national security officials, that it is the United States that has caused this crisis. https://theanalysis.news/is-nato-for-security-or-aggression-... Remember, it was the United States that broke the promise to not expand NATO after the fall of the Soviet Union. > Paul Jay >Crazy! Larry, how much of this is driven essentially, really by what domestic politics, th…
> it was the United States that broke the promise to not expand NATO after the fall of the Soviet Union
This promise is a myth [1]. At best, it was an informal statement by some guy in the U.S. government [2]. This has been blown out of proportion beyond any semblance to reality by Putin's propaganda.
And if it had happened, it would have been an agreement with the Soviet Union. Which does not exist. Russia, in 1994, formally agreed to "respect...Ukrainian independence and sovereignty in the existing borders" and "refrain from the threat or the use of force against...Ukraine," among other things. It has flagrantly broken these agreements.
[1] https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2014/11/06/did-nato-...
[2] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057%2Fs41311-020-00224...
Re: Russia says Ukraine talks hit 'dead end', Poland warns of risk of war
#18The bigger question is "why now". Ukraine is not joining NATO or the EU any time soon. Russia has de facto annexed Crimea and its ongoing support for separatists in Donbas keeps the region unstable to its advantage. I suspect two reasons: Putin's flagging domestic support and Russia's (and to be honest, the world's) perception that America is currently so divided and weak it will be unable to offer much resistance th…
are the rest of the US allies in the world so powerless? Isn't this why we have the UN? Without the US, does the world just go back to war, death, and destruction everywhere? That seems crazy to me.
Re: Russia says Ukraine talks hit 'dead end', Poland warns of risk of war
#19USA annexes Hawaii, no one bats an eye. Russia annexes Crimea, everyone loses their minds.
You pretend these are equal:
Well, they are not. There is a good deal over a century between those two events and a whole lot has changed since then - even though I should admit not as much as I want.
Russias aggression against Ukraine however is at a completely different level than anything anyone has seen in Europe since a long time ago (and then it was the Sovjet, and before that Nazi-Germany.)
Re: Russia says Ukraine talks hit 'dead end', Poland warns of risk of war
#20It's funny when the aggressor is "negotiating" to attack or not. The biggest bully in the region feeling "threatened" by its neighbours seeking any possible way to protect themselves from it. Like a government-level "Why are you hitting yourself?"
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