Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t know about existential. Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, Turkey, Hungary all lost their empires without ceasing to exist.
Do you think their leaders at the time were fine with this?
They were all wrong
The Ukraine war is ultimately about Poland
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Re: The Ukraine war is ultimately about Poland
#12Re: The Ukraine war is ultimately about Poland
#13Interesting read. The underlying point here is what many of us have been saying since the beginning of the conflict. Putin is not some crazy drugged up megalomaniac. Morality aside, his moves are clearly rational and shows a high level of sophistication. A small window of opportunity opened up just after covid. Russia got a chance to make its last stand against the rapid decline of its sphere of influence and soverei…
The article's analysis focuses on a rivalry between Russia and Poland. At least in my book, being stuck on a rivalry to the point of your own destruction is the exact opposite of "clearly rational" and having "a high level of sophistication". If Poland has gained this newfound strength by shoring up its western border through cooperation and trade, and Putin is worried about Ukraine just being able to do so as well,…
Putin tried to do that at the beginning of his presidency. He was talking a lot about joining NATO and even EU, but that didn’t go anywhere. Russia is much more valuable to the EU as a fossil colony.
Re: The Ukraine war is ultimately about Poland
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t know about existential. Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, Turkey, Hungary all lost their empires without ceasing to exist.
Do you think their leaders at the time were fine with this?
That's a good question to think about actually. I don't think they handled it the way Russia is handling it now (assuming that this is in fact what's happening with Russia).
Actually the big European powers gave up their empires fairly quietly. Yes they sometimes fought wars to keep them on a case by case basis, but I don't think any of them launched large scale campaigns of invasion as a response.
Re: The Ukraine war is ultimately about Poland
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t know about existential. Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, Turkey, Hungary all lost their empires without ceasing to exist.
Do you think their leaders at the time were fine with this?
Queen Elizabeth II oversaw a lot of the final decline of the British Empire and Commonwealth. She seemed okay with it.
Re: The Ukraine war is ultimately about Poland
#16Interesting read. The underlying point here is what many of us have been saying since the beginning of the conflict. Putin is not some crazy drugged up megalomaniac. Morality aside, his moves are clearly rational and shows a high level of sophistication. A small window of opportunity opened up just after covid. Russia got a chance to make its last stand against the rapid decline of its sphere of influence and soverei…
I don’t know about existential. Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, Turkey, Hungary all lost their empires without ceasing to exist.
feels like there is something different between countries you have listed and Russia, just can’t put my finger on what it is… :)
Re: The Ukraine war is ultimately about Poland
#17Interesting read. The underlying point here is what many of us have been saying since the beginning of the conflict. Putin is not some crazy drugged up megalomaniac. Morality aside, his moves are clearly rational and shows a high level of sophistication. A small window of opportunity opened up just after covid. Russia got a chance to make its last stand against the rapid decline of its sphere of influence and soverei…
Putin != Russia It was, and has always been a war to maintain a kleptocratic autocrat.
Navalny has always maintained that Crimea should be part of Russia, as did Yeltsin, so there goes your theory that the cause of the war is the idea that Putin is an especially bad leader.
Re: The Ukraine war is ultimately about Poland
#18Interesting read. The underlying point here is what many of us have been saying since the beginning of the conflict. Putin is not some crazy drugged up megalomaniac. Morality aside, his moves are clearly rational and shows a high level of sophistication. A small window of opportunity opened up just after covid. Russia got a chance to make its last stand against the rapid decline of its sphere of influence and soverei…
Many people don't seem to realize how existential this is for Russia What was existential for Russia? If they had of just remained peaceful and sold resources to the rest of the world, nothing would've happened to them, there was nothing existential about it. Maybe Putin is a paranoid lunatic and thinks people were out to get him, but there is no way there was some secret western plot to invade Russia or anything lik…
It is not existential for Russia, it's just yet another barely consistent concept Russian apologists are throwing around in hope it sticks. I vividly remember how there were dozens of comments on this website defending the lunatic conspiracy theory about "NATO biolabs below Azovstal" during week 3 of the invasion, so HN is just another social media "zone" which Russians and their Western sympathizers try to "flood with shit", quoting one of their ideologues.
Re: The Ukraine war is ultimately about Poland
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
The article's analysis focuses on a rivalry between Russia and Poland. At least in my book, being stuck on a rivalry to the point of your own destruction is the exact opposite of "clearly rational" and having "a high level of sophistication". If Poland has gained this newfound strength by shoring up its western border through cooperation and trade, and Putin is worried about Ukraine just being able to do so as well,…
Putin tried to do that at the beginning of his presidency. He was talking a lot about joining NATO and even EU, but that didn’t go anywhere. Russia is much more valuable to the EU as a fossil colony.
The largest, most resource-rich, nuclear-protected country in the world with the decent education cannot advance without raping its neighbors, because checks notes neighbors wanted to trade fossils with it?
Re: The Ukraine war is ultimately about Poland
#20Interesting read. The underlying point here is what many of us have been saying since the beginning of the conflict. Putin is not some crazy drugged up megalomaniac. Morality aside, his moves are clearly rational and shows a high level of sophistication. A small window of opportunity opened up just after covid. Russia got a chance to make its last stand against the rapid decline of its sphere of influence and soverei…
I don’t know about existential. Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, Turkey, Hungary all lost their empires without ceasing to exist.
Few of those empires lost territory between themselves and what they viewed as hostile powers.
For the UK, France, Spain, Portugal it was overseas empires