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Why John Mearsheimer Blames the U.S. for the Crisis in Ukraine

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Re: Why John Mearsheimer Blames the U.S. for the Crisis in Ukraine

#331

Post by Grustaf »

foogazi wrote: post #223
Grustaf wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're fighting because they are being attacked, and because Slavs are courageous and stubborn. But the West are not telling them to give up, to save civilian lives. Instead they encourage them to keep fighting, delaying the inevitable. I don't know by how many days that will prolong the war, but it's reckless.

Does the West have anything to do with Slav courage? Do you think Ukrainians are incapable of deciding for themselves? Putin seems to think so

As I wrote. Ukraine will obviously defend itself when attacked, with or without the West. And the West has been clear about not helping. But encouraging them to keep fighting, when it seems completely hopeless, is not doing them a service. Keyboard warriors in the US telling Ukrainian civilians to throw Molotov cocktails on tanks is especially infuriating.

Re: Why John Mearsheimer Blames the U.S. for the Crisis in Ukraine

#332

Post by himinlomax »

warner_of_doom wrote: post #38

Seeing this play out in the media reminds me of the Iraq War hysteria in 2003. Completely one-sided coverage, classic war-time propaganda (ghost of kiev), banning Russian arts and paralympians, etc. I've lost all faith in the media. Period. You may think that there is an absolute answer to this situation, but there isn't. I recommend that you study commentators and scholars such as: John Mearsheimer, Zbigniew Brezins…

One sided coverage in 2003? That's not what I remember, and that was definitely NOT the case in Europe.

Re: Why John Mearsheimer Blames the U.S. for the Crisis in Ukraine

#333

Post by jazzyjackson »

Grustaf wrote: post #328
jazzyjackson wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine Biden telling Ukraine to lay down arms and capitulate to the Russian occupation, and we thought Trump acted like the Manchurian candidate ! I really can’t see into your mind, how is Putin not the reckless one here? He’s going on a military adventure that has kept the Russian stock market closed for a week.

There can be more than one reckless party. Putin obviously started the war, and Russia will have suffered huge losses, not to mention the devastating human toll. But do you think Ukraine has a chance here? What is the purpose of fighting? It would only make sense if there was a chance of NATO or the EU stepping in to help them, but that seems to be ruled out.

NATO absolutely has stepped in via intelligence and ammunition. Kyiv would not stand for as long as it has without this support.

What is the purpose of fighting? Have you looked at Russia? ukrainians would like to remain free of totalitarianism and will die trying. They will not accept becoming a vassal state. What is the alternative to fighting?

It is clear to me they have a chance, as Russia has failed to gain air supremacy and the conscripts keep defecting. [I admit I only see pro-Ukraine propaganda, but as long as they are transmitting this propaganda out of Kyiv they are winning]

Re: Why John Mearsheimer Blames the U.S. for the Crisis in Ukraine

#334

Post by Grustaf »

lxm wrote: post #238
Grustaf wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is definitely less violent repression of journalists in Ukraine. But the corruption is worse, and the economy is doing very badly, it's the poorest country in Europe, despite fantastic conditions. I'm obviously not saying it's OK to invade a country just because it's corrupt, and that's obviously not the reason. I'm only talking about the absurd apotheosis of the corrupt Zelensky and the crazy idea that Ukraine…

> the corruption is worse Source? You keep repeating that, but Transparency International ranked Ukraine above Russia https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2021 You are correct on the poverty numbers if the peer group is “rest of Europe”, not “rest of USSR alumni”. Is it a reasonable peer group?

If you listen to Western media, Ukraine is just another democratic European country. Most Americans probably imagine that it's something like the Czech republic, when in fact it's 50% poorer than Belarus.

By the way here's an article about Zelensky written 2 weeks ago, so about 1 week before his apotheosis: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/21/opinion/ukraine-russia-ze...

About corruption being worse, that's mostly anecdotal. I have friends running parts of, or working for major corporations in Russia and Ukraine. But also, look at the amazing wealth of natural resources in Ukraine and compare it to the GDP.

Re: Why John Mearsheimer Blames the U.S. for the Crisis in Ukraine

#335

Post by Grustaf »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #333
Grustaf wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There can be more than one reckless party. Putin obviously started the war, and Russia will have suffered huge losses, not to mention the devastating human toll. But do you think Ukraine has a chance here? What is the purpose of fighting? It would only make sense if there was a chance of NATO or the EU stepping in to help them, but that seems to be ruled out.

NATO absolutely has stepped in via intelligence and ammunition. Kyiv would not stand for as long as it has without this support. What is the purpose of fighting? Have you looked at Russia? ukrainians would like to remain free of totalitarianism and will die trying. They will not accept becoming a vassal state. What is the alternative to fighting? It is clear to me they have a chance, as Russia has failed to gain air…

> What is the purpose of fighting? Have you looked at Russia? ukrainians would like to remain free of totalitarianism and will die trying. They will not accept becoming a vassal state. What is the alternative to fighting?

The point is that it seems completely hopeless without direct military help from the West. Looked at Russia, in what sense? I have lived there, so I know what life is like there, but I don't know the state of the military. Except that it's enormous, and only a fraction has been deployed so far.

Why won't they accept becoming a vassal state, if the alternative is complete destruction? Or are they betting that Putin will back off before it's levelled to the ground. Perhaps he will, but I wouldn't bet on it, look at Chechnya.

Clearly Putin thought the resistance would be weak and starting out they went to great lengths to spare civilians, but that has already started to give way. It's awful to think what will happen if this drags on.

Re: Why John Mearsheimer Blames the U.S. for the Crisis in Ukraine

#336

Post by zozbot234 »

cpleppert wrote: post #323
zozbot234 wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing about this archaic, old-fashioned "power politics" is that it's self-defeating in the age of late-stage modernity. You want to talk about power? China has certainly gained plenty of real-world power since the days of Mao Zedong. Japan has power. South Korea has power. But the thing is that, invariably, they did not gain that power by playing zero-sum "power politics" games, but rather as a side-effect of br…

>>You want to talk about power? China has certainly gained plenty of real-world power since the days of Mao Zedong. From the perspective of power maximizing their willingness to go to war is puzzling. But most research suggests states are not power maximizing but rather security maximizing. States don't consider their military potential in a vacuum but rather relative to other states that could disrupt their security…

I might agree but "states" here should really mean "decision making elites within states". It's not like "Russia" as a country fears for her security (that's of course a category error!), it's more that there's a pretty well-defined elite of people with decision making power within Russia who fear that their current power might not be stable.

Democracy helps solve these screwed up incentives by vesting sovereignty (the source for legitimacy of that sort of power) in the people as a whole, and making the status as an "elite" highly time-limited and contestable. So nobody has to fear more for their security than anyone else.

Re: Why John Mearsheimer Blames the U.S. for the Crisis in Ukraine

#337

Post by Sylamore »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #218
BitwiseFool wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a little more complicated than that. Ukraine did not have the ability to use any of those nuclear weapons because they never had the launch codes. They were basically stationed in Ukraine but were still under Moscow's control. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permissive_Action_Link A rough analogy would be this, if the United States broke apart South Dakota would have hundreds of nuclear warheads but the South Dako…

And they lacked the knowledge and infrastructure to maintain or modify them. And Russia didn't want them to have them and knew their exact locations. And NATO and the rest of the world saw Ukraine as a violation of the non-proliferation treaty and didn't want them to have them.

I suspect they had the knowledge, considering Ukraine was where one of their early nuclear research facilities were - they were able to reproduce early fission experiments and made a proposal to leverage the ability in bombs in 1940 but were dismissed by nuclear experts in Moscow[0]. And it was Ukrainian's who worked to reverse engineer the V2 rockets post WWII and turned it into the rocket design that put Sputnik into space[1].

[0] - https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/ukraine-and-soviet-...

[1] - https://euromaidanpress.com/2021/07/26/how-ukraine-wants-to-...

Re: Why John Mearsheimer Blames the U.S. for the Crisis in Ukraine

#338

Post by alphabettsy »

landemva wrote: post #315
dragonwriter wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you have a source for that? US and other Western troops (not NATO per se , though I think all were NATO members) were openly present in Ukraine training the Ukraine military up until shortly before the recent Russian escalation of their long-running invasion of Ukraine (they were pulled out to avoid getting caught up in direct combat with Russia in the event of an invasion.) EDIT: if you need a source, here's an…

Biden's withdraw of US troops in February was the green light for Russia to walk in.

Weren’t there less than 200 US troops and Russia had already amassed at the border of Ukraine?

Seems like it was going to happen regardless since the removal of US troops was because of the Russian build-up and not the other way around.

Re: Why John Mearsheimer Blames the U.S. for the Crisis in Ukraine

#339

Post by jazzyjackson »

Grustaf wrote: post #335
jazzyjackson wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NATO absolutely has stepped in via intelligence and ammunition. Kyiv would not stand for as long as it has without this support. What is the purpose of fighting? Have you looked at Russia? ukrainians would like to remain free of totalitarianism and will die trying. They will not accept becoming a vassal state. What is the alternative to fighting? It is clear to me they have a chance, as Russia has failed to gain air…

> What is the purpose of fighting? Have you looked at Russia? ukrainians would like to remain free of totalitarianism and will die trying. They will not accept becoming a vassal state. What is the alternative to fighting? The point is that it seems completely hopeless without direct military help from the West. Looked at Russia, in what sense? I have lived there, so I know what life is like there, but I don't know th…

> Looked at Russia, in what sense?

I will respect that you know better than me, an American that would like to see the sights of Russia one day.

In the sense that Putin murders/poisons his political opponents and journalists like Navalny & Politkovskaya, tortures and imprisons activists like Magnitsky and Nadya Tolokno. I can sympathize with anyone who would avoid a government responsible for such acts, granting that I'm ignorant of any Ukrainian equivelancies.

To me, Ukraine has the hope of a European future of democratic rule and economic prosperity, unburdened by such kleptocracy as that which has deprived the Russian military of its competence. Really, I think Putin was told his forces on the border were topped off with food, fuel, and combat units hungry for conquest. He is sorely mistaken, and his troops are hungry, out of gas, and without purpose. Again, this is just what I see. A superpower that isn't. As the war drags on, Putin has to answer to his fellow oligarchs as much as anyone else, and Ukraine will continue to be supplied by Russia's enemies.

Re: Why John Mearsheimer Blames the U.S. for the Crisis in Ukraine

#340

Post by artem247 »

warner_of_doom wrote: post #38

Seeing this play out in the media reminds me of the Iraq War hysteria in 2003. Completely one-sided coverage, classic war-time propaganda (ghost of kiev), banning Russian arts and paralympians, etc. I've lost all faith in the media. Period. You may think that there is an absolute answer to this situation, but there isn't. I recommend that you study commentators and scholars such as: John Mearsheimer, Zbigniew Brezins…

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