The US has many such friends everywhere.

These friends are all evil incarnate until a few bombs brings them freedom and democracy....

So bit confused on what you are trying to say here... — ssu

I didn't used Poland as an example. It was @SophistiCat.
Anyway, what I meant is that Poland (in WWII crisis) didn't act struggling Western side or Soviet block just for national issues. Let's be honest, nobody cared about Polish destruction and chaos. After WWII, Poland began to live a very complex situation and USA administration or the Bank of England didn't support them with tons and tons of money.
Poland did not regain its independence after World War Two. After the great conflict, the Soviet Union, which had first attacked Poland as Hitler’s ally in 1939, seized the entire Polish territory, with the open connivance of the triumphant Allies: A post-war war. The years of 1944–1963 in Poland

Not all the Ukranians are opposed to Russia. The more closer you go to Russian border you would see that their citizens root for Russia instead of Western world or NATO. This is a complex issue and it is not about all Ukrainians are against the invasion. Probably, the citizens of Kiev are nationalists but I doubt if the citizens from Jerson or Crimea have the same feelings. — javi2541997

This was obvious in 2014. The creation of Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics obviously show that there were those in support of them, yet important cities like Kharkov (or Odessa) didn't follow the pattern.

But even then, it has been said that for example if an actual referendum, not a staged one, would have been for Crimea to join Russia, there would have been a large minority supporting this, but not a majority.

And before 2014 the ties to Russia were totally different. But the simple obvious truth is that Putin had ambitions over Ukrainian territories. Annexing territories and bombing people make people change their minds, obviously. So things are different in 2023 than they were in 2021 or prior to 2014.

Let's be honest, nobody cared about Polish destruction and chaos. — javi2541997

Really?

I remember that both France and the UK declared war on Germany.

I think that doesn't sound like "nobody cared". The simple fact that these countries were too weak to do anything, but to start the "phoney war". And France got overrun in the next year.

The difference between National Socialists and plain socialists appears to be pretty tenuous.

These friends are all evil incarnate until a few bombs brings them freedom and democracy.... — Manuel

Abso-fucking-lutely!

Here, for example, are some people enjoying some of the freedom and democracy brought by US bombing campaigns in Yemen ...



They do look pleased, don't they?

And after the stirling work done by US military support in Afghanistan... some of the grateful population enjoying the freedom and democracy thereby brought about...



We can only look forward to the roaring successes their involvement in Ukraine will no doubt secure...

Well, some bombs are better than others, apparently. Putin's bombs hurt more. Ergo, lets guarantee he uses more of them.

Good times...

I remember that both France and the UK declared war on Germany. — ssu

I mean afterwards. When WWII ended. Nobody cared about Poland, Hungary, Czech, etc...

France and UK declared the war, yes. But we should recall some facts: the British royal family's connection with Nazis (The Duke and Duchess of Windsor were sympathetic to Nazi Germany)
The resistance of Charles de Gaulle fighting against the Nazis, while France controlled (and continued to control...) all African possessions.

What I want to mean: hypocrisy. The states and organisations only act when they see it is worthy for their own interests and I don't understand why the Western world is caring that much about Ukraine. I feel I am not seeing something.

The difference between National Socialists and plain socialists appears to be pretty tenuous. — SophistiCat

Here, let me help.

Socialists recently at Spandau...


National Socialists when they were last at Spandau...


Spot the difference?

Hint - count the number of brutally murdered members of ethnic minorities in each photo.

Well, some bombs are better than others, apparently. Putin's bombs hurt more. — Manuel

Yes, and also, we mustn't forget that people who die in wars die more than people who die from starvation, or air pollution, or lack of medical investment... so it's so much more important to prevent those deaths (obviously by selling them weapons) than it is to prevent deaths by any other cause (which, coincidentally, is also achieved by selling them weapons).

It's all irrationality to the highest degree. Nationalism is poison, be it Russian, Ukrainian, American or whatever.

Combine that with modern weaponry and a comfortably-at-home support team rooting for "victory" and you get all those deaths you mention. As a bonus, you get to feel good for "supporting the good guys".

It should be added that it's actually supporting the death of the good guys.

:roll:

What did you just write?! If the “concept” (intention or extension) of “legitimate grievance” needs to be negotiated then you yourself can not claim as a fact that those I listed are “legitimate grievances”: main parties didn’t negotiate anywhere what “legitimate grievances” Russia may be acknowledged to have. — neomac

Unfortunately your reading comprehension is so low we need here a dictionary intervention.

My constituents have a legitimate grievance, and it must be addressed tonight.

People caught in this way have a legitimate grievance against the tax regulations in this sense.

The system would then be clogged, making it impossible for those with a legitimate grievance to have their case heard promptly.

I think all of us feel that one of the most important things is that nobody should have a legitimate grievance.

I realise that there is a war on and that things are difficult in regard to borrowing, but this is a legitimate grievance.

Both claimed a legitimate grievance against those who stood in the way of a thorough-going conversion and justified violence in terms of divinely sanctioned retribution.

Those absent parent groups who campaigned so loudly against the child support scheme can no longer claim legitimate grievance.

Does this term as it is used at present prevent a person who has a legitimate grievance against that diplomatic agent from taking proceedings?

No attempt has been made to meet this real and legitimate grievance felt by tens of thousands of work people.

The attainment of contentment, or if contentment be too strong a word, the absence of a legitimate grievance, is a big step towards efficiency.

We hope also to get rid of some legitimate grievance which exists with regard to ready-made clothing. — Cambridge Dictionary

The banks should not be handed a legitimate grievance that would justify their failure to lend. -Times, Sunday Times

Politicians have responded by recognising tax avoidance as a legitimate grievance and are attempting to tackle it. -Times, Sunday Times

You have a legitimate grievance against words ending in. -Times, Sunday Times

Any employee who saw goalposts moving thus would have a legitimate grievance. - Times, Sunday Times

The people were satisfied with the administration, and they had no legitimate grievance against it. - Retrieved from Wikipedia — Collins Dictionary

"Legitimate grievance" is a mainly legal expression to make the distinction with a "grievance" that may or may not be legitimate.

For there to be a grievance, someone need only to complain about something, which could be anything, no matter how unreasonable.

For example, an executive may come into the CEO's office and say that there's a problem with a client and they received a letter with a long list of grievances.

The CEO may then reply "are there legitimate grievances?"

The question is not about whether the client feels their grievances are legitimate, but what this executive thinks. The answer will be the executives opinion about the merit of the grievances.

Legitimate grievance is a concept utilised on one side of the negotiation table to discuss the list of grievances on the other side.

In the context of business, if I'm the CEO and you an executive in the firm, and we agree this client has legitimate grievances, it means we believe the client would have a strong case to sue us, so we should be nice and try to solve the problem. If we concluded there was no legitimate grievances it means we think we can tell this client to take a hike. Of course, that remains our opinion and others may disagree or then we may disagree with each other.

In non-legal contexts (like the police promised coffee but that could not give rise to a law suite), or then the war (which has no legal authority to resolve it), the concept of legitimate grievance simply expresses what you think does actually need to be resolved in some way for the other side to do what you want. The police may have no legal compulsion to get a murderer a cup of coffee, but they may feel this grievance is indeed legitimate, they did say they would do that, and so they should comply if they want the murderer to keep talking.

Legitimate grievances is what you discuss on your side about the other side, trying to determine or guess what's actually important to the other side that your side is willing to do. The police may recognise the murderer's grievance of being arrested and no longer free is heart-felt and the murderer rather not be in prison; so, sure, it's a grievance but the police are unlikely to view it as a legitimate one, whereas coffee perhaps they can do.

So, when I say, for example, Nazi's in Ukraine is a legitimate grievance, it's expressing my opinion that we in the West should also not want Nazi's in Ukraine.

For a negotiation to conclude, there is rarely an agreement on what are all the legitimate grievances but the end result is simply the terms of the agreement.

The whole point of settling (for example in business) is often to be able to avoid ever needing to recognise the grievance was legitimate, and substituting money for the explicit recognition and potential legal public relations consequences if the matter went further. "We recognise no wrongdoing" is a typical phrase of any settlement between a corporation and the government. Of course, the whole reason they are settling is because, internally, they see the grievances in question are indeed legitimate and they have indeed done wrong.

So, now that (hopefully) you know what words mean, you are free to argue that Nazi's in Ukraine is not a legitimate grievance, or the oppression of Russian language speakers, or NATO missiles in the baltic, or indeed Russia has no legitimate grievances of any kind.

You are also free to argue that these may very well be legitimate grievances, but Ukraine has many more legitimate grievances, etc.

And, if you want the war to continue, for instance to maximise the damage on Russia, then it simply doesn't matter what may or may not be legitimate grievances for anyone: the war continues and feelings don't matter.

However, it's when you want to negotiate a settlement that the other side may accept, then it is necessary to consider things from their point of view and what grievances they have and which are legitimate (according to yourself).

A successful negotiation will parse everyone's legitimate grievances (at least satisfactorily enough for all parties to agree to it) and everyone's leverage (at least satisfactorily enough that no party feels they have enough leverage to demand more, as otherwise they would demand more and the negotiation continues).

Negotiation is not some absolute moral question, it is likely the moral issues remain unresolved and all parties feel the most wronged.

Negotiation is about arriving at agreements, which requires considering the perspective of the counter-party and how they see the world and what they would see as potentially resolving the situation and preferable to further conflict.

As far as smug self-righteousness goes, it is difficult to surpass its glory when you dismiss the will to defend oneself as a slavish pursuit of an ideology.

As far as smug self-righteousness goes, it is difficult to surpass its glory when you dismiss the will to defend oneself as a slavish pursuit of an ideology. — Paine

Defending a nation state is not self defence, the nation state exists only ideologically.

If the cost of the defence far exceeds whatever the purported benefits in well being to the majority of people are, then it is indeed a slavish pursuit of an ideology.

You are free to argue that the cost to Ukraine so far is worth it and overall "defending" Ukrainian interest, likewise baiting the war in the first place by continuously asserting the joining of NATO ... without ever joining NATO and NATO explicitly telling Zelensky that the "door would remain open" but they would never be allowed to join.

Even more absurd, when the war started it was all about defending Ukraine's "right" to join NATO, as all parties pretty much agreed that Ukrainian neutrality would end the war and so reasoning to reject that was needed by the parties pushing war. You cannot be more ideologically motivated than fighting and dying for a hypothetical right to join an organisation that won't let you ever join in practice.

There is honor in fighting even for a cause that cannot be won.

The issue is the continued cost of doing so, in terms of lives at stake, not to mention those pesky "externalities" that are hurting the whole world. And further problems that may arise if escalation continues.

There comes a point in which one must consider the costs of further loss of life.

Yes, plenty of smugness - from those who aren't fighting, rooting for those who are dying.

The people in Ukraine who are fighting Russians are fighting because they were attacked by Russians. Whatever arrangements could have been made before that are not germane any longer. To only view the unfolding of events that might have been is to ignore what is happening now.

Yes, neither you nor I are fighting. But you are willing to explain to the one's fighting why they are dying. To leave their view out of the picture comes from standing above them.

It seems your reasons for your views stand on a better foundation than mine, given the apparently curious comment that you know that those who are dying all share the same view.

So, then, we are on equal footing, standing "above" the dead. The difference seems to be that I want the war to end sooner rather than later, while you opt for the opposite - the obvious consequences of such a view needing little elaboration, as we daily see.

Make of that what you will.

Listing random examples from a dictionary is pointless if they do not clarify what "legitimate" in "legitimate grievance" is supposed to mean. Here some reading for you: https://uswlocals.org/system/files/whatisagrievance.pdf

Negotiation is about arriving at agreements, which requires considering the perspective of the counter-party and how they see the world and what they would see as potentially resolving the situation and preferable to further conflict. — boethius

Fine with me, but you are no longer talking about legitimate grievance here.

we agree this client has legitimate grievances, it means we believe the client would have a strong case to sue us, so we should be nice and try to solve the problem. — boethius

The case can be considered strong precisely because pre-established laws and contracts can grant legitimacy to the grievance to the client.

the concept of legitimate grievance simply expresses what you think does actually need to be resolved in some way for the other side to do what you want. — boethius

You are evidently confused. One can think that something needs to be resolved independently of the legitimacy of the grievance. If somebody is negotiating a ransom with a kidnapper that doesn't imply in anyway that laws, moral or contracts give legitimacy to the kidnapper' demand. An agreement is found for pragmatic reasons not because a right has been acknowledged. Indeed, even after agreement and the transaction take place, the police can still be after and find the kidnapper, and return the ransom to the victims without the kidnapper having a say about the legitimacy of keeping the ransom just because he and the victim found a pragmatic agreement.

So, when I say, for example, Nazi's in Ukraine is a legitimate grievance, it's expressing my opinion that we in the West should also not want Nazi's in Ukraine. — boethius

Oh it's your opinion about what Westerners should do and not a fact about Russian legitimate grievances. I thought so.

However, it's when you want to negotiate a settlement that the other side may accept, then it is necessary to consider things from their point of view and what grievances they have and which are legitimate. — boethius

Sure there might be demands that are legitimate. But you made a list of what you take to be legitimate grievances from Russia, without offering any plausible argument in support of their legitimacy wrt pre-established set of moral/legal rules that the West and Russia share. In any case the point is that for Russians the acknowledgment of "legitimate grievances" (like "Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault") has less to do with negotiating some material compensation like miserable kidnappers and more to do with things like violation of promises by the Westerners, lack of due respect of Russian sphere of influence, right to defend Russian minorities the way they see fit, right to oppress any independent national movement within their sphere of influence through Russification, right to be treated on the international stage as a superpower very much like the US and China, the extraordinary privilege for states like Ukraine to be dominated by Russia, and the like.

I want the conflict to end now. I am not the one fighting it, however.

Once again, you would have the Ukrainians merely be pieces on a board game.

You're speaking about pieces on a board game from me? Who are the ones giving Ukrainians arms with no echo of a though given about what the costs are nor who dies?

You think these "friends" of Ukraine give a flying f**k about them?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/04/26/us-has-big-new-goal-ukraine-weaken-russia/

I repeat, it is nice to see how so many people care about Ukraine, but don't give a damn about all the other on-going conflicts in the world.

Keep fighting the good fight.

Your observations do not support the little regard you have for Ukrainian motivations.

They do show why you view their agency to be unimportant.

The states and organisations only act when they see it is worthy for their own interests and I don't understand why the Western world is caring that much about Ukraine. I feel I am not seeing something. — javi2541997

You mean to say that your horse is higher because you don't care about anything (besides your income, natch)?

Well, if you believe that "states and organisations only act when they see it is worthy for their own interests" then it should be obvious why the Western world is caring about the biggest war in Europe since WWII. But another reason is that not everyone in the Western world is a selfish rat, and governments and organisations in democratic nations care about public opinion.

And your observations do? Given that all Ukrainians share the same motivation?

Because surely they all want to die to defeat the Russians.

But another reason is that not everyone in the Western world is a selfish rat, and governments and organisations in democratic nations care about public opinion. — SophistiCat

I am agree in this point. Nevertheless… those persons are the minority. In most of the cases we would see that each state or organization would act selfishly.
But yes, I follow your point and view. We should estimate those whose interests are not trickster.

Nationalism is poison, be it Russian, Ukrainian, American or whatever. — Manuel

Exactly. The reason why so many in this discussion cannot seem to get their heads around viewing this in any other grouping than by nationality. As if Zelensky (net worth $20 million), Putin (net worth $70 Billion), and Biden (net worth $9 Million) were not all in the same group, and far more separate from the working classes of Russia, Ukraine and America who each have far more in common with each other than with any of their ruling classes.

As if a flag carried more significance than being able to afford a roof, food, or medical care.

The people in Ukraine who are fighting Russians are fighting because they were attacked by Russians. — Paine

How on earth would you know that? Weren't you earlier berating @Manuel for...

you are willing to explain to the one's fighting why they are dying. — Paine

How are you not doing exactly the same here. Maybe some are staunch nationalists. Maybe some want to expunge all Russian influence from Eastern Ukraine and welcome the chance. Maybe some don't give a fuck who's in charge but Ukraine has conscription and has banned men from leaving the country...

It's starting to look a bit like the CSTO is failing, in some ways at least.
Russia has been a sort of deterrent within the alliance against conflict, but now Putin's Russia is busy elsewhere (Ukraine), and apparently neglecting the alliance.

As far as power-strategies go, it's in Putin's interest to keep them in check, and, at the same time, have them "keep each other in check".
In principle, more small states are easier for Putin's Russia to "manage" (dominate), than few large states, as long as they don't work (too closely) together.

What might the Kremlin do (if anything)?
Laissez-faire could get out of hand I suppose. Unless 3rd parties intervene? But then...


(As an aside, it might be interesting to count/compare occurrences of "pro-Ukraine", "pro-Putin", "pro-US", "pro-whatever" in the thread.)

Given that all Ukrainians share the same motivation? — Manuel

I referred to the ones who are fighting and the ones who support those people. There are a lot of them. I won't bother posting more evidence for that as it is dismissed as propaganda. Nobody has yet to post evidence to the contrary unless you count the polls conducted by Russia.

Obviously, there is more than one perspective. The politics before the invasion has been interrupted by an attack upon the whole country. The willingness of Russia to kill civilians seems, in part, to divide those who want to fight. Please report when you hear of that happening.

This is an improvement from when you did not see any kind of Ukrainian identity as being germane to what is happening. It takes Ukrainians for them to do bad things to each other.

The compulsion to serve is an important issue. It has been a deal breaker in many wars. The way you present it as an elective is odd. That would be more a reflection of intent if Ukraine was trying to invade Russia.