Another of those sorts of reports:

Ukraine: Russia sending civilians through landmine fields to find safe routes
^{— Jerusalem Post, Reuters · Feb 1, 2023}

Would Belarus then be complicit in crimes / human rights violations?
Don't know if Belarus would allow independent investigators, but probably not monitors.

Another of those posts.

There's two parts to this story...

1. A reputable Human rights group with a long and respected history accuses Ukraine of abusing human rights in it's landmine use.

2. One of Ukraine's war propaganda arms reports that Russians are using civilians to navigate these minefields.

In a sane world, which of these elements would receive most air, and which would be treated with some degree of suspicion during a bitter war?

In contrast, which do we have being promoted on social media here?

My point is that Ukraine may play a key role in the Western security system for future challenges, ... — neomac

Ok, but I have trouble reconciling this with page-long discussions about human rights, when you are now giving very straight-forward realist explanations for why Ukraine in NATO is useful to 'the West', which I think means primarily the United States. (And I don't disagree with those explanations. I think it makes good sense for the United States to instrumentalize any willing nation for its own goals.)

Being instrumentalized as a useful asset in great power competition in which, by the way, Ukraine is sitting in the front row, can hardly be considered beneficial to Ukraine though or am I missing something?

Certainly if past nations who found themselves in such a position are anything to go by, Ukraine is in big, big trouble for the foreseeable future.

Ukraine may offer plausible triggers to bend the NATO defensive alliance logic into an offensive operation, if needed. For the same reason, having Ukraine outside NATO has its risks for Russia too because it may keep re-militarised Europeans outside a direct confrontation (not military aid though) but it may also lead to some n-lateral military pact with Ukraine that is less than "defensive". — neomac

I honestly don't think any European nation fantasizes about invading Russia. They have no offensive capabilities to speak of.

The type of threats the Russians fear are probably more focused on economic and (geo)political strangulation - the type that a hostile Ukraine could have facilitated by cutting off Russia's access to the Black Sea.

I do not see any soft way to come out from this game. So either Europeans learn to be and act as a great power (a bit late for that) or they must suffer the great power initiative. — neomac

I don't believe the Russians had much incentive to pick a fight in Ukraine (let alone the rest of Europe) before the United States threatened to incorporate it. Even now the regions it occupies relate directly to their primary strategic interest - Crimea.

With Ukraine being neutral, Russia didn't have to fear the loss of Crimea. It was a stable situation.

If any tangible threat did exist, perhaps the proper reaction of the Europeans should have been to dust off their militaries instead of endlessly suckling on Uncle Sam's teet.

So yes, I agree nations must be prepared for conflict, especially in times like these. I don't agree the path the Europeans have chosen is in any way conducive to their own security.

I think it makes good sense for the United States to instrumentalize any willing nation for its own goals. — Tzeentch

Obviously as a general principle this is true to the point of being a truism, but if you look at the analysis I presented from Rand, it's not even clear that this war is in the US's interests (as a geopolitical unit). It seems more likely that it is very specific key sectors in America, and Europe, whose interests are served by a protracted Ukrainian war - namely arms manufacturing, reconstruction, finance, and gas/energy companies. The rest of the US seems just as prone to the economic downturn and shift to China that the war seems likely to bring, and all are at the same risk from escalation.

I don't think it's true to say that Ukraine are being 'rationally' used as a pawn of the US government. If there's a rational self-interest explanation, it would be that they are being 'rationally' used as a pawn of major industrial investment holders with the US government being merely a tool.

After all, all that lobbying money and share buybacks are not offered out of charity.

Obviously as a general principle this is true to the point of being a truism, ... — Isaac

Just thought I'd drop it here because for whatever reason it still seems controversial to suggest that nations, including the United States, are primarily self-interested.

... it's not even clear that this war is in the US's interests (as a geopolitical unit). It seems more likely that it is very specific key sectors in America, and Europe, whose interests are served by a protracted Ukrainian war - namely arms manufacturing, reconstruction, finance, and gas/energy companies. The rest of the US seems just as prone to the economic downturn and shift to China that the war seems likely to bring, and all are at the same risk from escalation. — Isaac

I agree the military-industrial complex and other corporate interests could have serious influence, however for the United States to go to war with a nuclear-armed former great power while the conflict of the 21st century is looming on the other side of the world in East Asia, demands further explanation.

I don't think it's true to say that Ukraine are being 'rationally' used as a pawn of the US government. If there's a rational self-interest explanation, it would be that they are being 'rationally' used as a pawn of major industrial investment holders with the US government being merely a tool.

After all, all that lobbying money and share buybacks are not offered out of charity. — Isaac

I see your rationale, and I see the argument for the military-industrial complex benefitting of this war, however I struggle to see what economic prospects Ukraine will bring as it is being thoroughly wrecked.

Even if Ukraine wins an unlikely victory, Russia's significant strategic interests in the region will ensure it is the center of conflict for the foreseeable future and beyond.


Earlier in this thread I've tried to offer a geopolitical explanation for the United States' actions:

Since the United States cannot have been surprised by the Russian invasion and also does not seem overly committed to a Ukrainian victory, I am entertaining the hypothesis that the United States intentionally sought to provoke long-lasting conflict between Europe and Russia.

Europe and Russia were cozying up to each other too much, while it is in America's best interest to keep the Heartland divided.

With China and Russia in an alliance that was futher strengthened by the American push for Ukrainian incorporation into NATO, the Eurasian continent was basically already 2/3's united. There was an actual threat of the Heartland uniting completely - with Europe becoming apathetic towards the United States and fairly neutral towards Russia and China, and with Russia and China being markedly anti-American.

The war in Ukraine attempts to establish Europe as a committed American ally, and a counterbalance against Russia in case a large-scale security competition breaks out between the United States and Russia and China.

Far-fetched? Sober big-picture thinking? You be the judge.

The central "oddities" that I am trying to reconcile here are:
1. The United States knew its actions could result in a serious conflict with the Russians.
2. The United States does not seem fully committed to Ukrainian victory (so why provoke conflict?).
3. Given the current geopolitical situation with the threat of war between China and US allies in the Pacific, it couldn't have been the United States' intention to commit to a war in Eastern Europe for a long time.

So at the base I guess we agree that it's hard to see how the United States' interests are served by this war, but I'm not sure if something of this magnitude can be explained by corporate interests. I think it is simply too significant for that.

Ok, but I have trouble reconciling this with page-long discussions about human rights, when you are now giving very straight-forward realist explanations for why Ukraine in NATO is useful to 'the West', which I think means primarily the United States. — Tzeentch

My recent discussion about human rights was just reviewing a narrowly scoped argument of mine inspired by Isaac’s claims [1].

Anyways, the shortest and most general answer I can give you about reconciling clashing views (human rights and realist geopolitics) is the following:
1. Policies promoting human rights (as any alternative policy agenda like the extermination of jews, or the working class liberation from capitalist exploitation, or Islamist sharia) require power. And since power is grounded on scarce resources this will trigger struggles over capitalising those resources among competitors. That’s how any government promoting human rights (competing with those promoting others political agenda) is realistically drawn willingly or unwillingly into a power race (including propaganda wars, economic wars, military wars, you name it).
2. Power is constrained by geographic factors so in international relations it makes sense to relativise (de facto and or normatively) political goals and decision making as a function of territorial sovereignity. This in turn will imply that any other interstate relation will be instrumental to empowering/securing sovereignty and determined by power relations. But that doesn’t exclude convergence and cooperation among states at all (indeed, that’s why there are alliances and partnerships).
3. Geopolitical strategies can involve long-term goals covering decades and generations to come, and always relative to competitors. So the power race is constrained by timing factors: any players is incentivised to be pro-active and facilitate/exploit other players failures/slowness/lack of reactivity as opportunity windows to take bolder steps. In other words, any understanding of geopolitical endgames limited to short term goals and irrespective of what competitors might do next is geopolitical myopic (and most certainly unreliable to support rational expectations about geopolitical players).
4. For a minimal moral justification one can simply argue in terms of the lesser evil (wrt costs and risks): so as long as the great power game is de facto framed as a conflict between US-led coalitions and Russia (and/or China) where the European security is jeopardised in so many ways that Europeans can’t autonomously or effectively address, then European governments are forced to pick a side (with costs and risks included). What’s the lesser evil even for empowering/securing human rights policies?

These are the background assumptions of my reasoning.

I honestly don't think any European nation fantasizes about invading Russia. They have no offensive capabilities to speak of.

The type of threats the Russians fear are probably more focused on economic and (geo)political strangulation - the type that a hostile Ukraine could have facilitated by cutting off Russia's access to the Black Sea. — Tzeentch

I agree and my comment was focusing on the possible contribution of Ukraine. As I said if Ukraine is integrated to the West security system through NATO or through n-lateral security agreement which includes the US, so not demilitarised de facto, Ukraine will always constitute a threat for Russia's access to the Black Sea, its ports might be bombed and military operations can attack Russian Western front, especially the annexed territories if they remain to Russia (in other words the US can play in Ukraine the same game Russia is now playing in Belarus against Ukraine). One way or the other pretexts can be found, if needed. So this might be a possible deterrent for Russia to engage in the eastern front.

I don't believe the Russians had much incentive to pick a fight in Ukraine (let alone the rest of Europe) before the United States threatened to incorporate it. Even now the regions it occupies relate directly to their primary strategic interest - Crimea. — Tzeentch

Even if Crimea is the core in Russian geostrategic calculations, its annexation wouldn’t guarantee its security as it would if Ukraine was under Russian control (or at least, demilitarised). So the threat for Russia may still be serious enough to work as a deterrent.

I don't agree the path the Europeans have chosen is in any way conducive to their own security. — Tzeentch

First, the Europeans are realising how delegating their own security to the US can be costly and risky as they never could before. And that Russia and China are on the path of engaging the US in a nasty power struggle. Understanding the dangers is a necessary step to better address them.
Second, Europeans can profit from the weakening of Russian military capacity, the lessons gained through this war, and the time gained to re-group and re-arm as well as they can.
That’s in some way conducive to Europeans’ own security. In the hindsight it may look suboptimal. In the hindsight.


[1]

As compassionate outsiders, our concern should solely be for the well-being of the people there. — Isaac

What is the well-being of the people? — neomac

That's up to us to decide. Personally I think the notion of human rights is a good starting point. — Isaac

So this might be a possible deterrent for Russia to engage in the eastern front. — neomac

I think it will have the exact opposite effect.

By inserting itself between Russia and one of its core strategic interests, the United States has guaranteed a permanent state of conflict (hot or cold) for as long as that situation persists.

Even if Crimea is the core in Russian geostrategic calculations, its annexation wouldn’t guarantee its security as it would if Ukraine was under Russian control (or at least, demilitarised). So the threat for Russia may still be serious enough to work as a deterrent. — neomac

Holding a nation's core strategic interests hostage will not work as a deterrent. It will ensure conflict permanently looms over the region, just like with Taiwan.

First, the Europeans are realising how delegating their own security to the US can be costly and risky as they never could before... — neomac

There seems to be little awareness within the European leadership that they and the United States have played a prominent role in provoking this conflict. The US is playing them for fools, because they largely are.

They've been given the illusion of importance and agency, but current US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland's words probably describe the United States' position vis-à-vis Europe the best: "F*CK the EU!"

It would be great if the Europeans started to realise this, but I see nothing of the sort.

Second, Europeans can profit from the weakening of Russian military capacity, ... — neomac

As we speak, Russia is massively expanding its military capacity.

Looking at Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine with 190,000 troops, what was there to fear, really? The Russian military was small and clearly not made for warfare against NATO.

We've given the Russians clear incentive to expand and modernize its military, even more so if it loses control over Crimea.

Ironically, how can we conclude anything other than the fact that Europe and Russia were quite de-militarized prior to this conflict breaking loose? And wasn't that something we should have fostered?

Europe profits (and has been profiting) from normal relations between Russia and the rest of Europe. But, as I have eluded to before, I don't think normal relations between Russia and Europe is what the Americans need in the coming great power struggle. It likes a divided Heartland.

I struggle to see what economic prospects Ukraine will bring as it is being thoroughly wrecked.

Even if Ukraine wins an unlikely victory, Russia's significant strategic interests in the region will ensure it is the center of conflict for the foreseeable future and beyond. — Tzeentch

Blackrock have already made a deal with the Ukrainian government for the reconstruction deal. I'm no economist so I couldn't say what the relative benefits are, but Blackrock are not in the habit of making deals they're not going to profit from.

And.. guess who was advising the US government on Russian and Ukrainian economic affairs prior to this war? Yep. Blackrock.

I think it's one of the basic tenets of modern capitalism. There simply isn't an ever-increasing demand, so to make an ever-increasing profit companies need to generate demand. Planned obsolescence, addiction, fear,...and trashing whole cities in manufactured wars...

I'm not sure if something of this magnitude can be explained by corporate interests. I think it is simply too significant for that. — Tzeentch

Possibly. I get the scepticism, but even as individual companies many corporations have working turnovers higher than most countries. As an industry... the arms industry put together (with their shared interest in perpetuating war) has a lobbying power in the US larger than most of Europe can muster. Plus it's multinational, so the same interests are lobbying the governments of both the US and Europe, tying up media narratives through advertising revenue control...

Personally, I find it far easier to see how a multinational corporation has the power and will to push an agenda like this than I do most governments.

any government promoting human rights (competing with those promoting others political agenda) is realistically drawn willingly or unwillingly into a power race — neomac

Exactly why I spent so much time demonstrating that your assumption that the US are following a different agenda to Russia in terms of basic human rights is completely unfounded. It may have different methods (elections plus narrative control), but the outcomes are the same - power concentrated into the hands of a smaller number of wealthy individuals.

that doesn’t exclude convergence and cooperation among states at all (indeed, that’s why there are alliances and partnerships — neomac

Exactly. So none of your theory, even if true, has any bearing on the debate about the US's involvement in this conflict. It may gain this 'power' you claim it needs by beating Russia militarily, but it may also gain it by clever diplomacy, territorial deals, persuasion, economic offerings, power-sharing...

Yes. It's easy to pick out one person and blame all the evils on the world on that person. And sure enough, he is a despicable thug. But what makes anyone think that removing him - if that could somehow be made possible - would not guarantee someone worse to rise to power, because that's never seen before.

Yeah, history is not on the side of the cheerleaders for this war.

Barely a single US foreign intervention has ever worked, since WWII whenever the US has tried to intervene in foreign wars/disputes. Virtually all failed.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780128158746000381

The way in which it is the opposition to US involvement that is made to sound unreasonable, is truly astounding.

Whether it's a nationalist resurgence in an economically crippled Ukraine, or a deterioration of the region into warring sub-factions... The lesson from history is abundantly clear. It will not be a shining beacon of democratic enlightenment.

any government promoting human rights (competing with those promoting others political agenda) is realistically drawn willingly or unwillingly into a power race — neomac

Exactly why I spent so much time demonstrating that your assumption that the US are following a different agenda to Russia in terms of basic human rights is completely unfounded. It may have different methods (elections plus narrative control), but the outcomes are the same - power concentrated into the hands of a smaller number of wealthy individuals. — Isaac

First, I didn't even understand what assumption you are attributing to me. Since you have a poor understanding of what I write better to avoid rephrasing. Quote me, it's much easier and fair.
Second, my claim suggests the opposite of your conclusion: even if power was concentrated into the hands of a smaller number of wealthy individuals, this may still serve human rights promotion.

that doesn’t exclude convergence and cooperation among states at all (indeed, that’s why there are alliances and partnerships — neomac

Exactly. So none of your theory, even if true, has any bearing on the debate about the US's involvement in this conflict. It may gain this 'power' you claim it needs by beating Russia militarily, but it may also gain it by clever diplomacy, territorial deals, persuasion, economic offerings, power-sharing... — Isaac

It has bearing to the extent that we are talking about geopolitical agents, so it makes sense to discuss our assumptions about what's their expected behavior and aims in given circumstances e.g. to understand why the US might spend hundreds of billions in military expenditure instead of fighting famine and diseases around the world. And to remind us that possibilities are not free floating in a vacuum of geopolitical constraining factors and historical legacies, that affect threat and trust perception: Russia had 30 years to become more pro-West through diplomacy, persuasion (G8), economic offerings (energetic cooperation between Europe and Russian) , power-sharing (in Syria and war against Islamist terrorism) but then Putin preferred to become more anti-US (profiting from the complacency of the pro-Russia attitude of the West, right?), pushing anti-West populist narrative in the West, and directly challenge the US leadership. On these premises, better to look for a diplomatic solution always in position of power.

So this might be a possible deterrent for Russia to engage in the eastern front. — neomac

I think it will have the exact opposite effect.

By inserting itself between Russia and one of its core strategic interests, the United States has guaranteed a permanent state of conflict (hot or cold) for as long as that situation persists. — Tzeentch

Any deterrence can also have the opposite effect. Anybody trapped in a security dilemma can likely see defensive measures of its opponents as offensive provocations. That’s e.g. how you get the nuclear race. The point is that the US is military engaged in Russia’s neighbourhood not the other way around. And the permanent state of conflict is useful to decouple Russia from Europe with little military investment wrt Russia. The benefit for Europeans, it’s the time to prepare for worse. And let’s hope that’s enough.

Even if Crimea is the core in Russian geostrategic calculations, its annexation wouldn’t guarantee its security as it would if Ukraine was under Russian control (or at least, demilitarised). So the threat for Russia may still be serious enough to work as a deterrent. — neomac

Holding a nation's core strategic interests hostage will not work as a deterrent. It will ensure conflict permanently looms over the region, just like with Taiwan. — Tzeentch

Deterrence on the Western from means that a costly retaliatory measure might ensue. And that is what Russian rational strategists need to take into account and possibly discourage any hostile move. The threat of an attack from Ukraine against Russia on the West front, say in the Black Sea, will oblige Russia to invest part of its military capacity in protecting that region, as it happens now for Ukraine under the threat of an attack from Belarus.
For any move it’s possible to imagine a counter move. But all moves have costs, so for the US investing resources to pressure competitors’ to pay greater and rapidly growing costs and re-aligning allies is still a good strategic move.

First, the Europeans are realising how delegating their own security to the US can be costly and risky as they never could before... — neomac

There seems to be little awareness within the European leadership that they and the United States have played a prominent role in provoking this conflict. The US is playing them for fools, because they largely are.

They've been given the illusion of importance and agency, but current US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland's words probably describe the United States' position vis-à-vis Europe the best: "F*CK the EU!"

It would be great if the Europeans started to realise this, but I see nothing of the sort. — Tzeentch

I don’t see it that way. “Provocation” sounds weird in competitive games (even more so if one champions Mearsheimer’s “offensive realism”). It’s like calling “provocation” a first pawn exchange on a chessboard by a player against an opponent. That’s the game they are supposed to play.
Besides “provocation” is in the eye of the receiver so it’s easy to represent one’s action in terms of reactions to some actual or perceived “provocation”. Also the US reacted to European provocations (who were flirting with American authoritarian competitors: Russia and China, “NATO is braindead”) and Russian provocations (Russia under Putin was set out to re-establish its great power role at the expense of the US plus “I and my Chinese boyfriend want a new world order”, and messing in America and America’s backyard, namely Europe, with infowar and lobbying) while both were enjoying the benefits of the globalisation promoted by the US (so without considering the US security concerns).
In talking about “provocation” Russia is just claiming some right that it can’t prove to have (and which within Mearsheimer’s offensive realism shouldn’t even make sense!), it’s an indirect threat to the US or the West, and it’s trying to make a genocidal mafia state look as a victim, if not a martyr. Ridiculous.

Ironically, how can we conclude anything other than the fact that Europe and Russia were quite de-militarized prior to this conflict breaking loose? And wasn't that something we should have fostered? — Tzeentch

Russia de-militarised prior to this conflict breaking loose?
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1203160/military-expenditure-russia/
“Peace talking” is always derailing your reasoning outside the power game “rules” you are trying to understand. In the opposite direction goes the ancient piece of wisdom: si vis pacem, para bellum

I think that the thought behind this is that the end justifies the means, so that who cares if a "hypocrite" state (and all powerful states are similar in this respect) arms Ukraine, the important thing is to beat this evil monster who knows not how to reason and so forth.

What I find quite confusing, which I heard said several times - and I don't know if it's been mentioned here, haven't kept up on the details, though have seen some of your replies, which, to my light have been excellent - is that if we somehow let Russia win, then, quite literally it is said "I don't want to live under a dictator."

Same "logic" with China.

If you failed to see a connection between these conclusions, then I will be more comfortably in knowing I am not a completely crazy person.

The country is going back to it's old ways rapidly. In celebration of the 1943 victory in Stalingrad, Volgograd was named again Stalingrad, at least for the festivities, and brand new busts of Stalin are made. Quite in line with banning human rights watch groups, that were accepted by the Soviet Union.

I don’t see it that way. “Provocation” sounds weird in competitive games (even more dumb if one champions Mearsheimer’s “offensive realism”). — neomac

I don't think the EU's behavior can be explained through the lens of offensive realism.

I don't personally subscribe to any one way of viewing international politics, and it should be noted Mearsheimer often states that he believes his theories aren't right 100% of the time either.

Russia de-militarised prior to this conflict breaking loose?
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1203160/military-expenditure-russia/ — neomac

Numbers mean little without context, and the context is that the Russia invaded Ukraine with 190,000 troops at the start of the invasion. For a gigantic country like Russia that is a very tiny force. With it they struggled to conquer and occupy even a few regions of Ukraine. It didn't come close to being a threat to NATO. They could double that, and it still wouldn't be.

Prior to this conflict most European armies were in shambles (for the most part they still are) and Russia was maintaining a small army relative to its size, and compared for example to the size of the armies of the Soviet Union.

“Peace talking” is always derailing your reasoning outside the power game “rules” you are trying to understand. — neomac

Hard to see what you mean by this.

Countries don't prefer to be at war. They prefer to be at peace. War is simply an inevitable consequence of the power structure states find themselves in.

When the status quo is resilient peace, there's no rational reason for states to disrupt that status quo simply because "those are the rules of the game".

For a gigantic country like Russia that is very tiny. With it they struggled conquering and occupying only a few regions of Ukraine. It didn't come close to being a threat to NATO. They could double that, and it still wouldn't be. — Tzeentch

Do notice that all armed forces combined Russia the size is very large. But the forces are deliberately cut into different services as one singular entity wouldn't pose a threat to Putin. Hence the National Guard (the old MVD) is roughly the same size as the Russian Ground forces. Add to this the Wagner group, which has no legal base in Russia (hence Putin can do away with it, if he would want to do that) and can do basically whatever (for example hire foreigners and prison inmates and shoot them, if they try to escape the war).

A powerful centralized Russian Army would be very beneficial in fighting a war, but would be a potential threat to Putin. Domestic politics comes always first.

I don't personally subscribe to any one way of viewing international politics, and it should be noted Mearsheimer often states that he believes his theories aren't right 100% of the time either. — Tzeentch

Yet you cited Mearsheimer (along with Sachs and Chomsky) to support the idea that the US has provoked this war, didn’t you? And you did that to imply what exactly?
Whatever Russia claims to be “provocation” doesn’t mean that Russia had a right to invade Ukraine in international law terms.
Nor it can possibly mean that the US (or the West in general) should put Russia security concerns above or at the same level of the US (or the West in general) security concerns, if you want to talk about geopolitical strategy.
Nor it can possibly mean that different political administrations are morally bound to follow the same path/commitments toward third countries that previous administrations followed without considering geopolitical strategy (and third countries’ administrations!).
So what else does it mean exactly? Can you spell it out?

Russia de-militarised prior to this conflict breaking loose?
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1203160/military-expenditure-russia/ — neomac


Numbers mean little without context, and the context is that the Russian military consisted of 190,000 troops at the start of the invasion. For a gigantic country like Russia that is very tiny. With it they struggled conquering and occupying only a few regions of Ukraine. It didn't come close to being a threat to NATO. They could double that, and it still wouldn't be.

Prior to this conflict most European armies were in shambles (for the most part they still are) and Russia was maintaining a small army relative to its size, and compared for example to the size of the armies of the Soviet Union. — Tzeentch

Then I don’t see enough context in there either. What counts for geopolitical considerations is Russian military capacity, not just what is mobilised in specific military operations and invested in military budget. Then its military offensive capacity (not only defensive) which needs to be compared to the defensive/offensive military capacity of any target country (e.g. post-Soviet Republics). Then its hegemonic ambitions wrt hegemonic competitors (like the US) and allies (like China).
Concerning the logic of your argument, if the EU is more demilitarised than Russia, then EU is more military vulnerable to Russia. Besides nobody is reasonably going to invade Russia as a whole, which would practically imply inheriting all the security issues Russia has for occupying such a vast territory (comprising lots of wastelands).

“Peace talking” is always derailing your reasoning outside the power game “rules” you are trying to understand. — neomac

Hard to see what you mean by this.

Countries don't prefer to be at war. They prefer to be at peace. War is simply an inevitable consequence of the power structure states find themselves in.

When the status quo is resilient peace, there's no rational reason for states to disrupt that status quo simply because "those are the rules of the game”. — Tzeentch

Hard to see what you mean by this as well. The “rules of the game” are just patterns of behavior that geopolitical agents show in dealing with security dilemmas that power structures and struggles “inevitably” pose. And that’s a fundamental premise to discuss the rationals for ensuring a otherwise mostly uncertain “resilient” peace. “Uncertain” precisely because indeed there are scarce resources, competing interests over those resources and no rules granting successful cooperation (not to mention equal distribution of related costs/benefits & risks/opportunities).

Yet you cited Mearsheimer (along with Sachs and Chomsky) to support the idea that the US has provoked this war, didn’t you? And you did that to imply what exactly?
Whatever Russia claims to be “provocation” doesn’t mean that Russia had a right to invade Ukraine in international law terms.
Nor it can possibly mean that the US (or the West in general) should put Russia security concerns above or at the same level of the US (or the West in general) security concerns, if you want to talk about geopolitical strategy.
Nor it can possibly mean that different political administrations are morally bound to follow the same path/commitments toward third countries that previous administrations followed without considering geopolitical strategy (and third countries’ administrations!).
So what else does it mean exactly? — neomac

Oh wow. You completely missed the ball on that one if that's what you believe my arguments implied.

Can you spell it out? — neomac

I already did, in painstaking detail, multiple times over, and I can't be bothered to do so again. You can go back and read them yourself.

Concerning the logic of your argument, if the EU is more demilitarised than Russia, then EU is more military vulnerable to Russia. — neomac

Except that the EU has a military ally, the United States, which has the most powerful military in the world by a mile and a half. So no, Europe wasn't vulnerable, which is why they left their militaries to collect dust for decades.

I already did, in painstaking detail, multiple times over, and I can't be bothered to do so again. You can go back and read them yourself. — Tzeentch

If that below [1] is the piece you are referring to, then ok, I missed it and I would basically agree. But then I totally disagree with your following comment.

Except that the EU has a military ally, the United States, which has the most powerful military in the world by a mile and a half. So no, Europe wasn't vulnerable, which is why they left their militaries to collect dust for decades. — "Tzeentch

That’s begging the question though. If you want to discuss the US reasons to engage in such a war, you can’t simply take the US military alliance to the EU for granted. War is often too heavy/costly endeavour on national and international level, and plenty of imponderable factors that even military/intelligence experts can't foresee until shit hits the fan. So one can reasonably expect geopolitical agents to avoid war not only for an understandable desire for peace, or avoiding wasting resources, but also because they might not want to discover how awfully wrong things can go. And the worst scenario for everybody is when war concerns major nuclear powers. Isn’t it? Besides the US is also plagued by deep domestic political conflicts, pressured by the rise of China, suffering from additional economic/technological competition from the EU (while enjoying the NATO shield and the benefits of the Pax Americana), suffering a growing anti-americanism from the Rest to the West. Why would the US care to protect the EU against a potential aggression from Russia? Why would the US preserve the globalisation if that benefits more its adversaries and its allies, and making them more defiant? For the sake of Europe? Because "those are the rules of the game”? Indeed, the US military presence in Europe has been declining for 30 years (which doesn’t fit well into the NATO expansion narrative). Besides the US solicited the EU to increase their military budget for a long time. Actually, since the Obama administration they have become very much vocal about it. Trump wanted to pull out the US from NATO. And Sarkozy declared NATO braindead.
So yes, Europe is vulnerable to Russia if Europe doesn’t give a shit about the US security concerns or plays against them.

[1]

Earlier in this thread I've tried to offer a geopolitical explanation for the United States' actions:

Since the United States cannot have been surprised by the Russian invasion and also does not seem overly committed to a Ukrainian victory, I am entertaining the hypothesis that the United States intentionally sought to provoke long-lasting conflict between Europe and Russia.

Europe and Russia were cozying up to each other too much, while it is in America's best interest to keep the Heartland divided.

With China and Russia in an alliance that was futher strengthened by the American push for Ukrainian incorporation into NATO, the Eurasian continent was basically already 2/3's united. There was an actual threat of the Heartland uniting completely - with Europe becoming apathetic towards the United States and fairly neutral towards Russia and China, and with Russia and China being markedly anti-American.

The war in Ukraine attempts to establish Europe as a committed American ally, and a counterbalance against Russia in case a large-scale security competition breaks out between the United States and Russia and China.

Far-fetched? Sober big-picture thinking? You be the judge. — Tzeentch

Why would the US care to protect the EU against a potential aggression from Russia? — neomac

Because Europe is home to a number of immensely powerful nations which are, united or seperately, essentially destined to play a big role in global affairs (most notably France and Germany).

Since WWII, the United States has controlled Europe through soft power. It bought influence for the cost of paying the lion's share of Europe's defense bill.

Such control over a large portion of the Heartland is extremely important to United States hegemony, at least if we are to follow Mackinder's and Brzezinski's ideas.

If the United States doesn't control Europe, it will either be controlled by another great power or possibly even turn into its own great power, which will inevitably find itself in conflict with the United States at one point or another.

Indeed, the US military presence in Europe has been declining for 30 years (which doesn’t fit well into the NATO expansion narrative). — neomac

That's no surprise. After the Cold War up until now there was virtually no military threat from Russia, so numbers of troops decreased while NATO was turned into an instrument to expand US influence through soft power.

Trump wanted to pull out the US from NATO. And Sarkozy declared NATO braindead. — neomac

Those are words, not actions.

Why would the US care to protect the EU against a potential aggression from Russia? — neomac


Because Europe is home to a number of immensely powerful nations which are, united or seperately, essentially destined to play a big role in global affairs (most notably France and Germany).

Since WWII, the United States has controlled Europe through soft power. It bought influence for the cost of paying the lion's share of Europe's defense bill.

Such control over a large portion of the Heartland is extremely important to United States hegemony, at least if we are to follow Mackinder's and Brzezinski's ideas.

If the United States doesn't control Europe, it will either be controlled by another great power or possibly even turn into its own great power, which will inevitably find itself in conflict with the United States at one point or another. — Tzeentch

If it wasn’t for the fact that:
1 - Europe is still far from turning into its own great power: existing military deficiencies and “strategic cacophony” inside Europe (also between France and Germany too) remain an obstacle to reach strategic autonomy
2 - EU with its large market (which included East Europe) is not Germany (nor Germany and France)
3 - The new developing economies (in South Asia, South America and Africa) are expected to become more relevant in next decades while EU is becoming less and less competitive
4 - Russia is supposed to be a mafia state and declining power so whatever they will be able to achieve by stretching further West their hegemony won’t be an evident challenge to the US military and economy
5 - The greatest challenge to American hegemony comes from China so the Americans might think to take Russia on their side to fight against China.
Not to mention that Germany became the peaceful economic power it has become, thanks to 30 years US-backed support for EU project, NATO and globalisation. And since world-wide power projection has its monstrous costs, everybody must pay for it. Even more so if they largely benefit from it for decades. Most certainly not play against it.
So no, at the moment, it’s not evident that the US must intervene or engage more than it does in Ukraine if Russia actually tried to military expand westward just because Europe has “powerful nations”. The US could handle this this during Cold War when Russians had also half Germany.

Indeed, the US military presence in Europe has been declining for 30 years (which doesn’t fit well into the NATO expansion narrative). — neomac


That's no surprise. After the Cold War up until now there was virtually no military threat from Russia, so numbers of troops decreased while NATO was turned into an instrument to expand US influence through soft power. — Tzeentch

If there was virtually no military threat from Russia why the NATO expansion then? And why would Putin worry about NATO expansion if it’s just American soft-power and American military presence was declining? Those countries that tried to invade Russia in its recent history (Germany and France) were pretty complacent toward Russian security concerns. So why was Russia so worried?
Besides under Putin Russian military budget increased significantly, power consolidation in domestic affairs and over rebel peripheries turned authoritarian, nationalist, and aggressive (see war in Chechnya and Georgia), Russian military projection overseas increased (in the Mediterranean Sea, Middle East and Africa), governmental cyberwarfare activities and “soft power” (by lobbying populist and anti-American info-war) in the West increased as well, anti-American rhetoric became more hostile up until calling for a new world order in partnership with China, and last but not least Russia (not the US) was the one with border disputes, Russian minorities scattered in neighbouring countries, a lost hegemonic influence to recover, and post-Soviet Russian political/economic/intellectual elites with revanchist dreams.

Trump wanted to pull out the US from NATO. And Sarkozy declared NATO braindead. — neomac

Those are words, not actions. — Tzeentch

Even Putin’s concerns for NATO enlargement in Ukraine were just words until they weren’t. The debate over transatlantic relations in the US has become bitter for a while now. Besides Putin (after the annexation in Crimea and still at war in Donbas) didn’t seem too much worried about the US until Trump was there, right? And until the military special operations French and Germans didn’t seem much compelled by the US soft-power to change their attitude toward Russia, and they still look reluctant about it (e.g. Sarkozy was still talking about Russian security guarantees just a few months ago).


I think it’s more intellectual honest to understand geopolitical agents’ security dilemmas for what they are. So misrepresenting them by removing implied uncertainties and risks, it’s myopic not only toward administrations’ internal tensions and ambiguities in international relations, but also toward administrations’ resolutions and consistency as expressions of their agency.

1 - Europe is still far from turning into its own great power: existing military deficiencies and “strategic cacophony” inside Europe (also between France and Germany too) remain an obstacle to reach strategic autonomy
2 - EU with its large market (which included East Europe) is not Germany (nor Germany and France)
3 - The new developing economies (in South Asia, South America and Africa) are expected to become more relevant in next decades while EU is becoming less and less competitive
4 - Russia is supposed to be a mafia state and declining power so whatever they will be able to achieve by stretching further West their hegemony won’t be an evident challenge to the US military and economy
5 - The greatest challenge to American hegemony comes from China so the Americans might think to take Russia on their side to fight against China. — neomac

All fair points, yet I don't think many would argue Europe isn't still very important to the United States,

So no, at the moment, it’s not evident that the US must intervene or engage more than it does in Ukraine... — neomac

I don't know where you get the idea that I implied as much. If anything I believe the Europeans should stop backing the war in Ukraine and encourage the Americans to leave as fast as possible.

If there was virtually no military threat from Russia why the NATO expansion then? — neomac

Because NATO became a tool to expand US influence through soft power, and there was plenty of historical grievance to build it on.

Putin (after the annexation in Crimea and still at war in Donbas) didn’t seem too much worried about the US until Trump was there, right? — neomac

US presidents have very little influence over foreign policy, so I don't think Trump's presidency made any difference in the Russian's view of the situation at all.

If anything Trump probably eased their minds at least for a little while, since he was all about his America First policy and a commitment to stopping "forever wars" across thousands of miles of ocean, etc. Of course, Trump used some bombastic words but such rhetoric isn't aimed at or taken seriously by world leaders. That was aimed at the US population towards which he wanted to seem like the "strongman".

And why would Putin worry about NATO expansion if it’s just American soft-power and American military presence was declining? — neomac

That should be obvious. When powerful nations are close to each other, conflict is bound to arise. And the United States' sphere of influence was inching ever closer to Russia. Powerful nations care greatly about what the other powerful nations are doing in their backyard.

And you underestimate the power of soft power if you think it cannot pose a serious threat to other countries. The American empire is largely based on soft power, though it never shied away from hard power either.

Besides under Putin Russian military budget increased significantly, power consolidation in domestic affairs and over rebel peripheries turned authoritarian, nationalist, and aggressive (see war in Chechnya and Georgia), Russian military projection overseas increased (in the Mediterranean Sea, Middle East and Africa), governmental cyberwarfare activities and “soft power” (by lobbying populist and anti-American info-war) in the West increased as well, ... — neomac

Yes. Great powers, even a small one like Russia, are often busy serving their interests militarily all over the globe. That's nothing new or special.

Whatever military build-up took place was nowhere near significant enough to pose any threat to Europe. After the fall of the Soviet Union it was only normal to expect some raise in military expenditure at some point, for a country as big as Russia with long borders and many potential flashpoints.

It is dwarfed by the actual military build-up we are seeing today, encouraged in part by the West's own actions.

Even Putin’s concerns for NATO enlargement were just words until they weren’t. — neomac

Russia acted the part as well. Concentrating troops and exercising near the border, letters of ultimatum, etc. and lets not forget they put forward a consistent message over the course of 15 years.

But when Trump says he wants to pull out of NATO, and the rest of America panics and starts yelling they have to secure their overseas alliances, such rhetoric has zero credibility. Only if it becomes consistent policy over several presidencies might it start to be seen as actually representing the geopolitical vision of the US foreign policy establishment.

And until the military special operations French and Germans didn’t seem much compelled by the US soft-power to change their attitude toward Russia, ... — neomac

Well yes, that may have been exactly the point.

The European leaders seem pretty naive and self-interested, but there are plenty of people smart enough to not assume the United States' benign intentions, so that reluctance will probably stay.

There is ultimately a limit to what United States influence can achieve, but there are historical examples aplenty of the United States leading countries willingly down the path of their own destruction.

Belarus leader says he has been asked to seal a non-aggression pact with Ukraine
^{— Andrew Osborn, Mark Trevelyan · Reuters · Jan 24, 2023}

They are asking us not to go to war with Ukraine in any circumstances, not to move our troops there. They are proposing we conclude a non-aggression pact. — Lukashenko

For the past ten months, [Belarus/Lukashenko] has permitted Russia to base troops in Belarus and launch airstrikes from the country against Ukrainian targets. — Rudnik

No, I cannot comment on this right now. I do not have any information. — Peskov

Russia is trying in every possible way to draw Belarus directly into the war. Ukraine warns Minsk against any possible further aggressive plans, we confirm the absence of any aggressive intentions towards Belarus on our part. — Nikolenko

Seems unlikely, and might not mean a whole lot anyway. Any takers?

Seems unlikely, — jorndoe

It's hard to make sense of it.

It basically signals that the Ukrainians fear an offensive from the north, while the chance of such an agreement being signed seems very low.

Perhaps it's a way to test whether the Belarussians are planning to get involved in the war. Declining would imply yes, agreeing would imply no. Though even if they weren't planning to get involved they would probably still decline for the sake of ambiguity.

Maybe the goal of the action is the signal itself; to feign weakness.

Or maybe the goal is simply to confuse.

So no, at the moment, it’s not evident that the US must intervene or engage more than it does in Ukraine... — neomac

I don't know where you get the idea that I implied as much. If anything I believe the Europeans should stop backing the war in Ukraine and encourage the Americans to leave as fast as possible. — Tzeentch

Why did you chop my quotation like this? My claim wasn’t about the war in Ukraine, it just drew a parallel with it. To clarify once again my point, I asked you "Why would the US care to protect the EU against a potential aggression from Russia?" and your answer was roughly that the US needs to control Europe and its “immense powerful nations” from becoming its own great power or fall under the control of another foreign power. Even if that’s true in general, a Russian aggression against the EU might not necessarily need to worry the US and compel its prompt reaction just for that reason. In concrete scenarios, the nature, magnitude, timing of the US intervention may greatly vary as a function of the nature, magnitude and timing of the Russia aggression (scenarios are countless), and as a function of the American priorities (imagine that Russia is attacking in the European front when China is attacking in the Asian front), so the American intervention may in the end frustrate expectations as it does in Ukraine at least to those who would welcome greater and quicker support (that’s the parallel I was making). Even more so if certain US administrations are playing with their credibility as reliable partners (https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/04/22/trump-says-he-threatened-not-defend-nato-russia/), emboldening Russia to take greater initiative against Europe (Russia is not even short on pretexts see the case of Serbia). Not to mention that Russia can both inflict great damage on EU territories (independently from land grabbing) and always threat escalation to nuclear strikes. In conclusion, the EU can’t just blindly rely on the US support in the risky case that Russia turns military hostile for revanchist reasons, and the US is troubled by other pressing domestic and foreign challenges.

If there was virtually no military threat from Russia why the NATO expansion then? — neomac

Because NATO became a tool to expand US influence through soft power, and there was plenty of historical grievance to build it on. — Tzeentch

I find your reasoning pretty confused. To me “historical grievance” means that Eastern block countries and especially post-Soviet countries were reasonably fearing Russian revanchism (https://www.politico.eu/article/western-europe-listen-to-the-baltic-countries-that-know-russia-best-ukraine-poland/) for a full package of reasons: border disputes, Russian minorities, Russian ultranationalist surge, and historical imperialist trends. Indeed, this “historical grievance” was a deep-rooted reason behind NATO expansion as I pointed out elsewhere [1]. This makes sense also wrt what you were claiming before: if the US cares about long-term control over Europe against rival powers, then of course it’s prudent to expand control against potential threats from Russia. “Potential threat” doesn’t mean “actual threat”, but it doesn’t mean no threat either. It has to do with long-term expectations and for such threats you don’t want to wait to find out if it was worth to prepare for it, because it might be too late. Unless you can turn a blind eye on it for convenience, or for otherwise feeling just remotely concerned, of course.
In 1993 (so no Putin and no NATO enlargement, apart from the consensual case of East Germany), even Mearsheimer famously suggested Ukraine to keep Russian nuclear weapons precisely for that reason: My argument for a Ukrainian nuclear deterrent assumes that Russian-Ukrainian relations are likely to deteriorate in the future. If trouble were not in the offing, Ukraine would not need a nuclear arsenal. The safest strategy is to make Ukraine a responsible nuclear power before serious trouble starts between them, and not have to attempt this in the middle of a Russian-Ukrainian crisis
Source: https://www.mearsheimer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Mearsheimer-Case-for-Ukrainian-Nuclear-Deterrent.pdf
(While via the Budapest Memorandum the Russophobic US helped Russia get back its nuclear weapons from Ukraine, which kept about 1/3 of the former Soviet nuclear weapons, go figure!)

Putin (after the annexation in Crimea and still at war in Donbas) didn’t seem too much worried about the US until Trump was there, right? — neomac

US presidents have very little influence over foreign policy, so I don't think Trump's presidency made any difference in the Russian's view of the situation at all.
If anything Trump probably eased their minds at least for a little while, since he was all about his America First policy and a commitment to stopping "forever wars" across thousands of miles of ocean, etc. Of course, Trump used some bombastic words but such rhetoric isn't aimed at or taken seriously by world leaders. That was aimed at the US population towards which he wanted to seem like the "strongman". — Tzeentch

Even Putin’s concerns for NATO enlargement were just words until they weren’t. — neomac

Russia acted the part as well. Concentrating troops and exercising near the border, letters of ultimatum, etc. and lets not forget they put forward a consistent message over the course of 15 years.

But when Trump says he wants to pull out of NATO, and the rest of America panics and starts yelling they have to secure their overseas alliances, such rhetoric has zero credibility. Only if it becomes consistent policy over several presidencies might it start to be seen as actually representing the geopolitical vision of the US foreign policy establishment. — Tzeentch

A part from the fact that you start underplaying the influence of US presidents over foreign policy, and then you highlight the influence of Trump’s policy on American foreign affairs, the main problem is that your claims don’t stand factual scrutiny. It’s true that American foreign policies is not determined exclusively by presidential administrations: Congress (sided by the the Pentagon) thanks to its institutional powers can set or stabilise major trends in foreign politics. Yet presidential administrations, even in non-emergency times, have significant powers concerning military operations, international agreements, and trade among others (e.g. signing the Budapest Memorandum). If American presidents weren’t influential, it wouldn’t make sense for foreign administrations to favour one over the other, or to try to interfere with their political elections, or to set their foreign activities’s timing accordingly.
Trump’s case was even more worrisome given his penchant for destabilising American institutions from the inside, his complicity with Putin and his polarising withdrawals from various international agreements:
https://www.trtworld.com/americas/trump-s-top-five-withdrawals-from-international-agreements-18543
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/01/31/politics/us-mike-pompeo-inf-withdrawal/index.html
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-germany-military-roettgen-idUSKCN24U2BJ
Indeed, the European leaders were seriously worried about Trump and needed reassurance: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/05/28/thanks-to-trump-germany-says-it-cant-rely-on-america-what-does-that-mean/
The “bombastic words” by Trump were taken so seriously by the Congress representatives themselves to the point that:
Such concerns led the House of Representatives in January 2019, to pass the NATO Support Act (H.R. 676), confirming Congress' support for NATO and prohibiting Trump from potentially withdrawing from NATO. On December 11, 2019, the Senate's Foreign Relations Committee passed a bill to be put in front of Congress which would require congressional approval for American withdrawal from NATO
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Withdrawal_from_NATO

And why would Putin worry about NATO expansion if it’s just American soft-power and American military presence was declining? — neomac

That should be obvious. When powerful nations are close to each other, conflict is bound to arise. And the United States' sphere of influence was inching ever closer to Russia. Powerful nations care greatly about what the other powerful nations are doing in their backyard.
And you underestimate the power of soft power if you think it cannot pose a serious threat to other countries. The American empire is largely based on soft power, though it never shied away from hard power either. — Tzeentch

What did you just write?! You are the one randomly qualifying “Nato expansion” in terms of “soft-power” not me. And after downplaying its deterrent value by calling it “soft power”, you need to re-affirm it’s threatening nature in terms of hard power to make sense of Russian reaction. In other words, you just demystified your own mystification.
As far I’m concerned, NATO is essentially a military defensive alliance so an expression of coercive power, against potential military threats. NATO is not like having McDonald’s and IKEAs (used to be present also in Russia), nor like joining the EU. NATO specifically concerns military security, so “hard-power”, not “soft-power”. I’m also the one claiming that any defensive measure can be taken as potential threat by competitors trapped in security dilemmas. So if me it’s easy to acknowledge that Russian national security concerns and demand for NATO access denial to Ukraine look persuasive, other considerations discounted.

Yes. Great powers, even a small one like Russia, are often busy serving their interests militarily all over the globe. That's nothing new or special.

Whatever military build-up took place was nowhere near significant enough to pose any threat to Europe. After the fall of the Soviet Union it was only normal to expect some raise in military expenditure at some point, for a country as big as Russia with long borders and many potential flashpoints.

It is dwarfed by the actual military build-up we are seeing today, encouraged in part by the West's own actions. — Tzeentch

You make no sense to me. On one side you claim: “when powerful nations are close to each other, conflict is bound to arise. And the United States' sphere of influence was inching ever closer to Russia. Powerful nations care greatly about what the other powerful nations are doing in their backyard”. So it’s all about Russian threat perception , that you seem to find definitively justified being Russia a powerful nation, even though NATO is defensive alliance, Russia is 3rd rank country by military capability with the largest stockpile of nuclear warheads in the world, Germany/France were against Ukraine within NATO (and cozying up to Russia), Russia had already annexed Crimea easy-peasy and whatever military support Ukraine got prior to the war wasn’t significant enough to pose any threat to Russia.
On the other side, when it’s time to assess the Russian threat from Western perspective, Russia is all of a sudden a small great power, nothing new or special, just busy serving their interests militarily all over the globe (but apparently not its borders despite all pretexts for territorial disputes and Russian minorities to protect) whose military build-up posed no threat to Europe (in other words, very powerful nation but not so very powerful nation after all, and let’s bother us over the fact that we are talking about the 3rd rank country by military capability with the largest stockpile of nuclear warheads in the world, very much active in the Mediterranean Sea & North Africa, Middle East, East Europe and Baltic sea, so all around Europe!) and whose nasty political/economic leverage in the West wasn’t used to mess with America’s backyard at all.

And until the military special operations French and Germans didn’t seem much compelled by the US soft-power to change their attitude toward Russia, ... — neomac

Well yes, that may have been exactly the point.

The European leaders seem pretty naive and self-interested, but there are plenty of people smart enough to not assume the United States' benign intentions, so that reluctance will probably stay.

There is ultimately a limit to what United States influence can achieve, but there are historical examples aplenty of the United States leading countries willingly down the path of their own destruction. — Tzeentch

Oh so now the US doesn’t want to control Europe (hosting “immensely powerful nations”) because Mackinder/Brzezinski say so, it wants to lead it down the path of its own destruction?!
BTW you most certainly seem one of those people smart enough to not assume United States' benign intentions, right? What can you tell me then about Putin’s benign intentions toward the satanist Europe ? Does his murdering, raping, deporting, torturing, wrecking the life of their own people (oh he’s very much peremptory about this! Ukrainians and Russians are one people! Don’t even dare question him, he could tzar bomb your ass!) give you any idea about it by any chance?


What you are so surreptitiously yet so clumsily trying to do is to support the idea that the West had no reason to fear Russia, and Russia had all reasons to fear the West. And then put all the blame on malign-intentioned US for artificially pulling all the triggers of this war at the expense of Europe (coz they are immensely powerful nations, so powerful that the war in Ukraine by a small great powerful nation could destroy them) and Russia (which is such a cute small great powerful nation that doesn’t bother anybody, just busy serving samovar tea & babushka cookies all over the globe). And you’d count yourself among the “smart people” for thinking all that by yourself, right?



[1]

From:

THE DEBATE ON NATO ENLARGEMENT
======================================================================= HEARINGS
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED FIFTH CONGRESS 
FIRST SESSION
__________
OCTOBER 7, 9, 22, 28, 30 AND NOVEMBER 5, 1997
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Relations


Comments about the Russian “imperialist bent” were of the following kind:

Russia has also been an imperialist country that, for 400 years of its history, acquired territories, expanding from the region around Moscow to the shores of the Pacific, into the Middle East, to the gates of India, and into the center of Europe. It did not get there by plebiscite. It got there by armies. To the Russian leaderships over the centuries, these old borders have become identified with the nature of the state.
So I believe that one of the major challenges we face with Russia is whether it can accept the borders in which it now finds itself. On the one hand, St. Petersburg is closer to New York than it is to Vladivostok, and Vladivostok is closer to Seattle than it is to Moscow, so they should not feel claustrophobic. But they do. This idea of organizing again the old commonwealth of independent states is one of the driving forces of their diplomacy. If Russia stays within its borders and recognizes that Austria, Singapore, Japan and Israel all developed huge economies with no resources and in small territories, they, with a vast territory and vast resources, could do enormous things for their people. Then there is no security problem.

[…]

According to Zbigniew Brzezinski, ``We should not be shy in saying that NATO expansion will help a democratic Russia and hurt an imperialistic Russia.''

[…]

Dr. Kissinger. One slightly heretical point on the Russian situation. We have a tendency to present the issue entirely in terms of Russian domestic politics. I could see Russia making progress toward democracy and becoming extremely nationalistic, because that could become a way of rallying the people. We also have to keep an eye on their propensity toward a kind of imperialist nationalism, which, if you look at the debates in the Russian parliament, is certainly present.

[…]

Advocates of NATO transformation make a better case for the Alliance to disband than expand. NATO's job is not to replace the U.N. as the world's peacekeeper, nor is it to build democracy and pan- European harmony or promote better relations with Russia. NATO has proven the most successful military alliance in history precisely because it has rejected utopian temptations to remake the world.
Rather, NATO's mission today must be the same clear-cut and limited mission it undertook at its inception: to protect the territorial integrity of its members, defend them from external aggression, and prevent the hegemony of any one state in Europe.
The state that sought hegemony during the latter half of this century was Russia. The state most likely to seek hegemony in the beginning of the next century is also Russia . A central strategic rationale for expanding NATO must be to hedge against the possible return of a nationalist or imperialist Russia, with 20,000 nuclear missiles and ambitions of restoring its lost empire. NATO enlargement, as Henry Kissinger argues, must be undertaken to ``encourage Russian leaders to interrupt the fateful rhythm of Russian history . . . and discourage Russia's historical policy of creating a security belt of important and, if possible, politically dependent states around its borders.''
Unfortunately, the Clinton administration [/b] does not see this as a legitimate strategic rationale for expansion. ``Fear of a new wave of Russian imperialism . . . should not be seen as the driving force behind NATO enlargement,'' says Mr. Talbott.
Not surprisingly, those states seeking NATO membership seem to understand NATO's purpose better than the Alliance leader. Lithuania's former president, Vytautas Landsbergis, put it bluntly: ``We are an endangered country. We seek protection.'' Poland, which spent much of its history under one form or another of Russian occupation, makes clear it seeks NATO membership as a guarantee of its territorial integrity. And when Czech President Vaclav Havel warned of ``another Munich,'' he was calling on us not to leave Central Europe once again at the mercy of any great power, as Neville Chamberlain did in 1938.
Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and other potential candidate states don't need NATO to establish democracy. They need NATO to protect the democracies they have already established from external aggression.
Sadly, Mr. Havel's admonishments not to appease ``chauvinistic, Great Russian, crypto-Communist and crypto-totalitarian forces'' have been largely ignored by the Clinton administration. Quite the opposite, the administration has turned NATO expansion into an exercise in the appeasement of Russia.

[…]


Regarding Mr. Simes' comments, I would simply clarify my own position. My position is not that we should accommodate Russia. Far from it. It does seem to me that whatever residual imperialistic tendencies, which, indeed, can be a problem, can best be contained by methods other than adding members to NATO. I can think of no lever more effective, no political lever, than the threat that if Russian behavior does not meet certain standards, NATO will be enlarged, and enlarged very rapidly, and even further, and considerably further, than the current proposal envisages.

[…]

The Russian people do not see NATO as an enemy or a threat. They are mainly interested in the improvement of their desperately bad living conditions.
Unfortunately, the Russian political ruling class has not reconciled itself to the loss of its empire. The economic and political system has been changed, but the mentality of the people who are pursuing global designs for the Soviet super power all their lives cannot be changed overnight. Eduard Shevardnadze warned the American people that the Russian empire disintegrated but the imperialistic way of thinking still remains. Andrei Kozyrev also warned against the old guard which has a vested interest in presenting NATO as a threat and an enemy. ``Yielding to them,'' wrote Kozyrev in Newsweek, ``would play into the hands of the enemies of democracy.''
Both statesmen have inside knowledge of the Russian ruling elite. They certainly speak with authority. Moscow is opposed not to the enlargement of NATO but to the very existence of NATO because it rightly sees a defensive military alliance as a threat to its long-term ambitions to regain in the future a controlling influence over the former nation of the Soviet orbit.
As in the time of the Soviet Union, we have to expect that the continued enlargement of NATO will meet with threats and fierce opposition from Moscow. Once, however, the process is complete, any imperialistic dreams will become unrealistic and Russia may accept the present boundaries of its influence as final. Such a reconciliation with reality would prompt Moscow to concentrate its full attention and resources on internal recovery. A change of the present mind set would open a new chapter of friendly relations between Russia and her neighbors, who would no longer see Moscow as a threat. This new sense of security would be an historic turning point.
This is exactly what happened between Germany and Poland.


Comments about Ukraine were of the following kind :

If, for example, we are saying that this is not the end. The Baltic countries are welcome. Ukraine is welcome. What then would be the consequences within Russia?
I guess all of this leads me to one question, and maybe this is my way, as somebody who is trying to sort through these issues, of getting closer to what I think would be the right position for me to take as a Senator.
You said that if countries meet this democratic criteria, they are welcome. Would Russia be welcome? Maybe that is the question I should ask. If Russia meets the criteria, after all, all of us hope that they will build a democracy. I mean, it will be a very dreary world if they are not able to. This country is still critically important to the quality of our lives and our children's lives and our grandchildren's lives. If Russia meets this criteria, would they be welcome in NATO?
Secretary Albright. Senator, the simple answer to that is yes. We have said that if they meet the criteria, they are welcome. They have said that they do not wish to be a part of it.
[…]

My estimate here rests on the fact that including the Madrid 3, there are now 12 candidates for NATO membership. This total of 12 candidates can easily increase to 15 if Austria, Sweden, and Finland decide to apply. In fact, I see a 16th country, Ukraine, on the horizon.

[…]
The most important issue this prospect raises, however, is NATO's relationship to the countries to its east. Specifically, expansion to the borders of the former Soviet Union unavoidably raises the question of NATO's approach to that vanished empire's two most important successor states: Russia and Ukraine. The suspicions and multiple sources of conflict between them make the relationship between these two new and unstable countries, both with nuclear weapons on their territory, the most dangerous and potentially the most explosive on the planet today.
An expanded NATO must contribute what it can to promoting peaceful relations between them, while avoiding the appearance either of constructing an anti-Russian coalition or washing its hands of any concern for Ukrainian security.
There is no more difficult task for the United States and its European allies and none more urgent. To the extent that their accession to NATO provides an occasion for addressing that task seriously, Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic will have performed yet another service for the West.

[…]
Some may ask, if the aim is to promote stability, then why not admit Ukraine or the Balkan countries first, since they need stability even more than Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. The answer is that prospective new members need to have achieved a certain degree of political, economic and military maturity before they can become members. They need to be ``contributors to security'' not just ``consumers'' of it. Otherwise, NATO and the EU would simply become a collection of economic and political basket cases and both organizations would be unable to function effectively.
[…]
I am not by this question suggesting that you do not feel and believe we have a commitment to the Baltics, but I think there is a factual historical difference between Ukraine and the Baltics. For example, I think the immediate effect on the Russian psyche of admitting either the Baltics or Ukraine would be very similar. But in fact we never recognized that the Baltics, which were annexed by the Soviet Union, were legitimately part of the Soviet Union. We have never recognized that, and it seems to me that any further actions will take some time and may need some massaging. I am not smart enough to know exactly how to do it, but it seems to me as a matter of principle that it is very important to make a distinction between the Baltics, for example, and Ukraine.
[…]
That understanding will be advantageous even to the nations not invited, at least in the near future, to join the Alliance just as the presence of NATO members on the borders of Austria, Sweden, and Finland provided an essential security umbrella during the Cold War. Ukraine and the Baltic States will benefit in a similar manner from the inclusion of Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic in the Alliance. Although Ukraine is not at this point seeking membership in the Alliance as Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia are, all four states are united in the belief that NATO enlargement--even if limited to its current parameters--is advantageous to their security. As a matter of fact, as expansion of the Alliance has become increasingly likely, Russian treatment of Ukraine and the Baltic States has become more moderate and more flexible. Russian policymakers clearly appreciate that rocking the boat too much could accelerate NATO's expansion to Russia's frontier--something they are eager to avoid.
 — neomac

To clarify once again my point, I asked you "Why would the US care to protect the EU against a potential aggression from Russia?" and your answer was roughly that the US needs to control Europe and its “immense powerful nations” from becoming its own great power or fall under the control of another foreign power. — neomac

I tried to give you an explanation for why the United States is worried about controlling Europe, which it evidently is.

If your argument is "they shouldn't be", then that's something you'll have to discuss with the policy makers in Washington, I suppose.

I find your reasoning pretty confused. — neomac

My point was that NATO was a tool to expand US influence, not whether the Europeans' feelings of historical grievance and/or fear were justified.

Your confusion would probably lessen if you paid more attention to what I write, and less to what you believe I am implying.

A part from the fact that you start underplaying the influence of US presidents over foreign policy, ... — neomac

Yes. Let there be no doubt about my position on this: US presidents don't have much influence over foreign policy at all. Many tried. Obama for example, who famously failed and admitted this in his exit interview. Trump also.

The neoconservative lobby, aka "the Blob" is probably the most powerful entity in US politics.

The “bombastic words” by Trump were taken so seriously by the Congress representatives themselves to the point that:
Such concerns led the House of Representatives in January 2019, to pass the NATO Support Act (H.R. 676), confirming Congress' support for NATO and prohibiting Trump from potentially withdrawing from NATO. On December 11, 2019, the Senate's Foreign Relations Committee passed a bill to be put in front of Congress which would require congressional approval for American withdrawal from NATO
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Withdrawal_from_NATO — neomac

You're making my point for me. Trump (might have) wanted to leave NATO. The establishment ensured he couldn't. Who is in power here? Not Trump.

What did you just write?! — neomac

NATO has a clear soft power element in terms of the relation between the US and it's allies. I don't see what's controversial or hard to understand about that. It's pretty obvious.

You make no sense to me. On one side you claim: “when powerful nations are close to each other, conflict is bound to arise. And the United States' sphere of influence was inching ever closer to Russia. Powerful nations care greatly about what the other powerful nations are doing in their backyard”. So it’s all about Russian threat perception , that you seem to find definitively justified being Russia a powerful nation, even though NATO is defensive alliance, Russia is 3rd rank country by military capability with the largest stockpile of nuclear warheads in the world, Germany/France were against Ukraine within NATO (and cozying up to Russia), Russia had already annexed Crimea easy-peasy and whatever military support Ukraine got prior to the war wasn’t significant enough to pose any threat to Russia.
On the other side, when it’s time to assess the Russian threat from Western perspective, Russia is all of a sudden a small great power, nothing new or special, just busy serving their interests militarily all over the globe (but apparently not its borders despite all pretexts for territorial disputes and Russian minorities to protect) whose military build-up posed no threat to Europe (in other words, very powerful nation but not so very powerful nation after all, and let’s bother us over the fact that we are talking about the 3rd rank country by military capability with the largest stockpile of nuclear warheads in the world, very much active in the Mediterranean Sea & North Africa, Middle East, East Europe and Baltic sea, so all around Europe!) and whose nasty political/economic leverage in the West wasn’t used to mess with America’s backyard at all. — neomac

Yes. Russia was not a threat to NATO at any point between 1989 up until now. Clearly that doesn't mean it wasn't still a powerful nation. Just not in relation to US/NATO.

Oh so now the US doesn’t want to control Europe (hosting “immensely powerful nations”) because Mackinder/Brzezinski say so, it wants to lead it down the path of its own destruction?! — neomac

You're just putting words in my mouth.

I guess I'll have to state the obvious; the US wants to control Europe. And in its desire to control, the US frequently destroys nations. Vietnam, the entire Middle-East, etc.

Ukraine is going to be the next addition to that list, I'm afraid.

What you are so surreptitiously yet so clumsily trying to do is to support the idea that the West had no reason to fear Russia, and Russia had all reasons to fear the West. — neomac

I'd probably put it in slightly more nuanced terms, but that's indeed the part of the point I have been making for a while now, and unapologetically so.


Your posts seem to degenerate into walls of text worth of ravings. Can you try to make your points in a straightforward fashion? And try doing so without putting words in my mouth or assuming that I am implying all sorts of things which I am not.

The neoconservative lobby, aka "the Blob" is probably the most powerful entity in US politics. — Tzeentch

Neocons were actually a tiny cabal, that just got power during younger Bush. You have more longer schools of foreign policy than that, starting from Wilsonianism, the Jeffersonian school, the on-and-off "isolationism" of the US.

To clarify once again my point, I asked you "Why would the US care to protect the EU against a potential aggression from Russia?" and your answer was roughly that the US needs to control Europe and its “immense powerful nations” from becoming its own great power or fall under the control of another foreign power. — neomac

I tried to give you an explanation for why the United States is worried about controlling Europe, which it evidently is.
If your argument is "they shouldn't be", then that's something you'll have to discuss with the policy makers in Washington, I suppose. — Tzeentch

I summarised my argument for you, so no need for you to suggest any other answer: “In conclusion, the EU can’t just blindly rely on the US support in the risky case that Russia turns military hostile for revanchist reasons, and the US is troubled by other pressing domestic and foreign challenges.”
Evidently you lost track of our previous exchange. In short:
- I claimed “if the EU is more demilitarised than Russia, then EU is more military vulnerable to Russia”.
- You countered “Except that the EU has a military ally, the United States, which has the most powerful military in the world by a mile and a half. So no, Europe wasn't vulnerable”
- I replied “If you want to discuss the US reasons to engage in such a war, you can’t simply take the US military alliance to the EU for granted” and in relation to that I asked “Why would the US care to protect the EU against a potential aggression from Russia?”
- You rebutted “If the United States doesn't control Europe, it will either be controlled by another great power or possibly even turn into its own great power, which will inevitably find itself in conflict with the United States at one point or another”
- And I commented that, although true in general, that doesn’t exclude the possibility that the US intervention against a potential Russian aggression might be frustratingly less or less reliable than expected (arguably as in the Ukrainian case), so the European vulnerability wrt Russia is not automatically gone just because the United States are their most powerful ally independently from the circumstances.

My point was that NATO was a tool to expand US influence, not whether the Europeans' feelings of historical grievance and/or fear were justified.
Your confusion would probably lessen if you paid more attention to what I write, and less to what you believe I am implying. — Tzeentch

I find “NATO was a tool to expand US influence” trivial, but you didn’t limit yourself to make such trivial point. You were talking about “soft-power” and “plenty of historical grievance to build it on”. NATO is not expression of soft-power (so why would you call it soft-power? [1]) and “historical grievance” was treated just as pretext, not on its own merit as you did with the Russian grievance (why this difference in treatment?). The way you conceptualise and argue things may be rife of understated implications which you later confirmed anyways [2].

A part from the fact that you start underplaying the influence of US presidents over foreign policy, ... — neomac

Yes. Let there be no doubt about my position on this: US presidents don't have much influence over foreign policy at all. Many tried. Obama for example, who famously failed and admitted this in his exit interview. Trump also. The neoconservative lobby, aka "the Blob" is probably the most powerful entity in US politics. — Tzeentch

The “bombastic words” by Trump were taken so seriously by the Congress representatives themselves to the point that:
Such concerns led the House of Representatives in January 2019, to pass the NATO Support Act (H.R. 676), confirming Congress' support for NATO and prohibiting Trump from potentially withdrawing from NATO. On December 11, 2019, the Senate's Foreign Relations Committee passed a bill to be put in front of Congress which would require congressional approval for American withdrawal from NATO
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Withdrawal_from_NATO — neomac

You're making my point for me. Trump (might have) wanted to leave NATO. The establishment ensured he couldn't. Who is in power here? Not Trump. — Tzeentch

As I said American foreign policy making is institutionally divided between Congress and presidents, in non-emergency times. So it’s false that presidents don’t have much influence over foreign policy at all (like all the agreements Trump withdrew from and the Budapest memorandum being an example of Clinton’s administration policy that returned 1/3 of soviet nuclear weapons to post-Soviet Russia). Besides if the Congress didn’t intervene Trump could have tried to withdraw the US from NATO so his weren’t perceived just as “bombastic words” which no political leader should have taken seriously (Trump could have also acknowledged Crimea annexation by Russia: https://www.rferl.org/a/trump-doesnt-rule-out-recognizing-russian-annexation-ukraine-crimean-peninsula/29328403.html). Finally, if American presidents have no influence in foreign policies, there would be no reason for Putin to favour/lobby for Trump more than Biden, or aggress Ukraine during Biden’s administration instead of Trump’s, etc. Indeed, presidents have decision powers over military deployments and intelligence activities, sanctions, and control executive international agreements that may be of tremendous importance for competitors.
The Blob, the military-industrial complex, etc. are more useful for polemical than analytical elaboration of the American foreign policy. And the logic of power doesn’t depend on any ideology, not even on “liberal hegemony”, but the other way around, that’s why militarisation and overstretch are recurrent phenomena in all hegemonic great powers independently from their ideology.
So no I’m not making your point at all.

What did you just write?! — neomac
NATO has a clear soft power element in terms of the relation between the US and it's allies. I don't see what's controversial or hard to understand about that. It's pretty obvious. — Tzeentch

Because the point of NATO is to military defend a country against aggressors. Military defence is a coercive response and readiness for that task. That is the element that can make the Russian security threat perception plausible, not the fact that NATO members serve each other tea and cookies.

Yes. Russia was not a threat to NATO at any point between 1989 up until now. Clearly that doesn't mean it wasn't still a powerful nation. Just not in relation to US/NATO. — Tzeentch

What’s your argument? A comparison of US military capacity and Russian military capacity is enough to make your point?
Something like: IF AND ONLY IF X is more military capable than Y (like the US vs Russia) and X is interfering in Y’s “backyard” (like the US in Ukraine as Russia’s backyard), then X is a threat to Y ?




[1] https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/natosource/transatlantic-division-of-labor-nato-hard-power-and-eu-soft-power/


[2]

What you are so surreptitiously yet so clumsily trying to do is to support the idea that the West had no reason to fear Russia, and Russia had all reasons to fear the West. — neomac


I'd probably put it in slightly more nuanced terms, but that's indeed the part of the point I have been making for a while now, and unapologetically so. — Tzeentch

NATO is not expression of soft-power — neomac

Because the point of NATO is to military defend a country against aggressors. — neomac

United States controls Europe through NATO. That is to say, it controls Europe through (in this case) political means not dependent on coercion.

The nature of soft power is the lack of a coercive element.

Your point seems to be that a military alliance cannot have a soft power dimension. I don't see any reason why that would be the case, and I think NATO is a clear example to the contrary.

No one forced the Europeans to neglect their militaries, with the end result of making them completely dependent on the United States for their defense, and thus greatly increasing United States influence. The Europeans did that completely voluntarily.

What a beautiful example of soft power at work.

“historical grievance” was treated just as pretext — neomac

That's an assumption on your part.

In my mind there's no question that ex-Soviet republics joined NATO in large part because of their history with the Soviet Union, and that the United States made use of that fact to expand NATO beyond what could be rationally explained by a foreign (Russian) threat.

What’s your argument? A comparison of US military capacity and Russian military capacity is enough to make your point? — neomac

Essentially, yes. What would you like me to compare instead? GDP? Think it'll paint a different picture?