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Every time I hear this...line of thought I feel frustration with some black amusement mixed in.
NATO is problematic, if not irresponsibly hostile, while very literal aggressive expansionism from Russia itself, when it's not outright 'dindu nuffin', is complicated and needs to be understood in context, and it's their backyard, and nothing is ever black and white like that, you know.
All of this, and more, is possible at the modest price of dramatically lowering the standards to which Russia is being held.
One would be forgiven for thinking that Russia in this frame is something akin to a rabid dog that just can't be blamed for trying to tear every careless passerby's throat out. I almost agree, though somehow the proposed solution always amounts to sticking one's head in the sand, sending thoughts and prayers to those unable to afford the luxury, and hoping everything will work out somehow, while simultaneously trying best to create the impression that this is the tough, sober, "realist" approach to international politics.
Look, the reason Russia wants Ukraine (and keep in mind it was fine with an independent Ukraine as long as it stayed aligned with them rather than NATO/EU) is because it has no defensive border between itself and Ukraine. Us supporting the color revolution to create a Western aligned government, promising them eventual NATO/EU memberships, and selling them weapons is pretty darn close to what lead to the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. We were creating an armed hostile camp within striking distance of their border and then make a shocked face when Russia decides tha5 this is unacceptable. And again, despite all the rhetoric of “Russia bad an$ wants to invade every country on its border,” it’s not making those moves. The threat of “if Ukraine falls, everybody else gets invaded” doesn’t make any sense or at least no more sense than saying that the world needed to stop us from invading Cuba in the 1969s lest we also decide to invade Haiti, Antigua, and Dominican Republic. None of those states were security concerns for the USA at the time, and even the Russian were not worried that there would be invasions beyond Cuba. You can’t just park weapons along a border of a rival state and call them rabid for that either.
Now, further, other than antagonizing Russia, there’s no strategic value to Ukraine as an EU member or being under the protection of NATO. It’s a corrupt state, it’s chiefly agricultural, we don’t need more ports on the Black Sea (we have Turkey for that purpose). Assuming Ukraine had made it into NATO and the EU, what do we gain? What was in Ukraine that would be worth billions of dollars a month and risking nuclear war? I can see intervention in Taiwan. Having a huge chip manufacturing sector is valuable, we need that industry if we’re going to remain competitive in the 21st century. That’s an absolutely vital thing to protect. And my fear is that our ability to do anything when China makes a play for Taiwan is going to be greatly diminished because so much of our money and military equipment was sent to Ukraine, the public will to defend ye5 another invaded country will be spent, and we’ll be unable to do anything as China absorbs Taiwan and corners the market on chip manufacturing.
I think we need to be much more strategic about where we spend our blood and treasure. We cannot sustainably intervene in every conflict around the globe. And since we have to pick our battles, it seems muc( better to do so on the basis of vital security and economic interests rather than the emotional response to events. I just don’t see anything in Ukraine tha5 would justify us continuing to prop it up long after it should have accepted the loss of Donbas, and that’s generously assuming that there was ever any serious interest at all,
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If the Soviet Union had sponsored a communist revolution in Mexico and then announced that they were admitting Mexico into the Warsaw Pact, what do you think would happen? Would you characterize the United States as a “rabid dog” for their response?
Given how post-Cold War Mexico has turned out, I've honestly wondered if this wouldn't have been one of the worst outcomes for Mexico, if not an actual improvement. And for the anti-immigrationists in the audience, that would have obviously been a great motivator to figure out how to close the border!
To respond more seriously, though, I cannot help but imagine, whenever I see people here complain about the "color revolution" of the Euromaidan, some sort of counterfactual timeline where Russia manages to salami-slice Ukraine into their sphere of influence without as much bloodshed, and the same people whining about "NATO expansionism" now are instead bitching about how the US/West/NATO was so weak and ineffectual as to prevent literal aggressive expansionism from encroaching on Europe.
My point was it would have most likely lead to immediate military action by the United States. I wasn’t making any kind of commentary about the merits or lack thereof of communism or its application in Mexico.
Regarding your second point, that’s a genuinely interesting counterfactual, and I’m not sure what I would have thought if it turned out that way.
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