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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   24995 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 17, 2025

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Russia has no more right to demand subservience from Ukraine than the US does from Canada or Mexico.

And yet the United States has a long, long history of demanding subservience from both:

•Invading Canada twice in 1777 and 1813 for not sufficiently supporting the American revolutionary project

•Sponsoring and funding a breakaway republic from Mexico in 1836, then officially recognizing that breakaway republic

•Launching a Special Military Operation against Mexico in 1848 and extracting massive territorial concessions because Mexico tried to destroy that breakaway republic

•Threatening to invade Canada in 1862 because their mother-state was providing aid to America’s own attempted breakaway republic

•Allowing foreign insurgents to stage in Minnesota and perpetrate multiple massive cross-border terrorist attacks into Canada between 1866 and 1871 resulting in hundreds of deaths

•Invading Mexico in 1913 to try to rendition a high value target that perpetrated a cross-border terrorist attack against the US

•Seizing the port of Veracruz in Mexico in 1912 to ensure access by military shipping

•Stationing numerous troops and military facilities in Canada

•Extracting trade concessions from both Canada and Mexico

Sponsoring and funding a breakaway republic from Mexico in 1836, then officially recognizing that breakaway republic

The U.S. never officially recognized the republic of Texas. Annexing the republic of Texas came about because democrats needed a victory vs the whigs; the country supporting Texas nationalism full throttle was actually France.

There’s an interesting alternative history where the USA votes against annexing Texas. I’ve thought about writing it up and posting it on, like, a Friday fun thread. But the long and short of it is that president Tyler wanted to annex Texas to shore up a pro-slavery position, and the democrats in the next election successfully framed it as a referendum on US territorial expansion while they whigs wanted to punt the issue to try to avoid talking about slavery. Mexico in this era had many breakaway republics and it was generally thought that Britain and France would seek to weaken the Mexican empire to carve out new world spheres of influence by taking the breakaways as Allies; these were the two major backers of the republic of Texas, which spent its entire existence at war and heavily indebted.

And yet the United States has a long, long history of demanding subservience from both:

And? Leaving aside some of the dodgy specifics herein, it would be pretty brazen to suggest that, e.g. Canada was really at fault for the Fenian Raids. If the point is merely that sometimes powerful nations bully weaker ones, no one was contesting that.

The point is that powerful nations take an interest in the behaviour of their neighbours, especially when those neighbours are aligning themselves with rival nations, and act accordingly. America is no exception. See e.g. Bay of Pigs, or the medieval friction between England and the Scots (because the latter often allied with France).

America has lately been able to act as though it would never do this only because it's had no major rivals for 30 years and its neighbouring nations are thoroughly cowed. If Mexico or Canada start entertaining an alliance with China, perhaps involving the stationing of Chinese troops, America will change its tune VERY quickly.

I reiterate: And?

The problem with the thug's worldview is that they create the world they think they are merely describing. Nobody in Eastern Europe would be clamoring for an alliance with Uncle Sam if not for Russia's own behavior.

And therefore American politicians are hypocrites (wittingly or not) when they say that large countries like Russia have no right to exert influence on their neighbours.

If they believe the same for America (which I doubt, they’ve never been shy about steering their vassals allies away from getting involved with geopolitical rivals, see Nord Stream 2) it is because they are the proverbial man in a gated community patrolled by police who believes that nobody has the right to self-defence.

Now, it may be that you personally would strongly oppose any such behaviour by America as strongly as you oppose it when done by Russia. But I don’t think many Americans would, and I certainly don’t think America’s government would.

Personally, as an Englishman I would vote for taking action should Ireland or a hypothetical independent Scotland start discussing alliance with enemy nations for example. Letting yourself be put into a position of weakness just because nobody has actually used it against you yet is stupid. So I can hardly order that nobody else does so. Of course, one hopes it never comes to that, but part of making sure it doesn’t is that everyone has to take care not to tread on each others’ toes.

And therefore American politicians are hypocrites

And?

it is because they are the proverbial man in a gated community patrolled by police who believes that nobody has the right to self-defence

This is the strangest conceptualization of self-defense I've seen in a while.

And?

You stated that "Russia has no more right to demand subservience from Ukraine than the US does from Canada or Mexico". Others have pointed out that the US acts as if it does have that right, and always has. To the extent that you believe what you say, you are rare. The majority of people who assert that Russia has no right to care about its neighbour's alliances are hypocrites who willfully refuse to put themselves in Russia's shoes, which they don't have to because America owns most of a continent and quelled its only neighbours centuries ago.

it is because they are the proverbial man in a gated community patrolled by police who believes that nobody has the right to self-defence

It's a fairly standard criticism of the kind of people who condemn others for physically defending themselves against assault - that the condemners can afford to take a high-minded view on such matters only because they live in a fortified community from which potentially-dangerous elements of the underclass have been forcibly excluded.

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