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This is a really bad cliche by now. Putin represents a moderate faction within Russia compared to the hardliners who wanted to invade 10 years ago after Maidan. Putin did not single-handedly launch the war (if one single man is reaponsible, it would probably be Strelkov). And Putin is not irrational for feeling threatened by NATO and the US.
The idea that Putin represents a moderate faction and that Putin is indeed single-handedly resposible for the current phase of war (ie. events after 2022) in no way contradict each other. When the drumbeat for war started in 2021, there were no indications that the situation in Ukraine was about to change in an essential way (ie. Ukraine was about to make a major assault to take back the territories lost after 2014 - if anything the Ukrainians had gone to great lengths to seem nonaggressive up until a few weeks before the invasion) and also no indications that Putin's strict grip on power in Russia was about to be challenged, by the more radical nationalist forces or anyone else. Putin simply saw that the idea that he'd get what he wants peacefully would not happen - the least anti-Russian politician that could get elected in Ukraine at this point, ie. Zelensky, would not budge or be able to do so - and took a gamble.
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Its worse than a bad cliche, and I've been stunned as an observer on this site, how many of the more intellectually minded people seem to fall victim to thinking in the same platitudes a standard ignoramus who doesn't even watch the news does. The problem with the above style of comments is that it fails to take geopolitics seriously and fails to understand alternative viewpoints. If it wasn't Putin, any other Russian leader would be beset with the same scenario and conditions.
Eh, my sense is that we have maybe one-digit number of hardline American jingoist posters who overwhelm any remotely Ukraine-related thread by participation and effort, and many more people who just generally lower the sanity waterline by seeing it as yet another metaphorical battleground for the US culture war where the only thing that matters is Hunter Biden and which side is more (fake and) gay. This seems to be about what to expect for a topic that attracts agenda posters but lies outside of the specialisation of anyone producing the sort of deep dives that tend to cause productive discussion around here.
Frankly this is one reason I actually prefer Reddit to this forum regarding certain hot topics (Ukraine, Holocaust, probably a few more). Either the specific subject matter experts demurr, or the topic has a pendantically obstinate position advanced eternally by emotionally invested posters. No slight against emotionally invested defenses of untenable positions, the consequence free wasteland of an anonymous forum means I will unironically simp for the XiMa TenAliAI Godhead, but it does mean that this tick isnt coming unburrowed.
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As the person who made the initial post, I'd like to push back on this. I guess I might have an "agenda". You'll have to take my word for it that my agenda is peace and the preservation of human life.
I think Ukraine is an important topic and one in which mainstream opinion is wrong. The intersection of these two makes it a great topic to discuss here. That's why I've posted about it twice now.
And, yeah, it seems to generate some heat, but I'd argue the amount of light is greater. How many people are even talking about conscription, either on the Motte, X, or on (shudder) mainstream media?
On the other hand, what I don't love about this forum is 5000 word "deep-dives" on some random game developer no one has ever heard of or cares about. I don't view those as productive in the slightest. The stakes couldn't be lower.
Since I think what gets said in places like this matters, I think it's important to discuss real issues.
This forum has a refreshing readiness to highlight bad take faiths, one of which is that Ukrainians actually really want to be Russians are are only being forced to fight by the cruel machinations of the West. That the pro-ru position overlaps between antiprogressives (tolerated here) and antiwest socialists (disrespected for good reason) is why bad takes are entertained even briefly, so long as the decorum of the forum is maintained. Calling '5000 word deep dives on videogames' cringe while your own takes are superior is, to my view, straining the boundaries of decorum.
Honestly, I think your comment is in bad faith. You are strawmanning a nuanced anti-war position in order to police an opinion you don't like and reducing it to a "bad take" and "pro RU". If you have an argument in favor of the Ukraine War make one.
Your words, not mine. Calling this a 'nuanced anti war position' is frankly laughable, a pathetic attempt at pretending to be impartial by labelling this position as such to head off the pass and preemptively tie all previous arguments to this end state.
An argument in favour of 'the Ukraine' (real subtle there): they don't want to be Russian. They made that calculus, and they can choose to effect that outcome however they can. State power, public sympathy, whatever. We (the nebulous we) are not obligated to listen to their requests, as you clearly have stated, but we are also free to suggest or deny as we see fit. If the Ukrainians see maybe dying in a ditch to be less preferable than being Worse Belarus, thats their calculus. Should the calculus flip (higher chance of dying, Worse Belarus isnt so stupid), the Ukrainian soldiers can make the decision themselves too, ala October Revolution.
Till that time, Ukrainians (as a currently united polity) can ask, we can respond, and the Russians can respond as well.
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If it wasn't Zelensky, any other Ukrainian leader would be beset with the same scenario and conditions.
If it wasn't Biden, any other American leader would be beset by the same scenario and conditions.
Are we pretending Yanukovych wasn't overthrown?
"Presidents come and go but the policies remain the same." - Vladimir Putin
Are we pretending Yanukovych wasn't fleeing the country rather than being procedurally removed from office for granting himself the authority to shoot not only the supporters of his political opponents but also the supporters of his unity government partners that he brought into his own government, at the direct pressure of the foreign government that he fled to after his own party loyalists didn't want to conduct a bloodbath?
And are we going to pretend that giving yourself authority to shoot political opponents in the streets without legislative support wouldn't drive legislature retaliation against an Executive clearly bowing to foreign government pressure and incentives?
I am as familiar with the Yanukovych coup narratives as you, and probably a bit more familiar with various political events during Euromaidan, including the ever-handy reference to the conspiracy theory that the US Ambassador discussing candidates for Yanukovych's invitation for a unity government and considering people who could work with Yanukovych and others was actually plotting a coup against the person who she was going to discuss the candidate list with in the coming days.
Perhaps you'd like to raise the protestor-sniper theories that justified the claim to shoot-to-kill authorities, which I might counter with the state sniper evidence and various security service suspect defections to Russia in the investigations after? Or perhaps you want to make the position that the protestors had no right to protest against the sovereign right of the government to join the Eurasian Union economic association, after Yanukovych made a rather abrupt about face on the already-sovereign-agreed to European Union association agreement that was followed by Russian pressure and incentive campaigns? Maybe you'd like to retreat to the defense of Eastern Russo-phile suppression of the Russian speakers, who were so uninterested in joining in the Russian novarussia campaign that the Russian millitary had to directly intervene to keep the separatist republics from collapsing?
Come now, there's so much history we can banter on!
I don't know how well read you are on the history of what happened...
Seems we both agree at the outset that he was democratically elected, do we not? His overthrow was explicitly supported by the US and it's allies. Are you not aware that there was even leaked audio of Victoria Nuland and the Ukraine's Ambassador that revealed deliberate planning of his overthrow? NATO was never a European alliance of 'peace', it's an alliance that's aimed at destabilizing Eastern Europe, with the intention to weaken Russia. Do forgive a homie for challenging American
imperialismunipolarity. This whole quagmire has absolutely zero to do with high minded moral idealism against the Next Hitler, who at the same time the media tells us is losing, running out of gas, is out of ammunition, is incompetent beyond belief; and simultaneously is preparing for world domination and his next target is going to be Poland or Scandinavia. It has everything to do with continued projecting of American and western geopolitical dominance across the planet.Ah, I see we are going to play the pretend we don't know game, such as--
-that US support for Yanukovych stepping down followed Yanukovych starting to process of shooting protestors in the streets with government snipers.
Oh, hey, called it-
Come now, we can go over the transcripts if you'd like. We can even go over Yanukovych's invitation for the opposition to join the government, which was the basis of Nuland's discussions of who would actually work well within Yanukovych's government which- again- was invited and being discussed in the context of Yanukovych running it.
While this certainly nails your flag high, it doesn't really establish your awareness with Euromaiden-
-or that, as far as challening American imperialism unipolarity, Ukraine was such an own-goal by Russia.
Yawn. Like I said, I'd rather you build a competent historical metaphor, not your naval gazing. If your media is telling us Putin is Next Hitler, or running out of gas, or out of ammunition, pick better media, not other trash.
It should also be remembered that the guys that Nuland and Pyatt were talking about - Yatsenyuk - was one of the main leaders of the main opposition party and had already been offered the PMs post by Yanuk as a compromise, making him the most natural leader to take this post after Yanuk and PoR had vacated power.
It's not like they just picked some guy out of nowhere to make him their puppet, the main thrust of the Nuland call was that they wanted to keep Klitchko and Tyahnubok marginalized since the first was too close to the Europeans and the latter was far-right (something that the pro-Russians never seem to mention - the US explicitly wanted to make sure the far right does not get too much power, something that doesn't fit in the idea of US gunning for Banderites to turn Ukraine into Banderastan).
The Nuland call is not inconsequential since it's evidence that EU should operate on its own and not just rely on the US, surely an important message to this day, but it's not by itself evidence that the entire Euromaidan sequence was just due to string-pulling by Americans with Ukrainians having no agency.
True, but perhaps not in the way many think.
Ironically, one of the back-channel complaints from the US in that time was a frustration with the Germans in particular for doing so much to set conditions for Euromaidan, but then dropping the ball and refusing to take any leadership role in negotiations on behalf of Europe despite being one of the key backers of the foundational infrastructure of Euromaidan politics (as in, the EU-funded networks that the US was also supporting). US policy in Ukraine before Euromaidan was basically supporting the European Union's association and social movement efforts, and the key driver and funder of that was the Germans, who had invested heavily in the Ukrainian media space and elsewhere in the decades leading up to it. For the Germans Ukraine was an economic interest and part of their post-Soviet soviet space influence links, and the US was supporting the European desire because why not.
There was a dynamic of that the US was frustrated not because the Europeans wouldn't align with the US, but that there wasn't a coherent European position for the US to align itself with, due to the Germans dropping their previous lead and distancing themselves from the Euromaidan architecture they'd set up. Between the German whip lash and the lack of European consensus, Nuland took steps in a relative void where the Germans had turned self-sabotaging and the Russians were attempting various spoiler efforts to keep the Ukrainians from associating with the EU.
Had the EU operated on its own- which is to say, had the EU actually operated on a consistent position and been willing to stand by its previous decade of messaging- Nuland would likely have been known as little more than a European backer.
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That it was orchestrated by the US? Yeah, that's long since been established. (1, 2)
If your historical metaphors are on par with the propagandists you find running the narrative, I see no reason to not treat them as roughly equivalent.
If there's a solid historical argument in there that doesn't evade the facts of what happened, I haven't seen it. Only an egotist's internal monologue.
Oh, hey, look who evaded acknowledging the inconvenient factor of Yanukovych granting himself the right to shoot people without legislative consent.
Oddly, neither of your sources indicate that the pro-European protests were orchestrated by the US as opposed to the US supporting protests that would occur from organic pro-EU support following Yanukovych's backing out of a highly popular agreement with the European Union also suppored by EU advocates well implaced.
Typical hyperagency / hypoagency framework, but American fanatics are American fanatics even if they are haters.
Further, your conspiratorial framing is outdated. Everyone who wants to trace the money and media flows knows that the Ukrainians were primarily reading German-owned media, not American.
Fortunately they are not, and I tend to avoid them unless there's an amusing parallel, such as who in the current day might be analogous to a warmongering expansionist imperialist power with dreams of establishing itself as a global power pole against western decadence.
Personally I don't think Ukraine meets that model, but such is life.
Again, the self-reflection.
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Indeed; the automaton peasants (who lack agency) of Ukraine were told by their CIA handlers (who have agency) to riot and oust the hapless Yanukovych (who lacks agency) and was replaced by American puppet Zelensky (who has agency and should use it to sue for peace). This led noble leader Putin (who lacks agency; anyone in his shoes would do the same) to regretfully declare war.
Makes sense. As you say, they're beset by the same scenario and conditions. Anyone in their shoes would do the same.
Don't know why you're trying make a mess of history on the matter. Even the regime change wing of the State Department admits of their activities in Russia's backyard and the very thing I'm calling it out for.
And as such, Russia's response is reasonable in turn to US' operations in their sphere of influence.
That the Russians suck at playing the international soft power game is their own fault. If the Russians couldn't even get a literal clown who performed for Putin to be their puppet, thats on them. Russians are hardly moral innocents reacting against a big mean west, they have continually acted (often incompetently) in their own interests against the west, and to give Russians the benefit of he doubt is an invitation to have your exposed back stabbed.
It doesn't seem you're interested in discussing anything history or policy related at this point. I see little value in further discussion. Be well.
Be well yourself, said hopefully without sarcasm. I find intermittent discussions of history or policy to be of invigorating intellectual merit, but not all discussions are necessarily enjoyable, and Ukraine often leads to misery on multiple sides. Perhaps a less heated topic, like the impending AI apocalypse looking like the actual Butlerian Jihad, might warrant an effortpost since it will inspire less intransigent discussions.
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I'm not sure why you believe Global Research .ca, an anti-globalization conspiracy website, represents the regime change wing of the State Department, but this would be both an incorrect citation and not a rebuttal to the post on hyper and hypo agency.
Similarly, you seem to have missed that point that he was making fun of the argument structure, and not actually making a position that your argeement with would advance your position.
You hit the nail on the head regarding the noncredible source. Often the usage of noncredible sources with demonstrated conspiracism and creative interpretations of reality (moonofalabama, wsws, consortiumnews, ritter mcgregor armchairw etc... and you all haven't even scraped Islamic twitter) is itself proof of scraping the bottom of the barrel to (ironically) write a 5000 word soup of 'logic' and 'facts' to justify an end point already concluded in the headline. Cogency and sourcing wither in the face of ironclad certitude, for evidence and theory are already one and the same to those pissing in the pool they drink from.
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And where would you expect to see the other side that vested western interests have an interest in keeping suppressed? CNN? Fox? MSNBC? How about the world's foremost critic of US foreign policy? Or is he just a senile old man at this point?
You're the one who obliged with the logic of that statement. Makes it difficult to argue against if you stand with it.
Non-American or European media, to start. Al Jazeera has good production value if you're insistent on English language, but if you're willing to indulge in machine translation then there are entire other continents of geopolitical fans with viewpoints- and memories- outside of anglosphere cultural frameworks.
However, your citation wasn't to have someone on the other side of vested western interests- your citation was on a claim of what the vested western interests were themselves supposed to be admitting. Citing someone accusing them of stuff is not them admitting to... well, you were very vague and generic, to a degree it's not clear what was supposedly being confessed to (or not).
Which, admittedly, was probably the rhetorical technique intended, it was just an odd appeal to authority to neither cite the authority, or anyone with special insight into the authority's position, but then to immediately appeal to an outsider with no authority when the lack of authority was noted.
Chomsky was a senile old man at heart decades ago, given that he's been an anti-american tribalist for longer than you've likely been alive with no particular moral creed to peg consistency to otherwise, and not a particularly impressive one unless you're awed by sophistry. If you think he's the world's foremost critic of US foreign policy, you have a very shuttered view of the world of American critics.
If you want intellectual heft, try the French foreign policy establishment and its advocates. Defiantly not-American enough not to buy into Anglophone tropes by default, but familiar enough with both western cultural contexts and a cultural inclination towards argument structure to be delightfully relevant, and with significant national patronage in order to define themselves against the US in their attempts to align Europe to their interests.
I suspect the difficulty is that you don't seem to recognize- or at least acknowledge- a satirical tone of non-agreement. Neither he nor I were standing with the position, and your continuing insistence that they were (and your word choice in the process) is suggestive that part of the reason why may be that English isn't your first language.
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I freely profess my ignorance of Russian politics. To clarify, do you think if Putin had not wanted to invade Ukraine in 2022, it would have happened regardless? Or if Putin had wanted to invade and his advisors had not, it would not have happened? Or is your position some bailey that Strelkov's actions set in motion a series of events that made Putin's decision to invade inevitable?
Because option 3 still sounds like Putin had plenty of agency to me.
And he tried exercising it to find more amicable solutions to the problem. That's what the Minsk Accords were.
Why was the west encouraging Ukraine behind the scenes to give Russia a run around, while the west poured arms into the country to bolster its strength so the government could betray the terms of their agreement?
The Minsk Accords were many things- including the functional erosion of national sovereignty by legislating an external power's veto by proxy- but an amicable solution they were not.
Why wouldn't the west encourage Ukraine not to submit to unreasonable Russian demands that the Russians knew were unreasonable and would not be accepted, while bolstering the ability to resist the military coercion that pushed the demands in the first place?
The demands were unreasonable, and were made at the end of a military intervention. Europeans, as with many other cultures, tend not to support those things against their neighbors lest it be applied to them.
Doesn't make for strange bedfellows when you understand the Minsk Accords mandated a similar relationship to Ukraine that the US imposed on Japan in the postwar period, which remains today.
Which was not an amicable solution to negotiations, but a compulsory surrender punctuated by more than one nuclear weapon after years of unrestricted submarine warfare against an island that needed to import resources and firebombing of cities made of wood and paper... after the receiving country had launched a series of unprovoked invasions and a litany of warcrimes across the region.
The Minsk Accords were, again, many things, but the Pacific Campaign of WW2 they were not.
Alas, the Japanese-American alliance today does not remain an unconditional military occupation with overt censorship by the occupying authority.
Also, the Russians aren't interested in dismantling a warmongering oligarchy as much as installing one.
Seems like you're engaging in some pretty strenuous intellectual acrobatics to preserve a conclusion you wouldn't accept if another actor adopted a similar justification. Judged by the standards of moral idealism, maybe both Russia and the US fall short. Judged by the standards of the world's only superpower, Russia isn't doing anything the US wouldn't approve of in it's own defense. You want me to be more introspective, check your own actions at the door first.
Which wasn't the point I was making. If you think history is important, I encourage you to read it. If not, then that tells me everything I need to understand your position.
I accept your concession of your limited perception with good cheer.
Sure, you made a silly historical metaphor while trying to ignore the inconvenient parts that ruin it as a simile. History's hard. Fortunately, this is the motte, and asinine positions are for being flanked, spanked, and penetrated as a result.
Modern Russia is certainly doing things the modern US wouldn't approve of in its own defense, not least of which is invading adjacent countries in territorial expansionism on irredentalist grounds based in the past. American warmongers of the current generation, as everyone has familair examples of, invade far-away countries on ideological grounds driven far more by humanitarian considerations/rationals in the present.
Even if you wanted to appeal to the 1800s Americas, back when it was run by racist imperialist most Americans would be appalled by and oppose today if a mirror-US magically appeared, the expansionist era American imperialists didn't rely on claims historical conquest to justify their conquests. They just resorted to the sort of lovably mockable jingoism and manifest destiny that's parodied, and no one believes or particularly claims that the Mexican-American war was a defensive war.
The fact that you tried appeal to a war the better of a century ago- to a war that was declared against rather than by the US by the perpetrators rather than defendent of territorial aggression- to force some kind of equivalence between the modern US-Japan relationship and the ongoing attempt to subjugate Ukraine kind of shows you missed the mark on historical metaphors. The US-Japan relationship of 2020 isn't the relationship of 1950, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine is not aiming to establish a relationship of 2020 US-Japan.
Now, if you argument is instead that Japan is analogous to Russia, and that Russia should be nuked and forced into unconditional surrender in order to be occupied and forcibly reconstructed as Japan was, that might be an interesting historical parallel to make...
I'd rather you devise a competent metaphor than be introspective. Naval gazing and whataboutism is easy, but not particularly impressive. Competence is hard.
I will submit that you likely think you are far more informed than you are, but that you also don't care when you make a bad historical claim with more relevant differences than similarities.
If you care to disagree with my position on historical differences mattering... let's hear it!
You completely missed the point I was making.
The Minsk II agreement was initially adopted by France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine in 2015, and endorsed unanimously by the UN Security Council. It presupposed withdrawal of George W. Bush’s invitation to Ukraine to join NATO and was reaffirmed by Obama, then vetoed by France and Germany. It called for disarmament of the separatist Russia-oriented region (Donbass) and withdrawal of Russian forces and spelled out 3 mutually dependent parts: demilitarization; a restoration of Ukrainian sovereignty that included control of the border with Russia and complete autonomy for the Donbass in the context of the decentralization of power in Ukraine as a whole. Which wasn't at all unlike the conditions the US imposed on Japan in the postwar period, by banning Japan from having an army, called for disarmament and economic integration with the western powers.
It seems you don't even understand my position enough to coherently disagree with it, sadly.
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Strelkov was important in 2014, but pretty marginal in 2022. Putin alone was indeed the main instigator of the war. Nothing had changed in 2022 in terms of Ukraine's ability to join NATO, as the US refused to let them in as it had for the previous 8 years. Putin just woke up one morning and decided he wanted an invasion, and the rest is history.
Strelkov started the chain of events that bubbled up to the war. It's a much bigger point: Putin didn't "just woke up" and create a war, there was already a war. It was started by other individuals, and Putin actually refused several earlier opportunities to escalate the war the way he did in 2022. The situation changed in 2022, which precipitated Russia's direct invasion. You can actually admit all of this without wanting Russia to win, or having to change any of your other opinions.
This is blatantly not true: The US refused to make a guarantee to Russia that Ukraine would not join NATO.
You're talking about 2014 here, right? If so, then sure, that checks out.
There was the frozen conflict that had been bubbling since 2014, but 2015-2021 was massively different from the invasion in 2022. There was little reason that status quo couldn't continue for another decade at least from the West's perspective, but then Putin decided he was unsatisfied with the state of affairs and that's how the invasion came to be.
I'm not saying there was no conflict prior to 2022. I'm saying the massive invasion itself that happened in 2022 was Putin's doing.
I don't think we're disagreeing on this point.
This was not a change, at least on the US's part! The US didn't let Ukraine join NATO, but they didn't rule it out either, same as 2015-2021. The US wanted to kick the can down the road some more (or indefinitely) by keeping Ukraine in limbo, and it was Putin who said that wasn't good enough now.
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This is untrue. Offers that Ukraine would not join NATO were made and duly ignored, on grounds that the US would not make unamendable changes to the US Constitution that were beyond the US Executive's ability to offer in order to meet the level of Russian demands for what a legal guarantee would consist of, which entailed requirements that no future legislature or executive could change their position on.
As the ability to prevent future administrations for reconsidering a policy, a legislature proposing a law, or constitutional amendment from reversing an amendment would require a level of legalistic restriction that the US has never negotiated in its history, and which the Russians have never negotiated upon themselves, it was a notably new and novel proposal for Russia's concerns on how an already vetoed state would not enter NATO. (It was also a unilateral demand as Russia reserves the sovereign right to walk away from treaties they sign, and had done so repeatedly in contemporary history at the time.)
Of course, these demands were also made when Russia had already was in the midst of the final operational preparations for the invasion, and was in the process of generating casus belli justifications and justification narratives, so the sincerity of the Russian interest in the specific demand is highly suspect given their familiarity with US government structure, and the concurrent demands for NATO withdrawals from former warsaw pact states as equally unrealistic demands that served little role other than to say that it was the Americans who refused to negotiate in good faith.
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I watched people predict this war at roughly this time well over a decade ago, so no, I'm pretty sure Putin didn't just wake up one morning and decide he wanted an invasion.
I'm talking about proximate causes. The long term reasons for competition between Russia and the West exist, and anyone can trot out Mearsheimer if they want the Russian view, but for the immediate causes of the war there wasn't really anything other than Putin. There was no reason he couldn't have kept it a frozen conflict for another decade.
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These unfortunately are the kind of replies you get from people who haven't been paying attention.
Antagonistic. You have been warned 3 times before:
5 day ban.
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If you're implying I haven't been paying attention to the Ukraine war, you're very mistaken.
I think he's implying you paid no attention to the Ukraine and Russia in the years leading up to the war.
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