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The idea that Putin and Russia are not under threat from the US axis is I think, not on solid ground. That's been demonstrated several times over the past twenty five years. Iraq, Syria, and Libya were not under threat from the US, until suddenly they were. Fundamentally, the US believes it has the right to direct the affairs of all the world, simply waiting for crisis and opportunity to strike.
This is not to say that Russia's aggression is justified. But the notion that the West is just minding it's own business is ridiculous.
Are you seriously arguing that the US might occupy Russia in the future like they occupied Iraq?
I considered the Iraq war of Bush II a mistake when he started it and had no reason to revise my opinion. But even if Russian nukes stopped working tomorrow due to magic, invading Russia would be insane. It has been tried a few times, ask Napoleon or Hitler how it went for them. There is nothing in Russia which would justify the costs of conquering it even to the most mercenary of minds.
This is not about Putin being afraid of Stars and Stripes flying from the Kremlin.
Like most countries, the US meddles in the affair of other countries. Some of it seems net-positive, some of it seems ill-advised to me. Regional powers meddle in their sphere of interest, the US meddles globally, as did the USSR.
If the US sees a chance to fund a coup against Putin, they might take it. Likewise, if Putin saw a chance to fund a coup against Biden, I would not begrudge him for taking it. This is just how this game is played.
Since the end of the cold war, Russia has not done so well in the Great Game. While the US had its share of fuckups, a lot of countries of the former Warsaw pact decided that being allied with the US served their purposes better than being allied with Russia. This might be because the US was rather well-behaved and soft spoken during the cold war in Europe while the USSR was prone to sending tanks to Prague. Turns out that people have long memories and really don't like being invaded.
There is no birthright for a country to having a large sphere of influence. The threat NATO poses to Russia is to its sphere of influence. The moves the US made to align most of Eastern Europe against Russia seem mostly non-evil to me, as far as these things go. Even if one would assume that the Euromaidan was 100% an evil CIA coup to wrest control of Ukraine from a legitimate pro-Russian president, the total number of deaths was below 200 (most of them on the pro-Europe side). It would be rather bloodless as CIA sponsored coups go. Most of the alignment was simply people voting for parties which were pro-NATO or pro-Europe instead of pro-Russia in places like Poland.
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But compared to the USA, Russia hasn’t been a globe-trotting military power imposing its will on other countries. This is the first large scale military invasion of a sovereign nation by Russia since the end of the Cold War. Compare that to America who has invaded Iraq twice, bombed Libya, invaded Afghanistan, and expanded NATO to include almost all of Eastern Europe. Whether or not you agree with either the geopolitical position (not wanting a NATO member along a difficult to defend border) or the stated aims (removing Nazis from Ukraine) or not, it’s not exactly the military adventures of the USA.
I don't consider NATO an alliance of puppet regimes, I just consider it an alliance. So as far as I'm concerned there's nothing to feel guilty about there.
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For context, the Cold War kind of ended with the collapse of the USSR.
Post Cold War Russia was not in a very good position to project force globally. They did have their small scale adventures, though, but Chechnya was not a recognized country, and Georgia was not fully occupied by Russia. Still, Putin was hardly a dove.
I think NATO adventurism in the Islamic World was a horrible move, but the expansion of NATO was a good thing. Do you recall how Clinton gave Poland an ultimatum to join NATO or face his tanks before they joined in 1999? Neither do I because that did not happen. Eastern European states were eager to join NATO because they know how the USSR had behaved in their countries in the Cold War, contrasted that with how the US had behaved in Western Europe during that period and decided that they would rather be under the protection of the US than Russia.
The raison d'etre of NATO is to prevent a war with Russia. It is certainly not to conquer a nuclear armed Russia. Having a NATO ally on his flank would be mildly inconvenient to Russia because it would place them in a worse strategic situation in a war with NATO. But realistically, a NATO-Russian war would result in large scale nuclear war, which is why both NATO and the USSR/Russia have taken great pains to avoid shooting at each other directly in any conflicts.
Also Transnistria! Break-away state from Moldova supported by Russia! I don't know the full story so I don't know if the details are similar to what happened in Georgia. I gotta look into that.
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True, but then again, we expanded NATO eastward to a difficult to defend border after it told Russia it had no intention of doing so. Even if Poland wanted in, it’s hard to ignore that having NATO troops and military equipment on the border of Russia is at least somewhat provocative. And given that it’s all of Eastern Europe and soon Ukraine as well, Russia is going to be basically surrounded. It’s about equivalent to Russia forming an alliance with Mexico and Canada. I can’t imagine a universe in which the USA would not view that as a threat.
And in this hypothetical the positioning of troops in Mexico and Canada was in direct response to USA's seizure of Nova Scotia.
The Baltics joined NATO in 2004, and didn't host any permanent NATO troops until the EFP was created in response to Russia's seizure of Crimea. The current force is ~10,000 in the Baltics, 11,600 in Poland. It doesn't take much historical acumen to understand that this is not a credible threat to Russia's continuity.
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If Russia didn't invade and ethnically cleanse their neighbours every chance they got, their smaller neighbours would be way less eager to join NATO.
That Russia's last hundred years of foreign policy is such a spectacular failure, having accomplished roughly zero of their aims, can hardly be said to be the fault of the US.
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I wouldn't say the West is minding it's own business - there seems to be a tit for tat in terms of proxies, espionage, fraud, hacking, etc. I would say that I've seen no evidence of attempts on Putin's life nor anything that could remotely be construed as NATO showing any interest in invading Russia or violating Russian territorial integrity. Would you disagree with that?
You are right that the US is very careful not to directly call for Putin's removal or a partition of Russia and it's destruction as an independent power. But I think that is what they seek, and it's what they work towards, and if Putin was to show any weakness, it's what they would work towards openly.
But that only started once it became clear that Russia was belligerent. The US didn't want to destroy Russia just for the sake of it, they wanted to do that because Russia was a threat to the system of the world.
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And yet, far less so than ignoring nuclear weapons as a deterrent for invasion.
The argument that Russia was not under threat from the US axis is not made on the basis that the US wouldn't if it could beat Russia in a conventional war- not least because nothing about the Ukraine war changed the underlying reality of Russia's conventional deficit vis-a-vis the US and has only made it worse- but rather that beating Russia in a nuclear war wouldn't be worthwhile when the cost is measured not in divisions, but cities.
The Russian national security argument for invading Ukraine has always fallen to the point that it does not change the actual nuclear balance of power against the US in any conflict, and that it has been nuclear deterrence that Russia had, and all those others have not.
The US was not exactly thrilled by hostile forces extending their influence into its hemisphere during the Cold War (or any other time really), especially the forward basing of missiles. It's expected that great powers will try to avoid this.
Sensors and missiles based in Ukraine are relevant to nuclear warfare, as are Ukraine's claims to Donbass and Crimea.
It's also expected that Russia can read a map and is aware that it is already in the position regardless of Ukraine- so invading Ukraine to keep it out of NATO doesn't change the missile threat, and thus does not serve as a sensible rational. If NATO wanted to place missiles in range of Moscow, they don't need Ukraine to do so.
Likewise, it's also well known that the US is in range of Russian missile bases in... Russia. Russia gets no nuclear posture advantage by advancing nuclear bases into Ukraine.
The Cuban Missile Crisis logic stopped making any sort of strategic sense within two decades of it happening. The US did not need to maintain nuclear missiles in Turkey for the sake of ranging Russia, and the Russians did not need missiles based in Cuba to range the US. ICBMs and SLBMs largely rendered the role of IRBMs irrelevant, which is why they were an easy-to-negotiate away weapon in the nuclear arms control treaties as a trust-building measure.
Not really. The sensors and missiles that can nuke Russia can do so from the continental united states and orbit. The nuclear deterrence argument continues to fail because the technology levels involved are not the 1950s or 60s or even 70s.
If you want to argue that Ukraine is the key to a potential NATO nuclear decapitation strike of Russia, you need to establish what Ukraine brings to the table that the Baltic countries don't... and why Russia's second-strike deterrent capability only works in the invade-Ukraine scenario but not in the other.
Nuclear decapitation does not work. Say you manage to nuke Moscow in a sneak attack. Do you really believe that the commanding officer of a ICBM silo in Siberia will say "too bad, without orders from Putin, I can not retaliate"? I assume that there are nuclear-tipped submarines in the Atlantic and Pacific which provide more second strike capabilities.
The gains from wiping Russia -- a regional power of limited threat to US interests -- would be limited, while the risks are enormous, especially on the tail side.
It is also not in the US long term interests. Even if they manage to wipe out all Russian nukes (and most of the Russians) without a single nuke exploding over NATO soil, this would normalize preventive nuclear warfare.
There is this other big country called China. Also a big nuclear power not particularly friendly with the US. Wiping out Russia would set the clock ticking on US-China relations, because once you have established that this is your strategy, this is where the next showdown would happen. So the US would have to get extraordinary lucky twice.
Global nuclear war does not poll very well. A sneak attack would completely undermine the role of the US as a soft-spoken hegemonic power whose clients thrive. (At least that is the image in Europe and SE Asia, less in Latin America or the Middle East.)
Between political ramifications, radioactive fallout, possible climate impacts and economic aspects (a large part of the chip industry is in China) wiping out China and Russia would be disastrous for the west.
We are not living in 1960 more, where some people believed that of course the Cold War would escalate and that it might thus be better to escalate on your own terms. Living in the shadow of nuclear annihilation turns out to be quite comfortable if you make it to the correct timelines, actually. No need to risk the good thing we have going.
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The distance from Northern Ukraine to Moscow is significantly less than from the Baltics to Moscow, 460 km to 600 km which is relevant to a decapitation strike. Missile defence based in Ukraine would also complicate Russian nuclear strikes. They would have to defend thousands of kilometres of extra airspace in addition to the Belarus-St Petersburg area.
The Russian Black Sea Fleet is not known for its excellence, they aren't in a position to to lose bases to NATO warships. Given the interest British and US warships seem to have in the Black Sea, it's likely there'd be many AEGIS-equipped ships in Crimea or the Sea of Azov. This obviously limits Russian power-projection abilities, their ability to support Syria or other allies.
And what happens once Ukraine joins NATO? Everyone and their dog has been saying this will happen for years now.
You're not supposed to be able to join NATO with territorial disputes - yet NATO training and integration has continued through 2014, through 2022 and continues to this day despite this. Suppose they amend the 'no territorial disputes' clause or strategically ignore it like Blinken does to bring in Ukraine and Ukraine moved on Donbass in a counter-factual where Russia didn't invade. Then Russia would be forced to choose between losing Donbass or war with NATO.
Furthermore, it's a basic strategic principle that great powers don't want their neighbours to be members of hostile alliance groups. Everyone knows that Russia was extremely unhappy with the idea of Ukraine being in NATO, Burns's 'nyet means nyet' cable shows this. We can identify efforts to prevent this in Russian strategy - debt relief and energy subsidies pre-2014 and increasingly intense economic and military pressure since the Special Diplomatic Operation you don't want to call a coup.
And note what the actual distinction is here, as there no significant range limiting factor at the 460-to-600km range in the modern era. Rather, it's time.
A nuclear decapitation in the modern age would be reliant on hypersonic weapons which- if not simply branding for old ballistic weapons- are traveling at a minimum of about mach 5, or 6, 173 km/hr. As the additionally 140 km is the distance to be traveled, this this simply adds time to the transit time, not a range limitation in itself.
An extra 140km at 6170 km/hr equates to an extra 80 seconds- again, at a slow hypersonic rate. Which, while not nothing- and I'm sure you will insist is very relevant- doesn't actually change the acceptableness of a nuclear first strike. If the goal of the decapitation strike is to kill a leader then the 80 second differential won't realistically make a difference in the target escaping the nuclear blast radius, and if the goal is to do a nuclear armegeddon first strike, this doesn't change that the success factor is being primarily driven by the ability to mitigate second strike capability, not the 80-extra seconds to alert / get release authorities for non-second strike.
Which returns to the question of who is unleashing nuclear holocaust on Russia in the first place in light of second strike capabilities. Which isn't the US, both because (a) the US has been deterred by much less capable nuclear risks for decades, and (b) the idea that the US is looking to nuclear genocide the russians is based in fever fantasy rather than any realistic understanding of American politics or its military-strategic community.
Which returns to the point that nuclear deterrence is still being waived away, because the argument premise is silly when Russia's own nuclear capabilities are brought into the picture.
Missile defenses based in Ukraine would complicate Russian nuclear strikes on Ukraine or over the Black Sea. The nature of the curvature of the earth is such that the Russians don't need to fire over Ukraine to hit any other NATO nuclear member for the purposes of maintaining deterrence, and that they'd have to actively go out of their way to do so.
Now, if your argument will shift to that Russia really needs to be able to nuke non-nuclear members like Turkey, I will grant you that Ukraine would help defend Turkey... but now we are conceding that the Russians need to act based on threats not actually in Ukraine, and not nuclear-driven in the first place. And while Russia certain had war plans to nuke most non-nuclear states it could come into conflict with in NATO, that mentality was rather a significant part as to why they wanted to be in NATO under a nuclear umbrella.
Whether the Russian Black Sea fleet is known for excellence, they were the original impetus for the strategic value of the Crimean peninsula as a naval base, and this was considered a major key to support Russian power projection despite the Black Sea being cut off from Syria or other allies regardless of how many AEGIS-equipped systems are in the Black Sea by virtue that the Black Sea is controlled by the Turkish straight.
Ukraine provides no advantage for the Russians to expand power-projection abilities into the Middle East, unless you hand-waive Turkey out of the way. Crimea is a prestige port, not an enabling port for out-of-blacksea activities.
Based on history to date, Putin publicly claims it doesn't change anything and Russia doesn't care anyway and continues not to attack a NATO power and the NATO powers continue not to attack Russia because no one involved- least of all the US- wants the expense or hassle of attacking Russia.
Peace, in other words.
NATO training and integration leadup are not joining NATO, and there is no position that NATO cannot work with willing candidates in preparation for the time that they resolve the territorial disputes- the resolution of which was the official Russian of 2014 through 2022 and even now.
And, of course, this goes back to why this matters, which amounts to pretending that Russian nuclear deterrence doesn't exist and that 80 seconds of travel time is somehow what is preventing the US from unleashing a nuclear genocide opening against the Russians.
This would unironically be a net gain for the average Russian, and would have been a major strategic gain for the Russian defense interest had it been done years ago. The average Russian would no longer be on the hook for subsidizing a broke mafia statelet that has been responsible for tens of thousands of Russian deaths to date with more to come, and had it been abandoned years ago the Russians wouldn't have crippled their northern flank's very viable option for a significant military victory against the NATO alliance, it wouldn't have reinvigorated NATO at a time where the Americans and Europeans were openly discussing strategic divorce over the lack of a perceived shared security interests, and not only would tens of thousands of Russian military-aged men by alive and 10% of the Russian IT workforce still in the country, but hundreds of thousands of pieces of equipment wouldn't have been lost in the sunk cost fallacy over a failed popular uprising that primarily had the effect of taking the pro-Russian demographic out of the Ukrainian electorate and accelerating Ukraine's political reorientation from wanting to to be a part of the European Union but militarily neutral to the most anti-Russian demographic this side of Poland.
NovaRussia was a Russian strategic blunder in the great power competition year before the Ukraine War turned the Russian military into a mid-cold war army and made the Russians synonymous with cope cages for years to come.
Furthermore furthermore, it's a basic known fact of history that great powers who repeatedly attack their neighbors drive their neighbors into alliance groups by their own hostility, and that if the goal is to not drive neighbors into hostile alliance groups, a great power should not result to repeated armed interventions. Russia was indeed extremely unhappy that its former subjects feared it like a battered wife might fear a drunken Husband, and yet Russia continued to attempt to coerce and threaten and hit its former subjects into compliance.
This is, in strategic lexicon, an 'own goal.'
Furthermore furthermore furthermore, it's an even more basic strategic principle that great powers who pick stupid wars get stupid prizes. The eras of empires of conquest ended years ago not merely because most of the Europeans realized it was morally abhorrent, but also because it was economically and militarily ruinous due to the technologies (that russian enabled and widely spread) for cost-effective resistance. The ability of minor powers to disproportionately hit back against an invader so long as they were willing to fight and had foreign support was the hallmark of many of the wars of the Cold War, and Russia's belief that they would be greeted as liberators was as stupid for them as it was for the Americans in Iraq.
Or perhaps even more stupid. The Americans were initially welcomed by the Shia, but then stuck around and tried to stop the follow-on civil war that was initially ignorring them. The Russians planned to have torture facilities and kill lists from the start.
Regardless, I return to a long-stood by claim that appeals to strategic principles are misaimed when it comes to Russia, because Putin has demonstrated his strategic incompetence for over a decade at this point.
Which I do not for the same reason that you don't want to admit the rather inconvenient but uncontested context of Yanukovych's departure: that he was not escorted out of the country by the military or security forces, but rather fled before he could be arrested and tried for crimes against the nation after the military and broader security forces refused orders to follow along in shooting civilians in the streets after he granted himself the power and began to do so without legislative consent while his government executed a sniper campaign to justify the crackdown.
No one in the 'it was a coup!' camp ever really addresses what the level of impeachable conduct is that might warrant a legislature moving against an executive without being a coup, but in other contexts they generally concede that the executive granting themselves the right to shoot their political opponents at foreign behest typically qualifies as a legitimate rather than illegal basis for removing a president.
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