I think - wrongly - people can conflate support for Palestine as support for Hamas.
Geopolitics
- Thread starter Mciahel Goodman
- Start date
I think - wrongly - people can conflate support for Palestine as support for Hamas.
You can seperate the discussion on the wider issue of what's needed to arrive at a two state solution (and even how historically its got to this) from individual acts committed though.
It's not a support one support all catch all and this framing of it being 'complicated' is exactly what Russia is now trying to use on It's own people. Obfuscate the events, complicate it with the morals of minority actors, bring in historical complexities.
When the bad guys are using the same devices to explain away actions It's a bit of a red flag that further thought might be needed. Those devices tend not to be used to provide a clear moral judgement.
The world needs to come down hard on unacceptable state actions rather than this current model of focusing on allied or non-allied actors and demonising accordingly.
Btw you do know that the Soviets helped arm Israel in the 1948 Arab war? Those arms went a long way in helping them.
A nice, sane, rational and calm thread like this, which definitely isn't a clusterfeck of unresolvable opinions, really makes you wonder why people are so determined to keep threads about specific conflicts on topic...
I haven't seen any evidence of Russia trying to convince their people that this is "a complicated issue" or obfuscate the events going on. They have driven a hardline narrative which includes a revised historical reading even by their standard of how they are justifying this invasion, and resistance to this is now being met by police force and the threat of decades in prison. Where exactly is the "it's complicated" in that?
For the acknowledgement of a complicated issue, you have to be willing to start from a position where no one side is entirely right or wrong - be it in the actions of the relevant actors either today, in recent history, or in the socio-politcal sphere.
Your stance gives justification for someone using whatever moral argument they may have to purport a response of absolutes. It's the opposite of "whataboutery" that this thread is looking to explore.
Yes, and was the first to recognise Israel, but things went very pear shaped in the fifties and the USSR switched sides.
So I guess USSR were the good people then?
This is a ridiculous discussion
But, to dip in quickly, you may not want to google Operation Atlas on the topic of unsavoury collaborations.
This will go on forever. Isn't this maybe for the Israel-Palestine thread? Or could you try and bring the discussion back up to a somewhat higher level? (In terms of detail vs. abstraction, I mean.)
Tooze is great although he would have been banned from the Ukraine thread.
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I would say in response to the above, that you are right that foreign policy is fundamentally about interests but you are incorrect that those interests preclude moral, legal or ethical elements. The Cold War wasn't just chess pieces cynically being moved around a board, it was also a conflict about two competing visions of how society should be organised.
The Ukraine War is not just about NATO anymore (and that video is massively out of date in that Ukraine didn't join NATO and NATO did in fact stop expanding and the US did recognise they had no vital interest in Ukraine being in NATO and Putin did make clear this was more about a 'greater Russia' than anything else), it's also about preserving International law. It's about Europe making common cause with an emerging European democracy (seeing the EU step up, recognise its interests, has been remarkable and historic.) And it's about preventing the return of crude imperialism. Those are all real interests.
Someone made an interesting point the other day, that the US, Russian and EU geostrategic interests are potentially more aligned with respect to China than divided. But you can't see any potential progress on that until Putin and his cronies are gone, because I think fundamentally he has a view of Russia's interests that has become warped by his own personal fears and desires.
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Thank you, I needed that laugh.You're right (moral/legal/ethical concerns are baked in), my point was just that different genres of discourse often overlap and people operating from one frame (pure strategy, if you're an analyst) are more concerned with logic which is typically amoral but that doesn't mean that they themselves have no morality or moral concerns, just that such are back-grounded as a matter of professional necessity. As for the Cold War, I agree, but many major conflicts in a multipolar world (in modern history) represent different visions of societal organisation (not as stark as the Cold War, as class/state/free-market were heightened) insofar as one state, even if it mirrors another in imperialist motive, always differs in its interests from another (even if the difference is much less than US/USSR).
Yeah, the US, Russia, and EU are potentially more "naturally" (religion/culture) aligned but this invasion basically means that Russia will form a bloc of convenience with China and I don't see an easy return (unless some agreement is reached and Ukraine is divided along eastern/western lines and US/NATO/Russia agree on military neutrality across the entire territory, which also seems remote now).
I would also just add that "international law" usually refers to Western ideals of how the world should be ordered.
The context is actually not as you present it. Corbyn wasn't "ridiculed" for suggesting the Tories were being funded by Russian oligarchs, he was called out because he equivocated on whether Russia had been to blame for the attempted murder of Sergei Skripal, then a few days later decided to make his focus Tory party funding rather Russian involvement - again it just looked like he was seeking to change the subject. It later emerged that it was a deliberate strategy "to steer Labour’s position away from holding the Russian government to account, including allegedly gutting a speech of “any statements levelling blame at Russia, support for Nato, or anything else that Corbyn might regard as unduly imperialist in its tone.”
Yeah, that's fair. Corbyn is fiercely anti-NATO, so no arguments. On the donor issue, though, I'd say Corbyn was essentially correct but was the wrong messenger at the wrong time.
Go through the entire thread below.
Good God
Thanks, really insightful. Cohen in another video says that the US/NATO wants to continue expanding it's sphere of influence, sometimes violently, but doesn't want Russia to do so. How else will Russia, a superpower themselves, react to that.
While Russia are again wrong for reacting the way they are before any sort of offensive from NATO, you can understand their paranoia over having NATO forces surroundings it's western border.
NATO should have been more clever in how they dealt with this, which is making me more scared about statements from Germany saying that they are spending more on military and sending weapons to Ukraine.
Yikes
A few thoughts:
Without wanting to dismiss any of the thinkers he quoted, because they're mostly knowledgeable and pragmatic, and their argument is one in part proven by current events, but the compilation is still a biased sample. He went looking for people with the specific warning about Russia's discomfort in NATO's expansion and he found them. What it leaves out is what other good arguments might have been made about the Ukraine-Russia dynamic?
The one flaw in using the argument made by these thinkers since the 90s to this present situation is that Ukraine never joined NATO, so it doesn't fully line-up with their warns. That said the NATO countries did in some ways live in indecision about Ukraine for seemingly 20+ years, and certainly since 2014, in a way that did probably send all the wrong messages. Any of the statements that "Ukraine will one day join NATO" and that weren't followed-up with a specific and brief timeline were foolish. It threatened Russia with the situation they didn't want, but provided no actual deterrence in the form of membership and additional military capacity. They either should have messaged clearly that it wasn't going to happen, or do it quickly and make it a fait accompli.
Lastly, there is still an issue even if we were to simply accept the notion that a country belongs in another's sphere of influence. It's not just the moral aspect that they should still have agency (if we won't call it true soveirgnty), but the practical aspect that they will have agency! In this specific case it is an issue that being in Russia's sphere of influence kind of sucks from a development standpoint. This is going to be a continued issue for Russia's sphere of influence I predict, as long as it remains a lagging country in economic terms. When you combine the lack of economic development with the political suppression, it adds up to a sphere of influence that will probably have recurring conflict even if it appears internal at many times. Recognizing spheres of influence is a way to avoid conflict between major powers, but it isn't a recipe for broader peace.
From NZZ: "this time they are actual refugees"
How long before this thread or anything remotely anti-west is forbidden from posting on here?
Is the whataboutery brigade going to play the trumpites card of claiming that having their ideas challenged amounts to censorship?
The whole "whataboutery brigade" bullshit is the exact description of what you claim.
You can take it as you want.
I'll take that as a yes.
Ironic that israel reacted to the invasion of Ukraine saying international law has been broken….israel is currently broken how many international laws? 65 at last count
israel and in the current conflict Russia are the aggressors, but you know this youre just trying to flip the narrative as per usual.
https://www.ndtv.com/indians-abroad...ed-on-trains-2799299#pfrom=home-ndtv_bigstory
More and more Indian students are simply not being allowed to leave Kharkiv. Getting kicked off the trains or simply not allowed to get onto trains, because they are not Ukrainian.
Indian embassy desperately asks people to leave on foot to escape from shelling.
Already one Indian student dead in the shelling as he went out of his bunker to get food.
More and more Indian students are simply not being allowed to leave Kharkiv. Getting kicked off the trains or simply not allowed to get onto trains, because they are not Ukrainian.
Indian embassy desperately asks people to leave on foot to escape from shelling.
Already one Indian student dead in the shelling as he went out of his bunker to get food.
Is President Zelensky flipping the narrative too?
“We know what it’s like not to have our own state,” Zelensky said. “We know what it means to defend one’s own state and land with weapons in hand, at the cost of our own lives. Both Ukrainians and Jews value freedom, and they work equally for the future of our states to become to our liking, and not the future which others want for us. Israel is often an example for Ukraine.”
I don't remember Ukraine surrounding and invading Russia five times in order to push it into the sea.
I don't remember Ukraine lobbing missiles at Russian civilians.
I don't remember Ukraine sponsoring the formation of the Russian Liberation Organisation.
Do you?
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Looking at the situation now with Russia and Ukraine, how do you think the world got here?
I think all the trouble in this case really started in April, 2008, at the NATO Summit in Bucharest, where afterward NATO issued a statement that said Ukraine and Georgia would become part of NATO. The Russians made it unequivocally clear at the time that they viewed this as an existential threat, and they drew a line in the sand. Nevertheless, what has happened with the passage of time is that we have moved forward to include Ukraine in the West to make Ukraine a Western bulwark on Russia’s border. Of course, this includes more than just NATO expansion. NATO expansion is the heart of the strategy, but it includes E.U. expansion as well, and it includes turning Ukraine into a pro-American liberal democracy, and, from a Russian perspective, this is an existential threat.
You said that it’s about “turning Ukraine into a pro-American liberal democracy.” I don’t put much trust or much faith in America “turning” places into liberal democracies. What if Ukraine, the people of Ukraine, want to live in a pro-American liberal democracy?
If Ukraine becomes a pro-American liberal democracy, and a member of NATO, and a member of the E.U., the Russians will consider that categorically unacceptable. If there were no NATO expansion and no E.U. expansion, and Ukraine just became a liberal democracy and was friendly with the United States and the West more generally, it could probably get away with that. You want to understand that there is a three-prong strategy at play here: E.U. expansion, NATO expansion, and turning Ukraine into a pro-American liberal democracy.
You keep saying “turning Ukraine into a liberal democracy,” and it seems like that’s an issue for the Ukrainians to decide. NATO can decide whom it admits, but we saw in 2014 that it appeared as if many Ukrainians wanted to be considered part of Europe. It would seem like almost some sort of imperialism to tell them that they can’t be a liberal democracy.
It’s not imperialism; this is great-power politics. When you’re a country like Ukraine and you live next door to a great power like Russia, you have to pay careful attention to what the Russians think, because if you take a stick and you poke them in the eye, they’re going to retaliate. States in the Western hemisphere understand this full well with regard to the United States.
The Monroe Doctrine, essentially.
Of course. There’s no country in the Western hemisphere that we will allow to invite a distant, great power to bring military forces into that country.
Right, but saying that America will not allow countries in the Western hemisphere, most of them democracies, to decide what kind of foreign policy they have—you can say that’s good or bad, but that is imperialism, right? We’re essentially saying that we have some sort of say over how democratic countries run their business.
We do have that say, and, in fact, we overthrew democratically elected leaders in the Western hemisphere during the Cold War because we were unhappy with their policies. This is the way great powers behave.
Of course we did, but I’m wondering if we should be behaving that way. When we’re thinking about foreign policies, should we be thinking about trying to create a world where neither the U.S. nor Russia is behaving that way?
That’s not the way the world works. When you try to create a world that looks like that, you end up with the disastrous policies that the United States pursued during the unipolar moment. We went around the world trying to create liberal democracies. Our main focus, of course, was in the greater Middle East, and you know how well that worked out. Not very well.
I think it would be difficult to say that America’s policy in the Middle East in the past seventy-five years since the end of the Second World War, or in the past thirty years since the end of the Cold War, has been to create liberal democracies in the Middle East.
I think that’s what the Bush Doctrine was about during the unipolar moment.
In Iraq. But not in the Palestinian territories, or Saudi Arabia, or Egypt, or anywhere else, right?
No—well, not in Saudi Arabia and not in Egypt. To start with, the Bush Doctrine basically said that if we could create a liberal democracy in Iraq, it would have a domino effect, and countries such as Syria, Iran, and eventually Saudi Arabia and Egypt would turn into democracies. That was the basic philosophy behind the Bush Doctrine. The Bush Doctrine was not just designed to turn Iraq into a democracy. We had a much grander scheme in mind.
We can debate how much the people who were in charge in the Bush Administration really wanted to turn the Middle East into a bunch of democracies, and really thought that was going to happen. My sense was that there was not a lot of actual enthusiasm about turning Saudi Arabia into a democracy.
Well, I think focusing on Saudi Arabia is taking the easy case from your perspective. That was the most difficult case from America’s perspective, because Saudi Arabia has so much leverage over us because of oil, and it’s certainly not a democracy. But the Bush Doctrine, if you go look at what we said at the time, was predicated on the belief that we could democratize the greater Middle East. It might not happen overnight, but it would eventually happen.
I guess my point would be actions speak louder than words, and, whatever Bush’s flowery speeches said, I don’t feel like the policy of the United States at any point in its recent history has been to try and insure liberal democracies around the world.
There’s a big difference between how the United States behaved during the unipolar moment and how it’s behaved in the course of its history. I agree with you when you talk about American foreign policy in the course of its broader history, but the unipolar moment was a very special time. I believe that during the unipolar moment, we were deeply committed to spreading democracy.
With Ukraine, it’s very important to understand that, up until 2014, we did not envision NATO expansion and E.U. expansion as a policy that was aimed at containing Russia. Nobody seriously thought that Russia was a threat before February 22, 2014. NATO expansion, E.U. expansion, and turning Ukraine and Georgia and other countries into liberal democracies were all about creating a giant zone of peace that spread all over Europe and included Eastern Europe and Western Europe. It was not aimed at containing Russia. What happened is that this major crisis broke out, and we had to assign blame, and of course we were never going to blame ourselves. We were going to blame the Russians. So we invented this story that Russia was bent on aggression in Eastern Europe. Putin is interested in creating a greater Russia, or maybe even re-creating the Soviet Union.
Let’s turn to that time and the annexation of Crimea. I was reading an old article where you wrote, “According to the prevailing wisdom in the West, the Ukraine Crisis can be blamed almost entirely on Russian aggression. Russian president Vladimir Putin, the argument goes, annexed Crimea out of a longstanding desire to resuscitate the Soviet Empire, and he may eventually go after the rest of Ukraine as well as other countries in Eastern Europe.” And then you say, “But this account is wrong.” Does anything that’s happened in the last couple weeks make you think that account was closer to the truth than you might have thought?
Oh, I think I was right. I think the evidence is clear that we did not think he was an aggressor before February 22, 2014. This is a story that we invented so that we could blame him. My argument is that the West, especially the United States, is principally responsible for this disaster. But no American policymaker, and hardly anywhere in the American foreign-policy establishment, is going to want to acknowledge that line of argument, and they will say that the Russians are responsible.
You mean because the Russians did the annexation and the invasion?
Yes.
I was interested in that article because you say the idea that Putin may eventually go after the rest of Ukraine, as well as other countries in Eastern Europe, is wrong. Given that he seems to be going after the rest of Ukraine now, do you think in hindsight that that argument is perhaps more true, even if we didn’t know it at the time?
It’s hard to say whether he’s going to go after the rest of Ukraine because—I don’t mean to nitpick here but—that implies that he wants to conquer all of Ukraine, and then he will turn to the Baltic states, and his aim is to create a greater Russia or the reincarnation of the Soviet Union. I don’t see evidence at this point that that is true. It’s difficult to tell, looking at the maps of the ongoing conflict, exactly what he’s up to. It seems quite clear to me that he is going to take the Donbass and that the Donbass is going to be either two independent states or one big independent state, but beyond that it’s not clear what he’s going to do. I mean, it does seem apparent that he’s not touching western Ukraine.
His bombs are touching it, right?
But that’s not the key issue. The key issue is: What territory do you conquer, and what territory do you hold onto? I was talking to somebody the other day about what’s going to happen with these forces that are coming out of Crimea, and the person told me that he thought they would turn west and take Odessa. I was talking to somebody else more recently who said that that’s not going to happen. Do I know what’s going to happen? No, none of us know what’s going to happen.
You don’t think he has designs on Kyiv?
No, I don’t think he has designs on Kyiv. I think he’s interested in taking at least the Donbass, and maybe some more territory and eastern Ukraine, and, number two, he wants to install in Kyiv a pro-Russian government, a government that is attuned to Moscow’s interests.
I thought you said that he was not interested in taking Kyiv.
No, he’s interested in taking Kyiv for the purpose of regime change. O.K.?
As opposed to what?
As opposed to permanently conquering Kyiv.
It would be a Russian-friendly government that he would presumably have some say over, right?
Yes, exactly. But it’s important to understand that it is fundamentally different from conquering and holding onto Kyiv. Do you understand what I’m saying?
We could all think of imperial possessions whereby a sort of figurehead was put on the throne, even if the homeland was actually controlling what was going on there, right? We’d still say that those places had been conquered, right?
I have problems with your use of the word “imperial.” I don’t know anybody who talks about this whole problem in terms of imperialism. This is great-power politics, and what the Russians want is a regime in Kyiv that is attuned to Russian interests. It may be ultimately that the Russians would be willing to live with a neutral Ukraine, and that it won’t be necessary for Moscow to have any meaningful control over the government in Kyiv. It may be that they just want a regime that is neutral and not pro-American.
When you said that no one’s talking about this as imperialism, in Putin’s speeches he specifically refers to the “territory of the former Russian Empire,” which he laments losing. So it seems like he’s talking about it.
I think that’s wrong, because I think you’re quoting the first half of the sentence, as most people in the West do. He said, “Whoever does not miss the Soviet Union has no heart.” And then he said, “Whoever wants it back has no brain.”
He’s also saying that Ukraine is essentially a made-up nation, while he seems to be invading it, no?
O.K., but put those two things together and tell me what that means. I’m just not too sure. He does believe it’s a made-up nation. I would note to him, all nations are made up. Any student of nationalism can tell you that. We invent these concepts of national identity. They’re filled with all sorts of myths. So he’s correct about Ukraine, just like he’s correct about the United States or Germany. The much more important point is: he understands that he cannot conquer Ukraine and integrate it into a greater Russia or into a reincarnation of the former Soviet Union. He can’t do that. What he’s doing in Ukraine is fundamentally different. He is obviously lopping off some territory. He’s going to take some territory away from Ukraine, in addition to what happened with Crimea, in 2014. Furthermore, he is definitely interested in regime change. Beyond that, it’s hard to say exactly what this will all lead to, except for the fact that he is not going to conquer all of Ukraine. It would be a blunder of colossal proportions to try to do that.
I assume that you think if he were to try to do that, that would change your analysis of what we’ve witnessed.
Absolutely. My argument is that he’s not going to re-create the Soviet Union or try to build a greater Russia, that he’s not interested in conquering and integrating Ukraine into Russia. It’s very important to understand that we invented this story that Putin is highly aggressive and he’s principally responsible for this crisis in Ukraine. The argument that the foreign-policy establishment in the United States, and in the West more generally, has invented revolves around the claim that he is interested in creating a greater Russia or a reincarnation of the former Soviet Union. There are people who believe that when he is finished conquering Ukraine, he will turn to the Baltic states. He’s not going to turn to the Baltic states. First of all, the Baltic states are members of NATO and—
Is that a good thing?
No.
You’re saying that he’s not going to invade them in part because they’re part of NATO, but they shouldn’t be part of NATO.
Yes, but those are two very different issues. I’m not sure why you’re connecting them. Whether I think they should be part of NATO is independent of whether they are part of NATO. They are part of NATO. They have an Article 5 guarantee—that’s all that matters. Furthermore, he’s never shown any evidence that he’s interested in conquering the Baltic states. Indeed, he’s never shown any evidence that he’s interested in conquering Ukraine.
It seems to me that if he wants to bring back anything, it’s the Russian Empire that predates the Soviet Union. He seems very critical of the Soviet Union, correct?
Well, I don’t know if he’s critical.
He said it in his big essay that he wrote last year, and he said in a recent speech that he essentially blames Soviet policies for allowing a degree of autonomy for Soviet Republics, such as Ukraine.
But he also said, as I read to you before, “Whoever does not miss the Soviet Union has no heart.” That’s somewhat at odds with what you just said. I mean, he’s in effect saying that he misses the Soviet Union, right? That’s what he’s saying. What we’re talking about here is his foreign policy. The question you have to ask yourself is whether or not you think that this is a country that has the capability to do that. You realize that this is a country that has a G.N.P. that’s smaller than Texas.
Countries try to do things that they don’t have the capabilities for all the time. You could have said to me, “Who thinks that America could get the Iraqi power system working quickly? We have all these problems in America.” And you would’ve been correct. But we still thought we could do it, and we still tried to do it, and we failed, right? America couldn’t do what it wanted during Vietnam, which I’m sure you would say is a reason not to fight these various wars—and I would agree—but that doesn’t mean that we were correct or rational about our capabilities.
I’m talking about the raw-power potential of Russia—the amount of economic might it has. Military might is built on economic might. You need an economic foundation to build a really powerful military. To go out and conquer countries like Ukraine and the Baltic states and to re-create the former Soviet Union or re-create the former Soviet Empire in Eastern Europe would require a massive army, and that would require an economic foundation that contemporary Russia does not come close to having. There is no reason to fear that Russia is going to be a regional hegemony in Europe. Russia is not a serious threat to the United States. We do face a serious threat in the international system. We face a pure competitor. And that’s China. Our policy in Eastern Europe is undermining our ability to deal with the most dangerous threat that we face today.
What do you think our policy should be in Ukraine right now, and what do you worry that we’re doing that’s going to undermine our China policy?
We should be pivoting out of Europe to deal with China in a laser-like fashion, number one. And, number two, we should be working overtime to create friendly relations with the Russians. The Russians are part of our balancing coalition against China. If you live in a world where there are three great powers—China, Russia, and the United States—and one of those great powers, China, is a pure competitor, what you want to do if you’re the United States is have Russia on your side of the ledger. Instead, what we have done with our foolish policies in Eastern Europe is drive the Russians into the arms of the Chinese. This is a violation of Balance of Power Politics 101.
I went back and I reread your article about the Israel lobby in the London Review of Books, from 2006. You were talking about the Palestinian issue, and you said something that I very much agree with, which is: “There is a moral dimension here as well. Thanks to the lobby of the United States it has become the de facto enabler of Israeli occupation in the occupied territories, making it complicit in the crimes perpetrated against the Palestinians.” I was cheered to read that because I know you think of yourself as a tough, crusty old guy who doesn’t talk about morality, but it seemed to me you were suggesting that there was a moral dimension here. I’m curious what you think, if any, of the moral dimension to what’s going on in Ukraine right now.
I think there is a strategic and a moral dimension involved with almost every issue in international politics. I think that sometimes those moral and strategic dimensions line up with each other. In other words, if you’re fighting against Nazi Germany from 1941 to 1945, you know the rest of the story. There are other occasions where those arrows point in opposite directions, where doing what is strategically right is morally wrong. I think if you join an alliance with the Soviet Union to fight against Nazi Germany, it is a strategically wise policy, but it is a morally wrong policy. But you do it because you have no choice for strategic reasons. In other words, what I’m saying to you, Isaac, is that when push comes to shove, strategic considerations overwhelm moral considerations. In an ideal world, it would be wonderful if the Ukrainians were free to choose their own political system and to choose their own foreign policy.
But in the real world, that is not feasible. The Ukrainians have a vested interest in paying serious attention to what the Russians want from them. They run a grave risk if they alienate the Russians in a fundamental way. If Russia thinks that Ukraine presents an existential threat to Russia because it is aligning with the United States and its West European allies, this is going to cause an enormous amount of damage to Ukraine. That of course is exactly what’s happening now. So my argument is: the strategically wise strategy for Ukraine is to break off its close relations with the West, especially with the United States, and try to accommodate the Russians. If there had been no decision to move NATO eastward to include Ukraine, Crimea and the Donbass would be part of Ukraine today, and there would be no war in Ukraine.
That advice seems a bit implausible now. Is there still time, despite what we’re seeing from the ground, for Ukraine to appease Russia somehow?
I think there’s a serious possibility that the Ukrainians can work out some sort of modus vivendi with the Russians. And the reason is that the Russians are now discovering that occupying Ukraine and trying to run Ukraine’s politics is asking for big trouble.
So you are saying occupying Ukraine is going to be a tough slog?
Absolutely, and that’s why I said to you that I did not think the Russians would occupy Ukraine in the long term. But, just to be very clear, I did say they’re going to take at least the Donbass, and hopefully not more of the easternmost part of Ukraine. I think the Russians are too smart to get involved in an occupation of Ukraine.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/why-john-mearsheimer-blames-the-us-for-the-crisis-in-ukraine
Complementing my OP, Great Power politics and morality are not mutually exclusive but to view the first in the frame of the latter runs against the grain of those whose job it is to study such things.
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since this is the whataboutery thread
Is there a femminist out cry out the draconian measures used at the border where only women and children can leave? Why is it that having a vagina means you get to flee? What happens if youre a transman? a transwoman? a feeble man that hates guns and cant do shit in a war? what if your a single dad with 2 young children? i have seen very little outcry about this and it makes me wonder why is it that once your a man you are forced to stay but woman can leave as they please?
Is there a femminist out cry out the draconian measures used at the border where only women and children can leave? Why is it that having a vagina means you get to flee? What happens if youre a transman? a transwoman? a feeble man that hates guns and cant do shit in a war? what if your a single dad with 2 young children? i have seen very little outcry about this and it makes me wonder why is it that once your a man you are forced to stay but woman can leave as they please?
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The other day I saw a post on twitter about some rich guy opening doors of his hotel or something to Ukrainians fleeing. First preference will be given to those with pets
The comments section was filled with people praising his kind heart and his love for animals etc. I was the only one imagining a family of guy, wife and 2 kids being turned away because the room has been taken away by a single man with 2 dogs.
Agreed - I think the violence from Russia and the fall out therein will shine a light on other countries undergoing occupation from foreigners. Continued Israeli aggression to Palestine will only make the world realise how similar they are to Russia in this scenario.
I don't think that will happen. The hypocrisy has always been there. Israel has always been treated as the "good guy" and Palestine as the "bad guy". So it is good occupation.
Same with many Western countries bombing countries resulting in direct/indirect death of many civilians. The media also helps to drive this into everyone's brains on who are the good guys and bad guys.
There are videos of children, as young as 5-6, helping parents to make molotov cocktails in Ukraine. Such a video emerging from the middle east would have raised so much hue and cry, but today it is cheered, if not celebrated.
As a Hungarian, it's hard to overstate how infuriating it is to read this pontification about how those countries in 1997 shouldn't have been allowed to join NATO. These grand thinkers are effectively telling us that we should accept our fate, that we are Russia's buffer zone and they should be able to do whatever they want around here.
That interview was also ridiculous in more ways than one. Baltic states won't be attacked because of NATO but they shouldn't be in NATO - and he says he doesn't see why those statements have anything to do with each other...
Probably wrong time and place to express this, but I’m not entirely comfortable with some of the anti-Russian sentiment going round, e.g. “Once Russia has become civilized, they can rejoin civilization.” (@Walrus). Also thinking this current unprecedented wave of isolating a country will certainly help fan those flames.
The accusation of whataboutism is a cheap tool to mask hypocrisy. Crimes and wrongdoings should be called out wherever it is. It has nothing to do with the west or east.
It's frustrating to be a pawn in a battle between superpowers. Let's not forget the US doing the same during the Cold War, invading Vietman when they had a communist leader, supporting horrific dictators in Central America because they were opposed to communism.
While Hungary, and Ukraine, should absolutely have the right to join whichever group they want to, NATO themselves need to understand the consequences of such because they are dealing with an authoritative regime who is sensitive about being surrounded by a group with whom they have had not-so-good relations with (again, same with the US during the Cold War).
Russia had not right to invade Ukraine, but as the tweet rightfully says NATO are no angels as they've also invaded, attacked and influenced other countries to further their own political interests.
I said it before, we need to learn from the mistakes of World War 1 and not completely isolate Russia hopefully when they lose this war. Germany's feeling of humiliation and economic devastation was the prime reason for the rise of Nazism.
I have a question..
Why did the Ukrainian government join forces with the US and UK in Invading another country in 2003? the Ukrainian troops was the 3rd largest after the US and UK? why did they send troops to kills Iraqis? Why did they travel 3500 km to interfere in another country politics? Did the Ukrainian army find the famous Iraqi WMD?
Why did the Ukrainian government join forces with the US and UK in Invading another country in 2003? the Ukrainian troops was the 3rd largest after the US and UK? why did they send troops to kills Iraqis? Why did they travel 3500 km to interfere in another country politics? Did the Ukrainian army find the famous Iraqi WMD?