I think there comes a time where you have to dismiss delusional excuses for what they are.
There are millions of Republican anti-vaxxers who are genuinely scared of a dangerous vaccine being forced on them by a hostile government. On this forum at least, there’s no way they’d get the same charitable treatment as you’re advocating for here.
Plus, framing the history of invasions of Russia as though Russia was a passive victim is also abetting the excuse-making. We could also make a list of incidents where Russian armies turned up all over central and even western Europe. It would be quite long.
I don’t even know what this means. What do rights have to do with it, and who said Russia has any special rights? I think what I’m saying is uncontroversial and largely agreed upon by historians: Russian foreign policy thinking in the post-WW2 era was greatly influenced by their history of being invaded, and it continues to be so. If you want to understand what they’re doing, it helps to understand what they’re thinking.
Contrast it with e.g America, which has almost no history of being invaded, so much so that Americans generally believe it unthinkable, the stuff of fiction. Make no mistake, this is mostly a Cold War showdown between Moscow and Washington.
What charitable treatment am I advocating for here?
No doubt. Let me know when you find one that killed as many people as the one in 1941.
Arguing that we treat these concerns as real in some way, even while we don’t agree with them.
It’s an argument that also contains an embedded assumption. That no-one in Russian government can, or has ever been able to see the obvious state of the world around them. NATO has never had the capability or the political will to invade Russia. To treat those concerns as genuine, we have to believe that Russians are fundamentally ignorant or irrational.
One difference from all the dates you cited is they now have a ton of nukes.
I’m not arguing that we treat those concerns as real, other than to say they that they really have those concerns, even if those concerns are stupid. They’re ‘real’ in that sense.
I believe they’re fundamentally ignorant or irrational for thinking that NATO is going to invade them. But I would be stupid to think that they don’t really fear that NATO is a threat to invade them, if that’s what they actually believe, wouldn’t I?
Sure. I’m saying this is a Cold War standoff, and has to be treated like one, because Russian thinking mirrors their Cold War thinking, and because they have a ton of nukes,
ShivaX
2005
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/01/26/vladimir-putin-does-not-think-like-we-do/
Three tenets from Putinism are particularly important to grasp. First, Putin believes that the West unfairly dictated the terms of peace at the Cold War’s end. In Putin’s view, the West imposed liberal restructuring inside Russia, compelled Moscow to sign lopsided arms control treaties, expanded NATO with no regard for Russia’s interests, and — the greatest sin of all — divided the Slavic peoples of the Soviet Union into separate countries and then “systematically and consistently pushed Ukraine to curtail and limit economic cooperation with Russia.” (Actually, it was the leaders of the three Slavic Soviet republics who signed the agreement dissolving the U.S.S.R. in December 1991, not leaders from Washington, London, or Brussels.) Now that Russia is powerful again, Putin is prepared to risk a lot to revise this so-called American imperial order, especially in Europe. He sees this mission as his sacred destiny.
Second, unlike realists, Putin does not view countries as unitary actors; he looks within countries to distinguish between dictatorships and democracies. Not without reason, Putin believes that U.S. support for democracy abroad threatens his autocratic rule.
Even today it would be wrong to assume all Russians support war with Ukraine to preempt some fictitious, future threat of NATO expansion. In 2021 Levada polls, most Russians expressed positive attitudes toward the Ukrainian people, and only 17 percent of respondents support unification between the two countries.
Yes, I think this is also part of what informs their views. In the Cold War era, they were largely alone and surrounded by enemies. If you’re already paranoid about being invaded, that situation isn’t going to help.
Yeah, since the USSR got nuclear weapons, any question of invading Russia is fantasy. The only time that would have been remotely imaginable (but not really possible even then, both for practical and political reasons) in recent historical memory was Patton’s rumored wish for the Western powers to “just keep going” once Germany was defeated and turning on our former allies (though technically not “The Allies”). That would have been nuts even then but at least not civilization/planet-ending.
Post WW2 yes, and unsurprisingly Western Europe policy thinking was also greatly influenced by their own recent history of being invaded.
Both sides in the cold war maintained defensive postures, for the same reasons. Do you recall how the general assumption in the West was that Russia would strike first? And it turned out that in Russia the general assumption was that the West would strike first?
The long list of previous “invasions” doesn’t factor into it since all European nations can boast such lists.
Fuck Putin he’s just the next strongman trying to get his way by force. He doesn’t get a pass because of a nations past traumas… ESPECIALLY with respect to Ukraine.
Again…who is offering Putin a pass?
All Putin apologists frame it this way. Russia just wants security!
I’m not interested in giving that argument any oxygen.
Go fucking argue with them, then.
You’re the one who brought up Russians supposed fear of invasion as a way to understand their foreign policy.
Yes, trying to understand what motivates people is the same thing as being an apologist for them.
It’s a bullshit argument that you can make for every European country and America even.
America frames all its foreign adventurism as defensive in nature I wonder why.
I’m just pointing out it’s bunk and you’re flipping the fuck out.
I think you’re wrong, but the difference is that I can think you’re wrong without casting any aspersions on your underlying motivations for being wrong.
Indeed, I’m the one who is flipping the fuck out.
Have a great day. Really.
Djscman
2017
Hey, that’s not fair. America hasn’t invaded Russia in over a century!
Hell, Russia invaded the US back in '66, too:
Thrag
2019
Well, we can’t then ignore the 1981 US invasion of Czechoslovakia.
