Calelari
21125
I have things to say about the realists but I don’t think Tom would approve.
His is the common view of the “realist” camp amongst foreign policy analysts, as well as tankies. But luckily there’s no sign that the voters of any Western democracy are taking that view seriously. And it’s not likely that they’re going to suddenly be convinced after nine months of Russian war crimes and atrocities. I don’t know why @Janster even raises that possibility.
And fundamentally, that’s because Mearsheimers and all the others are basing their arguments on a simple lie. As he put it in that video, NATO and the US kept “pushing and pushing and pushing” for the Ukraine to join NATO. Which. Is. A. Fucking. Lie.
It seems clear that the problem was the opposite. NATO membership was on the table for Ukraine and Georgia around 2008. The Russian response was armed aggression against both countries, dressed up with weak excuses about Russian-speaking separatist movements, all of which were essentially manufactured in Moscow. And NATO’s reaction was the exact opposite of Mearsheimers‘ lie about “doubling down”; instead we backed off. We imposed mildly painful sanctions while continuing to spend hundreds of billions on Russian energy, and immediately took NATO membership off the table. Aggression was rewarded.
Janster
21127
Well, this forum is for me an echochamber of the same type of arguments ie. Russia sucks and are loosing (I kinda agree) , and Russia is the main aggressor (wholly agree), but the narrative, as I tried to say long ago, is that a LOT of people aren’t totally in this camp, and some polling shows to that effect, Netherlands for example are 49% pro supporting Ukraine…to Portugal which is 90% for or something to that effect…and lets not get into Turkey and what they think.
I don’t think the Netherlands support Mearsheimer 51%, but support in general is 49% or so.
And Mearsheimer is a major proponent and voice for this reason, and he’s not bought by Russia unlike some other assholes I’m not gonna mention…and his arguments are a bit hard to refute at times…
antlers
21129
When rockets deploy cluster munitions, they spray them out from racks at altitude and then the rocket itself just falls to the earth. All these rockets each deployed dozens (or hundreds) of grenade-sized bomblets.
Just to clarify, so you mean support their EU/NATO candidacy or support Ukraine vs. Russia? Your number strikes me as their EU/NATO candidacy. Every poll on their opinion of the war seems well over 50% in favor of Ukraine (although how that support should be expressed varies considerably).
Still waiting for a source on that post-WWII artillery shell production figure…
Thrag
21132
Yes, not everyone supports Ukraine. Are you under the impression a lot of people here think there’s complete and universal support for Ukraine?
You really do seem to assume extreme arguments of others and rush to take contrarian positions to those assumed arguments. Like how you seem to assume that other people think victory will be a cake walk for Ukraine and that you are countering that non-existent narrative.
His arguments mostly seem to consist of stating “facts” that aren’t true and hoping the audience won’t notice.
Gotcha. I was aware of how cluster munitions worked, just not that that was what the Russians were using. That’s technically a war crime, isn’t it, using them on civilian areas?
As for the so-called realists, oy vey. I mean, I got my MA in Foreign Affairs, in a department where many of the folks prided themselves on their realpolitik cred. Even they would laugh at this bullshit though. The whole “NATO membership for Ukraine forced Russia’s hand” is not only a lie, like was said above, it’s based on an outdated and mostly irrelevant (to most nations) 20th century view of international relations. It’s the stuff of Kissinger’s wet dreams, where nations act as territories on a Risk board and where the “science” part of political science supposedly comes into play. It’s all ratios this cand calculations that, played out by rational actors who all ultimately have the same basic goals. And it’s all bullshit in the 21st century (and was probably bullshit in thee 20th for most of the time).
The main reason this clown is saying what he is saying–and why other clowns bob their heads in obsequious assent–is that they have built their entire academic careers on regurgitating this malarky and it’s a bit too late for them to back off of it. It’s one reason I switched to plain old History for my Ph.D., for sure.
abrandt
21135
Wasn’t Ukraine still very much controlled by a Russian puppet around then? Certainly after Maidan Putin felt Ukraine slipping away and acted aggressively. And you’re right, at that point NATO membership was pretty much never going to happen. The west was more invested in providing support to Ukraine for them to retain their sovereignty after that, but seemingly were satisfied with allowing Russia to keep Crimea and leave the breakaway regions alone. With those unsettled territorial issues there is no way NATO membership was ever ever going to happen. Putin should have known that. And I’m not sure if his paranoia really had him convinced otherwise or if it was just a convenient domestic excuse for him to declare his weak casus belli. Either way, he got greedy and screwed up a status quo that was in his favor.
And of course all of this is ignoring that there was no good reason for Russia to still have an adversarial relationship with the west. It feels like we’ve kind of forgotten that over the last ten years and have gone back to just seeing that antagonistic set up as something that just inherently exists.
Quaro
21136
Yup.
John Mearsheimer Interview: Why Russia’s move to annex four Ukrainian provinces isn’t imperialism.
Sabotai
21137
I suppose the number for the Netherlands are from this opinion poll
Saying only 49% of the Dutch support Ukraine is misleading. The questions in this poll are about weapon support and economic sanctions.
The poll says: “the Netherlands uses economic sanctions on Russia and delivers weapons to Ukraine”. The answers from which people can choose are all conditioned whether they support the war unconditionally in relation to having to pay higher (energy) costs for a longer period of time.
This phrasing (both general statement and answers) is kinda vague: 49% of the respondents support Ukraine unconditionally with regards to weapon deliveries and sanctions even if their costs go up for a longer period of time, 31% supports weapon deliveries and sanctions unconditionally unless their costs go up for a longer period of time. Also, the poll doesn’t specify “longer period” or “higher costs”.
Only 20% of the people do not support the war in Ukraine unconditionally regarding weapon shipments and sanctions.
And these are poll numbers before the government announced help with energy costs for November and December and a price cap on energy costs in 2023.
Now cost of living is an issue (I have my heating at 17 degrees C for the first time), but to say that only 49% of the Netherlands only support the war is grossly misleading. It’s more like: 49% support the economic sanctions to Russia and weapon deliveries unconditionally and 31% only if their costs do not go up for a longer period of time. 20% does not support weapon deliveries and economic sanctions.
abrandt
21138
I know we’ve discussed this before, but the continued thinking that leads to that shit assumes a still largely imperialist world and robs so many nations of their agency. It’s funny that people that do that are so often stridently anti-imperialist(because they are stridently anti-US foreign policy which they describe as imperialist) but they espouse a fundamentally imperialist worldview where you have the big players on the world stage that matter and then a bunch of pawns who only exist to further the goals of the important countries. Who the fuck cares if Ukraine wants to join NATO, their overlord Russia says no and now they must be punished for their disobedience. Oh no, Russia feels threatened, guess it’s fine for them to violate sovereignty of whatever neighbor countries they like, it’s their right after all. Who cares that all those countries that joined NATO in the last 30 years did it because they felt threatened by Russia(for good reason!), they don’t have right! Don’t they know their place.
Can you imagine taking these people’s arguments and just substituting individuals in for countries?
There was an official NATO action plan for membership agreed with Ukraine in 2008, but Viktor Yanukovych won the presidential election in 2010 and shelved it.
Yes, I’ve often felt this way. Syria for example provides no strategic benefits to Russia, and as a conflict seems merely to have been a performance; a perfect Short Victorious War for Putin’s domestic audience, and another demonstration to the West that Russia won’t be ignored.
On the other hand. If you’re a Russian imperialist or nationalist for whom Russia is permanently humiliated until her “traditional” or “historical” borders are restored, then there is a good reason for that adversarial relationship. Because either the West has to give up any defence of its understanding of international law, the rights to national self-determination and the sovereignty of democratic states in Eastern Europe, or Russia has to stay humiliated. The only new news we’ve learnt in 2022 is that, under that image of calculated self-interest that’s served Putin so well in the past, he’s one of those people.
I’ve seen a few tweets repeating this story, but with no more detailed follow-up. But the wailing and gnashing of teeth in the Kremlin will be epic if it comes true.
abrandt
21141
Thanks for the correction, shows how far back my paying close attention to Ukraine goes. 2012 is the actual answer, because that’s the year I started working with a Ukrainian.
Janster
21142
The point he makes is that there were talks, and that most likely would a pro-western Ukraine seek EU or Nato membership, either was considered existensial, but as Carl Bildt says, its not about Russia, its about Putin, the more liberal democracies on the border to Russia, the more tenous his position will be.
The question is how far is he willing to go, to avoid having such nations on his border. pretty far it seems.
Mearsheimer is worried about Nuclear war, he says the odds are pretty high of that, I don’t know if that’s full on, or localized, but either way, after such an even, things will take a turn for a very worse…and he wants to avoid it with appeasement,
Note today how Macron in France is going about just this very policy…
So you’re pretty naive if you think the narrative is ONLY about 100% Ukraine and 0% Russia.
Lastly, before this invasion, Ukraine was considered just another corrupt eastern European country, like Romania, one which EU didn’t want in, cause the cost is too high…but Putin doesn’t know this and so here we are.
Someone found a video they liked? That’s the news?
Janster makes some good points. We should let Russia have Norway in order to keep the peace. We can’t reasonably expect Putin to allow a liberal democracy to exist on Russia’s borders; it is better to let the Russians “denazify” Norway than to risk a nuclear war.
Of course, after that there may be other neighbouring liberal democracies on the continent which threaten Russia. To avoid nuclear war it follows that the rest of Western Europe should be ceded to Russia.
To be candid, people who argue the Russian existential threat cassus beli cannot be reasoned with.
