I often wonder what would have happened if that stupid coup attempt against Gorbechev had never taken place.
Notwithstanding that, yes I’ve read that the West’s relations with post-Soviet Russia could have been much better managed.
In Halifax in '93 or '94 there was a port visit by a few Russian warships and their navy was in rough shape at the time. There was a huge community push to invite Russian sailors to BBQs and other things of that nature. People were also buying gifts for them as well.
A couple of years later, when I was in NDHQ in Ottawa a coworker went to Russia on some arms inspection trip, and when he returned he went on at length about the very poor state of their military.
During those years NATO certainly could have done a Marshall plan kind of thing to guide Russia into a positive and possibly NATO relationship.
Is the United States perfect? Of course not. But in a comparison with Russia, we hold the moral high ground.
Which is part of the reason the United States doesn’t need to build an empire (along with economic prosperity). All we want is a level playing field. If we have that, other countries will in general freely choose to associate with the United States.
Countries like Russia and China lack that advantage. They have to push other countries to associate with them.
NATO’s expansion wasn’t because the United States and countries in western Europe wanted to build an empire. It happened because the countries in eastern Europe saw Russia as an ongoing threat and wanted to get under the NATO umbrella for their own self-interest. NATO didn’t push eastward; it was pulled eastward.
And what we’re seeing this week is that that was a realistic assessment of the situation.
To answer the OP: I don’t think anyone was Neville Chamberlain. Biden was as tough as the circumstances permitted him to be. Nobody caved in to Russia. It wouldn’t have been a good idea to send US troops into Ukraine itself, but nobody was playing appeaser here, except for maybe a few fringe European factions and some Trumpies.
Notwithstanding what I said above, I absolutely agree with you on this and it really frustrates and infuriates me that we are all essentially being held hostage by one man and his mental issues. I literally find myself asking “why the hell can’t you people just be like us? It really isn’t that bad and you’re just making a conscious choice to be our enemy FFS”
I wonder that a lot myself. I trusted Gorbachev, I even went down to see him when he visited Ottawa way back when. Dude had essentially unlimited power when he took over as the premier of the USSR, and then gave it away because he realized the whole situation was fundamentally untenable, and reforming the system was the only way to prevent a complete collapse. Everyone who came after him was only interested in increasing their personal power.
If he’d been able to lead Russia through the 90s, things would be very different now.
I posted on this on reddit earlier. The problem is, functional democracy is a habit, which take time to develop. The Russians never had a chance to develop that habit. They went from the soviets faking elections to Putin faking elections, with maybe a few years in between of real elections. Not nearly enough time to develop the social and institutional traditions of democracy that the western powers are used to.
As I said earlier, we really kind of messed up the whole 90s. We had a shot at creating a working democracy system in eastern Europe, but we dropped the ball on that.
Both the population and the government of Ukraine were ambivalent since independence until finally it’s then-President Kuchma declaring they weren’t interested in 2005. This more or less continued under a number of administrations until 2014 and the war with Russia and the annexation of Crimea. Cite
If the Ukraine sees NATO membership as a good thing Putin has only himself to blame.
Is it possible that we, the West (NATO and/or EU and/or anyone else appropriate) are collectively the equivalent? I sure as hell don’t want a war and, unfortunately, everything is completely unpredictable. All we really know is that now Putin is capable of anything, regardless of cost or consequence.
After the Crimea episode should NATO have started pre-positioning significant additional forces in the surrounding NATO countries?
Should NATO have started negotiating with Ukraine to ensure that there would be regular NATO + Ukraine combined joint exercises twice a year?
Had the above, or similar been done, would Putin have tried the same thing?
This article in Foreign Policy–hardly a pro-Russia journal–Liberal Illusions About NATO Caused the Ukraine Crisis With Russia makes this argument
“But Putin is not solely responsible for the ongoing crisis over Ukraine, and moral outrage over his actions or character is not a strategy. Nor are more and tougher sanctions likely to cause him to surrender to Western demands. Unpleasant as it may be, the United States and its allies need to recognize that Ukraine’s geopolitical alignment is a vital interest for Russia—one it is willing to use force to defend—and this is not because Putin happens to be a ruthless autocrat with a nostalgic fondness for the old Soviet past. Great powers are never indifferent to the geostrategic forces arrayed on their borders, and Russia would care deeply about Ukraine’s political alignment even if someone else were in charge. U.S. and European unwillingness to accept this basic reality is a major reason the world is in this mess today.”
Perhaps, but there is a huge difference between caring “deeply” and going off the rails and starting a war (against a threat which supposedly must be de-nazified) which could completely destabilize Europe (and possibly beyond). Putin’s recent pronouncements about his messed up version of history are really indicative of someone who doesn’t have a rational view of the world.
On the NYT’s The Daily podcast this morning, they talked to a correspondent in St. Petersburg and he said that Putin’s justifications for the invasion don’t make sense to most people there. Russians are just too well informed these days to believe any of it. That doesn’t mean that they oppose Putin’s actions; just that they know the casus belli is bullshit.
A friend reminded me this morning about the invasion of Kuwait. Bush started building up troops within days. A coalition of forces in Saudi Arabia prepared for war. We all know what eventually happened.
I know that won’t happen in Ukraine. I wish there was something that could be done.
Why do I feel you would be making a completely opposite argument if the United States was invading Cuba?
So a big country has to invade its smaller neighbours because … reasons? This argument is nonsense. Ukraine was not a threat to Russia. There was no way Ukraine was going to attack Russia. No foreign power was using Ukraine as a base to attack Russia.
Russia attacked Ukraine for the opposite reasons; Russian military strength overwhelms Ukrainian military strength so Russia saw it was able to invade Ukraine. Invading another country just because you are able to is not a moral act.
Yes it’s kind of like saying that your average citizen’s unwillingness to accept the basic reality of rapes, murders and burglaries is a major reason the world is in this mess today.
Not sure how useful pathologizing Putin is; denying he/Russian government believes it has real interests and rational fears of US expansion is part of what got us into this mess, as even some US experts, like the one in the article I linked to, have argued
I’m not saying that you’re wrong; I’m disagreeing, which isn’t the same thing. There are many people and institutions that strongly believe, care about, and want certain things really badly. That, however, doesn’t give them the right to take it by force. And there’s nothing in your quoted passage that excuses Russia’s current behaviour.
I strongly believe in laws and other tools that help us as a species rise above our basest instincts.