There’s a disconnect here, I think. The first three words of your title are “Russia was justified,” and the gist of the entire discussion has been about whether that’s true. That’s an easy question. I see nobody in this thread who thinks the invasion was justified in any sense. The linked video says the same, in so many words. In fact it starts and ends on that point. It doesn’t seem to me that it’s equivocating in the way you seem to suggest.
There’s a more complicated and substantive conversation than “whose fault” about what the role of the US and allies has been up to this point, and what it should be going forward, and whether particular actions by actors who are not Russia have been/ would be justified. None of that really has anything to do with whether Russia has legitimate moral or legal claims to have started a war, even to the extent we are willing to say those can really exist.
I think there’s a sort of unexamined idea here that Western liberalism justifies itself, and by virtue of being Western liberalism it is the “good guy” in any conflict. That is basically our explicit foreign policy. I think the point of that video is that you don’t necessarily have a “good guy” just because you’ve identified that Putin is bad. If you allow yourself to kind of squint enough to blur the picture, and see this as two big systems that have been competing for decades, without assigning a black and white “good” and “bad,” I think it becomes a much more interesting conversation about, like, what if nobody is really “justified” in the sense you mean it? It can be bad to do imperialism in the east and then also bad to do 9/11 and then also bad to do a War on Terror, to use an extreme example.
I wasn’t really after a good guys verse bad guys theme in this thread. What I wanted to do was lay out and give a thread to people who do see Russia’s actions as justified, to some degree, as well as some of the arguments I’ve heard bandied about since this thing started…so others could see that, yeah, there are folks who believe this stuff. I, obviously, have my own ideas on all of this, but I like to try and see what the other side is thinking, to try and understand where they are coming from, and see if there is any merit to their arguments or something I’m missing. But this isn’t about right vs wrong, or white hats verse black hats, or at least that wasn’t my intention.
The WION video was to show a different perspective…basically, how others are viewing events through their own lens, and some of the things they think about NATO, the west, and the US. Certainly, the people who did that video don’t think Russia is justified in their actions…but they do agree with some of the things I laid out in the OP wrt NATO encroachment, Russia’s (valid, according to them) security concerns, and the like. China also has its own view on these events.
If you want to expand on that and make that argument that is fine with me. On the face of it, and in this specific instance (invasion of Ukraine) I think the west has been ‘justified’ in its actions, and I think Russia is not ‘justified’ in its actions, but if you want to make a case this isn’t so I’d love to hear it…seriously. If you mean this in the broader sense, i.e. the broad actions of Russia in the past decade or two (or since the Russian Federation started) and their security concerns areas ‘justified’ as the broad actions of NATO, or the US or whatever, then, again, I’d love to hear that. That is what this thread is really about…trying to get a different perspective on all of this. As I said in the OP, I’ve actually seen a bit of dissenting opinion in various Ukraine threads, but their comments don’t get much traction, so I thought this would be a good place for those who want to make them go ahead and do that. So far, that hasn’t really happened, as I think, broadly, 'dopers are generally in agreement on this stuff.
What should probably be mentioned in this thread is what Russian disinformation efforts are pumping into the Q loving portion of the US population. I know a couple of Quidiots and I’ve been informed Putin is right because Ukraine is a den of iniquity filled with pedophiles, Nazis and Bidens. There is a minority but significant portion of this country that believes Putin is justified.
Yeah, that’s a good point. I’m not really tied into this group, so I didn’t mention it as I haven’t seen much on this score, but I assume that this is happening in a big way in those communities, with Russia fanning the flames for all they are worth.
The argument I’ve been seeing isn’t so much that Russia was justified in attacking Ukraine, but that the root causes of the attack lie with US foreign policy/NATO east expansion. I think that’s using some very troubling logic, but it’s gotten some play from various left-wing commentators, such as Noam Chomsky:
Or Diana Johnstone:
Now, these articles range from the insightful to the hilarious, but I think the core argument is basically:
the US knew that NATO east expansion (or rather, lack of explicit disavowal of no NATO east expansion) would incite a Russian attack on Ukraine, yet, they did not cater to Russian demands, and hence, are partly to blame for the suffering inflicted on innocent Ukrainians. The problem with this is that it’s a horrendously bad argument that doesn’t work even if one agreed that NATO east expansion is a bad thing, because it relies on a premise that the demands of those capable of inflicting violence on others should be respected, or else, one is indirectly responsible for that violence. That’s the sort of reasoning that tells women they really shouldn’t dress like that if they want to avoid being the object of sexual violence; or perhaps more aptly, that they shouldn’t do anything to aggravate their violent spouses, because ‘you know how he gets when he’s angry’, and the like.
I mean, let’s grant that NATO east expansion is a ‘red line’ for Russia (not that this isn’t questionable in itself; Putin himself has vacillated somewhat wildly on that point). So, one might (validly) conclude, had the US/the West/NATO not acted in that particular way, violence in the Ukraine might have been avoided (again, for the sake of argument). But then, the leap that therefore, US/the West/etc. shares moral blame for the Ukraine attack is just non sequitur; and the only way to actually make it follow is to appeal to a further premise to the effect that one shouldn’t do what causes those threatening violence to follow up on their threats. But that’s obviously a terrible stance in that it shifts the blame to the victim: even if a woman aggravated her husband by, say, drinking his last beer, that’s not going to make her share the blame of the beating she received. So this sort of reasoning just seems a non-starter to me.
Well, yeah. That is one of the underlying principles of a lot of international relations, as it turns out. It is particularly fundamental to US foreign policy.
No. The US and NATO are not the victims of Russian aggression. Also a fundamental element of all this. It seems to be a consensus view that Russia has not and probably would not act aggressively toward NATO. The US and NATO engaged in a kind of flirtation toward Ukraine without the present intent to fully embrace Ukraine. Ukraine was then the victim of Russian aggression. To the extent pointing at NATO expansion is a form of “blame,” it isn’t Ukraine who is being blamed.
If we did accept that there had been an agreement in 1991, I feel we could argue that Russia’s violation of the Budapest Memorandum in 2014 cancelled the agreement.
Russia would have a hard time arguing that they invaded Ukraine because Poland joined NATO. Their argument has been that they were worried about the “threat” of Ukraine joining NATO and they acted pre-emptively to secure Ukraine before it became a NATO base.
I’m making the argument that Russia’s 2014 invasion of Russia cancelled out (at Russia’s initiative) any agreements that had been made between the United States and Russia regarding Ukraine - i.e. both the 1991 and the 1994 agreements. The United States now had a free hand to offer Ukraine military assistance, including NATO membership, if it wished.
Ukraine was part of Russia since ancient times is the biggest one. Big deal. California was once part of Mexico. Can the Mexicans invade California?
Ukraine (and Belarus, and Georgia, and the Baltic States) fall into the Russia sphere of influence, and so should be in that sphere In the days of the USSR, which are over. Get over it.
Putin has serious, existential concerns about NATOs deliberate and provocative expansion, and is a direct threat to Russia, and so is justified. Can I have concerns that my neighbor wants to join a club that disapprove of and use it as grounds to burn his house down? In all the years of NATO, it has never made an offensive move against Russia.
The US is the one at fault for this crisis as it provoked Russia and forced its hand. How, exactly?
The US has done worse things, invading Afghanistan, Iraq and Vietnam, and no one cared about that, The US did some bad things, but certainly not worse than what the Russians are doing now.
I didn’t say that; I said that the underlying stance is one that shifts the blame onto the victim. Although of course one also hears those blaming Ukraine for seeking to join NATO in the first place, knowing full well that it would aggravate Russia.
All bothsiderism arguments rest on the shaky premise that it’s acceptable to something if the other guy is also doing it. If it was wrong for the United States to invade a weaker country then it’s equally wrong for Russia to invade a weaker country. Russia can’t justify its action by claiming those actions have been unjust in past situations.
The other way around, actually. Kiev was a political power, a military power, and a cultural center, back when Moscow was a frontier trading post. The princes of Moscow were back-country hillbillies, until they became the tax-collectors for the Mongols.
Come to think of it, Vladimir Putin’s relationship to Xi Jinping bears some resemblance to Ivan Kalita’s relationship to Ozbeg Khan.
I’ve seen a ton of far-lefties on Twitter believe the Russian invasion was justified and bring up a ton of circumstantial evidence regarding that the Ukraine government is a Far-Right Nazi inspired government. They like to bring up the Azoz Battalion being funded by the the Ukraine Government a whole lot.
If we’re willing to accept that there was an informal, unsigned agreement in 1991, how can we ignore the signed agreement in 1997 that specifically acknowledges the freedom of sovereign nations (like Ukraine and Poland) to choose their own alliances?
From Russia’s point of view, in terms of honoring agreements, by 2004 they already watched NATO admitting 11 countries that they’d been assured would never join.
Why wouldn’t Russia expect NATO to abrogate the Budapest memorandum at its earliest convenience, when it had already broken every other assurance at the earliest convenient juncture?
I don’t think any of those agreements were appropriate, and NATO was right to break all of them. They never should have been made in the first place. Russia shouldn’t get to dictate jack squat about the security situation of its neighbors, especially given that it had already invaded a number of them previously.
But It doesn’t serve the discourse to ignore the fact that NATO made a mockery of all these agreements well before 2014, and Russia would have been laughably naive to think NATO would respect the Budapest memorandum. NATO wasn’t wrong to do what it did, but it was foolish not to anticipate the blowback.