I linked to his blog because he was specifically making the point that Russia’s alleged fear in NATO expansion was due to US military presence, so again, no US, no ‘justification’.
No worries; that sort of vague guilt by association isn’t any kind of criticism I’d take seriously, anyway.
It’s not a matter of guilt by association, it’s a question of whether you believe (and are peddling) Russian propaganda. If you posted the link to demonstrate that it exists but not to echo the claim about Russia’s motivations, then that’s fine.
Sure it is; the association being between me and Musk, who’s pushed the narrative of NATO aggression.
More like the association between you and the guy you linked, Jeffrey Sachs; though you clarified that.
I linked the Musk post because when I first read the linked blog post, I thought “this sounds like straight up Russian propaganda; who is this guy?” And came up with very little, other than that he teaches at Columbia. But I came across the Musk post earlier today, recognized the name, and the The Hill article that outlines exactly how this guy went cuckoo for Putin puffs.
Come now, don’t try to pass yourself off as more of a fool than you actually are. You called me out in a thread titled ‘Russian Propaganda’ and linked me to the nonsense spewed by Musk, and you know exactly what you were implying with that.
What the fuck are you talking about?
Yeah, of course I was implying you, like Musk, were parroting Russian propaganda. That’s bad not because of the association with Musk, but because of the Russian propaganda.
When you clarified that you didn’t actually think that Russia invaded Ukraine because of NATO aggression, or that Trump pulling the US out of NATO would make Russia back off, I withdrew my criticism, because you made it clearer that you were not making these claims yourself.
If I still thought you yourself believed (or were trying to make others believe) that Russia only invaded Ukraine out of fear of NATO aggression, I’d continue calling you a Musk-like Putin apologist. But since you made it clear that wasn’t the case, I withdrew that accusation.
Well then, why not just ask? Why tar me with the association to a Russian apologist? Why drag this into the Pit? Why do the whole nudge-nudge-wink-wink song and dance of hey, isn’t it just too strange of how you link to someone Musk also linked to? 
Nothing in my original post implied that I endorse the NATO aggression narrative at all, and even if that wasn’t clear to you, the honest, good-faith approach would’ve been to just quickly ask for clarification, either under the post itself, or via PM. You chose not to do that, because of course your interest here is just in getting a cheap shot off against my character, and nothing else. You just happened to do it in a dumb way and are now left having to backpedal.
That wasn’t meant as a wink wink nudge nudge, that was meant as a direct accusation. I’ll be more explicit next time.
So it seems I gave you too much credit there then. Well, good to know I guess.
You spend 95% of the post waxing poetically about how interesting it is that this persistent narrative of Russia being threatened by NATO exists to counter the idea that Russia is just expansionist; and in the end you give a half committed ‘I doubt it will do Ukraine much good’; and you think it is clear that you disagree with the whackjob whose blog you linked? OK buddy.
What I actually did in that post is to point out that the narrative would be put to the test by America backing out of NATO (and yes, for that, I thought it prudent to exhibit an example of that narrative). But sure, believe what you want to believe, if it makes you happy.
And once you clarified that, I withdrew my accusation.
You too, buddy.
Going back to the OP, it should (again) be pointed out that Russia was in NATO when they took over Crimea. On that occasion, the big issue seems to have been that Ukraine was considering a free trade deal with the EU. The Crimean takeover is how Russia got ejected from NATO. Prior to that the US and Russia were training together and working together to fight ISIS.
And while we’ll never know, since Georgia attacked first, it seems quite plausible that Russia had a similar plan to take over Northwest Georgia, back in 2008, by pretending to run a “training mission” on the border. Again, there’s no particular reason to think that this had anything to do with NATO or any external threat.
And in terms of the new invasion of Ukraine, we have the following excuses:
In general, my sense is that they threw the spaghetti against the wall to see what sticks. Numbers 3 on have all fallen off the radar. They didn’t stick.
The first has stuck in Russia but doesn’t really explain why you’d want to conquer the region. “We need to have more Nazis living in our borders and standing beside us as citizens”? Excuse me? Why do you want dominion over these people?
And it ignores that there’s a lot of good evidence that the Ukrainians were reasonably positive towards Russia until Russia took over Crimea and kept getting caught trying to slip Ukrainian politicians money. Zelenskyy, for example, used to be a popular star and a regular on Russian TV. There’s also issues like that the Nazis wanted to genocide the Slavs and Ukraine is a country of Slavs (they need to murder themselves?) and Wagner Group is named after an anti-Semite and was likely run by a guy with swastika tattoos.
The NATO argument doesn’t match history. Ukraine and Russia both applied to join in the early 90s. There was no notable movement on the Ukrainian front in the following 25 years. Whereas, on the side of Russia, they were accepted as a co-leader of the organization and had veto power on admissions until they were booted for seizing Crimea.
Russia never was a formal NATO member. There was a succession of mutual treaties and collaboration agreements, the last of which was the NATO-Russia Council. Russia is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, and as such, has veto power there; this in turn passes resolutions which provide the mandate for NATO interventions. The only organization I can think of that Russia was kicked out of following the Crimea annexation is the G8, although that’s not really something that issues a formal membership.
But it’s true, of course, that Russia and Putin specifically was at times at least quite sanguine about Ukraine’s possible NATO membership, such as the famous quote from 2002 where he essentially said that this is a question between Ukraine and NATO. Furthermore, the Baltic states, themselves former Soviet republics, joining NATO never seem to have disturbed him much, and neither has the joining of Sweden and Finland in the wake of the Russian attack on Ukraine. The latter in particular got him exactly what he’s claimed to want to prevent, namely, a larger direct border with the NATO—and it’s not exactly something that was hard to predict.
Furthermore, any possible date for Ukraine joining NATO would’ve been decades into the future, and NATO was in fact in the process of demilitarization across Europe before the attack—so not only was Putin rather inconsistent in his estimation of the ‘danger’ posed by NATO, but he seems to have reacted to it in the singular way that would guarantee it becoming much more severe.
But the case that Putin had different interests in attacking Ukraine can also be made in a more definitive way, I think (having had some cause to look into this some time back). You don’t need to engage in any complicated who promised what to whom, or who intervened in which revolution, and so on, it’s enough to just look at the data, as measured by any one of several indices that can be used as a proxy for democratic values. For instance, here’s the human rights index for Ukraine over the last 80 years or so:
The biggest jump is the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Then, in 2004, the Orange Revolution sees again a definite increase, with a large decrease coming in 2013 when Viktor Yanukovych suddenly reneges on the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement, instead accepting a Russian offer. This is then followed by the Euromaidan-protests and the Revolution of Dignity in 2014, which starts again an upswing, and prompts Russias annexation of Crimea. This briefly halts the upswing, but after it picks up again in 2019, when Zelenskyy is elected, we get the full-scale invasion of 2022. (You get pretty much the same picture choosing instead, e.g., the Freedom of Expression Index or the Freedom of Association Index.)
We get much the same picture looking at Georgia:
A steady climb following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, then a pronounced jump with the 2004 Rose Revolution, and the following dip marking the 2008 Russo-Georgian war.
It’s also interesting to look at the data for Russia itself (again you can also look at other indices):
There, too, we see a pronounced raise after the Soviet years, a short plateau, and then a continuing decline, starting in 2000—the year Putin (first) assumes the presidency.
So the first story, where Putin reacts to some NATO ‘threat’, has him be extremely inconsistent about this, while simultaneously reacting to it in the dumbest way imaginable. On the other hand, if we suppose Putin is just an authoritarian looking to suppress democratic tendencies in his sphere of influence, this seems like it accords very well with the data.
The neat thing about this, in my opinion, is that even if people claim (as they do) that the revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine are just due to Western (read: US) meddling, you can still point to the fact that they evidently succeeded in increasing individual freedom and human rights, which seems rather desirable to me; and then point to the fact that it is these heights that seem to correlate well with Russian military interventions, and nothing besides really.
Thank you for the (later) analysis of Russian intention. But your opening could be read to dismiss what I was saying about NATO intentions.
What you said is detailed than what I wrote and, yes, it may technically be more accurate to say that the Council was “dissolved” than that Russia was booted from the organization, but I doubt that Obama as thinking of it in the terms of an everyday discontinuation of an arbitrary treaty. It was an active and pointed rejection of Russian compatibility with the goals of NATO - working to protect borders and lives around the world. Russia was, in practical effect, booted from the effort.
NATO is also “just a treaty”. I wouldn’t say that it’s reasonable to dismiss the NATO-Russian Council as a meaningless organization on the basis that it was simply a treaty between the two groups.
Russia and NATO were in cooperation. Bush was listening to Russia about NATO acceptance, to ensure that no feet were being stepped on. NATO is an organization that - not always perfectly but still on principal - seeks to protect borders and lives. After the fall of the Soviet Union, there’s no particular evidence that the organization has any problem with Russia other than in trying to dissuade it from conquest.
I don’t think the NRC was ever officially dissolved. They haven’t met since January 2022 (so it’s also not clear to me what Obama has to do with this), although following Crimea they had already suspended practical cooperation.
Hm… I could swear that I recall Obama doing something… Maybe I’m wrong on that element.
Looks like it was a fairly vague “suspension”:
No one should kid themselves. If NATO weren’t on Russia’s border, Russia would be on NATO’s.
It should also be pointed out that, strategically, Latvia is a similar distance from Moscow as Ukraine.
This isn’t to say that there’s no military value in holding Ukraine, if the US wanted to make an attempt to attack and conquer the nuclear power known as Russia. But, given that it is a nuclear power, that would be real real dumb and still fail, even with the inclusion of Ukraine.
The common sense reason for Ukraine to be a member of NATO isn’t because NATO gains something, it’s because it protects the country from Russia. In general, NATO mostly loses since the average NATO ally just makes it more difficult to keep the coalition together and they don’t pay their dues.