this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2023
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You can't write two paragraphs excusing Russia and then say "I'm not excusing Russia btw."
No country should be able to force 'my way or a military invasion' ultimatum on another non hostile sovereign state. If a government interprets a neighboring country joining a purely defensive treaty out of their own volition (no, Ukraine is not secretly run by the CIA after Maidan) as a hostile act, that only means the nationalism levels went out if control.
I'm normally very critical of the US, but neither them nor NATO can be blamed for this conflict.
For the first 40 years of NATO's existence it sought to offensively undermine democracy and reinforce the states of NATO aligned countries in Europe through terrorism.
They then rather offensively carpet bombed Yugoslavia killing and wounding thousands of civilians ( many of whom were from Kosovo the people they purportedly wanted to help), 3 foreign diplomats by bombing a foreign embassy not in anyway involved in a conflict and completely destroying the infrastructure of Serbia.
They then offensively invaded Afghanistan where they destabilized the country, toppled the government and then put pedophile psychos in charge because they were the ones willing to work with us, killed nearly 100,000 civilians, and then ended up putting the original government back in charge 20 years later.
Finally they offensively took the most prosperous country in Africa, a country with universal college, healthcare, jobs programs, and housing, a desert country that had a 200 year supply of water and bombed the fuck out of it, destroying the water supply, plundering the gold, supporting the precursors to ISIS, and turned the country into a place with fucking slave auctions.
But yeah NATO is a defensive alliance.
Ok, I will not be defending those actions of NATO - I protested against my country involvement when possible and do agree about them being either dumb decisions (Kosovo) or straight up war crimes (Afghanistan). They shouldn't have happend.
My point still stand though. NATO doesn't threaten Russia borders. It could be called 'Anti-Russia-Country-Club', but even then the only things threatened by existence of NATO are post-USSR legacy and economic interest. Not exactly arguments to mount a large scale invasion/ethnic cleansing.
You'll just ignore their relevance to why NATO approaching your doorstep is, in fact, hostile and aggressive.
NATO was literally created to oppose the USSR and the left in Europe generally, and did not disband after the fall of the USSR, instead taking up further aggression and at greater range, and keeping a very clear encirclement position around Russia. The bases got larger, the spending increased, and membership was sought to undermine any countries stepping out of line of the American-imposed order.
If NATO, as we both agree, is an aggressive group of countries that has a contemporary history of attacking countries that are not aligned with the West, despite many of these countries trying to align themselves with the West in good faith (Libya, Russia, and Iran all helped the West in the war on terror), then what is the appropriate way for Russia to react to the expansion of NATO to their doorstep? And I'm asking this as a genuine question, you're Russia how are you reacting to the West surrounding you despite assisting them, when do you stop tolerating increased military encroachment?
I don't think that Russia invaded Ukraine because of only NATO expansion, but it obviously played a role given that the peace agreement that was nearly agreed upon April 2022 had Ukraine agree to neutrality. I think a lot of it came down to the genocide of ethnically Russian Ukrainians in the East and Ukraine's increased shelling of the region in February 2022 is probably what escalated the war into what we see today.
That's a good question. Let me tackle it from a different angle though - why do ex USSR/Warsaw Pact countries actively want to join NATO?
As a resident of one, I think it's because they feel that Russia after Yeltsin has the exact same imperialistic principles USSR did. And it doesn't matter to them that Russia did cooperate with the West, because they see those principles as enough threat. Thus, they have the same reason to fear Russia as Russia has to fear NATO.
Perhaps if NATO disbanded before 1999 we wouldn't have current Russia, but that's alt history.
Because they are run by right-wing oligarchies that want to consolidate and protect their accumulated wealth and power? The imperialism is coming from inside the house.
Disappointing. The other Hexbear folk at least tried to have a discussion, you just show up with the old 'everything left of my position is fascist' argument, expecting what exactly?
Bro one of the Baltics is sueing holocaust survivors for trying to reclaim their property. Orban just straight is fascist. Poland has a reactionary right wing theocratic government that rather famously banned abortion. What do you want from us? If it looks like a goose and goosesteps like a goose. The reactionary right wing takeover of eastern europe is well documented. The spread of the double-holocaust narrative and it's acceptance by the us and eu is well documented. The antisemitism, anti-lgbt violence, anti-romani violence, is all well documents. What do you want from us?
No, a good understanding of fascism and imperialism includes understanding that countries at the periphery either find a way to do the imperialism to their east/south (geographically right now) or to their ethnic others within or be the ones consumed by it.
Poland got to join the imperialists, though with significant disadvantage of being at the behest of exploitation, in exchange for becoming the people who perform (at least partially) the expropriation towards he east at Russia/Belorussia/Ukraine. The ruling class of capitalists always takes this bargain as long as they continue to benefit
Russia during Yeltsin rolled in the tanks on its own parliament. The absence of foreign invasions was not for lack of malice, but for lack of capability.
The reason why ex-Warsaw Pact countries are flocking to NATO is because when the communists left power, the reactionaries resurged. And naturally the reactionaries in power wanted to be part of a right-wing alliance. But no matter what revanchists might tell you, living standards across Eastern Europe were better in the 1980s than they were in the 2000s.
Yeah, Russia had nukes. That's the only thing that will stop NATO.
I live in eastern Europe, and I agree that the 90s and early 2000 sucked for us. Big time. My country government absolutely botched the transition to free market economy.
Still, I feel we traded stable but shit for volatile yet hopeful.
there's no way to sell public infrastructure to the highest bidder that won't result in a massive drop in quality of life. it's got very little to do with your government and entirely to do with the introduction of bourgeois rule.
I'd agree in a vacuum. Even though I'd prefer state owned stuff, quality of life does not depend solely on who owns the infrastructure.
Stuff we take for granted like buying food product at the deli (meat, cheese) required either being lucky, knowing the right people or having US dollars in your pocket.
The only way the transition was "botched" was that the west wasn't able to loot as much as they wanted.
Because the US starts color revolutions in those countries until a pro-western government is in power.
Fellow ex Warsaw Pact resident here.
They wanted to join NATO because after the dissolution of the USSR these countries were pushed into a deep economic crisis, to which one of the solutions, apart from relentless austerity programs was the privatization of the shit ton of public assets they had. Of course lots of western companies were in on this since for them these assets were really cheap and they had a lot of money. The city hall of the town i went to university to became a fucking McDonald's.
Thing is, a lot of people didnt like this, not just the austerity, but the handing of domestic assets to western companies. And they were not even that wrong about it! In Albania, in 1997 a series of bankruptcies of asset managing companies (most western owned) who were basically scamming people who barely came into contact with capitalism, telling them theyll get 50% interest rates for their money, led to a brutal uprising where ordinary people were sacking military bases, setting up machine gun nests in the borders of cities and overthrew the government (after half a year of protests).
In the meantime Russia was led by well-known alcoholic, Boris Yeltsin, who doesn't strike me as the napoleonic conqueror people make him out to be.
So why did these countries join NATO? Because they DESPERATELY needed the money, but western companies wouldnt invest in (exploit) them if they dont have insurances (troops that could be sent against the people anytime an Albanian-type revolt breaks out or an anti-western government come in power who would try to renationalize assets) that their investments (exploitation) runs as smoothly as possible. And it works. People like to say that "ackshually the living standards went up in Eastern Europe", but they never stop to check that it only went up because the rich got richer, pulling the average up. The working class' lives stagnated at best, except the social net around them is rapidly brought down. Older people are not nostalgic for socialism here because theyre becoming senile, but because they see every time that they go to a hospital that the increasingly privatized healthcare system is crumbling.
Don't believe me? It's fine. But i would suggest that you examine who the current pariahs are in NATO: Hungary, whose government has to rely in a lot of things to the cheapest due to a ravaged economy (both by corruption and privatization), so they rely a lot on domestic production and trying to hand off as little stuff to western corporations as possible (and still fail at it, hence why they are still intact), and Turkey, who makes no secret of wanting to standing on its own feet and not rely on western corporations.
probably worth mentioning that I think he also couped the government to prevent the Communist party from being voted back in to power in I want to say '94.
NATO weapons are bombing Russia literally right now.
Are the Russians sincerely supposed to believe that NATO isn’t a threat
That’s sort of a hard reality to contextualize away
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For the past several decades NATO has utterly destroyed various countries around the world, while maintaining ruthless tradewars against the peoples of Cuba, Iran and Venezuela, as well as a brutal colonial regime across much of West Africa. NATO won't stop at invading your country either. They'll maintain occupations in Syria and blockades of Afghanistan from now until the end of time.
NATO would rather see the people of Niger and Mali starve to death rather than pay market rates for their resources.
NATO will crow that countries in South America are too defiant, why, they didn't even try and coup the brazilian elections last year!
NATO is, simply put, a defensive alliance of the world's preeminent warmongerers.
Hosting NATO troops is the epitome of hostility.
Unfortunately for you some countries can actually resist. And resist they shall.
Oh I'd forgotten that Biden seized Afghanistan's soveriegn wealth, causing a famine.
That famine was an investment in democracy.
Non-hostility is when you do ethnic cleansing against the ethnicity the neighboring country is named after, engage in a war right by the borders to support that ethnic ckeansing, violate your treaties to end that war, and cozy up your coup government to the military organization intended to encircle that country, an org that regularly engages in aggression.
Ethnic cleansings in those territories are a fabricated casus beli for Russia 'green man'. There were tensions between Russian and Ukrainian nationals in those territories, but I've seen no data on large scale extermination operations.
Ukraine engaged in a defensive war with a force clearly backed by their stronger neighbor that just laid claim to another piece of their land (Crimea). This was a land grab in all but name, no matter how much propaganda tries to paint it as a legitimate independence movement. Blame for casualties of that war lies entirely on separatists and Russia.
The ethnic cleansing was and is part of official Ukrainian policy. Do you think the sneaky Rooskies infiltrated and forced Kyiv to drop Russian as an official language, one that could be learned and used in schools in Donbas? Did they cleverly rename the streets to Bandyerite fascist names? Did they create the Azov Batallikn, Righy Sector, etc - the Ukrainian fascist groups weaponized against the ethnic Russian civilians of Donbas and now directly incorporated into the government and armed forces? Did Russia secretly create the entire Kyiv side of the civil war that heavily targeted civilians and civilian infrastructure on the Donbas side?
Cool to learn, I didn't know that.
Ukraine has used internationally banned cluster munitions in the donbass since 2014. A six year old playing in a field and dying to unexploded ordnance, whether that child is a Russian or Ukrainian speaker, is a horrific tragedy. These bombs are a form of terrorism sponsored by the post-coup Ukrainian state, and the nazi paramilitaries active in the area were and are state-sponsored terrorists.
https://www.hrw.org/news/2014/10/20/ukraine-widespread-use-cluster-munitions
But I never said I support cluster munitions. Fuck them, and fuck the Nazis.
I did not just engage in a few hours of discussion to try and convince anyone that Ukraine is the shining beacon of hope and democracy. It isn't, they have problems. So does every state. Some (like Russia) just seem to have comparatively more of those, or are not particularly good at dealing with them.
The problem though is that these issues are self-perpetuating. Both the current Russian and post-2014 Ukraine governments are the products of US interference. If we were truly spreading Democracy, then they would be capable of mediating these conflicts peacefully. Since Capital dictates the terms of our international intervention, it puts its own interests first, and it's very interested in selling weapons. I just can't accept the premise that selling more weapons will lead to any sort of long-lasting peace or democracy in the region.
there have been reports of Ukranian paramilitaries shelling the Donbas going back almost a decade. multiple peace treaties were signed over it, all aiming to stop the ethnic cleansing. each and every one of those treaties were violated. this is all extremely well-documented. can you even prove that a single of these reports is fabricated?
I meant pre 2014 conflict though.
the person you replied to was talking about the last 9 years
How many people do you have to exterminate before it becomes bad?
They can, because hexbear. They’re Russian apologists.
Yeah yeah, I know Hexbear. I don't agree with their pro-imperialism, but at the same time they are not wrong with their socialist takes.
That's why it's worth debating them - they are not inherently evil like fascists are.
In fascists' defence, they have no theory to fall back on, it's all just kneejerk reptilian brain brute force and brute words and brute cult of personality. That's why I am befuddled whenever I see a leftist take an offensive realist perspective :/