Ukraine

[Seanchaidh]

Yes, and that selectivity of how you choose to recognise sins is deeply problematic.

It's not about recognition. It's about relevance. The US and NATO can fix the problem here. Could have avoided the problem here. And they're the ones with the most power in the world, so they have a responsibility to pursue peaceful relations and to make concessions in any even halfway moral idea of geopolitics; they typically do the opposite. "Russia bad" is not license to encircle, encroach, raise tensions, and provoke conflict.

The fact that numerous strains of your argument are contradictory

There is nothing contradictory about focusing criticism on one's own country and what it could do (very much) better.

 

[Agema]

It's not about recognition. It's about relevance. The US and NATO can fix the problem here.

There is literally nothing you have suggested here except to say that NATO should let Ukraine surrender its sovereignty to Russian imperialism. Which is why no-one takes you seriously when you make any argument about imperialism being bad.

And it's worse than that, because you have been busy justifying Russian imperialism and destroying Ukraine's sovereignty with a whole host of hopelessly biased and specious comparative assessments of Ukraine and Russia. Russia's autocracy, grotesque nationalism, war crimes, indiscriminate targetting of civilians and mass deportations conspicuously don't seem to trouble you at all. You are after all a man who has presented ethnic cleansing of a demographic plurality as some sort of liberation - so long as Russia does it.

 

[Thaluikhain]

It's not about recognition. It's about relevance. The US and NATO can fix the problem here. Could have avoided the problem here.

Define "problem". Cause if you define the problem as a war that's killing lots of Ukranian civilians, Russia could have avoided that by not going to war.

 

[Hades]

It's not about recognition. It's about relevance. The US and NATO can fix the problem here. Could have avoided the problem here. And they're the ones with the most power in the world, so they have a responsibility to pursue peaceful relations and to make concessions in any even halfway moral idea of geopolitics; they typically do the opposite. "Russia bad" is not license to encircle, encroach, raise tensions, and provoke conflict.

Can they though? Any concession would mean giving Russia territory where they'd be free to torture and slaughter Ukrainian citizens. Remember, Russia has already admitted that their ultimate aim is to ethnically cleanse the region. With stakes that high its rather hard to make concessions.

Also ''Russia bad'' seems quite a good argument since Russia is behaving in such a grotesquely bad fashion. When Russia has historically always destroyed and oppressed their neighbors, and is currently plotting to destroy and oppress their neighbors yet again, then those neighbors have every licence in the world to seek protection. Especially now Russia had admitted to desiring the ethnic cleansing of their neighbors those countries would be foolish to try and gamble on Russia's good faith.

 

[Seanchaidh]

Define "problem". Cause if you define the problem as a war that's killing lots of Ukranian civilians, Russia could have avoided that by not going to war.

And there would still be the underlying causes of the conflict that have their genesis in the actions of the US and NATO (mostly; the Ukrainian government's refusal to follow through on Minsk is more directly the fault of Nazis throwing tantrums whenever a Ukrainian leader looks like they might actually honor that treaty). There would still be a war in the Donbass. Crimea would still have its fresh water shut off. NATO would still be threatening Russia's security and ignoring all attempts to negotiate.

Whereas the US and NATO can solve (or in some of the cases just help to solve) all these problems. But they'd rather give Russia a choice between letting its security be threatened by a military alliance that regularly invades other countries on flimsy pretenses or acting out like they are now.

Remember, Russia has already admitted that their ultimate aim is to ethnically cleanse the region.

"Remember, thing that is almost certainly false"

 

[Hades]

"Remember, thing that is almost certainly false"

So you suggest that ''what should happen to Ukraine'' isn't a real article?

Whereas the US and NATO can solve (or in some of the cases just help to solve) all these problems. But they'd rather give Russia a choice between letting its security be threatened by a military alliance that regularly invades other countries on flimsy pretenses or acting out like they are now.

Amusing because Russia itself is the country that keeps invading other countries under flimsy pretenses. Russia can also help solves all those problems. By getting the fuck out of Ukraine and accept its an independent country rather than Russia's property.

 

[meiam]

I think the logic here is that NATO/US should have pre emptivly invaded Russia to stop it from pre emptily invading Ukraine in an attempt to stop NATO/US invading Russia. Bonus point if they tend forcefully displaced Russian to work camp in Ukraine.

Have to say, Russian bot/troll are really active in Africa/Asia and apparently doing a really good job at it, it seems that the public genuinely believe that NATO was just about to attack Russia (I don't know why they don't immidatly realize how dumb this is since NATO isn't attacking Russia while its busy).

 

[Silvanus]

Stop making up something to argue against.

You specifically said you want Ukraine to be demilitarised, and label any defensive aid provided from outside as 'escalation'. You very explicitly want Ukraine to lose any and all ability to defend itself from military aggression.

That's functionally identical to ceding its territory to Russia. Destruction of the Ukrainian state would inevitably follow your favoured course of action.

The thing is, you actually know this fully. The denial that that's the end goal is part of the play-- just as Russia denied its goal was invasion (before invading), and denied it was sending troops into Ukraine for 8 years (when it was).

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

It's not about recognition. It's about relevance. The US and NATO can fix the problem here. Could have avoided the problem here. And they're the ones with the most power in the world, so they have a responsibility to pursue peaceful relations and to make concessions in any even halfway moral idea of geopolitics; they typically do the opposite. "Russia bad" is not license to encircle, encroach, raise tensions, and provoke conflict.

Even if one were to take this as truth (which would be a colossal mistake), look at the reaction to Russia's actions: Even longstanding neutral countries now want to join NATO because they do not at all trust Putin to not try to "de-Nazify" them. Screw-up of the century.

 

[Silvanus]

You don't care one whit about the self-determination of Crimea, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, or the Donbass; spare me this ridiculous bullshit, please.

And this "respect" for "Ukrainian sovereignty" is not a concern for Ukrainian self-determination in practice. It is a way to elevate the interests of the oligarchs who dominate Ukraine's politics.

You presume this because you're unable to conceive that those who disagree with invasion are anything but propaganda-hypnotised drones.

The fact remains that what you want is diametrically opposed to what Ukrainians have actually expressed support for. You can make groundless, bad-faith speculations that I "don't care" all you like; it's ultimately irrelevant, because my favoured course of action involves them being able to decide their own direction of policy, whereas yours involves the violent imposition of policy they have rejected.

There are much more solid grounds to say someone "doesn't care" about self-determination when they advocate going against that country's will, rather than following it.

 

[Trunkage]

Also ''Russia bad'' seems quite a good argument since Russia is behaving in such a grotesquely bad fashion. When Russia has historically always destroyed and oppressed their neighbors, and is currently plotting to destroy and oppress their neighbors yet again, then those neighbors have every licence in the world to seek protection. Especially now Russia had admitted to desiring the ethnic cleansing of their neighbors those countries would be foolish to try and gamble on Russia's good faith.

I would use the example of Finland after the Great North war. While not completely harmonious, Finland was given a level of autonomy within the Russian Empire and thus were generally happy to be a part of it. It only became a problem when they tried to Russify

They CAN work together with others. But they have also destroyed and oppressed their neighbours

I do not see this as much different than American trying to shove their 'Freedom and Democracy" down others throat. Mainly because the US understanding of Freedom and Democracy does not mean freedom or democracy. In fact, it generslly means the opposite

 

[Seanchaidh]

because my favoured course of action involves them being able to decide their own direction of policy,

It doesn't.

Your favored course of action involves a direction of policy decided by Ukraine's comprador bourgeoisie and guaranteed by the threats made from their Nazi militia servants, laundered through a nominally democratic process that is dominated by a plutocratic media, welcomes western interference and outlaws political organization and speech deemed to be too far left or insufficiently anti-Russian. Your favored course of action means letting Nazi groups exercise a de facto veto over government policy just like when they threatened Poroshenko into derailing the Minsk process or, indeed, when they overthrew the government in 2014 with the encouragement of the United States.

Much like in the United States, there is no democracy to save here. So stop pretending that's what you're about.

and label any defensive aid provided from outside as 'escalation'.

There is a conflict. Adding weapons (that will actually be used) to either side escalates that conflict. What do you think is controversial about that? That is basic.

Perhaps more importantly, though, various foreign countries inviting themselves to a war, arming one side or the other, makes them part of the war machine of the country that they are arming. It should not be difficult to figure out how such a situation can spiral out of control.

You specifically said you want Ukraine to be demilitarised... You very explicitly want Ukraine to lose any and all ability to defend itself from military aggression.

Could you point either of these out? I'm having trouble finding them. I searched for Seanchaidh and various spellings and hyphenations of de-militarize and demilitarisation and all I'm finding are posts by you and others. None by me, very strangely. So apparently whatever I may have said to give you that impression was not that specific.

That's functionally identical to ceding its territory to Russia. Destruction of the Ukrainian state would inevitably follow your favoured course of action.

The thing is, you actually know this fully. The denial that that's the end goal is part of the play-- just as Russia denied its goal was invasion (before invading), and denied it was sending troops into Ukraine for 8 years (when it was).

I think you're confusing me with a caricature imagined by you and others in this thread. Part of this is that I have not been diligent about correcting every ridiculous misrepresentation, I'll admit. On the other hand, there are so very many of them, so that's too tall an order. I make a post and there appear under it eight utterly brainless takes on what I'm supposed to have meant, many in explicit contradiction to what I wrote, then replying to each other with even more tenuous extrapolations from those initial misrepresentations. Specifically addressing everything would be Sisyphean. You, understanding this, should then be careful not to invent what you think I mean. That includes all the various times you've alleged me to know something I have not said like you're some liberal foreign policy presuppositionalist.

What I do recommend is Ukrainian neutrality with respect to NATO and Russia just like Zelensky had said was a possible element of a peace agreement both before and after the beginning of the invasion. As far as demilitarization, it is a thing that seems likely to happen eventually given the current course. Russia wants concessions from the United States, but the United States is unwilling to negotiate or empower Zelensky to negotiate on its behalf, so we're almost certainly going to see the war continue for a long while. Neither Biden nor Putin are going to accept anything that seems like a loss, so we blunder toward nuclear apocalypse-- either that or a total defeat of Ukraine's armed forces and bitterly but also thankfully ending it at that. I think the latter more likely, but think of me saying "I told you so" if you hear an air raid siren in the near future; petty things like that will be all we have left.

There is literally nothing you have suggested here except to say that NATO should let Ukraine surrender its sovereignty to Russian imperialism.

I have not suggested they should do that, so it cannot be the only thing I have suggested.

So you suggest that ''what should happen to Ukraine'' isn't a real article?

Your post is literally the third Google result for "What should happen to Ukraine" (with the quotes; without managed to be similarly unhelpful). Oh, I wonder if this one will overtake it! Or maybe it'll be fourth. Anyway, the first is a video on facebook that at a glance appears to be Ukrainian propaganda. The second is a dead link that redirects to the homepage of "Bharat Express News". Whatever you are referencing is, as you said, an article. Do you think Bill O'Reilly or Tucker Carlson or any of the other right-wing nujobs on television or in print are spokesmen for the US government as well? If Charles Krauthammer says the United States should bomb Iran, is that an admission of United States policy?

Even if one were to take this as truth (which would be a colossal mistake), look at the reaction to Russia's actions: Even longstanding neutral countries now want to join NATO because they do not at all trust Putin to not try to "de-Nazify" them. Screw-up of the century.

Alright, but that has no bearing on the argument.

 

[Seanchaidh]

You are after all a man who has presented ethnic cleansing of a demographic plurality as some sort of liberation - so long as Russia does it.

This is your invention.

 

[Trunkage]

This is your invention.

Yes, I'm very aware you didnt know what you asked for

 

[Hades]

Do you think Bill O'Reilly or Tucker Carlson or any of the other right-wing nujobs on television or in print are spokesmen for the US government as well? If Charles Krauthammer says the United States should bomb Iran, is that an admission of United States policy?

That's a rather disingenuous take isn't it? Because you know that the American media is not a direct mouthpiece of the government. But Russian state media is, and every journalist who doesn't toe the line gets either fired, arrested or killed. Its kinda foolish to suggest the Russian state media says things the government totally doesn't mean, especially after said government already admitted this has always been about blood and soil.

 

[Silvanus]

It doesn't.

Your favored course of action involves a direction of policy decided by Ukraine's comprador bourgeoisie and guaranteed by the threats made from their Nazi militia servants, laundered through a nominally democratic process that is dominated by a plutocratic media, welcomes western interference and outlaws political organization and speech deemed to be too far left or insufficiently anti-Russian. Your favored course of action means letting Nazi groups exercise a de facto veto over government policy just like when they threatened Poroshenko into derailing the Minsk process or, indeed, when they overthrew the government in 2014 with the encouragement of the United States.

Much like in the United States, there is no democracy to save here. So stop pretending that's what you're about.

Absolute drivel. They elected a government in a free election. In that election, the big money candidate lost, for all your whining about "plutocracy".

Most everything else here-- constantly banging on about Nazis and western interference-- is a mess of rank exaggeration. Completely writing out the presence of Nazis and foreign interference in the pro-Russian camps (which was greater), and then attributing any and all government actions to those same forces.

Ukrainians overwhelmingly reject reintegration with Russia. Ukrainians voted for the government that currently rules. You don't like their direction of policy, so you're endlessly exaggerating and lying about the surrounding context in order to paint them as wholly illegitimate, and pave the way for them to be violently deposed--- and then for your favoured policy to be enacted at the barrel of a gun.

There is a conflict. Adding weapons (that will actually be used) to either side escalates that conflict. What do you think is controversial about that? That is basic.

Perhaps more importantly, though, various foreign countries inviting themselves to a war, arming one side or the other, makes them part of the war machine of the country that they are arming. It should not be difficult to figure out how such a situation can spiral out of control.

Providing weaponry that is then used solely in defence of a country is not escalation.

You may as well blame an attempted-murder victim for brandishing a knife at their would-be murderer.

Could you point either of these out? I'm having trouble finding them. I searched for Seanchaidh and various spellings and hyphenations of de-militarize and demilitarisation and all I'm finding are posts by you and others. None by me, very strangely. So apparently whatever I may have said to give you that impression was not that specific.

The post where you call for Ukrainian demilitarisation is here.

You needn't have to search far for the other; you've indicated on this very page that sending defensive weaponry to Ukraine is unacceptable.

So ultimately, the situation you're aiming for is: a country with no functional army, with no international defensive support, existing next to an imperial power that has invaded it twice, stated that it cannot be allowed to exist, and stated that it cannot be allowed to even be neutral.

It's pretty obvious that that wouldn't remain the situation for very long.

I think you're confusing me with a caricature imagined by you and others in this thread. Part of this is that I have not been diligent about correcting every ridiculous misrepresentation, I'll admit. On the other hand, there are so very many of them, so that's too tall an order. I make a post and there appear under it eight utterly brainless takes on what I'm supposed to have meant, many in explicit contradiction to what I wrote, then replying to each other with even more tenuous extrapolations from those initial misrepresentations. Specifically addressing everything would be Sisyphean. You, understanding this, should then be careful not to invent what you think I mean. That includes all the various times you've alleged me to know something I have not said like you're some liberal foreign policy presuppositionalist.

What I do recommend is Ukrainian neutrality with respect to NATO and Russia just like Zelensky had said was a possible element of a peace agreement both before and after the beginning of the invasion. As far as demilitarization, it is a thing that seems likely to happen eventually given the current course. Russia wants concessions from the United States, but the United States is unwilling to negotiate or empower Zelensky to negotiate on its behalf, so we're almost certainly going to see the war continue for a long while. Neither Biden nor Putin are going to accept anything that seems like a loss, so we blunder toward nuclear apocalypse-- either that or a total defeat of Ukraine's armed forces and bitterly but also thankfully ending it at that. I think the latter more likely, but think of me saying "I told you so" if you hear an air raid siren in the near future; petty things like that will be all we have left.

And I think you're unwilling to acknowledge the direct results of the policies you're espousing.

The only power in this situation who has repeatedly threatened nuclear annihilation is Russia. And if Russia triggers a nuclear first-strike solely because it wasn't easy enough for them to invade and conquer another country, then the only perpetrator there will be Russia.

 

[Agema]

And there would still be the underlying causes of the conflict that have their genesis in the actions of the US and NATO (mostly; the Ukrainian government's refusal to follow through on Minsk is more directly the fault of Nazis throwing tantrums whenever a Ukrainian leader looks like they might actually honor that treaty).

What a load of horseshit.

Minsk offers a basic framework for progress, but there is a lot open to interpretation for how it could be implemented. An objective view of what the Russians consider as appropriate implementation is basically a denial of Ukrainian sovereignty, and consequently deeply unpalatable to Ukraine.

Russia's way or no way isn't a workable agreement. That you cannot see anything wrong whatsoever with Russia's demands is, again, a signal of just how dishonest or blinkered you are. That you refuse to recognise how deeply unpalatable - even unacceptable - Russia's demands from Ukraine are, and instead make pathetic claims about "Nazis", just reinforces the notion that you're a Kremlin stooge.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

There is a conflict. Adding weapons (that will actually be used) to either side escalates that conflict. What do you think is controversial about that? That is basic.

"Your Honor, my victim attempted to stop me from murdering him, so I had to kill him in self-defense."

Alright, but that has no bearing on the argument.

"I can't defeat this argument so it doesn't count."

 

[Silvanus]

Your post is literally the third Google result for "What should happen to Ukraine" (with the quotes; without managed to be similarly unhelpful). Oh, I wonder if this one will overtake it! Or maybe it'll be fourth. Anyway, the first is a video on facebook that at a glance appears to be Ukrainian propaganda. The second is a dead link that redirects to the homepage of "Bharat Express News". Whatever you are referencing is, as you said, an article. Do you think Bill O'Reilly or Tucker Carlson or any of the other right-wing nujobs on television or in print are spokesmen for the US government as well? If Charles Krauthammer says the United States should bomb Iran, is that an admission of United States policy?

"What should happen to Ukraine" is an article published in RIA Novosti, for which I posted a link to an English translation here.

In it, the writer (an ex-advisor of Viktor Yanukovych!) expresses that Ukraine cannot be allowed to retain sovereignty; that Ukraine cannot be allowed to be neutral, and must be made reliant on Russia; that "de-Nazification" is the same thing as "De-Ukrainianisation"; and that the Ukrainian government is worse than Hitler.

The difference between that and the output of O'Reilly, Carlspon or Krauthammer, of course, is that RIA Novosti is owned by the Russian state. Everything they publish is condoned by the Russian gov. censors. So this is the quasi-fascist, hysterical line that the Russian government explicitly wants to sell.


===

Ooh, while we're at it, some other good stuff (which I somehow missed) from RIA Novosti; they also accidentally published early an article celebrating Russian victory in Ukraine.

In which the writer celebrates that Ukraine has been... returned to Russia. So annexation of the country was on the cards from the start, then.

 

[Seanchaidh]

Absolute drivel. They elected a government in a free election. In that election, the big money candidate lost, for all your whining about "plutocracy".

Ok, I'm not even going to read the rest of your post right now, this is just too shockingly stupid and unnecessary.

The United States is very obviously a plutocracy. And yet

In 2016

By your standards

THE "BIG MONEY CANDIDATE" (by about 2:1)

LOST.

If you're wondering why the above is formatted that way, it's because you didn't notice this very clear counterexample to your reasoning when it appeared in regularly formatted text (numerous times? I don't remember) before.

As if it is impossible for multiple candidates to be plutocratic. As if it is impossible for multiple candidates to have the same policies approved by plutocrats. As if it is impossible for a system to be plutocratic in more ways than just candidate selection. As if it is impossible for the effect of money on politics to be expressed in more ways than a tally of official campaign expenditures. Like, oh, I don't know, being the star of a popular television show on a plutocrat's TV channel. Like both Trump and Zelensky were!

But no, celebrity is obviously not tied to money. It's just an organic expression of personal merit- or whatever other contortion you wish to make to preserve this asinine dodge.

There are so many ways in which your line of argument falls apart that it is amazing that you keep repeating it.

Ihor Kolomoisky is a Ukrainian oligarch and plutocrat- excuse me, I mean billionaire, he's not Russian after all- who funds various Nazi militia groups and every winner of the Ukrainian presidency since (and including) Poroshenko. He was also a governor for whatever that's worth.

Will you now deny that the United States is a plutocracy so I can laugh even harder? And with such reasoning! The election of Trump obviously means that the United States cannot be a plutocracy lmao

This is how a Washington D.C.-based think tank speaks of the democratic Ukraine that blossomed in the aftermath of Euromaidan (and the selection of Arseniy Yatsenyuk as Prime Minister by US officials):

Yatsenyuk came under sustained attack from the Ukrainian media. Especially vocal was former Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili, appointed by Poroshenko to be governor of Odessa Region, who openly accused the prime minister and his associates of corruption (while exempting anyone close to the president from similar charges).

Western governments were angry. Christine Lagarde, head of the International Monetary Fund, warned that Ukraine’s $18 billion bailout program might be suspended “without a substantial new effort to invigorate governance reforms and fight corruption.”

The sudden parliamentary about-turn means that Yatsenyuk will survive as prime minister for at least another six months. It naturally spawned a number of allegations of foul play. Yulia Timoshenko instantly claimed that deputies who had refused to vote down the prime minister had been bought off, with sums of up to 1 million dollars.

Mustafa Nayyem, one of the leaders of the Maidan movement and now a parliamentary deputy, said the second vote was the result of a deal between Ukraine’s oligarchs, the president, and the prime minister.

It will not be hard to prove whether or not there was indeed a secret deal to keep Yatsenyuk in office. We will soon see whom the prime minister appoints to key economic positions in his cabinet and whether these appointees are figures approved by the president and the oligarchs.

Glorious.