I can’t concede that because it was always my position.
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71 new posts ITT, something big must have happened!
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just one mention of keed and…
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Oh I was under the impression you realized you were wrong. I’m also aware of how you left instead of admitting you were wrong and never actually said ‘yeah guys my bad’ on any of this shit. You’ve done that a lot, over multiple threads (origins of covid, trump taking power) and it’s extremely annoying.
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I only knew I was wrong like a week ago, not sure how I knew not to post for the first two weeks. But is that it? I was wrong about Russia not invading (In February!) and I didn’t think Russia was retreating from Kherson? Anything else ikes? Its your big day!
Yeah, we apparently agree on that now (which is odd, because at the outset of his first thread it was all about Russia not liking western military bases nearby, not they were out for conquest anyway), but even with this agreement he still wants to insist that the West is culpable for Russia’s ambitions of conquest that predated Western meddling, which is quite silly.
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He’s not saying the West is culpable for Russia’s ambitions of conquest, he’s saying given Russia’s ambitions of conquest, maybe the West shouldn’t have meddled
I don’t even think I agree with him and feel very dumb for dragging myself into this but it is genuinely baffling how everyone’s brains shut down as soon as keed enters the conversation (or just from mentioning his name!)
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It’s reasonable to say that NATO encroachment led Russia to want de jure control of at least parts of Ukraine rather than pursuing a strategy of de facto control.
I think NATO and the EU have an impulse for expansion that is as natural as Russian desire to dominate its neighbors. Rather than seeing this war as being caused by western infringement on Russia prerogatives, it might be better to see this as an inevitable conflict that just happens to be occurring here and now.
OK, for one, that phrasing does not change the culpability of Russia, they are still at fault. Also, it must be nice to tell 43 million people that they should just be subject to genocide while no one else dare lift a finger to help them. That has always been the principle disagreement here, not really about who started it.
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Deontological ethics are a valid approach to foreign policy.
Not sure how many times I need to repeat that nobody who is a realist gives the slightest shit about this definition of “at fault”.
If I concede that Russia is the most evil, malicious country ever to besmirch the face of the planet, in your mind does that make it logically impossible that expanding NATO to include all the countries which border Russia is a bad idea? I’m not asking your actual opinion on NATO expansion, just whether you think “Russia is a very bad actor” and “Excessive NATO expansion is a bad idea” are logically incompatible.
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Seems like NATO expansion is the only thing stopping Russia from trying to take over its neighbors.
You can take it up with the Mearsh:
the United States and its European allies share most of the responsibility for the crisis.
Inevitable NATO expansion puts Russia on a clock where they have to take over their neighbors before expansion is official if they want to actually own that land and not just influence it.
In an ideal world, Russia would realize that they are no longer a great power and that they should be sucking up to NATO rather than trying to be its equal.
Yeah, you seem completely unable to grasp this:
Similarly with “blame”. If I fly to Mogadishu, start walking around in the streets and get kidnapped, robbed and killed, am I to blame for that? No, would say someone using a moral framework. Yes, would say Mearsheimer, because I could rationally analyse the situation and figure out what the consequences would be, and it’s incumbent on me to accept the fact that other people have domains of control in the world and if I trespass there, I play by their rules. When Mearsheimer says “should” and “blame”, he’s always using this realist framework for what those words mean.
Likewise “responsibility”. This is not MORAL responsibility. It’s the responsibility someone has for getting their arm ripped off if they keep poking a bear with a stick through the bars at a zoo.
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But to answer your question, yes, Evil Russia is a great reason to expand NATO, even if it will piss them off. It’s good to make it more expensive for nuclear powers to conquer their non-nuclear neighbors, whether that’s via a treaty like NATO, or via arming unallied members so that nuclear powers think twice about invading. It’s a great lesson to teach China about their ambitions for Taiwan.
It’s plain to see that Russia invaded Ukraine not because Ukraine was going to join NATO, but because they hadn’t yet, and Russia clearly only had it sights on non-NATO targets: Ukraine and Moldova first, then perhaps the 'Stans next.
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Not expanding allows them to do whatever they want indefinitely. This isn’t the first country Russia has invaded and annexed this country. It would have simply continued.
Wars prevented are a lot cheaper than wars fought.
open door policies are not an impulse for expansion. any one member state can veto new memberships.