It’s not but morality, is getting snuck in after the fact. War or peace, or responsible or not responsible have no intrinsic value in themselves, only increasing or minimizing spheres of influence. Wars kill people? Irrelevant. Is the US responsible for the Ukraine war? Doesn’t matter. By the realist lights the Ukraine war was a gamble and the US and Europe is winning. That’s good! But somehow people who claim to be a realists aren’t happy.
It depends on what your objectives are. You can be an isolationist realist or an interventionist realist, or something in between. The neocons like Vicky Nuland and Dick Cheney and Bill Kristol could be realists if their objectives are weakening Russia by fighting an intense proxy war. I don’t think that was their strategy all along but it’s entirely possible. I don’t care about weakening Russia for the sake of weakening Russia and also don’t care if Kiev or Moscow rules eastern Ukraine. So as a more isolationist realist, of course this war isn’t good. Why is weakening Russia in America’s interest? It’s not as far as I can see.
It’s been posted here numerous times. The goal isn’t weakening Russia per se. It’s about preventing more wars, which hamper the global economy and each introduce further risk of nuclear holocaust, by proving that it’s too expensive for expansionist nuclear powers to conquer their neighbors. If the lesson learned by great powers in this war is that no one will stop them, then you can expect more wars of conquest and perpetual turmoil in global trade.
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12 posts were split to a new topic: Discussions About Theories of International Relations Such as Realism
That’s gotta be a real pain in the ass for Putin.
https://twitter.com/MontayBayBay/status/1591591269310300161
I think original source?
https://twitter.com/DarthPutinKGB/status/1590609077415350272
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I moved some posts here so that those who wish to engage in debates over different theories of international relations can continue to do so while keeping this thread more focused on the latest news/developments in Ukraine and what comes next.
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Hate to go on this merry-go-round again but dude, Mearsh’s analysis is specifically considering the “blame” or “responsibility” or whatever you want to call it of the west in relation to Russia. The point isn’t whether US has more responsibility than Uruguay - of course it does. It is precisely whether the US is more at fault than the kidnapper or the bear. Note the irony of the side that fainted over dehumanization for months reducing the agency of Russia to that of a Somalian kidnapper or a 4-legged mammal. Like the reason you have to use these types of analogies is that if you just say here’s 2 human beings and one of them tries to advance their interests by making a treaty with one of the others’ closest friends, and he responds by invading their house and killing their whole family, the idea of - hey man you should have analyzed the consequences and accepted the fact that other people have domains of control in the world - just doesn’t have the same ring to it.
Related question: If I get kidnapped in Somalia and the next day my American friend comes down to rescue me and beats the shit out of the kidnappers, would you say that the American “shares most of the responsibility for the crisis”? How much would your answer change if gasp the American spent the last few years making deals with some of the kidnapper’s neighbors because well they are also terrified of getting kidnapped?
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To me all the discussion of blame or fault is irrelevant. As a US citizen, I’m primarily concerned with what the US does and ought to do.
Well in a vacuum I don’t think it would have been great for the US to do nothing and watch as Russia conquers Ukraine and slaughters thousands of people.
Sure, that’s a reasonable way of looking at things.
Their lives are a small price to pay if you don’t want to be disrupted and can’t imagine any future consequences to giving would-be warmongers the green light.
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try NOT to look for any videos of beatings and torture rn. twitter should be pulling them down, but who knows what ocntent moderation is doing at the moment. i saw a ‘mild’ one already. 4/5 thumbs down, do not recommend
The “NOT” in the above post was edited in.
the edit was adding a BOLD and caps not
You’re ruining the joke.