Yeah I mean I don’t know, I’m putting words in his mouth here, but I assume the Mearsheimer argument would be that NATO were too flirtatious with Ukraine when they had no intention of actually sealing the deal. Like in his mind it would be better to be like “NATO membership? LOL sorry no you’re staying neutral, you have to learn to live with Russia” than it is to be like “oh yeah you guys can probably be members one day!” then when Russia attacks them to forestall this be like “oh sorry about that, not going to actually help you militarily or anything though”.
Like in his worldview, the entire game is working out where spheres of control end and what constitutes red lines for other powers. Therefore the US and NATO fucked up by not understanding that they were encroaching on one of Russia’s red lines.
I don’t think the analogy quite holds because his assumption is that there is a price to pay for invading and demolishing Ukraine. He’s got heavy sanctions, his army is dying, a long occupation would be near impossible. So Ukraine isn’t completely helpless to every whim of Russia. Just not very good options ones before the war started, options to avoid war.
Should the West should have allied with Ukraine and the other Eastern bloc countries since the dissolution of the USSR because it’s the right thing to do? Or should it have shunned them because it’s the pragmatic/sensible thing to do? That’s a moral argument.
But first you have to establish that not helping them is even the pragmatic thing to do. I don’t think anyone but Messer is even conceding that.
When I’m strictly talking about Ukrainians voting with their fists that they don’t agree with Messerheimer’s opinion on what’s best for them - there is no moral argument there.
So is the play here to just decide that the Russians aren’t suicidal and pretend they don’t have civilization ending nuclear weapons and treat them as such?
Yes moral argument for the west. But only if there’s a disconnect between the morally right thing and the sensible thing.
I’m not convinced that appealing a totalitarian dictator while he gobbles up every eastern bloc country on his way to re-creating the USSR is the sensible thing to do. And it’s obviously not the moral thing to do.
I feel like people discount how all-encompassing it is to have the power to kill political enemies on a whim, even when they happen to reside in a NATO country, with no repercussions.
That is the entire game. People will risk their careers and their livelihoods for a just cause, even jail. But very few will stand up when their life could be at stake.
A dictator with the power to throw a political enemy out of a window has to be 100x more powerful than the exact same dictator w/o the power to kill his enemies.
Messer is saying half of Europe should just invite that back into their countries, after living free of it for decades (if push comes to shove). You think Romania wants Ceausescu 2.0?
conflating US and NATO is a classic kgb trick. they posit that joining nato is the same as subjugation to the US, which is dumb. full membership ensures your nation’s voice is heard in any matters, and many nato nations refused to participate in questionable conflicts. nato as a forum should be a mechanism that constrains the US military ambitions, and serve as a way to not always be building a bigger military. preparing for war is expensive. fighting them is even more so.
I mean is his viewpoint exclusive to Ukraine or like … all NATO members such as Romania? I don’t know how long he has been making this argument. It’s just soooo hard to extrapolate anyone’s arguments on this Ukraine matter to NATO members. Cross that bridge if/when it comes (and we see what NATO states do then compared to Ukraine).
Edit: If he has been then I genuinely didn’t know that. This thread is the only reason I’ve even heard of the guy. I’ve read a lot from people with viewpoints that are similar to his but not as black/white (imo) so I am trying to equate them in this too because this debate is obviously about not just Meirsheimer but anyone who subscribes to equating any level of blame to NATO expansion.
What’s the point of US intelligence continually saying we think Kiev will fall in X days/weeks? Feels weird/gross and seems like it is being done to set expectations for domestic political purposes.
he’s not highly nationalistic. even by western standards, which are definitely more moderate than russian politics. he’s changed the focus of his platform a few times, and is currently MOSTLY pro democracy. at one time you could say it was more nationalistic, but explaining it would require me to type out a long thing about nationalistic/patriotic nuances that absorb the russian ideology. that’s partly how we are at the ukraine-russia crisis, and i don’t want to endorse it.
navalny does address the nationalistic angle in the HBO/CNN doc. you should all watch it.
Can someone give me the cliffs on the Chiefsplanet takes?
I assume that as recently as a few months ago they were generally pro-Russia/Putin as much of the right has become. Where are they now? If they’re condemning Putin for invading that puts them on the same side as the libtards and I can’t imagine they want to do that.
a part of it is not wanting to reveal their hand to putin. the other part is that casualties look a lot higher for RU. spinning that up will not maximize the aid they receive, and obviously the majority of rocket damage may yet still to be inflicted.
Do you think that NATO expansion in ANY WAY (like 0.0001%+) contributed to Russia’s behaviour, including the stupid propagandising they are undertaking that you are utilising as an argument to shit on people with different takes to your own?
There’s no indication that this is anything but a fantasy, though. Like if I grant that if he could, he would wave a magic wand and have the Baltics as Russian vassal states, which I am not even convinced he wants, there’s still a vast gulf between wanting something and doing it. The US presumably would like to depose Putin, but they are not about to launch a military operation to do it. Being like “well he’s attacking Ukraine, is Poland next?” is like saying “well the US deposed Saddam and Gaddafi, they could easily go for regime change in Russia too!”. There is a point at which arguing with “but what if Putin is a crazy supervillain and will do anything at any time” becomes tiresome, but it does have the virtue of being unfalsifiable.
Putin’s “restoring the greatness of Russia” rhetoric is taken as gospel truth by the same group of people who assume he is always lying at every other time. With Ukraine you have a situation where the Kremlin obviously decided that this is a red line and they need to take decisive action. I see Putin’s “Ukraine has always been Russian” rhetoric as mostly selling the war to a skeptical Russian population, same as the “yo we gotta denazify Ukraine” schtick. It’s much like the US’s rhetoric on “spreading freedom and democracy”. Do they actually believe that? Well… kind of. Like all else being equal, the US would like to see the promulgation of democracy through the world. But that doesn’t mean that this aspiration doesn’t die a swift death any time there’s any conflict with realpolitik.
