Yeah sure. And the way in how peace is preferable to endless imperialist proxy wars.
And the way how reality is preferable to fantasy. How woke is preferable to asleep. Like acknowledging that the CIA funded the coup by far right elements in Ukraine. Like they did plenty of times before all over the word! But facts are only selected among alternative facts if they serve politics in this post truth world. Nothing can be true that could lead to diplomacy and acknowledging “this is partially our fault”.
Because if we acknowledged the historical facts and that Russia just might genuinely feel threatened by NATO we could move forward with diplomacy to end this war.
All I see when I look at “leftists” today is the image of nazis endlessly screaming YES! YES! WE WANT THE TOTAL WAR! YES! YES! WAR!
How sanity is preferable to insanity. Although I am slightly envious of your blissfully empty minds just flowing along with the majority opinion towards the end of history.
You know if you were even a little bit sane, you’d think about how bad this war is for climate change and you’d let Russia have a little Crimea. God forbid a burgeoning empire have a little Ukraine. Like even if the evil caricature of Russia was true, in a utilitarian perspective it would be better to let them take half of Ukraine because of the insane amounts of greenhouse gases this war produces. Less people would be dead too. But you can only think in childish principles and scold anyone who doesn’t want Ukraine fighting to the last man. Surrender was always a shitty option.
Basically it’s better in every way to not support an endless and pointless war.
Russia’s whole economy relies on green house gas production, so much for the climate. It’s really easy to say you should capitulate to a foreign military invasion when you aren’t the one being sacrificed. Russia wanted control of Ukraine, and every place they lost when the USSR collapsed. Making it clear his goals are to annex land from other nations he sees as part of their lost empire. If you don’t believe me Putin keeps saying things like how annexing lost land isn’t invasion, it’s reclamation, then uses the Peter the Great’s similar justification for expanding their empire into Sweden centuries ago, how it’s just reclaiming their god given lands, like on the 350th anniversary of the event, in a speech defending his invasion of Ukraine, which undermines the veracity of how threatened they felt in this situation, or how that was why they invaded Ukraine. He rambles on about it so much he even went on an tangent about it in a meeting with an organization of young Russia entrepreneurs who were still in university. NATO and the EU, also acting in their self interest, wanted Ukraine to favor trade, and defense pacts with them instead. So there has been a proxy war between them, in Ukraine, and guess what? Russia lost. So, unwilling to accept a cold defeat, and going with the concept that they have a god given right to Ukraine, they fired up the military again, and went in for a full invasion this time, with a bunch of BS excuses, like de-nazification, as they sent in a PMC ran by nazis, to accomplish this task.
Neither actor in this is operating for some sort of altruistic reason, Ukrainian oligarchs are pursuing who they think they can use to enrich themselves the most with, and the Ukrainian people are stuck between two forces they are much smaller than, who are fighting over their homeland. You give favor to one empire in this situation (and you acknowledge that is what they are, and what they are doing), the one who has used it’s military to slaughter 150 thousand, or more, innocent people, because you believe it will be the best option for you. You are both acting in self interest on top of the lives lost, because “just giving” Russia Ukraine is just that, sacrificing the lives of those who’s home they are invading, and falling for the falsehood that trying to appease imperialists will make them stop waging wars, taking land, and slaughtering people in the process, thus supporting endless war by giving the empirical power what they want, more empire, thus justifying use of military force, because it results in more empire. You are doing is with the thin veneer of an excuse that is b-b-but the environment, ignoring how, by your own ideas of a utilitarian perspective, that it’s actually best to allow Ukraine to align more with the west, because it was Russia that sent the military killing machine in, while NATO was sticking to routes far, far, less damaging to the environment, and human life.
Russia wanted control of Ukraine, and every place they lost when the USSR collapsed.
So your argument boils down to that the CIA operation to regime change the democratically elected government of Ukraine is a preemptive strike to…
NATO and the EU, also acting in their self interest, wanted Ukraine to favor trade, and defense pacts with them instead.
uh, gain control of Ukraine. And Russia should just concede that they lost.
I mean fine, I think that is what the people who planned this brinkmanship thought too. All is fair in love and war and so on. With “people” I mean Obama and Biden btw.
The problem is this was dangerous warmongering and we KNEW how Russia would most likely react. Even during the Maidan “protests” when senior US politicians visited Ukraine as support there were articles in western newspapers warning of this.
Because the exact same thing happened when the CIA interfered in Georgia with the “Rose Revolution” and talk of EU and NATO led to Russia invading. And yes there is hard evidence for CIA/NED interference in Georgia as well.
So: if you know that action A leads to consequence B, and you do action A anyway, you are accepting the consequence as the price for your actions.
So the moral question becomes - is it justified to start a war in order to bleed the dangerous OrcRussian empire?
If your answer is yes, then that puts the onus of providing hard evidence that the alternative would have been likely to occur and to be worse.
And even then it doesn’t justify fucking shitting on everybody who points out the historical facts and that this war was partially provoked? Why continue demanding unwavering support for the US, NATO and EU imperialism? Why deny reality? Why pretend that the western mainstream media is somehow reporting the objective truth and everything else is “Russian propaganda”?
The answer is that ONLY if you deny all historical evidence can you build consensus to endlessly continue the proxy war and make it sound like diplomacy is impossible.
Anyway, yeah Putin talks a lot of shit, he’s known to do that. He’s a sociopath who rules Russia by means of propaganda. But he hasn’t started any wars except in response to US imperialist aggression (or maybe one, don’t know about the Chechen war). So I don’t think he would actually invade neighbors unprovoked. Ukraine could have stayed neutral and be… well not perfectly fine. But better than it is now.
What Russia did do is pretty much the same as what the US does - interfere through propaganda and other means in the democracy of other countries. This would justify harsh sanctions in my opinion, but does not justify war because moderating social media like facebook and twitter to filter propaganda would not even be that expensive. But that is not something you’d hear from a neoliberal.
It all boils down to this: This war was provoked, the evidence for interference and regime change is indisputable (they admitted it), there are actual nazi sympathizers holding power in Ukraine’s military today. Would Ukraine be better off without a CIA plot and still neutral under Yanukovych’s successor?
BTW this does not excuse Russia’s invasion or make me pro Russia. And neither is this argument invalidated by any war crimes committed since the coup, or excuse these war crimes.
On a personal note I have to say that well at least the EU would be whole fucking lot better off without this imperialist bullshit. Without this insane wealth transfer to the military industrial complex. Without rearmament. Without the left completely turning off their brain and drinking the fucking NATO cool aid.
You give favor to one empire in this situation (and you acknowledge that is what they are, and what they are doing)
I did not, do not misrepresent what I wrote! I called them a burgeoning empire, an itty bitty little cute empireling! (/s in case you missed it again)
But yeah I think objectively Russia is the lesser of two evils by far.
No, that wasn’t my argument. The US and Russia have been having a cold war over trade, and defense, with ex-soviets countries since the soviet union fell. Both have been exercising various amounts of power over Ukiraine against each other. For instancem, Poroshenko was involved in very Trump like corrupt business deals with Russia. He was also playing cards of possibly siding with the EU to get more favorable outcomes from Russia, and vice versa. People in Ukraine had valid reasons to sour on him. I am not saying the CIA didn’t act on this momentum, but you paint the CIA as a total control mechanism of Ukraine, and Ukrainians without, or very greatly reduced, agency over their own actions. This is something the “non-western” imperial apologists have a tendency to do. The CIA is credited with so much they are like some sort of near politically omnipotent entity, and the people in the countries they operate in are little more than easily controlled, witless, puppets. This is not true. Outside of situations where the military was totally willing to be pocketed by the US, the CIA has only the ability to give fuel towards already existing political momentum. Put their hand on the scale, so-to-speak. They also ignore the same proxy war crap Russia does, because it makes their narrative cleaner when they are only pointing to one provocateur. Yanukovich was corrupt, and his position within Ukraine was deeply soured by his own actions. Did the CIA play a hand in euromaiden? Of course they did. However they did not create the backlash to his presidency, nor was euroomaiden something the CIA fabricated whole cloth. In the end Yanukovich was deeply corrupt, had lost most of his favor with the people, and Oligarchs that would better profit from the deal with the EU, that he killed, likely false flagged some protestors, as an icing on the cake measure towards someone already in free-fall. Poroshenko was not assassinated, the military, and other security organs did not oust him, there was no massive public backlash, ala euromaiden. He lost an election to Zelenskyy, who won by a large margin for a national election. Zelenskyy was popular for a number of reasons, he was relatively popular as a comedian, he was charasmatic, and found it easy to defend himself with words, probably aided by his occupation. Also he garnered a LOT of popularity being that he was just some comedian, and Poroshenko was just another corrupt politician in Ukraine. So this was not some situation where Russia was just trying to be Ukraine’s BFF, and giving them the best possible diplomatic outcomes. They had FSB on the ground, they were buying people, they were reaching deeper into Ukrainian trade interests, etc. They lost. Guess what? Neither group is the good guy here. You seem to take my stance that Russia is complete shit, and held back by NATO being a barrier of a, currently, greater imperial power, as me supporting the US/NATO. I see them both the same, just that NATO has a lot more wealth, so they are currently the ones exercising that power most broadly. If Russia could, they would, and Putin, when addressing his own people, even in private events, makes speeches about how that is exactly his intent. Nationalistic fervor is hugely popular in Russia. The point being, Russia is not JUST innocently defending themselves, they are vying for power projection as they can.
This same two way interference went on with Georgia as well. Difference is I don’t turn a blind eye to Russia’s empire expansion, or the “west’s”. They are both knowing players in a political campaign that predates the USSR.
"So your argument boils down to that the CIA operation to regime change the democratically elected government of Ukraine is a preemptive strike to…
NATO and the EU, also acting in their self interest, wanted Ukraine to favor trade, and defense pacts with them instead.
uh, gain control of Ukraine. And Russia should just concede that they lost."
Correct, I have modeled it after your argument of just surrendering Ukraine to Russia. If it’s an acceptable outcome for Russia, it should be acceptable the other way around too. Both are just empires maneuvering for control of spheres of influence, and strategic resources.
“So: if you know that action A leads to consequence B, and you do action A anyway, you are
accepting the consequence as the price for your actions.” - in relationship to seeing expansion of western sphere of influence into Ukraine as something that will trigger war.
This cuts both ways, there has always been two players, at least, vying for Ukraine. Whoever lost the cold war either has to choose to cut their losses, or turn their military power on Ukraine, and invade. There is no morally upright outcome to this. Neither side was going to just give up. Well, at least I believe the US probably would have invaded, in case of loss, but that’s not how it played out, so I may be wrong, but I am pretty certain I am not. I have no doubts it would have been an incredible tragedy for the Ukrainian people either way, and that is what I am concerned with. People who defend non-western empires so often call for nuance, but what they want is for only information painting their opposing camp in the worst light, and apologia when the corruptions, FSB manipulation, etc. of Russia is brought up. Always playing Russia as merely defending its self, and never just suffering the consequences of participating empire building proxy wars. This is the outcome when you are capitalists, you compete for trade, and influence, and you do whatever to achieve your goals. This inevitably leads to wars.
“But yeah I think objectively Russia is the lesser of two evils by far”
As do I, but only because they are the poorer empire, by far. They walk like a duck, and quack like a duck, so they are a duck, and loss of western control of these spheres of influence will only open a vacuum Russia will do everything in it’s power to fill, as long as they are physically able to do so.
In the same way an oligarchy is preferable to an absolute monopoly, sure
Yeah sure. And the way in how peace is preferable to endless imperialist proxy wars.
And the way how reality is preferable to fantasy. How woke is preferable to asleep. Like acknowledging that the CIA funded the coup by far right elements in Ukraine. Like they did plenty of times before all over the word! But facts are only selected among alternative facts if they serve politics in this post truth world. Nothing can be true that could lead to diplomacy and acknowledging “this is partially our fault”.
Because if we acknowledged the historical facts and that Russia just might genuinely feel threatened by NATO we could move forward with diplomacy to end this war.
All I see when I look at “leftists” today is the image of nazis endlessly screaming YES! YES! WE WANT THE TOTAL WAR! YES! YES! WAR!
How sanity is preferable to insanity. Although I am slightly envious of your blissfully empty minds just flowing along with the majority opinion towards the end of history.
You know if you were even a little bit sane, you’d think about how bad this war is for climate change and you’d let Russia have a little Crimea. God forbid a burgeoning empire have a little Ukraine. Like even if the evil caricature of Russia was true, in a utilitarian perspective it would be better to let them take half of Ukraine because of the insane amounts of greenhouse gases this war produces. Less people would be dead too. But you can only think in childish principles and scold anyone who doesn’t want Ukraine fighting to the last man. Surrender was always a shitty option.
Basically it’s better in every way to not support an endless and pointless war.
Anyway, lets agree to disagree.
Russia’s whole economy relies on green house gas production, so much for the climate. It’s really easy to say you should capitulate to a foreign military invasion when you aren’t the one being sacrificed. Russia wanted control of Ukraine, and every place they lost when the USSR collapsed. Making it clear his goals are to annex land from other nations he sees as part of their lost empire. If you don’t believe me Putin keeps saying things like how annexing lost land isn’t invasion, it’s reclamation, then uses the Peter the Great’s similar justification for expanding their empire into Sweden centuries ago, how it’s just reclaiming their god given lands, like on the 350th anniversary of the event, in a speech defending his invasion of Ukraine, which undermines the veracity of how threatened they felt in this situation, or how that was why they invaded Ukraine. He rambles on about it so much he even went on an tangent about it in a meeting with an organization of young Russia entrepreneurs who were still in university. NATO and the EU, also acting in their self interest, wanted Ukraine to favor trade, and defense pacts with them instead. So there has been a proxy war between them, in Ukraine, and guess what? Russia lost. So, unwilling to accept a cold defeat, and going with the concept that they have a god given right to Ukraine, they fired up the military again, and went in for a full invasion this time, with a bunch of BS excuses, like de-nazification, as they sent in a PMC ran by nazis, to accomplish this task.
Neither actor in this is operating for some sort of altruistic reason, Ukrainian oligarchs are pursuing who they think they can use to enrich themselves the most with, and the Ukrainian people are stuck between two forces they are much smaller than, who are fighting over their homeland. You give favor to one empire in this situation (and you acknowledge that is what they are, and what they are doing), the one who has used it’s military to slaughter 150 thousand, or more, innocent people, because you believe it will be the best option for you. You are both acting in self interest on top of the lives lost, because “just giving” Russia Ukraine is just that, sacrificing the lives of those who’s home they are invading, and falling for the falsehood that trying to appease imperialists will make them stop waging wars, taking land, and slaughtering people in the process, thus supporting endless war by giving the empirical power what they want, more empire, thus justifying use of military force, because it results in more empire. You are doing is with the thin veneer of an excuse that is b-b-but the environment, ignoring how, by your own ideas of a utilitarian perspective, that it’s actually best to allow Ukraine to align more with the west, because it was Russia that sent the military killing machine in, while NATO was sticking to routes far, far, less damaging to the environment, and human life.
And you call me insane?
So your argument boils down to that the CIA operation to regime change the democratically elected government of Ukraine is a preemptive strike to…
uh, gain control of Ukraine. And Russia should just concede that they lost.
I mean fine, I think that is what the people who planned this brinkmanship thought too. All is fair in love and war and so on. With “people” I mean Obama and Biden btw.
The problem is this was dangerous warmongering and we KNEW how Russia would most likely react. Even during the Maidan “protests” when senior US politicians visited Ukraine as support there were articles in western newspapers warning of this.
Because the exact same thing happened when the CIA interfered in Georgia with the “Rose Revolution” and talk of EU and NATO led to Russia invading. And yes there is hard evidence for CIA/NED interference in Georgia as well.
So: if you know that action A leads to consequence B, and you do action A anyway, you are accepting the consequence as the price for your actions.
So the moral question becomes - is it justified to start a war in order to bleed the dangerous
OrcRussian empire?If your answer is yes, then that puts the onus of providing hard evidence that the alternative would have been likely to occur and to be worse.
And even then it doesn’t justify fucking shitting on everybody who points out the historical facts and that this war was partially provoked? Why continue demanding unwavering support for the US, NATO and EU imperialism? Why deny reality? Why pretend that the western mainstream media is somehow reporting the objective truth and everything else is “Russian propaganda”?
The answer is that ONLY if you deny all historical evidence can you build consensus to endlessly continue the proxy war and make it sound like diplomacy is impossible.
Anyway, yeah Putin talks a lot of shit, he’s known to do that. He’s a sociopath who rules Russia by means of propaganda. But he hasn’t started any wars except in response to US imperialist aggression (or maybe one, don’t know about the Chechen war). So I don’t think he would actually invade neighbors unprovoked. Ukraine could have stayed neutral and be… well not perfectly fine. But better than it is now.
What Russia did do is pretty much the same as what the US does - interfere through propaganda and other means in the democracy of other countries. This would justify harsh sanctions in my opinion, but does not justify war because moderating social media like facebook and twitter to filter propaganda would not even be that expensive. But that is not something you’d hear from a neoliberal.
It all boils down to this: This war was provoked, the evidence for interference and regime change is indisputable (they admitted it), there are actual nazi sympathizers holding power in Ukraine’s military today. Would Ukraine be better off without a CIA plot and still neutral under Yanukovych’s successor?
BTW this does not excuse Russia’s invasion or make me pro Russia. And neither is this argument invalidated by any war crimes committed since the coup, or excuse these war crimes.
On a personal note I have to say that well at least the EU would be whole fucking lot better off without this imperialist bullshit. Without this insane wealth transfer to the military industrial complex. Without rearmament. Without the left completely turning off their brain and drinking the fucking NATO cool aid.
I did not, do not misrepresent what I wrote! I called them a burgeoning empire, an itty bitty little cute empireling! (/s in case you missed it again)
But yeah I think objectively Russia is the lesser of two evils by far.
No, that wasn’t my argument. The US and Russia have been having a cold war over trade, and defense, with ex-soviets countries since the soviet union fell. Both have been exercising various amounts of power over Ukiraine against each other. For instancem, Poroshenko was involved in very Trump like corrupt business deals with Russia. He was also playing cards of possibly siding with the EU to get more favorable outcomes from Russia, and vice versa. People in Ukraine had valid reasons to sour on him. I am not saying the CIA didn’t act on this momentum, but you paint the CIA as a total control mechanism of Ukraine, and Ukrainians without, or very greatly reduced, agency over their own actions. This is something the “non-western” imperial apologists have a tendency to do. The CIA is credited with so much they are like some sort of near politically omnipotent entity, and the people in the countries they operate in are little more than easily controlled, witless, puppets. This is not true. Outside of situations where the military was totally willing to be pocketed by the US, the CIA has only the ability to give fuel towards already existing political momentum. Put their hand on the scale, so-to-speak. They also ignore the same proxy war crap Russia does, because it makes their narrative cleaner when they are only pointing to one provocateur. Yanukovich was corrupt, and his position within Ukraine was deeply soured by his own actions. Did the CIA play a hand in euromaiden? Of course they did. However they did not create the backlash to his presidency, nor was euroomaiden something the CIA fabricated whole cloth. In the end Yanukovich was deeply corrupt, had lost most of his favor with the people, and Oligarchs that would better profit from the deal with the EU, that he killed, likely false flagged some protestors, as an icing on the cake measure towards someone already in free-fall. Poroshenko was not assassinated, the military, and other security organs did not oust him, there was no massive public backlash, ala euromaiden. He lost an election to Zelenskyy, who won by a large margin for a national election. Zelenskyy was popular for a number of reasons, he was relatively popular as a comedian, he was charasmatic, and found it easy to defend himself with words, probably aided by his occupation. Also he garnered a LOT of popularity being that he was just some comedian, and Poroshenko was just another corrupt politician in Ukraine. So this was not some situation where Russia was just trying to be Ukraine’s BFF, and giving them the best possible diplomatic outcomes. They had FSB on the ground, they were buying people, they were reaching deeper into Ukrainian trade interests, etc. They lost. Guess what? Neither group is the good guy here. You seem to take my stance that Russia is complete shit, and held back by NATO being a barrier of a, currently, greater imperial power, as me supporting the US/NATO. I see them both the same, just that NATO has a lot more wealth, so they are currently the ones exercising that power most broadly. If Russia could, they would, and Putin, when addressing his own people, even in private events, makes speeches about how that is exactly his intent. Nationalistic fervor is hugely popular in Russia. The point being, Russia is not JUST innocently defending themselves, they are vying for power projection as they can.
This same two way interference went on with Georgia as well. Difference is I don’t turn a blind eye to Russia’s empire expansion, or the “west’s”. They are both knowing players in a political campaign that predates the USSR.
"So your argument boils down to that the CIA operation to regime change the democratically elected government of Ukraine is a preemptive strike to…
uh, gain control of Ukraine. And Russia should just concede that they lost."
Correct, I have modeled it after your argument of just surrendering Ukraine to Russia. If it’s an acceptable outcome for Russia, it should be acceptable the other way around too. Both are just empires maneuvering for control of spheres of influence, and strategic resources.
“So: if you know that action A leads to consequence B, and you do action A anyway, you are accepting the consequence as the price for your actions.” - in relationship to seeing expansion of western sphere of influence into Ukraine as something that will trigger war.
This cuts both ways, there has always been two players, at least, vying for Ukraine. Whoever lost the cold war either has to choose to cut their losses, or turn their military power on Ukraine, and invade. There is no morally upright outcome to this. Neither side was going to just give up. Well, at least I believe the US probably would have invaded, in case of loss, but that’s not how it played out, so I may be wrong, but I am pretty certain I am not. I have no doubts it would have been an incredible tragedy for the Ukrainian people either way, and that is what I am concerned with. People who defend non-western empires so often call for nuance, but what they want is for only information painting their opposing camp in the worst light, and apologia when the corruptions, FSB manipulation, etc. of Russia is brought up. Always playing Russia as merely defending its self, and never just suffering the consequences of participating empire building proxy wars. This is the outcome when you are capitalists, you compete for trade, and influence, and you do whatever to achieve your goals. This inevitably leads to wars.
“But yeah I think objectively Russia is the lesser of two evils by far”
As do I, but only because they are the poorer empire, by far. They walk like a duck, and quack like a duck, so they are a duck, and loss of western control of these spheres of influence will only open a vacuum Russia will do everything in it’s power to fill, as long as they are physically able to do so.