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This might sound like sophistry, but invading a country is not the same thing as trying to export and enforce a country's own political ideals. If you just lo

This might sound like sophistry, but invading a country is not the same thing as trying to export and enforce a country's own political ideals. If you just look at a map, NATO has been steadily pushing towards Russia ever since the USSR fell. They have legitimate security concerns and want to have a friendly government on their border, for the simple reason that Russia doesn't trust us. What they're not doing is dismantling the country and trying to rebuild it from scratch, like the US has been trying in Iraq.

ajross 10y ago
> This might sound like sophistry, but invading a country is not the same thing as trying to export and enforce a country's own political ideals. It's literally sophistry. Russia's "own political ideals" weren't merely exported to or enforced on Crimea. The region was annexed. It's now has precisely identical "political ideals", being, y'know, part of Russia. And the whole argument is sort of crazy-specific anyway, given the history of this region[1] has been one of a huge, Russian-led attempt to enforce a single political system on a giant collection of border states. [1] That, y'know, kind of led to that NATO expansion you're mentioning. Eastern Europe doesn't want to be dominated by the Russians again. Go figure.
- smallnamespace 10y ago
  Crimea really isn't a great example to hang your hat on, given that the population is majority Russian, was historically part of Russia before the creation of the Soviet Union (1783-1954), and by all accounts, the population wants to be part of Russia. Like, I'm all for the principle of no border changes through warfare, and we should object to the invasion on those grounds, but this is literally not an example of nation building, more like Putin wanting to take back historically Russian territory.
  - ajross 10y ago
    This is getting Orwellian. America's nation building is unique and special becuase Russia never does that and invading a neighbor is totally a different kind of thing. And Russia is justified in this behavior because it's neighbors don't trust it and are aligning against it because they don't trust Russia due to literally decades of the kind of aggressive Russian nation building that Russia never does. Your whole thesis only makes sense if you look at the last 9-10 years and ignore the rest of history. I mean, I seriously doubt the FSB cares about HN or even knows what it is, but if they were to put a plant here to spread propaganda...
    - smallnamespace 10y ago
      You're putting words in my mouth. Of course Russia did 'nation building' post-WW2, and it did it beforehand too. It was called the Russian Empire for a reason. But none of that has anything to do with the present day, for the same reason it's not useful to talk about German nation-building or Japanese nation-building -- like Russia, those regimes were defeated, their ideologies discredited, and their leaders and institutions replaced. America is unique in how it actively funds and promotes Western political institutions throughout the entire world. There's also no other modern-day parallel to Iraq or Afghanistan, where sovereign nations halfway around the world are invaded, their leadership decapitated wholesale, and Western democratic institutions are built from the ground up -- institutions that have zero cultural history in those places. I'm not saying what the US is doing good or bad, but facts are facts. Only the US does this because only the US has the power and money to. Russia can barely project power past its own borders; China as well. Even if they wanted to, they couldn't pull off an Iraq. Also, the US policy establishment has a history of being fooled by its own propaganda and projecting pure ideological motives on its opponents, often to the detriment of its own strategic goals. For example, Truman and MacArthur's outright dismissal of China's warning to not approach the Yalu river, which brought China into the Korean war -- the US completely misread China's strategic motives, which were to prevent an American troops literally right next to its industrial heartland, and instead thought that China was completely under the USSR's thumb and that the USSR didn't want a war. US bought into its own rhetoric and thought Communist ideology trumped nationalism, a mistake that cost ~20-30k American lives. Anyway, no matter if you really think the US is right and Russia is the bad guy, the first step is to actually understand your opponent's motives. But I guess you prefer calling everyone who disagrees with you an FSB plant.
__derek__ 10y ago
> What they're not doing is dismantling the country and trying to rebuild it from scratch, like the US has been trying in Iraq. That's true. Other those two wars, they have taken the tack of funding and supporting pro-Putin political parties instead. You can see that throughout Europe. Rather than rebuilding countries with weak institutions, Putin attacks those with decent ones from within. > NATO has been steadily pushing towards Russia ever since the USSR fell Yes, as Putin's Russia has become more and more beligerent. It's not as though the Baltics joined just for the sake of more meetings.

ajross 10y ago

> This might sound like sophistry, but invading a country is not the same thing as trying to export and enforce a country's own political ideals. It's literally sophistry. Russia's "own political ideals" weren't merely exported to or enforced on Crimea. The region was annexed. It's now has precisely identical "political ideals", being, y'know, part of Russia. And the whole argument is sort of crazy-specific anyway, given the history of this region[1] has been one of a huge, Russian-led attempt to enforce a single political system on a giant collection of border states. [1] That, y'know, kind of led to that NATO expansion you're mentioning. Eastern Europe doesn't want to be dominated by the Russians again. Go figure.

smallnamespace 10y ago
Crimea really isn't a great example to hang your hat on, given that the population is majority Russian, was historically part of Russia before the creation of the Soviet Union (1783-1954), and by all accounts, the population wants to be part of Russia. Like, I'm all for the principle of no border changes through warfare, and we should object to the invasion on those grounds, but this is literally not an example of nation building, more like Putin wanting to take back historically Russian territory.
- ajross 10y ago
  This is getting Orwellian. America's nation building is unique and special becuase Russia never does that and invading a neighbor is totally a different kind of thing. And Russia is justified in this behavior because it's neighbors don't trust it and are aligning against it because they don't trust Russia due to literally decades of the kind of aggressive Russian nation building that Russia never does. Your whole thesis only makes sense if you look at the last 9-10 years and ignore the rest of history. I mean, I seriously doubt the FSB cares about HN or even knows what it is, but if they were to put a plant here to spread propaganda...
  - smallnamespace 10y ago
    You're putting words in my mouth. Of course Russia did 'nation building' post-WW2, and it did it beforehand too. It was called the Russian Empire for a reason. But none of that has anything to do with the present day, for the same reason it's not useful to talk about German nation-building or Japanese nation-building -- like Russia, those regimes were defeated, their ideologies discredited, and their leaders and institutions replaced. America is unique in how it actively funds and promotes Western political institutions throughout the entire world. There's also no other modern-day parallel to Iraq or Afghanistan, where sovereign nations halfway around the world are invaded, their leadership decapitated wholesale, and Western democratic institutions are built from the ground up -- institutions that have zero cultural history in those places. I'm not saying what the US is doing good or bad, but facts are facts. Only the US does this because only the US has the power and money to. Russia can barely project power past its own borders; China as well. Even if they wanted to, they couldn't pull off an Iraq. Also, the US policy establishment has a history of being fooled by its own propaganda and projecting pure ideological motives on its opponents, often to the detriment of its own strategic goals. For example, Truman and MacArthur's outright dismissal of China's warning to not approach the Yalu river, which brought China into the Korean war -- the US completely misread China's strategic motives, which were to prevent an American troops literally right next to its industrial heartland, and instead thought that China was completely under the USSR's thumb and that the USSR didn't want a war. US bought into its own rhetoric and thought Communist ideology trumped nationalism, a mistake that cost ~20-30k American lives. Anyway, no matter if you really think the US is right and Russia is the bad guy, the first step is to actually understand your opponent's motives. But I guess you prefer calling everyone who disagrees with you an FSB plant.

__derek__ 10y ago

> What they're not doing is dismantling the country and trying to rebuild it from scratch, like the US has been trying in Iraq. That's true. Other those two wars, they have taken the tack of funding and supporting pro-Putin political parties instead. You can see that throughout Europe. Rather than rebuilding countries with weak institutions, Putin attacks those with decent ones from within. > NATO has been steadily pushing towards Russia ever since the USSR fell Yes, as Putin's Russia has become more and more beligerent. It's not as though the Baltics joined just for the sake of more meetings.