24 ms·
I read this as why the economist and friends want russia to want war. but maybe im just cynical and jaded?
by baremetal 5y ago
I read this as why the economist and friends want russia to want war.
but maybe im just cynical and jaded?
- skrebbel 5y agoI live under a rock, can you clarify why the Economist wants Russia to want war, and who those friends are?
- numlock86 5y agoTo write paywalled click-bait articles about it.
- User23 5y agoI doubt the Economist much cares. As for the parties unknown who direct the Economist’s editorial staff? I could only speculate. Since such speculations would necessarily include offering some pretty unsavory possibilities, I’ll not share them here.
- drno123 5y agoYou are not alone. The economist articles related to Russia/Ukraine for the past few weeks are pure war mongering.
- aww_dang 5y agoIt is hard not to be skeptical about the drum beats for war. Pick any conflict from Vietnam to Syria/Iraq and you'll find a complicit media parroting false pretenses. Any amount of reckoning (fact checks?) for these past incidents (dangerous misinformation?) would go a long way.
- gfosco 5y agoI don't think you're too cynical, but we can have our own takes. From what I was able to piece together, Russia isn't the one starting this conflict, in action. It's NATO aligned countries trying to get Ukraine to join NATO. Russia made it very clear, that ain't happening and they'll go to war over it. So who's still agitating for war? The zero-evidence claims that Russia was about to invade sure look like pure propaganda from the same people who are thirsty for it.
- BobbyJo 5y agoI mean, that's still Russia being the aggressor. Ukraine, as a sovereign nation, can align with who they wish, and be lobbied by anyone and everyone to do so, and Russia doesn't get a say in that.
- hollerith 5y agoAnd if 20 years from now, Mexico and Canada decide to align with China and invite Chinese troops to set up on the border with the US, then the leader of the US should explain to US citizen living near the borders, "Hey, I know this makes us vulnerable, and I don't like it any more than you do, but I cannot ethically do anything about it because no country gets a say in the military alliances of any other country," according to you?
- BobbyJo 5y agoDid you forget Cuba exists and that the US was regarded a the agressor for trying to get the soviets out of there? Or would it have be totally ok with you if we invaded them?
- hollerith 5y agoThe US didn't need to invade: President Kennedy instituted a naval blockade and that plus Kennedy's promise to remove US missiles from Turkey in exchange was enough to get the Soviets to agree to remove their missiles from Cuba. That blockade of course was an agressive act against Cuba, and it was the correct course of action IMO because a rule that says that no country will be agressive towards any other country is unworkable because there is no power above the countries that could enforce the rule. (The UN is toothless.) If a country's leaders adhere to an unenforceable rule and insist on other countries doing the same, that will on average lead to more death and less prosperity for the world than if each country's leaders rationally pursues their country's interests IMO. Some courses of action at the country level are more ethical than others, but it is more complicated than you imply it is and any ethical framework has to take into account certain realities.
- stefan_ 5y agoThis seems to be a popular edgy opinion but I think it's useful to occasionally remember who has thousands of soldiers massed on the border.
- AutumnCurtain 5y agoHackerNews has a weirdly pro-Russia bent, at least in these comment sections. People talking about how NATO "shouldn't expand" (why not, if the nations involved want to join a voluntary pact?) and how Crimea is and has been Russian, even though the Russians invaded and conquered it in the past decade... Really odd. Not just making arguments against US involvement but flat out repeating false, pro-Russian propaganda.
- oceanplexian 5y agoI mean part of it could be that lots of us have actually been to Russia (I fit in that category) or are Russian. We don’t need to rely on third party sources to tell us how to think. I’ve also been to China and it’s so much worse but the US propaganda machine loves China, in fact we’re watching them trivialize a country that places minorities in concentration camps on primetime TV. Doesn’t seem odd to me at all. The media has lost credibility and our government is morally bankrupt.
- AutumnCurtain 5y agoThat would explain cogent arguments based on the real world. Does it explain blatantly false ones that align with Russian propaganda?
- oceanplexian 5y agoWhat about the American propaganda that the government doesn’t spy on its citizens, because if it weren’t for Russia the person who brought that to light would be sitting in a jail cell instead of taking interviews.
- rosndo 5y ago
- unclebucknasty 5y agoRussia annexed Crimea and has been engaged in a proxy war in Donbas for 8 years. The Kremlin has now amassed 100K - 200K troops at Ukraine's border. Yet, the Russian propaganda machine continues to claim it's the West that wants war. Can you explain how the West is the aggressor here?
- tim333 5y agoThere is a sort of aggression in that the West, and most the world's people really, like human rights and democracy and oppose the murderous dictator for life thing. Obvs that threatens Putin and he doesn't want that stuff setting in too much in his neighborhood.
- iqanq 5y agoThe NATO, which shouldn't be expanding eastwards, wants missiles in Ukraine pointing at Putin's face.
- consp 5y ago> The NATO, which shouldn't be expanding eastwards If you neighbor wants to invade you and has done that already at least one in the past decade you might want a stronger ally than nobody. That is up to the country to decide. Though the cold war has shown that neither party wins in a climate of fear.
- throw0101a 5y agoWhy shouldn't it be expanding eastwards? Seems to me that if a bunch of countries want to get together to protect each other, they have every right to do so. Especially when a near-by country has a habit of being an aggressor: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Chechen_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Chechen_War * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Chechen_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Chechen_War * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Georgian_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Georgian_War * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annexation_of_Crimea_by_the_Russian_Federation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annexation_of_Crimea_by_the_Ru... And let's not forget Malaysia Airlines Flight 17: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_17 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_17
- t-3 5y ago
- krzyk 5y agoYou mean after the coup that placed Russia siding president in Ukraine?
- ericb 5y ago> only the US & allied governments are actually actively promoting the idea of going to war. It's incredibly costly to park 150,000 troops and armor in a position to invade. But your issue is with the governments saying "excuse me, why does it look like you're positioning your troops for an invasion?" OK.
- sudosysgen 5y agoDon't overestimate the cost. If the units weren't there, they'd be doing large scale exercises and maneuvers, which can be even more costly. From the perspective of the Russian army, stationing a medium-sized force within their own borders is not going to be that expensive. Also, the corresponding increase in gas prices is going to counteract that perhaps even completely.
- shagmin 5y agoNot sure I follow why they would necessarily be doing large scale exercises and maneuvers if they weren't deployed to the Ukrainian border. Also from what I understand a lot of these Russian troops are actually in Belarus as well.
- rosndo 5y ago
- Bostonian 5y agoI suggest replacing "an idiot" with "misguided".
- rosndo 5y agoWe shouldn’t spare much kindness for trolls like this. The facts are indisputable and known to everyone, Russia is preparing to invade Ukraine.
- nathanaldensr 5y agoIf there's one thing humanity should know as "fact," it's that in war there are very, very few of them. Propaganda is the order of the day, not scientific fact.
- rosndo 5y agoAre you saying that all the publicly accessible satellite footage showing Russian troop movements is fake? Are you saying that the discredited Russian false flag attacks in separatist areas didn’t happen? (A fact anyone can verify by looking at the metadata of those videos) Are you saying that the Russians are lying when they confirm these troop movements? Are you saying they lied when they publicly stated that they’re considering military action in Ukraine? What exactly are you trying to say? These are very real independently verifiable facts known to the whole world.
- VictorPath 5y agoYou are right. Russia is not even dignified with national interests, it is the Ukraine and "Vladimir Putin and his entourage".
- elzbardico 5y agoThis article is pure propaganda war. It is this generation's "WMDs in Iraq" And the industrial-military complex will laugh all its way to the bank while stepping on the innocents corpses