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Being comfortable in your neighborhood is not a delusion, it's a core priority most nation states will be willing to go to war over. If you are American, then y
by rmk 5y ago
Being comfortable in your neighborhood is not a delusion, it's a core priority most nation states will be willing to go to war over. If you are American, then you will likely not understand this because America is blessed with wonderful location: it does not have to contend with dozens of possibly unfriendly neighbors bordering it, which is a luxury that Russia, China, and India do not have. They are huge landmasses having long borders with many, many different neighbors who are not all friendly. America has thousands of miles of ocean from its bigger rivals, which all but rules out massive land wars and even air wars. Only a blue-water navy can challenge America, and even then the Americans can take the fight to the littoral states of countries like China if they have beefs with them. Can you imagine that with America?
It's the same thing with Russia: Putin has struck a deal with Xi that allows him to move his military assets from the east to this theater, because he feels that it's a strategic imperative to 'clear the neighborhood'.
Russia has given up land and trapped foreign invaders, including Napoleon and Hitler, but it has done so at a huge cost in blood and treasure. From Russia's perspective, it's far more cost-effective to have weak client states that do their bidding on their hard-to-defend flanks, than to have strong, democratic, independent states that can ally themselves with their archenemies.
- valzam 5y agoThis sounds reasonable in theory but IMHO is centered in a completely outdated worldview. What European state is an "enemy" of Russia? What European state would attack Russia with military force? It's paranoid thinking by a madman. Russia could have used it's considerable natural resources and top-notch science education to grow their economy and become a prosperous nation but corruption and cronyism at home prevented that.
- chrisco255 5y agoNATO is a de facto enemy of Russia. The entire point of the alliance is to defend against Russia. That includes most of the EU.
- mopsi 5y agoThis doesn't really answer who you'd expect to attack Russia. Finland? Norway? Poland? Spain? France? Might as well start preparing for the Mexican invasion of the United States.
- selfhoster11 5y agoI am not American. I am from Poland, and we've been attacked without a provocation from both the east and the west, multiple times across several centuries. We're worried about Russia with good reason. Since my nation was literally behind the Iron Curtain, I can assure you that Russia _has no right_ to invade neighbouring sovereign nations, no matter how "unsafe" they are feeling. Invading Ukraine is an attempt to externalise the cost of having a land buffer, by stealing said land from a nearby nation. No matter how "cost effective" it is, it has a real price in human blood and suffering. Only a sociopath would agree it's a reasonable solution, if one were to be (or pretend to be) a good-faith geopolitical player. Which is the current perception of the Western stance on the NATO-Russia tensions from the perspective of ~everyone who cares about human rights and the right to national and personal self-determination.
- rmk 5y agoI'm not saying Russia's actions are legal, morally right, or justified. Russia (or, for that matter, any authoritarian nation-state that's barely accountable to its own people) is a threat to all its neighbors. I'm only saying that a regional power that has traditionally been the hegemon will think this way.