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How are Russian troops entering Ukraine different from Germany invading Poland? Well probably quite a lot. Sort of a hard question obviously there are differenc

How are Russian troops entering Ukraine different from Germany invading Poland? Well probably quite a lot. Sort of a hard question obviously there are differences and similarities I don't want to get into just listing things out and arguing why the differences or similarities matter or don't matter. I hardly even know what's going on in the region now and my WWII history is not fantastic, so I don't think it would be too productive. I would be interested to hear you to explain it if you believe they are similar (if you want to). Do you think this is more similar to Crimea 2014 or Poland 1939, for example? Or maybe you think Crimea 2014 was the same as Poland as well?

shmerl 5y ago
The main parallel is that it's about a power maniac who won't stop until he is stopped. Or to put it differently, he'll take as long as he can. So the question you should be asking, will he stop with Ukraine if he'll take it?
- throwawaylinux 5y ago
  > The main parallel is that it's about a power maniac who won't stop until he is stopped. Well there's clearly huge differences then aren't there? > Or to put it differently, he'll take as long as he can. So the question you should be asking, will he stop with Ukraine if he'll take it? I think I should be asking a lot of questions, that one included of course. And I'm not sure or even sure he would risk getting involved in a significant war in Western Ukraine. At this point "power maniac who must be stopped" doesn't sway me enough that I should ask someone else to send their son to die. If we are concerned with power maniacs, should we start with China? Will they stop at Tibet and the Uyghurs and Hong Kong? Should we take the CCP regime down before they take Taiwan? That is actually stated goal of the party after all. North Korea? Saudi? I mean if the concern is occupations, mad dictators, human rights or whatever, we have a lot of wars we could start. Why just limit ourselves to Ukraine? That's why I don't find that emotional argument convincing (coming from the ruling class, at least). They're sometimes concerned with dictators, except when they aren't. In those other cases sometimes they ignore them and sometimes they actually support them. Sometimes they were the ones who installed them in the first place.
  - shmerl 5y ago
    I see more parallels than differences. Fascistic regime with most of its budget used on the army run by the power hungry maniac swallowing its neighbors when he feels he can. And your arguments could be applied to World War II as well, so they don't sound stronger in this case, than in that one.
    - throwawaylinux 5y ago
      > I see more parallels than differences. Fascistic regime with most of its budget used on the army and power hungry maniac running it. Okay. I would be interested in hearing why it's different from other similar regimes but if you don't want to explain that's okay. > And your arguments could be applied to World War II as well. Some could in some ways that's true. But I don't think it's similar and I don't think all of them apply in equal ways. Western Europe was petrified of Germany in the 30s and considered it a very high risk of wide scale invasion and wars though, which is why they doubled or tripled their military expenditure and had massive build ups of fortifications and forces during the 30s. There's simply been no such sense of that kind of risk with Russia in the past few decades even up to today. I share that view that the real risk is not high. And Russia doesn't use most budget on the army, there is just no such indication of that kind of build up as Germany had. So far it's a regime which is not very nice and has locally expansionist ambitions. Which is a lot like China. You have preferred so far not to answer whether you think we should go to war against China before they could roll through Taiwan since occupying Tibet, but I think that's a much better parallel than 1930s Germany.
      - matkoniecz 5y ago
        > Okay. I would be interested in hearing why it's different from other similar regimes but if you don't want to explain that's okay. Which regimes? Can you list some cases where fascistic regime with most of its budget used on the army and power hungry maniac running it was appeased and it worked well?
        throwawaylinux 5y ago

shmerl 5y ago

The main parallel is that it's about a power maniac who won't stop until he is stopped. Or to put it differently, he'll take as long as he can. So the question you should be asking, will he stop with Ukraine if he'll take it?

throwawaylinux 5y ago
> The main parallel is that it's about a power maniac who won't stop until he is stopped. Well there's clearly huge differences then aren't there? > Or to put it differently, he'll take as long as he can. So the question you should be asking, will he stop with Ukraine if he'll take it? I think I should be asking a lot of questions, that one included of course. And I'm not sure or even sure he would risk getting involved in a significant war in Western Ukraine. At this point "power maniac who must be stopped" doesn't sway me enough that I should ask someone else to send their son to die. If we are concerned with power maniacs, should we start with China? Will they stop at Tibet and the Uyghurs and Hong Kong? Should we take the CCP regime down before they take Taiwan? That is actually stated goal of the party after all. North Korea? Saudi? I mean if the concern is occupations, mad dictators, human rights or whatever, we have a lot of wars we could start. Why just limit ourselves to Ukraine? That's why I don't find that emotional argument convincing (coming from the ruling class, at least). They're sometimes concerned with dictators, except when they aren't. In those other cases sometimes they ignore them and sometimes they actually support them. Sometimes they were the ones who installed them in the first place.
- shmerl 5y ago
  I see more parallels than differences. Fascistic regime with most of its budget used on the army run by the power hungry maniac swallowing its neighbors when he feels he can. And your arguments could be applied to World War II as well, so they don't sound stronger in this case, than in that one.
  - throwawaylinux 5y ago
    > I see more parallels than differences. Fascistic regime with most of its budget used on the army and power hungry maniac running it. Okay. I would be interested in hearing why it's different from other similar regimes but if you don't want to explain that's okay. > And your arguments could be applied to World War II as well. Some could in some ways that's true. But I don't think it's similar and I don't think all of them apply in equal ways. Western Europe was petrified of Germany in the 30s and considered it a very high risk of wide scale invasion and wars though, which is why they doubled or tripled their military expenditure and had massive build ups of fortifications and forces during the 30s. There's simply been no such sense of that kind of risk with Russia in the past few decades even up to today. I share that view that the real risk is not high. And Russia doesn't use most budget on the army, there is just no such indication of that kind of build up as Germany had. So far it's a regime which is not very nice and has locally expansionist ambitions. Which is a lot like China. You have preferred so far not to answer whether you think we should go to war against China before they could roll through Taiwan since occupying Tibet, but I think that's a much better parallel than 1930s Germany.
    - matkoniecz 5y ago
      > Okay. I would be interested in hearing why it's different from other similar regimes but if you don't want to explain that's okay. Which regimes? Can you list some cases where fascistic regime with most of its budget used on the army and power hungry maniac running it was appeased and it worked well?
      - throwawaylinux 5y ago