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Is the current Russo-Ukrainian war about ideology or about land? With the same facts, you could analyze it as both. Arguing for land, it's clear that Russia wan

Is the current Russo-Ukrainian war about ideology or about land? With the same facts, you could analyze it as both. Arguing for land, it's clear that Russia wants control of Ukrainian land, not least Crimea (which hosts Russia's main Black Sea naval base), but also as much of Ukraine it can get its hands on (see the recent decision to annex every oblast Russia was occupying). But you could also argue that it's about ideology: resisting NATO encroachment on Russia, or Russia's denial of the existence of Ukrainians who aren't "really" Russians, or general east-versus-west/democracy-versus-autocracy/etc. ideologies. This is about a war that is currently ongoing, where even lay people are likely to be cognizant of the various causes and theories of the war. Applying this same analysis for wars that happened 500 years ago is more difficult, especially since knowledge of the particulars is likely to be filtered via people who favor one theory over another. FWIW, I'm generally in the camp that most wars are waged for the primary purpose of controlling more land, with the reason for doing so largely boiling down to some form of "naked territorial aggression"--including the current Russo-Ukrainian War as well as recent conflicts like the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh.

Bouncingsoul1 4y ago
Sorry I don't comment on Russo-Ukrainian war online as I want to avoid to get the discussion into a flamewar. "Applying this same analysis for wars that happened 500 years ago is more difficult" Yes it is and there a still colored discussions about this e.g. consider the Roman expansion in into Greece. There is a camp which argues it was (initally) a defensive move to counter a pact between Macedonia and Selecuid kingdom against Egypt (Green at al), which would distribute the power in eastern Mediterranean against Rome. The other side argues Rome was just build to expand endlessly and it was aggressive move. Here I'm slightly on the first side, as I think Rome wanted to consolidate after the Punic Wars. But after the inital wars the following wars were clearly landgrabs, which provided with Rome with rich areable land in the east. Anyway I argue, to wage war up until to modern times you needed control land as this paid your military, in rome were talking about 50% of state income, most from landtax. And this created the initative to wage war of said reason (we are getting into interstate anarchy theory see. e.g. Eckstein or Waltz).
watwut 4y ago
> resisting NATO encroachment on Russia, That one was just a lie. It has zero to do with nato. It is ideologically against westernization of countries around Russia against their souverenity and for making them authoritarian puppet states responding to Kremlin. But encroachment by NATO thing is nonsense. It frames Russia as vicrim od nato, but that is not what it in reality was. Even nato enlarging was because countries actively seemed membership, pushed pleaded pressed. Because they have seen nato as only available protection.

Bouncingsoul1 4y ago

Sorry I don't comment on Russo-Ukrainian war online as I want to avoid to get the discussion into a flamewar. "Applying this same analysis for wars that happened 500 years ago is more difficult" Yes it is and there a still colored discussions about this e.g. consider the Roman expansion in into Greece. There is a camp which argues it was (initally) a defensive move to counter a pact between Macedonia and Selecuid kingdom against Egypt (Green at al), which would distribute the power in eastern Mediterranean against Rome. The other side argues Rome was just build to expand endlessly and it was aggressive move. Here I'm slightly on the first side, as I think Rome wanted to consolidate after the Punic Wars. But after the inital wars the following wars were clearly landgrabs, which provided with Rome with rich areable land in the east. Anyway I argue, to wage war up until to modern times you needed control land as this paid your military, in rome were talking about 50% of state income, most from landtax. And this created the initative to wage war of said reason (we are getting into interstate anarchy theory see. e.g. Eckstein or Waltz).

watwut 4y ago

> resisting NATO encroachment on Russia, That one was just a lie. It has zero to do with nato. It is ideologically against westernization of countries around Russia against their souverenity and for making them authoritarian puppet states responding to Kremlin. But encroachment by NATO thing is nonsense. It frames Russia as vicrim od nato, but that is not what it in reality was. Even nato enlarging was because countries actively seemed membership, pushed pleaded pressed. Because they have seen nato as only available protection.