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> I know it sounds devastating, but you have to get used to the fact that a new era has begun. The pre-war era. It is madness that we're in a position where th
by roenxi 2y ago
> I know it sounds devastating, but you have to get used to the fact that a new era has begun. The pre-war era.
It is madness that we're in a position where this can be baldly stated by a PM and there has been no "huh?" moment when people stop and assess how badly the broader West's military, economic and diplomatic efforts have failed over the last 30 odd years. Possibly longer. I wasn't expecting to see land wars in Europe even before the cold war ended.
Humanity has unprecedented destructive power at our command and the systems that sustain 8 billion people are delicate. We can't afford to be in a "pre-war era" and act like this is just going to be something to deal with when we get to it plus a little prep in specialist domains.
- fabian2k 2y agoWhat kind of diplomacy would have prevented Russia from invading its neighbours?
- roenxi 2y agoPicking on Ukraine, the US not having a policy of signing new people up to the anti-Russia military alliance every few years [0] seems like low hanging fruit. Or not working to integrate their intelligence with the CIA [1] for the last decade. I don't speak German but apparently Merkle said that we weren't negotiating in good faith to keep the peace either [2]. These are the sort of thing I suspect Russia would see as escalatory. I certainly do. A better diplomatic policy would have been to encourage neutrality. The western powers weren't going out of their way to make sure that the situation stayed peaceful. We could have treated this as the Russian equivalent of the US invasion of Afghanistan or Iraq and let it go away. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enlargement_of_NATO https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enlargement_of_NATO [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/10/23/ukraine-cia-shadow-war-russia/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/10/23/ukraine-cia-... [2] https://politics.stackexchange.com/questions/77139/what-position-exactly-did-merkel-express-about-the-minsk-agreements-in-this-dece https://politics.stackexchange.com/questions/77139/what-posi...
- kibwen 2y ago> US not having a policy of signing new people up to the anti-Russia military alliance every few years Weird how all of Russia's neighbors are eager to join a military alliance protecting them from Russia. I wonder if that has something to do with Russia's actions towards its neighbors? No, no, surely the US is to blame for that...
- roenxi 2y agoYeah, sure. But the US chooses who it integrates with militarily. An alternative approach would have been to say "hey, yeah we can see why you'd want to join - but this will foment tensions with Russia, so you can't". That is the kind of diplomacy would have prevented Russia from invading its neighbours. It would have been difficult to get worse outcomes with that approach than what the powers that be managed to get us to - we could be staring at the start of a major pattern of wars here and the US's deterrence has been spectacular in not quite succeeding. The Russian border is still closer to Moscow right now than it was in the 80s, but it has gotten a lot bloodier than the 90s.
- fabian2k 2y agoThe only thing that would have changed is that Russia now also could invade the baltic states. Why do you think Russia would not have invaded Ukraine if the NATO had not been expanded?
- Ray20 2y ago>Why do you think Russia would not have invaded Ukraine if the NATO had not been expanded? Because the main reason for the full-scale invasion of Ukraine is a miscalculation about resistance. With the expansion of NATO, the prospect of invasion would be assessed closer to reality and dismissed as counterproductive
- roenxi 2y agoUnder what circumstances would Russia feel a need to invade Ukraine if they didn't fear NATO involvement? It is pretty clear in the current war that exactly what the Russian leadership feared was happening - a pushover country on their border was being militarised by the US. In hindsight they must feel naive for not being more paranoid and bulking up their military before going in. The NATO enlargement is a broad strategy of threatening Russia and building up force to use against them. And the political rhetoric out of the US on Russia has been unhinged since at least 2016. The Russians would be stupid not to be scared and this invasion of Ukraine looks like a desperation play through that lens. Ukraine is a great example of what US support does - if the US had told them that they're on their own, Ukraine would have just gone with whatever Russia wanted diplomatically. Instead, a lot of Ukrainian's are dead, they've lost a double-digit percentage of their country, the west is hell-bent on destabilising the leadership that controls the world's largest nuclear arsenal, it looks like we're escalating into a WWIII style situation because the US deterrence is failing and Ukraine is STILL likely to end up having to do what Russia wants. Technically not maybe because they've lost the territory that Russia was most interested in. The US shouldn't be involved in militarily organising Eastern Europe. It has not helped, it seems to be making war a certainty.
- relaxing 2y agoThe gunboat kind.
- matheusmoreira 2y agoThat's a great way to get countries to promptly ally with China and Russia instead.
- relaxing 2y agoI see why one might think that, if they lacked all knowledge of the history of region and Russia’s involvement.
- matheusmoreira 2y agoAs if the west is so much better with its "gunboat diplomacy". You know, the "diplomacy" where they bring ships to your coast to let you know they can just shell you with complete impunity if you do not submit to them.
- atemerev 2y agoAutocracies are inherently unstable and dangerous in this regard. They have every incentive to be irrational and unwilling to negotiate. They call it “sovereignty”, which it isn’t — just a sparkling dictatorship. Autocracies have no place in the modern world.
- z3phyr 2y agoAnd yet autocracies are historically the most "successful" types of governments. Humans always and eventually end up selecting autocracies with thunderous applause.
- atemerev 2y agoHistory is young, there’s too little data to go for meaningful conclusions yet, particularly post-industrial revolution. But yes, I agree, autocracy is a natural state of affairs. Democracy is a miracle to keep.
- z3phyr 2y agoThere is not much difference in the capability of human experience. I bet a baby born in 494AD, teleported to the modern period and raised by modern humans will be indistinguishable in capability to every other human being.
- indymike 2y ago150K NATO troops in Ukraine.
- ein0p 2y agoBasically the opposite of this “advice”: https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB10014.html https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB10014.html
- ungreased0675 2y agoCan’t speak for Europe, but the US used the same ineffective playbook they’ve been using for decades. I believe more creativity and more “Is this working?” strategy assessment could have been effective. As a few examples, what if Putin specifically was targeted with information warfare? Leak information on his health, finances, etc to his rivals. Fire up the meme factory to influence the military. Disrupt oil production via cyber attacks. Threaten to give Ukraine a couple nukes back. The US doesn’t do aggressive (effective) things like that because “What if they do it to us?”
- lesuorac 2y agoI mean you're either in a war period or a pre-war period ... Although yeah the whole propping up non-democracies because they have cheap labor or cheap materials for decades does seem to have been a poor decision in the long run.
- 5e92cb50239222b 2y ago"You" are still doing it, your Western governments looked the other way at killing of more than 300+ pro-democracy protesters by our government forces at the beginning of 2022 because it was convenient for them to do so. Half of worldwide supply of uranium fuel and all that. These things will be remembered for decades.
- kjkjadksj 2y agoNot exactly the first post cold war european land war either
- rank0 2y ago> I wasn't expecting to see land wars in Europe even before the cold war ended. You are the ultimate example of your own statements. Take another look at history and tell me again that war in Europe is a surprise.