6 ms·

What kind of diplomacy would have prevented Russia from invading its neighbours?

roenxi 2y ago
Picking 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 ago
    Yeah, 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 ago
      The 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 ago
        Under 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.
        chrz 2y ago
        are you saying that if US was kot involved then Ukrainy would have to do whatever Russia tell yhwm yo do and that would be better for Ukraine? And yes sure, Russia is nust defending itself
- simion314 2y ago
  It is not an anti-Russia alliance, we Romania enter NATO to survive teh eventual Ruzzian invasion, as you can see from Ukraine war our politicians, even the communist regime was sure that a Ruzzian invasion is unavoidable (yeah, makes your mind segfault when you find out that communist Romania had better relations with USA and was preparing to resist a USSR invasion). You need to talk with Russians to understend their Zed mentality, they think God gave them the right to dominate half of the world, they will tell it to my face that genocide my nation is not personal, it is geo politics and Ruzzia must do it. the way to avoid the Ukrainian war would ahve been if Ukrainians would ahve not been stupid and would ahave joined NATO with Romania and Poland, but the idiots still believed in brotherhood with the Zeds. P.S I am using Z to refer to the Russians that are Zed supporters and to make it clear I am not referring to the entire Russian population, since there are a few educated Russians there that can see the truth.
  - aizen89 2y ago
    Everything you outlined applies to US politics too :DD
    - simion314 2y ago
      >Everything you outlined applies to US politics too :DD What? that Canada made an alliance with soem other neighbors so the evil USA would not invade them ?
      - lmz 2y ago
        > they think God gave them the right to dominate half of the world, they will tell it to my face that genocide my nation is not personal, it is geo politics This part could well apply to Americans.
        simion314 2y ago
        >This part could well apply to Americans. What about USA? But honestly I never chat with an american that would claim that half of the world belongs to them and they are not sorry for the future genocides that they will have to do to achieve it. Nice of you to confirm here for our HN community that what I said is true, Ruzz claim that God gave tehm half of the world to make a "sphere of influence" and that Moscowites are OK with genocides because is geo politics and not "personal"
relaxing 2y ago
The gunboat kind.
- matheusmoreira 2y ago
  That's a great way to get countries to promptly ally with China and Russia instead.
  - relaxing 2y ago
    I see why one might think that, if they lacked all knowledge of the history of region and Russia’s involvement.
    - matheusmoreira 2y ago
      As 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 ago
Autocracies 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 ago
  And yet autocracies are historically the most "successful" types of governments. Humans always and eventually end up selecting autocracies with thunderous applause.
  - atemerev 2y ago
    History 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 ago
      There 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 ago
150K NATO troops in Ukraine.
ein0p 2y ago
Basically 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 ago
Can’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?”

Picking 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 ago
  Yeah, 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 ago
    The 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 ago
      Under 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.
      - chrz 2y ago
        are you saying that if US was kot involved then Ukrainy would have to do whatever Russia tell yhwm yo do and that would be better for Ukraine? And yes sure, Russia is nust defending itself
simion314 2y ago
It is not an anti-Russia alliance, we Romania enter NATO to survive teh eventual Ruzzian invasion, as you can see from Ukraine war our politicians, even the communist regime was sure that a Ruzzian invasion is unavoidable (yeah, makes your mind segfault when you find out that communist Romania had better relations with USA and was preparing to resist a USSR invasion). You need to talk with Russians to understend their Zed mentality, they think God gave them the right to dominate half of the world, they will tell it to my face that genocide my nation is not personal, it is geo politics and Ruzzia must do it. the way to avoid the Ukrainian war would ahve been if Ukrainians would ahve not been stupid and would ahave joined NATO with Romania and Poland, but the idiots still believed in brotherhood with the Zeds. P.S I am using Z to refer to the Russians that are Zed supporters and to make it clear I am not referring to the entire Russian population, since there are a few educated Russians there that can see the truth.
- aizen89 2y ago
  Everything you outlined applies to US politics too :DD
  - simion314 2y ago
    >Everything you outlined applies to US politics too :DD What? that Canada made an alliance with soem other neighbors so the evil USA would not invade them ?
    - lmz 2y ago
      > they think God gave them the right to dominate half of the world, they will tell it to my face that genocide my nation is not personal, it is geo politics This part could well apply to Americans.
      - simion314 2y ago
        >This part could well apply to Americans. What about USA? But honestly I never chat with an american that would claim that half of the world belongs to them and they are not sorry for the future genocides that they will have to do to achieve it. Nice of you to confirm here for our HN community that what I said is true, Ruzz claim that God gave tehm half of the world to make a "sphere of influence" and that Moscowites are OK with genocides because is geo politics and not "personal"

relaxing 2y ago

The gunboat kind.

matheusmoreira 2y ago
That's a great way to get countries to promptly ally with China and Russia instead.
- relaxing 2y ago
  I see why one might think that, if they lacked all knowledge of the history of region and Russia’s involvement.
  - matheusmoreira 2y ago
    As 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 ago

Autocracies 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 ago
And yet autocracies are historically the most "successful" types of governments. Humans always and eventually end up selecting autocracies with thunderous applause.
- atemerev 2y ago
  History 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 ago
    There 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 ago

150K NATO troops in Ukraine.

ein0p 2y ago

Basically 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 ago

Can’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?”