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The problem is that's a false narrative. There were never any promises, and Putin barely even cared that it resulted in Finland and Sweden joining NATO. Becau

The problem is that's a false narrative. There were never any promises, and Putin barely even cared that it resulted in Finland and Sweden joining NATO. Because Russia's stated motivation for invading Ukraine was never Putin's actual reason, which is basically an emotional desire for historical greatness by reclaiming Russia's lost empire, combined with war always being an excellent mechanism for staying in power and distracting from domestic problems. So it's sad to see anyone falling for Putin's lies so easily. (See also Mearshimer.)

xg15 2y ago
But how do you know so clearly that the one thing is a lie and the other is the truth? Even if you reject the "encroaching NATO" narrative, what makes "Putin just woke up one day and decided that remaking the Soviet Union and/or the zarist Russian Empire would be a great thing to do in the 21th century" the more plausible hypothesis? What information do you have that Mearsheimer doesn't?
- dinglestepup 2y ago
  One of Putin's stated goals when he came to power was joining NATO. He did not feel threatened by it until he needed to justify his imperialistic behavior.
  - xg15 2y ago
    Or until the European stance changed, under the influence of the US, from one of including Russia to excluding. At least that's what Ulrike Guerot claims to have experienced. I have no idea if this is true. I also don't want to say that Russia always tells the whole truth without lies and propaganda. But I'm finding it rather that our own side doesn't behave in the Ukraine conflict as we behave in other conflicts between third countries. We also engage in a lot of propaganda and biased reporting, especially on the topic of Ukraine and Israel (as shown by fair.org), so I've become careful too quickly deciding what the truth is. (I do disagree in at least one point with all the russia apologists though: Whatever may have happened in Ukraine before the war and whatever the larger context is, what is happening right now there is driven by Russia and is absolutely devastating for Ukrainians. That Ukrainians hate Russia is absolutely understandable. So I think we should continue to support Ukraine. Nevertheless, if there was some hidden context in the lead-up of the war, it would be in our best interests to expose this.)
    - cc81 2y ago
      Europe was happily buying more and more gas from Russia and wanted to increase trading until the directional change from Putin.
- crazygringo 2y ago
  There are plenty of articles by respected international relations and Russia experts you can find that explains it quite clearly. The IR community does not share Mearsheimer's take. He is very much known to be the exception. Which is why he's the only one we're referring to by name here, because his analysis is so contrary to the overwhelming consensus of experts.
  - xg15 2y ago
    Could you share some of those? I'd be interested. (Having both "pro-russian" and "pro-western" family members, so I'm engaged in lots of discussions currently and would be glad for new information, no matter which side) I think it's important which countries the experts are coming from. That our own IR/Russia experts are sharing this view doesn't seem very surprising to me - it's a war situation after all. I just notice that a lot of non-Western countries seem to be at least undecided which narrative to follow, e.g. Brazil, India, Turkey, many African countries. (Ignoring China which is obviously allied with Russia and therefore also has a clear bias). Also, BRICS membership seems to be in demand, what I wouldn't expect if it was generally believed to be dominated by an insane, warmongering megalomaniac. Mearsheimer is not alone though (even though it's definitely a minority position here). Jeffrey Sax, Ulrike Guerot and, well, Noam Chomsky come to mind, or also organisations such as fair.org with well-documented sources.
    - ImPostingOnHN 2y ago
      > I think it's important which countries the experts are coming from. I don't think it's important to engage in prejudice based on national origin. > I just notice that a lot of non-Western countries seem to be at least undecided which narrative to follow 141 countries decided that Russia's aggression is deserving of condemnation and must stop: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_General_Assembly_Resolution_ES-11/1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_General_Assembl... Additionally, the court with relevant jurisdiction (composed of impartial judges from western and non-western countries) has decided that Putin should be arrested and tried for his crimes: https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/situation-ukraine-icc-judges-issue-arrest-warrants-against-vladimir-vladimirovich-putin-and https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/situation-ukraine-icc-judges-is... Doesn't seem too undecided.
- CamperBob2 2y ago
  Russia is a nuclear-armed state. They have nothing to fear from NATO. They can never be invaded or conquered again, by anyone, ever. Except from within. Disagree? Answer my questions below, and explain exactly how you would go about attacking Russia.
  - hollerith 2y ago
    >They can never be invaded or conquered again, by anyone, ever. Why does thinking about nuclear weapons cause most people to think in absolutist terms like this? Maybe Russia was counting on getting a 15-minute warning of ICBMs approaching, but if a hostile military can station missile right on their southwestern border (523 miles from the center of Moscow) their plan goes out the window.
    - CamperBob2 2y ago
      Why does thinking about nuclear weapons cause most people to think in absolutist terms like this? I don't understand the question. Can you elaborate? How would you go about invading Russia, as a senior NATO commander? Russia's stated policy is to deploy nuclear arms against any invading force. As for a hypothetical sneak attack on Moscow, are you familiar with the concept of the strategic defense triad?
      - hollerith 2y ago
        >How would you go about invading Russia, as a senior NATO commander? NATO would have to nuke Russia, then invade. Tank crew are protected from fallout radiation. If they have filtered air, I think they can enter "fallout plumes" right away. Soldiers not protected by tanks will be able to enter in about 3 weeks: weapons fallout is very different in character from the contamination from, e.g., Chernobyl or Fukushima. It dissipates much more rapidly. In fact, since the fallout plumes will cover only about half of the land area or less, the tanks can map out the locations of the plumes, after which the infantry might be able to enter the parts of the country missed by the fallout plumes well before 3 weeks after the end of the nuclear attack. (The fallout stays in one place after it has fallen out of the sky and has hit the ground -- or more precisely the fallout that does end up being blown around by the wind after it has hit the ground is small enough in particle size to not be deadly, though it will mess up your mucus membranes via beta radiation, hence my words above about filtering the air for the tanks.) When Jens Stoltenberg says that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought, his "cannot be won" is not literally true. He is saying it to emphasize that NATO would never even consider starting a nuclear war. And in fact I don't think the US or NATO ever would choose to start an intercontinental nuclear war, but it is very hard for the Kremlin to come to understand the US well enough to be as confident of that as I am (having lived in the US for over 60 years). Also, the people who run Russia and who will run Russia after Putin is dead are professional spies. They are evaluated by how seriously they take national security. Also, Russia has been invaded about 50 times in its recorded history: by the French, the Germans, a Polish-Lithuanian confederation, Sweden, the Turks many times, various groups (other than the Turks) looking to get slaves, Central Asian peoples and many kinds of steppe nomads (mostly notably the Mongols, Tatars and Cossacks). The whole country takes national security very seriously. Of course NATO would want to evacuate its cities before it begins its attack. If it does, more than half of its population will survive the inevitable Russian response -- probably much more than half. (It's been a while since I saw the relevant papers.) Also, the US has spent many tens of billions on research into missile defense, and Russia cannot know with any certainly whether that research has born enough fruit so that the US can shoot down most of Russia ICBMs in a big war. Also, the Kremlin has expressed concern that the US Aegis system can shoot down Russian ICBMs, and now that Ukraine is good buddies with NATO, Russia has to consider the possibility of NATO's stationing many Aegis systems in Eastern Ukraine in addition to the Aegis systems already on US destroyers in the Baltic Sea. In 1951 or so, China sent an army of about a million men against a large number of soldiers of the US Army. This Chinese army had the usual instructions from its political masters, namely, to kill as many US soldiers as possible and to destroy their equipment. They did this even though they would only get their first nuke in the 1960s whereas in 1951 the US had hundreds of nukes. Although the events I just described are a far cry from China's invading the US homeland, it does go against the notion that nukes are somehow a magical shield against conventional military attacks if even a non-nuclear military will contemplate attacking a nuclear power. By the way, consider the motive of Beijing in 1951: the reason they risked getting nuked was to avoid having a regime (namely, the regime in Seoul) friendly to the US on their border. They preferred having a buffer state, namely, North Korea between them and any country friendly enough with the US to maybe agree to host US troops. They preferred it so much that they sent a million men and risked getting nuked. That is one of the data points that led Mearsheimer, Kissinger, Merkel, Sarkozy and many other security experts to criticize the plan of adding Ukraine to NATO. (Merkel and Sarkozy stopped their criticism because Paris and Berlin depend on Washington to guarantee their security, which gives Washington the last word on Paris and Berlin's security policy, so they went along with the plan even though that thought they still thought it was dumb.)
- racional 2y ago
  Mearsheimer "has" all the information; it just doesn't fit his preferred narrative ("The U.S needs to stop picking on Russia so they can team up together against China"), so he discards the parts get in the way of that narrative. Such as the long and deep history of Russia's colonial attitude toward Ukraine, for example. As to a more realistic narrative -- it's a bit more nuanced than the formulation you suggest, but even so -- is pretty much obvious once we look at the things Putin and key people around him have been saying, along with the last 350 years of so of Russia's history vis-a-vis its neighbors and Belarus and Ukraine in particular. The links in the short comment tree below (which answered essentially the same question from just a few weeks ago) might be useful here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40455815 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40455815
deleted 2y ago
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deleted 2y ago
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softsound 2y ago
There are many many reasons for war, not just because Putin wrote a fancy paper long ago about his aspirin, or because the drought in Crimea was costing Russia tons of money since they took over and had their water cut off or the falling population and economy that purposely did not reinvest properly to keep Putin in power. Giving a simple answer is not wrong if the long one takes much longer to explain. Multiple factors can be true, I'm sure Russia was uneasy that Siberia wanted to leave and with Ukraine gone they would have no direct access to water there. And the threat of China slowing taking over Russian land *with Russian permission of course*. Russia has attempted to do something even if extremely poorly miscalculated. That's kinda what Russia is known for, doing something and very often failing at it. They have been lucky, sometimes clever but often terrible truly terrible at long term long planning. Ask their unpatriotic AI what it thinks, they will get mad about it too.
- YeGoblynQueenne 2y ago
  >> Putin wrote a fancy paper long ago about his aspirin Explain?
  - gruturo 2y ago
    Aspiration + autocorrect?
  - philbin 2y ago
    [dead]
YeGoblynQueenne 2y ago
>> So it's sad to see anyone falling for Putin's lies so easily. (See also Mearshimer.) Mearsheimer can be a bit too convincing for his own good, surely. What he has argued that is certainly convincing is that Russia was ready to negotiate a peace at the start of the war, when Russians and Ukrainians met in Belarus and then in Istanbul. If Putin wanted to recreate Imperial Russia, or the Soviet Union, then why would he negotiate for peace? That's Mearsh's argument, which he articulates, e.g. here in Lex Friedman's show (sorry, I couldn't find a better source): https://youtube.com/watch?v=r4wLXNydzeY&t=2684 https://youtube.com/watch?v=r4wLXNydzeY&t=2684 Full transcript here: https://lexfridman.com/john-mearsheimer-transcript/ https://lexfridman.com/john-mearsheimer-transcript/
- YeGoblynQueenne 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - foldr 2y ago
    > security guarantees for Ukraine This is laughable. Russia cannot give any credible security guarantee to a country that it has just invaded! The war has shown precisely that Russia still believes that it has the right to control Ukraine and that any negotiated peace is nothing more than a temporary pause in hostilities in anticipation of a more opportune moment for Russia. Putin is a cypher and no-one really knows exactly why he wants to invade and conquer Ukraine, but as it is enormously plain at this point that he does want to do so, this entails that there is no really workable negotiated settlement.
    - YeGoblynQueenne 2y ago
      >> Russia cannot give any credible security guarantee to a country that it has just invaded! Security guarantees would be provided by Western countries, not only Russia.
      - foldr 2y ago
        Ukraine is in no need of further security guarantees from Western countries save the one guarantee that Russia will never accept: NATO membership. Without that – and the associated obligation to offer a direct military response to Russian aggression – it's difficult to see how any security guarantee could possibly extend beyond what Western countries are already providing. Russia's key conditions for the supposed "deal" that you refer to were that (i) the size of the Ukrainian army would be heavily constrained and that (ii) Russia would have a veto on any response to future aggression against Ukraine. Ukraine rejected the deal because it would have been worthless.
riku_iki 2y ago
> There were never any promises, and Putin barely even cared that it resulted in Finland and Sweden joining NATO. you don't know for sure. The only evidence is some notes from brit diplomats I think which refer on such promise.. Also, Ukraine is much more considered as Russian inner territory than Finland and Sweden, and Putin likely got freaked out that pro-western movements will move to actual Russia and kill his regime.
- emn13 2y ago
  Exactly. I think it's worth considering that people are using "threatened" in two slightly but meaningfully different ways in these discussions. It seems superficially reasonable to defend yourself militarily when "threatened"; but that's only true if that threat is military. However, it seems pretty implausible that either Putin's regime was threatened, or that they thought they were militarily threatened. However, as you point out, it's a lot more plausible they feared cultural contamination. Putin's regime wanted heavy-handed control over its neighbors; and the Maidan revolution demonstrated not only that this control wasn't as strong as it appeared, but also that it might be possible to break free from that oppression for others too, including perhaps Russian's. That example was the threat from which Putin was "defending" himself. As much as Chomsky's well-reasoned talks are worth respect, he never really addressed that well. Putin's defense vs. the NATO threat was about as reasonable as a colonial power's "defense" vs. their subject's freedom; and it's also being executed about as reasonably, too. But to hear Chomsky describe it this is basically irrelevant; anything opposed to American overreach is reasonable - even when it's clearly not, and it's not even clear there's any overreach in the matter at hand.

xg15 2y ago

But how do you know so clearly that the one thing is a lie and the other is the truth? Even if you reject the "encroaching NATO" narrative, what makes "Putin just woke up one day and decided that remaking the Soviet Union and/or the zarist Russian Empire would be a great thing to do in the 21th century" the more plausible hypothesis? What information do you have that Mearsheimer doesn't?

dinglestepup 2y ago
One of Putin's stated goals when he came to power was joining NATO. He did not feel threatened by it until he needed to justify his imperialistic behavior.
- xg15 2y ago
  Or until the European stance changed, under the influence of the US, from one of including Russia to excluding. At least that's what Ulrike Guerot claims to have experienced. I have no idea if this is true. I also don't want to say that Russia always tells the whole truth without lies and propaganda. But I'm finding it rather that our own side doesn't behave in the Ukraine conflict as we behave in other conflicts between third countries. We also engage in a lot of propaganda and biased reporting, especially on the topic of Ukraine and Israel (as shown by fair.org), so I've become careful too quickly deciding what the truth is. (I do disagree in at least one point with all the russia apologists though: Whatever may have happened in Ukraine before the war and whatever the larger context is, what is happening right now there is driven by Russia and is absolutely devastating for Ukrainians. That Ukrainians hate Russia is absolutely understandable. So I think we should continue to support Ukraine. Nevertheless, if there was some hidden context in the lead-up of the war, it would be in our best interests to expose this.)
  - cc81 2y ago
    Europe was happily buying more and more gas from Russia and wanted to increase trading until the directional change from Putin.
crazygringo 2y ago
There are plenty of articles by respected international relations and Russia experts you can find that explains it quite clearly. The IR community does not share Mearsheimer's take. He is very much known to be the exception. Which is why he's the only one we're referring to by name here, because his analysis is so contrary to the overwhelming consensus of experts.
- xg15 2y ago
  Could you share some of those? I'd be interested. (Having both "pro-russian" and "pro-western" family members, so I'm engaged in lots of discussions currently and would be glad for new information, no matter which side) I think it's important which countries the experts are coming from. That our own IR/Russia experts are sharing this view doesn't seem very surprising to me - it's a war situation after all. I just notice that a lot of non-Western countries seem to be at least undecided which narrative to follow, e.g. Brazil, India, Turkey, many African countries. (Ignoring China which is obviously allied with Russia and therefore also has a clear bias). Also, BRICS membership seems to be in demand, what I wouldn't expect if it was generally believed to be dominated by an insane, warmongering megalomaniac. Mearsheimer is not alone though (even though it's definitely a minority position here). Jeffrey Sax, Ulrike Guerot and, well, Noam Chomsky come to mind, or also organisations such as fair.org with well-documented sources.
  - ImPostingOnHN 2y ago
    > I think it's important which countries the experts are coming from. I don't think it's important to engage in prejudice based on national origin. > I just notice that a lot of non-Western countries seem to be at least undecided which narrative to follow 141 countries decided that Russia's aggression is deserving of condemnation and must stop: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_General_Assembly_Resolution_ES-11/1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_General_Assembl... Additionally, the court with relevant jurisdiction (composed of impartial judges from western and non-western countries) has decided that Putin should be arrested and tried for his crimes: https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/situation-ukraine-icc-judges-issue-arrest-warrants-against-vladimir-vladimirovich-putin-and https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/situation-ukraine-icc-judges-is... Doesn't seem too undecided.
CamperBob2 2y ago
Russia is a nuclear-armed state. They have nothing to fear from NATO. They can never be invaded or conquered again, by anyone, ever. Except from within. Disagree? Answer my questions below, and explain exactly how you would go about attacking Russia.
- hollerith 2y ago
  >They can never be invaded or conquered again, by anyone, ever. Why does thinking about nuclear weapons cause most people to think in absolutist terms like this? Maybe Russia was counting on getting a 15-minute warning of ICBMs approaching, but if a hostile military can station missile right on their southwestern border (523 miles from the center of Moscow) their plan goes out the window.
  - CamperBob2 2y ago
    Why does thinking about nuclear weapons cause most people to think in absolutist terms like this? I don't understand the question. Can you elaborate? How would you go about invading Russia, as a senior NATO commander? Russia's stated policy is to deploy nuclear arms against any invading force. As for a hypothetical sneak attack on Moscow, are you familiar with the concept of the strategic defense triad?
    - hollerith 2y ago
      >How would you go about invading Russia, as a senior NATO commander? NATO would have to nuke Russia, then invade. Tank crew are protected from fallout radiation. If they have filtered air, I think they can enter "fallout plumes" right away. Soldiers not protected by tanks will be able to enter in about 3 weeks: weapons fallout is very different in character from the contamination from, e.g., Chernobyl or Fukushima. It dissipates much more rapidly. In fact, since the fallout plumes will cover only about half of the land area or less, the tanks can map out the locations of the plumes, after which the infantry might be able to enter the parts of the country missed by the fallout plumes well before 3 weeks after the end of the nuclear attack. (The fallout stays in one place after it has fallen out of the sky and has hit the ground -- or more precisely the fallout that does end up being blown around by the wind after it has hit the ground is small enough in particle size to not be deadly, though it will mess up your mucus membranes via beta radiation, hence my words above about filtering the air for the tanks.) When Jens Stoltenberg says that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought, his "cannot be won" is not literally true. He is saying it to emphasize that NATO would never even consider starting a nuclear war. And in fact I don't think the US or NATO ever would choose to start an intercontinental nuclear war, but it is very hard for the Kremlin to come to understand the US well enough to be as confident of that as I am (having lived in the US for over 60 years). Also, the people who run Russia and who will run Russia after Putin is dead are professional spies. They are evaluated by how seriously they take national security. Also, Russia has been invaded about 50 times in its recorded history: by the French, the Germans, a Polish-Lithuanian confederation, Sweden, the Turks many times, various groups (other than the Turks) looking to get slaves, Central Asian peoples and many kinds of steppe nomads (mostly notably the Mongols, Tatars and Cossacks). The whole country takes national security very seriously. Of course NATO would want to evacuate its cities before it begins its attack. If it does, more than half of its population will survive the inevitable Russian response -- probably much more than half. (It's been a while since I saw the relevant papers.) Also, the US has spent many tens of billions on research into missile defense, and Russia cannot know with any certainly whether that research has born enough fruit so that the US can shoot down most of Russia ICBMs in a big war. Also, the Kremlin has expressed concern that the US Aegis system can shoot down Russian ICBMs, and now that Ukraine is good buddies with NATO, Russia has to consider the possibility of NATO's stationing many Aegis systems in Eastern Ukraine in addition to the Aegis systems already on US destroyers in the Baltic Sea. In 1951 or so, China sent an army of about a million men against a large number of soldiers of the US Army. This Chinese army had the usual instructions from its political masters, namely, to kill as many US soldiers as possible and to destroy their equipment. They did this even though they would only get their first nuke in the 1960s whereas in 1951 the US had hundreds of nukes. Although the events I just described are a far cry from China's invading the US homeland, it does go against the notion that nukes are somehow a magical shield against conventional military attacks if even a non-nuclear military will contemplate attacking a nuclear power. By the way, consider the motive of Beijing in 1951: the reason they risked getting nuked was to avoid having a regime (namely, the regime in Seoul) friendly to the US on their border. They preferred having a buffer state, namely, North Korea between them and any country friendly enough with the US to maybe agree to host US troops. They preferred it so much that they sent a million men and risked getting nuked. That is one of the data points that led Mearsheimer, Kissinger, Merkel, Sarkozy and many other security experts to criticize the plan of adding Ukraine to NATO. (Merkel and Sarkozy stopped their criticism because Paris and Berlin depend on Washington to guarantee their security, which gives Washington the last word on Paris and Berlin's security policy, so they went along with the plan even though that thought they still thought it was dumb.)
racional 2y ago
Mearsheimer "has" all the information; it just doesn't fit his preferred narrative ("The U.S needs to stop picking on Russia so they can team up together against China"), so he discards the parts get in the way of that narrative. Such as the long and deep history of Russia's colonial attitude toward Ukraine, for example. As to a more realistic narrative -- it's a bit more nuanced than the formulation you suggest, but even so -- is pretty much obvious once we look at the things Putin and key people around him have been saying, along with the last 350 years of so of Russia's history vis-a-vis its neighbors and Belarus and Ukraine in particular. The links in the short comment tree below (which answered essentially the same question from just a few weeks ago) might be useful here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40455815 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40455815

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

softsound 2y ago

There are many many reasons for war, not just because Putin wrote a fancy paper long ago about his aspirin, or because the drought in Crimea was costing Russia tons of money since they took over and had their water cut off or the falling population and economy that purposely did not reinvest properly to keep Putin in power. Giving a simple answer is not wrong if the long one takes much longer to explain. Multiple factors can be true, I'm sure Russia was uneasy that Siberia wanted to leave and with Ukraine gone they would have no direct access to water there. And the threat of China slowing taking over Russian land *with Russian permission of course*. Russia has attempted to do something even if extremely poorly miscalculated. That's kinda what Russia is known for, doing something and very often failing at it. They have been lucky, sometimes clever but often terrible truly terrible at long term long planning. Ask their unpatriotic AI what it thinks, they will get mad about it too.

YeGoblynQueenne 2y ago
>> Putin wrote a fancy paper long ago about his aspirin Explain?
- gruturo 2y ago
  Aspiration + autocorrect?
- philbin 2y ago
  [dead]

YeGoblynQueenne 2y ago

>> So it's sad to see anyone falling for Putin's lies so easily. (See also Mearshimer.) Mearsheimer can be a bit too convincing for his own good, surely. What he has argued that is certainly convincing is that Russia was ready to negotiate a peace at the start of the war, when Russians and Ukrainians met in Belarus and then in Istanbul. If Putin wanted to recreate Imperial Russia, or the Soviet Union, then why would he negotiate for peace? That's Mearsh's argument, which he articulates, e.g. here in Lex Friedman's show (sorry, I couldn't find a better source): https://youtube.com/watch?v=r4wLXNydzeY&t=2684 https://youtube.com/watch?v=r4wLXNydzeY&t=2684 Full transcript here: https://lexfridman.com/john-mearsheimer-transcript/ https://lexfridman.com/john-mearsheimer-transcript/

YeGoblynQueenne 2y ago
[flagged]
- foldr 2y ago
  > security guarantees for Ukraine This is laughable. Russia cannot give any credible security guarantee to a country that it has just invaded! The war has shown precisely that Russia still believes that it has the right to control Ukraine and that any negotiated peace is nothing more than a temporary pause in hostilities in anticipation of a more opportune moment for Russia. Putin is a cypher and no-one really knows exactly why he wants to invade and conquer Ukraine, but as it is enormously plain at this point that he does want to do so, this entails that there is no really workable negotiated settlement.
  - YeGoblynQueenne 2y ago
    >> Russia cannot give any credible security guarantee to a country that it has just invaded! Security guarantees would be provided by Western countries, not only Russia.
    - foldr 2y ago
      Ukraine is in no need of further security guarantees from Western countries save the one guarantee that Russia will never accept: NATO membership. Without that – and the associated obligation to offer a direct military response to Russian aggression – it's difficult to see how any security guarantee could possibly extend beyond what Western countries are already providing. Russia's key conditions for the supposed "deal" that you refer to were that (i) the size of the Ukrainian army would be heavily constrained and that (ii) Russia would have a veto on any response to future aggression against Ukraine. Ukraine rejected the deal because it would have been worthless.

riku_iki 2y ago

> There were never any promises, and Putin barely even cared that it resulted in Finland and Sweden joining NATO. you don't know for sure. The only evidence is some notes from brit diplomats I think which refer on such promise.. Also, Ukraine is much more considered as Russian inner territory than Finland and Sweden, and Putin likely got freaked out that pro-western movements will move to actual Russia and kill his regime.

emn13 2y ago
Exactly. I think it's worth considering that people are using "threatened" in two slightly but meaningfully different ways in these discussions. It seems superficially reasonable to defend yourself militarily when "threatened"; but that's only true if that threat is military. However, it seems pretty implausible that either Putin's regime was threatened, or that they thought they were militarily threatened. However, as you point out, it's a lot more plausible they feared cultural contamination. Putin's regime wanted heavy-handed control over its neighbors; and the Maidan revolution demonstrated not only that this control wasn't as strong as it appeared, but also that it might be possible to break free from that oppression for others too, including perhaps Russian's. That example was the threat from which Putin was "defending" himself. As much as Chomsky's well-reasoned talks are worth respect, he never really addressed that well. Putin's defense vs. the NATO threat was about as reasonable as a colonial power's "defense" vs. their subject's freedom; and it's also being executed about as reasonably, too. But to hear Chomsky describe it this is basically irrelevant; anything opposed to American overreach is reasonable - even when it's clearly not, and it's not even clear there's any overreach in the matter at hand.