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It's not the same because one party is clearly not willing. That's all it takes: consent. If tomorrow morning Friesland decides by majority vote it wants to be

It's not the same because one party is clearly not willing. That's all it takes: consent. If tomorrow morning Friesland decides by majority vote it wants to be independent of the rest of NL I'd be perfectly ok with that. Likewise I'm fine with countries deciding whether or not they want to join one alliance or another. Languages and history have nothing to do with it, it is all about consent. If you plan to kill people in order to get them to join your idea what your country should look like you've already lost, then you're just another occupier. I've lived in Poland under the USSR, it was pretty clear what the Russian position was on how they viewed the Poles - and anybody else that wasn't 'properly' Russian for that matter. This was an occupation, not a league of nations, and in a way Russia got more out of WWII than even the Molotov/Ribbentrop pact would have given them. I've lived in Romania, I visited Latvia many times, I visited Ukraine, many times. Everywhere the sentiment is roughly the same: that they would rather die than live under Russian occupation again, they already know what that is like. And no amount of shared history or language (or forced relocation, which in many of those cases is the source of that shared history) is going to offset that. You're if I'm not mistaken someone with Russian roots living in Berlin. Coincidentally, I know more people that are in that position. Most of them still have family back in Russia so they are very circumspect in the positions that they take. But they have zero illusion about Russia having good intentions in any of the wars they have engaged in since the USSR fell apart and it is patently clear by the indiscriminate attacks on the Ukrainian population that Russia does not care for the people that they in the same breath claim to call their brothers and sisters.

ivan_gammel 1y ago
You are just repeating the same idea without further analysis. As a German born in USSR I do know something about oppression too, however I also understand the difference between socialism, imperialism and Russian flavor of neoconservatism - 3 different ideologies that existed in Russia in last 300 years. They are very different in operation and expansion modes and those differences are very important for external observers, especially when there are few trillions of taxpayer money at stake. Russia stopped being an imperial project with colonies in 1917. Period. Soviet Union wasn’t Russian nationalist project at all, so mixing it up with contemporary history or seeing it as an extension of empire is just incompetent. Contemporary Russia of Putin’s period is claiming to extend both, but it’s just propaganda legitimizing the regime, when the motives, the goals, the government structures are very different.
- jacquesm 1y ago
  It's a distinction without a difference. For the victims it hardly matters what idiocy motivated the occupiers, and those are the people we are concerned with, not with how Russians view themselves. Just like I don't give a fuck about how MAGA adherents want to redefine what the United States is. I do care about the people that they then collectively threaten to murder/invade.
  - ivan_gammel 1y ago
    Well, good for you. Your taxpayer money aren’t going to be spent in this conflict, thanks to Trump. What concerns me is that Eastern European nationalists are selling the big war narrative that will make Europe overspend on defense and American LNG when we have plenty of other problems. It doesn’t have to go this way, but that requires really good understanding of intentions and capabilities of either side, at least on the level of Cold War. At the moment there’s no such understanding neither among public nor among politicians. What’s worse, there’s no even attempts to understand - you are great example of such attitude.
    - nradov 1y ago
      Instead of spending taxpayer money it would be better to seize all assets held by Russian entities (including private citizens) in NATO and other allied countries. Just steal it all. Killing Russian soldiers is expensive so we might as well let the Russians themselves pay for it. I actually do understand why Russia is attempting to seize Ukraine, and from a strategic geopolitical perspective it was sort of logical. But so what, that doesn't mean we should have any sympathy for them or let them gain any advantage. Better so utterly crush, humiliate, and impoverish them so that they cease to be a threat for a couple generations to come. This will also serve as a useful object lesson to anyone else who might want to try a similar stunt: FAFO.
      - jacquesm 1y ago
        The money is the least of the problem for me, I'm more than happy to spend and do whatever it takes to ensure that this kind of idiocy ends here, once and for all.
hollerith 1y ago
>If tomorrow morning Friesland decides by majority vote it wants to be independent of the rest of NL I'd be perfectly ok with that. That is a easy postition for the Netherlands to take because it has very little security against invasion even now before Friesland secedes, given its location in which there is little in the way of mountains, rivers or seas between it and countries more powerful than it. (More powerful if only because of their greater size: I'm not claiming that the Dutch are bad at fighting). But it would be foolish for Australians to allow a large chunk of Australia to secede or for the Japanese to allow part of Japan to secede because the way it is now, both countries enjoy a very favorable security situation in which any invader would need to cross an ocean or at least a wide channel even to begin an invasion. If Japan split into two, then one of the two new countries might invite in the military of a larger power with the result that the other new country is in a vastly more precarious security situation than it was before the split into 2 countries. The Mongols attempted a massive invasion of Japan, but the invasion was foiled by stormy weather while the Mongols were trying to cross the wide channel. If there were two polities in Japan at the time, the Mongols could have offer to protect one polity from the other one, and if their offer had been accepted, they could have moved their forces to Japan at their leisure, and would not have needed to risk an operation in which all their forces try to cross a sea as quickly as possible ready to fight as soon as they get to the other side. Because of their separation from other countries by large bodies of water, Australian and Japan have been invaded or occupied only once in the last 2000 years (Australia when Europeans arrived and Japan after WWII) whereas during those 2000 years, the Netherlands has been invaded many times (with the occupation or annexation of the Netherlands by Spain having proved particularly painful). Again: the Netherlands is not giving up much in the way of security advantages by allowing parts of itself to secede, but not all countries are in a similar situation.

ivan_gammel 1y ago

You are just repeating the same idea without further analysis. As a German born in USSR I do know something about oppression too, however I also understand the difference between socialism, imperialism and Russian flavor of neoconservatism - 3 different ideologies that existed in Russia in last 300 years. They are very different in operation and expansion modes and those differences are very important for external observers, especially when there are few trillions of taxpayer money at stake. Russia stopped being an imperial project with colonies in 1917. Period. Soviet Union wasn’t Russian nationalist project at all, so mixing it up with contemporary history or seeing it as an extension of empire is just incompetent. Contemporary Russia of Putin’s period is claiming to extend both, but it’s just propaganda legitimizing the regime, when the motives, the goals, the government structures are very different.

jacquesm 1y ago
It's a distinction without a difference. For the victims it hardly matters what idiocy motivated the occupiers, and those are the people we are concerned with, not with how Russians view themselves. Just like I don't give a fuck about how MAGA adherents want to redefine what the United States is. I do care about the people that they then collectively threaten to murder/invade.
- ivan_gammel 1y ago
  Well, good for you. Your taxpayer money aren’t going to be spent in this conflict, thanks to Trump. What concerns me is that Eastern European nationalists are selling the big war narrative that will make Europe overspend on defense and American LNG when we have plenty of other problems. It doesn’t have to go this way, but that requires really good understanding of intentions and capabilities of either side, at least on the level of Cold War. At the moment there’s no such understanding neither among public nor among politicians. What’s worse, there’s no even attempts to understand - you are great example of such attitude.
  - nradov 1y ago
    Instead of spending taxpayer money it would be better to seize all assets held by Russian entities (including private citizens) in NATO and other allied countries. Just steal it all. Killing Russian soldiers is expensive so we might as well let the Russians themselves pay for it. I actually do understand why Russia is attempting to seize Ukraine, and from a strategic geopolitical perspective it was sort of logical. But so what, that doesn't mean we should have any sympathy for them or let them gain any advantage. Better so utterly crush, humiliate, and impoverish them so that they cease to be a threat for a couple generations to come. This will also serve as a useful object lesson to anyone else who might want to try a similar stunt: FAFO.
    - jacquesm 1y ago
      The money is the least of the problem for me, I'm more than happy to spend and do whatever it takes to ensure that this kind of idiocy ends here, once and for all.

hollerith 1y ago

>If tomorrow morning Friesland decides by majority vote it wants to be independent of the rest of NL I'd be perfectly ok with that. That is a easy postition for the Netherlands to take because it has very little security against invasion even now before Friesland secedes, given its location in which there is little in the way of mountains, rivers or seas between it and countries more powerful than it. (More powerful if only because of their greater size: I'm not claiming that the Dutch are bad at fighting). But it would be foolish for Australians to allow a large chunk of Australia to secede or for the Japanese to allow part of Japan to secede because the way it is now, both countries enjoy a very favorable security situation in which any invader would need to cross an ocean or at least a wide channel even to begin an invasion. If Japan split into two, then one of the two new countries might invite in the military of a larger power with the result that the other new country is in a vastly more precarious security situation than it was before the split into 2 countries. The Mongols attempted a massive invasion of Japan, but the invasion was foiled by stormy weather while the Mongols were trying to cross the wide channel. If there were two polities in Japan at the time, the Mongols could have offer to protect one polity from the other one, and if their offer had been accepted, they could have moved their forces to Japan at their leisure, and would not have needed to risk an operation in which all their forces try to cross a sea as quickly as possible ready to fight as soon as they get to the other side. Because of their separation from other countries by large bodies of water, Australian and Japan have been invaded or occupied only once in the last 2000 years (Australia when Europeans arrived and Japan after WWII) whereas during those 2000 years, the Netherlands has been invaded many times (with the occupation or annexation of the Netherlands by Spain having proved particularly painful). Again: the Netherlands is not giving up much in the way of security advantages by allowing parts of itself to secede, but not all countries are in a similar situation.