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> since it is in our interest to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe happening on the Polish border. If your argument is preventing trouble on the Polish border

• Oranguru 2mo ago
  > We're all more likely to get what we want. Ideally peace and prosperity. As sovereign citizens of their own country, Ukrainians have the right to decide under which flag they want to collectively pursue peace and prosperity. I believe they have made that choice clear through democratic means, something Russians have not experienced in a long time. If Russia is allowed to take Ukraine, it will move on to Poland next, and then to claim the remaining former Soviet states. A line must be drawn somewhere.
  • roenxi 2mo ago
    > As sovereign citizens of their own country, Ukrainians have the right to decide under which flag they want to collectively pursue peace and prosperity. Much like Iran. And yet we took out their leadership just this year (again) because we think they picked the wrong flag. Apparently such behaviour is tolerable. If it is tolerable, we should tolerate the Russians doing it too, even if it is on their own border instead of the other side of the world.
    • ben_w 2mo ago
      > Apparently such behaviour is tolerable. No, it was incredibly stupid for the US to do so, everyone who has done more than a cursory look at the results of wargames and previous interventions knew this. It wasn't even a good idea in Iraq with Saddam Hussein (second time, the first at least was to stop him invading Kuwait), probably not even Afghanistan.
      • rbanffy 2mo ago
        > No, it was incredibly stupid for the US to do so, everyone who has done more than a cursory look at the results of wargames and previous interventions knew this And yet there are no sanctions against the US for its obviously reckless interference in other countries.
        • ben_w 2mo ago
          No disagreement there, if you look at "sanctions" then yes, there have been none of relevance for a very long time. I guess "tolerable" has more than one meaning, so I should have checked which one was intended before starting my previous comment with just plain "No", but before reading your reply I hadn't considered that. The lack of sanctions is due to how power works rather than anyone else agreeing with them in any specific case: the USA has got too much of the money that everyone else wants, and too many weapons which everyone else wants pointed in the right direction rather than to find they're now standing in a position to read the sign saying "front towards enemy" with a wire trailing off to a nearby bush. This does not change that it was incredibly stupid for the US to attack Iran in particular, so stupid that it cost the US a significant part of its own matériel, made the remaining matériel less scary as a threat, and reduced the economic relevance of the USA's money, all at the same time. Every US leader before Trump made sure to not damage those things, and thus retained both hard and soft power. Trump's throwing both away rapidly, at such a pace that it's no longer inconceivable that the rest of the world will be able to sanction the US without fear of what retaliation may result. Consider that Trump's poor choices mean in particular that the EU got away with telling Trump to take a hike over Greenland, and China got away with telling Trump to take a hike over tariffs. With the kind of damage he's doing to the USA's power, this shift may be shockingly sudden when it does happen, with nobody being able to see exactly how close the transition is even 12 months before the world order changes. (I am not saying this is 12 months away today, I'm saying nobody will know even when it is 12 months away). So, stuff is shifting today specifically because of the USA's "reckless interference in other countries", with emphasis on the "reckless" part. There is a degree of governmental tolerance for the "interference" part, out of fear, meaning the condemnation (such as it is) is somewhere between "toothless" and simply not joining in with the misadventures. Trump appears to be trying to punish every nation who didn't help him attack Iran, but between them and all the nations the US failed to defend from Iranian counterstrikes are rather a lot of nations who are all now looking to each other for military and economic collaborations. It may not look much on paper; it remains to be seen if it is much in practice. China will of course be happy to substitute for the USA everywhere, but for the rest of us this changes which hyperpower we find ourselves forced to kowtow to, this time less metaphorically and more literally. Reasonable chance a lot of nations make their own nuclear deterrents either way, with all the extra risk that comes with. I didn't want to predict anything past 2031 even before all this geopolitical rifting started.
  • Lumich 2mo ago
    « Ukrainians have the right to decide » – Well, they did decide, but the U.S. didn't appreciate, so overthrew their government back in 2014, remember? “The most blatant coup in history”, see Nuland/Pyatt intercept. Instead, the U.S. (and UK) decided there would be a war, as simple as that. Good for business (“make America great again”).
    • rbanffy 2mo ago
      In Brazil, 2014, President Dilma Rousseff was reelected and the US intensified their effort, resulting in a coup that opened the way to Bolsonaro, which is kind of not what the US wanted (they usually prefer more moderate and controllable authoritarians) but still happened because the only credible opposition to him was the party they ousted in 2015/16
  • justsomehnguy 2mo ago
    > As sovereign citizens of their own country, Ukrainians have the right to decide under which flag they want to collectively pursue peace and prosperity. I believe they have made that choice clear through democratic means It's always amusing to hear this and point out what some Ukrainians are... not equal to other Ukrainians and therefore are not allowed to have the right to decide under which flag they want to collectively pursue peace and prosperity. Somehow it's always only one flag what is 'right' and anything other is 'not right'.
    • ben_w 2mo ago
      Most nations do not allow regions to become independent. The USA famously had a kerfuffle over this. And that's even without statements like "it's really obvious that Russia fakes votes".
      • pjc50 2mo ago
        Eh, I think there's lots of valid cases for secession. In the case of the South though, I believe they could have had a peaceful secession had they not fallen victim to their own version of the "sphere of influence" argument: they refused to tolerate a free North to which slaves could escape, resulting in opening fire on Fort Sumter.
        • p_j_w 2mo ago
          That you think it’s valid for the South to break away so they could continue to treat black people as property says a lot of things, none of them good.
          • ben_w 2mo ago
            > That you think it’s valid for the South to break away so they could continue to treat black people as property says a lot of things, none of them good. They didn't actually say that, though I can see how one might read it that way. valid cases for secession. In the case of the South though Is two things. I wrote a thing and an example, he's replied to both the thing and the example. It's like Al Gore "I took the initiative in creating the Internet" being taken as "I invented" rather than "This was invented, I took the initiative in supporting it when that happened".
  • edgyquant 2mo ago
    Sovereignty is contingent on the ability to prevent others from telling you what to do. Ukraine has not yet proven this ability
    • ben_w 2mo ago
      I would argue that the continuation of the war is Ukraine preventing Russia from telling Ukraine what to do. Unfortunately for Ukraine, Russia is still strong enough to count as a sovereign nation, Russia is not yet weak enough that it is unable to prevent others (Ukraine) from telling them (Russia) to stop throwing high velocity explosives over the border. That had too many negatives in a row, I hope I phrased that right.
    • lovich 2mo ago
      That’s crazy. I guess Ukraine must have fallen in the 3 day operation and definitely hasn’t stalemated the larger country. Might as well pack it up and go home since they’ve lost all their territory and resources.
• pjc50 2mo ago
  > "sensible" According to what idea of "sensible"? > encourage a Ukrainian surrender early on and send them some food/whatnot in a care package, then fortify the Polish border. This would still have resulted in millions of refugees, plus some unknown number of people killed by Russian forces exterminating any local pro-Europe political supporters. Remember Euromaidan. It also snuffs out a democracy, which is not a good precedent to set. The second motivation is the belief that the invasion, if permitted, will not stop at Ukraine. This is why Finland and Sweden joined NATO after it happened. > Keeping a conflict worthy of WWII smouldering in the area for more than 4 years now? Russia can retreat into their internationally recognized borders at any time. > Can we please be honest about our motivations here? Can we be honest about the motivations of Russia in capturing and annexing other countries, something forbidden by both the post-WW2 international order and the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum (which also justifies Europe's security provision to Ukraine)?
  • roenxi 2mo ago
    [flagged]
    • pjc50 2mo ago
      > there doesn't seem to be any reason to be provoking and sustaining it. It has been disastrous policy. We shouldn't have done it, we shouldn't have continued it and we should stop it now Stopping the Iran war via total withdrawal might work like that. Western surrender in the Ukraine war (which, we need to keep reminding you, the first actual shots were in all cases fired by Russia) results in a situation far worse. The bombing runs on Moscow will continue as long as the bombing runs on Kyiv continue. It is absurd to pretend that Russia are somehow agencyless dupes of US policy because you don't like the idea that Putin doesn't care how many Russians are killed so long as he retains power.
    • ben_w 2mo ago
      > Which, with 20/20 hindsight, we now know was wild paranoia. The Russians weren't even geared up to properly invade Ukraine, they were as shocked as the rest of us when the Ukrainians decided a land war in Asia was a better idea than surrender. They spent something like 2 years back in 2022-2024 retooling for a real war. They weren't preparing to take Poland, they were trying to preserve a sphere of influence in Ukraine. Them being idiots and thinking they could take Ukraine does not preclude that they were also idiots who thought they could take Poland. > we embarked on this poorly advised policy of war. We, the people who are supplying Ukraine with support, and I want to emphasise this, have not embarked on this poorly advised policy of war. We are not at war, our soldiers are not fighting. We are selling (and giving) weapons to someone who wants to defend themselves, which is a standard thing for weapon-exporting nations to do. Russia has embarked on this poorly advised policy of war. > It isn't normal for a major to break international law and it ends up in a million-casualty war where we sponsor bombing runs on their capital. Russia did bombing runs on the Ukrainian capital before Ukraine was able to respond. Can you give Ukrainians a reason why they should not develop nuclear weapons? The Polish? The Lithuanians? > We're just pushing the global centre of power towards Asia. Only if "we" is "the Russian government". The things which the rest of NATO is doing that can be described as "pushing the global centre of power towards Asia" are 75% Trump being a chaos monkey undermining both the USA itself and all the USA's alliances, and 25% the EU member-states bike-shedding union-wide economic-industrial policy.
• watwut 2mo ago
  Most corrupt country in Europe is Belarus tied with Russia, depending on whether you count Russia as European. Everything Russia touches becomes more corrupt. That includes Hungary btw. And speaking about it, that includes Ukraine - anti Russians politics was also the anti-corruption politics.
• Lumich 2mo ago
  « getting nuked » – If that were a real possibility it would have happened in March '22 when the (not very sharp) Russian leadership understood they'd entered a bear trap and couldn't see a way to get out. This idea has always been a hoax, and if you read the propaganda that accompanied its introduction in 1945 (“Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists”) you can see it was linked to ideas of (literally) world government (because “too grave a danger” etc, mafioso posing as policeman). Russia is the only country still clinging to the idea because geopolitically they feel very insecure, so the illusion is “comforting” (a tranquilizer), but still dumb (like most tranquilizers), and not to be confounded with a stable framework of international order (there is none, chiefly due to the one particular actor who has several hundred military bases abroad).
• myko 2mo ago
  No, the sensible thing to do would have been to enforce a no fly zone and tell Putin to get the fuck out. This is horrific and downplaying Russia's invasion is abhorrent.
  • pjc50 2mo ago
    The Russians ended up with a no fly zone of their own (shooting down an airliner full of civilians)
  • bulbar 2mo ago
    I can't believe how many fall for the Russian propaganda while it's pretty clear who's the attacker and who is being attacked. And yet, some people still get it wrong. "Just surrender" to have peace... I can't believe it, as if an invading force comes in peace. How about "just stop attacking" instead.
• bulbar 2mo ago
  You don't achieve peace by surrendering to the people with the guns.
  • edgyquant 2mo ago
    That is one of two ways, the other is to beat them with more guns. For peace to happen somebody has to surrender or you have to both lose so bad you reach a deal
• ben_w 2mo ago
  > Keeping a conflict worthy of WWII smouldering in the area for more than 4 years now? > The sensible thing to do would have been to encourage a Ukrainian surrender early on and send them some food/whatnot in a care package, then fortify the Polish border. Imagine if the British had responded this way to the invasion of Poland in WW2. Worse: which side of the border is Auschwitz located? > It is also one of the very few paths that could reasonably see Poland or countries in that general region getting nuked. Ukraine had nukes, gave them up. Was probably sensible at the time, but the observed behaviour is now "having nukes means you don't get invaded, giving them up means you do". Russia invading at all is pushing nations more in the direction of getting their own nuclear arsenals to deter Russia. (Also, but entirely separately, Trump's USA sabre-rattling over Canada, Greenland, war with Iran, and disengagement from previous allies everywhere, is pushing nations the same way but to deter the USA(!) or China).
  • Lumich 2mo ago
    « Imagine if the British had responded this way to the invasion of Poland in WW2. » – What exactly was the British “response” when the Soviet Union invaded “Eastern Poland” on Sep 17, 1939? And what was their “response” when confronted with reports of Polish atrocities against Germans in “Western/Northern Poland” during the August crisis? « getting their own nuclear arsenals to deter Russia » – Stuck in the 20th century? Everyone can see that nukes don't work, else Russia would have used them in March '22, on military objects, and to draw a line; not “democratically” on women and children as the US did, of course (in truth the US used a kind of napalm, poison gas, pumpkin bombs, flash bombs, and coloured smoke bombs, see “Hiroshima revisited” by Michael Palmer). “Nukes” are just an elaborate deception created from 1945 through the 1950s, basically in maintenance mode ever since.
    • ben_w 2mo ago
      > What exactly was the British “response” when the Soviet Union invaded “Eastern Poland” on Sep 17, 1939? Other than being at war with the nation who had allied themselves with the USSR's joint invasion of Poland? Also, why even ask? It's not like the post-WW2 international order was good for the Polish. Failing to defend Poland from the USSR, regardless of how this can be attributed to war exhaustion or foolishly believing Stalin's word, doesn't make that failure good. Failing to defend Ukraine now, would be like failing to defend Poland then. > And what was their “response” when confronted with reports of Polish atrocities against Germans in “Western/Northern Poland” during the August crisis? I had to look this up. I think I know what you are now. Someone in the modern age who has the benefit of hindsight calling what was actually done an "atrocity", using the framing of the invader which we now know to have been exaggerated for propaganda to create a casus belli, says something very specific about their worldview. > Stuck in the 20th century? Everyone can see that nukes don't work, else Russia would have used them in March '22, on military objects Tell that to Russia. They keep threatening the use of them against everyone who aids Ukraine. Their nukes may or may not work. But they're definitely afraid of other people's nukes. And also definitely, the USA is afraid of other people's nukes. > see “Hiroshima revisited” by Michael Palmer Jesus, you're also a conspiracy theorist? We have film footage of plenty of nukes past the 50s, the physics isn't particularly fancy, and with that era's stealth technology Japan would have been unable to avoid noticing the kind of airforce capable of delivering that kind of destruction by conventional means.