https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/2135509

this is practically a child’s view of the world. good guy vs bad guy. Russia = bad, NATO = good. plus, someone should tell her she has it completely backwards: ending russia is kinda natos entire thing

  • KarlBarqs [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    0·
    11 months ago

    You’re looking at this from an emotional standpoint, not geopolitical.

    NATO’s existence is why Russia js aggressive. Think on it geopolitically, not emotionally:

    You’re the leader of a country. The vast majority of your western border - the half of the country most inhabited by your population - is surrounded by hostile nations. The hostilities date back a few decades to the Cold War but that ended when the previous political system of the country dissolved. You spent the first decade or so of the new political system trying to make friends with these nations, but they keep refusing, all the while portraying you in all their media as the bad guys. Any move you make on the geopolitical scale for your own nation’s sake is tarred, while similar actions by the other countries are praised. No matter what you do, you cannot please these other countries, and they continue to threaten to put military bases and nuclear weapons on your border, eventually sealing your entire western border away behind hostilities.

    What the fuck is one expected to do in this situation, and if this shit was happening to the US or anywhere in Europe, you know full well they wouldn’t take it lying down. Why is there an expectation that Russia does, when the world wouldn’t?

    • stratoscaster@lemmy.zipEnglish
      0·
      11 months ago

      Maybe I’m drinking stupid juice, but I think that people hating Russia isn’t really a valid reason for them to invade Ukraine. I know that’s not specifically what you’re saying, but in essence that’s the line of reasoning that I’ve heard throughout this thread.

      That said, Russia can’t be painted as “innocent” like so many posters here are stating. They routinely violate human rights. See:

      Russian censorship of, among many other things, the internet: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Russia

      Russia’s anti-lgbt policies: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/30/europe/russia-upper-parliament-lgbt-propaganda-law-intl/index.html

      Russia’s anti-protest laws: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_assembly_in_Russia

      Russia’s general laundry list of human rights violations: https://www.amnesty.org/en/location/europe-and-central-asia/russia/report-russia/

      I’m not saying the US is much better, although it is marginally, but claiming that Russia is just “scared and defending itself” doesn’t really track. It’s an authoritarian regime.

      If I’m misunderstanding this, somehow, please let me know.

      • KarlBarqs [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
        0·
        11 months ago

        Yes boss, you have catastrophically misunderstood the point.

        The point isn’t that people were mean tk Russia and therefore they’re allowed little a invasion as a treat. The point is that they’ve been encircled by hostile nations since the 1990s despite all attempts at overture to them, and that the encirclement continues to get worse. NATO was formed explicitly to take on Russia, and the point of this thought experiment is to try and see this not from an emotional point of view (aka Russia bad) but from a geopolitical point of view of a nation’s leader.

        Go back and read my post again. If you were the leader of Russia, knowing that decades of attempted détente didn’t work and that the organization who’s express goal is to break your country apart, and that that organization is doing its best to place troops and nuclear armaments on every inch of your border, would you accept that, or would you perhaps try and prevent that?

        We know what happened when the shoe was on the other foot. The US placed nuclear missiles a thousand miles from Moscow on the Black Sea. When the USSR understandably got annoyed and placed nukes in Cuba, the US was seconds away from ending the entire world despite the Soviets repeatedly saying the nukes were defensive response to the Black Sea nukes.

        So if we know that the US won’t accept hostile nations arming up on their border, why do we expect others to just kowtow to that?