Maybe you want to join NATO. Whether or not you get in is dependent on US approval.
There is another question: from a practical standpoint the US when it extends its security umbrella to cover countries like Latvia is offering a lot and in exchange it is getting back almost nothing. If the underlying principle is that any country that is invited to join NATO should be able to contribute something valuable in terms of men, tanks, planes and military force to the overall alliance then the Baltic states should never have been admitted.
I'm cynical enough to think that the deal is the US MIC gets a few billion a year from each member and the member gets the US nuclear umbrella. The US citizen gets shafted, but hey.
For the record, I think this is a REALLY good deal for us Eastern Euros and the current invasion 1000% validates that paying tribute to the US is way better than having to worry about Russian soldiers on vacation.
Ukraine and Georgia badly wanted into NATO for obvious reasons. They never got membership precisely because while it would probably have been good for them it would have been bad for the United States. So it definitely isn't just about Eastern Europeans and it probably is mostly about the USA.
OK, to be fair, US economy benefits from arms sales in some regard. Trump was just a greedy hog and wanted more protection moolah.
I don't know what it means for it to be 'about' something. Obviously the US is dominant in this interaction, was I at any point suggesting anything else? But I think EE members are fine with that? We've more or less always had to hide behind one empire to guard against another.
All I'm saying is that EE strongly prefers being secondary(or maybe tertiary) partners in the western empire rather than in the russian one.
But you just admitted that the primary dynamic here is great power competition and that small nations need to hide under the umbrella of bigger ones.
"All I'm saying is that EE strongly prefers being secondary(or maybe tertiary) partners in the western empire rather than in the russian one."
That's fine until you take it as far as Ukraine did, without the guarantees that come with NATO membership.
As an American my response is that this is an enormous fuck up that is going to consume huge amounts of US attention and resources over the coming years when, in the immediate future, the US has to worry about red hot inflation and a potential recession this year. It's a terrible deal for the US and the world at large.
It would be pretty cool if Freddie had an open thread where only Europeans were allowed to comment on the Russia situation. There isn't anyway to police that, but its still a cool idea.
Dan, this is the first introspective comment I’ve seen in a sea of nonsense on here lately (apologies to others I may have missed). I am sincerely grateful for your self-awareness, your humility, and your willingness to admit it aloud.
You think the tenor in the comments here has been, what - chill and respectful? I think you guys are encountering something inside yourself that you don't like. And I don't think there's any tone that could placate you when it comes to whoever forces you to see that thing.
Comments are *usually* thought provoking in this substack, even when I do disagree. That said: People are remarkably shrill around here when it comes to insisting that America is the lesser-evil and that arguments to the contrary are inherently suspect and wrong. I sense hurt feelings.
And the dozens of foreign policy experts in the linked tweet who have been saying that exactly what's happened would happen? You think, what, you're better informed than they are?
How is "moral introspection" different from "whataboutism"? And I don't think there has to be a set of coherent principles applied equally to the US and Russia, because Vladimir Putin is an autocrat, a kleptocrat, and a doofus. What we're talking about here is not The United States and Russia; it's the international order vs. That One Guy Vladimir Putin. They're different things.
What's the difference between "One Guy Vladimir Putin" invading a country, and an undemocratic "International order" invading Iraq? To me the second one sounds more scary.
So "he who is without sin cast the first stone"? Ok, we're baddies, too. Now what? We send our president to go shake Putin's hand in Kyiv once his conquest is done?
China’s media is entirely censored and controlled by the government so they sweep all their misdeeds under the rug. They don’t let people endless lament Tibet, Tienemen, The Cultural Revolution, etc.
If you care about the international order, why don't you lobby for the US to respect the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court instead of having a law that literally says we will invade the Netherlands if any American is ever prosecuted? Or to join the ban on Cluster Bombs? Or to stop vetoing resolutions against Israel's human rights abuses against Palestinians? Freddie's point is that the United States has no standing to call on Russia to respect the international order when it fails to do so itself, repeatedly.
Who said anything about the past? These are all things happening right now. And yes, get your own house in order before you try to fix someone else's. There is no reason to think that the United States is looking out for the interests of the Ukrainian people or that our involvement will benefit them.
Ok. Let's bring all the U.S. military home, close all bases around the world, and go to family therapy together. What kind of chaos would that sow? How is that more moral and consistent? You guys seem to think I'm wearing my American flag tshirt and screaming America fuck yeah, and I'm not. I'm saying this is what we have, right now, and what do we do?
The U.S. President should absolutely close all their foreign military bases and bring all the troops back home. From Japan all the way to Europe, close down all the bases.
It is time to end the occupation, which has been going on for so long that most people don't even realize that it was even there to begin with.
Are you Afraid that Japanese Hitler will come to power if the US were to ends its occupation?
The new international order is a bipolar world compared to a unipolar one. Behaving responsibly in one entails significantly different behavior than the other.
Honestly detection of "logical fallacies" (like whataboutism) are abused. They aren't used to make argument more rigorous, they're employed to turn argument into a pattern matching game where if your opponent's sentence kind of matches the template on the logical fallacies website, you win.
"Whataboutism" is now literally invoked anytime any American crime is mentioned. I asked in my post when people who cheer for Ukraine grapple with, say, our current destruction of Yemen. As you can see from the comments here, the answer is never.
Not true. It seems the sanctions on Yemen are a terrible idea, and I support revoking them. But so is the invasion of Ukraine. You're asking for a coherent foreign policy--which from what you've written I'm interpreting as "universal"--and that cannot happen. It's not possible. Just like I can't have a "coherent parenting policy" with my three kids, to use a small-scale analogy. The west has heaped derision on Russia for its crimes during the USSR period. Would you not say Germany shouldered its share of derision after WWII? The difference in how they've evolved on the world stage to me seems clear: one embraced democratic values and the other didn't, which makes every country who does embrace democratic values Russia's enemy. So now Putin put on his sunglasses and has Taylor Swift's "Look what you made me do" on repeat.
Perhaps, but that wouldn't make Russia a peaceful country. Even while they were "down on their knees" they managed to fuck up half the former republics pretty good. That behemoth occupying half the Eurasian continent did not just come into being out of the ether by the will of god. They've been killing their neighbors for a thousand years.
I recall all those IR classes I took in the late 90s/pre-9/11 00s and endlessly discussing this issue. So much of my youth was spent reading articles on the purpose of NATO. It's amazing that 20 years later we're still dealing with this issue.
That's a reasonable position, but the fact that the Warsaw Pact was fundamentally coercive and it dissolved because the member countries intentionally left it (and many almost immediately tried to get into NATO), and NATO states weren't clambering to get out probably has some relevance.
Who is your audience for this article? Are there leftists who are in favor of our constant meddling in other country's affairs? Who like our bombing / funding of various regimes that support our interests? I feel like a lot of your articles speak to me personally, but this one is way out of left field. Those who are on the right who make excuses for American meddling are currently those making excuses for Putin's actions in Ukraine.
Eh, there are the classic neocons who never stopped hating Putin but they are the "America, fuck yeah" types Freddie seems to not have a problem with in terms of their consistency.
He's aiming at us centrist liberal interventionists who sometimes agree with the necons and sometimes don't (and not all liberal interventionists agree about any given intervention).
He thinks liberal interventionists cannot be operating from a consistent moral framework because America has done bad things, but many of those bad things can be recognized as such (and, again, not all interventions were unanimously agreed to by liberal interventionists) and we move forward trying to do better.
They're happening right now. The US is supporting the destruction of Yemen right now. If we Americans could muster half the outrage about what's happening to Yemen as there is about Ukraine right now, we could end that war immediately. There's little to nothing the average American can do about the invasion of Ukraine. And yet, here we are. Ask yourself why.
Yemen is bad on all sides and obviously an immense tragedy in humanitarian terms. But it's a nasty civil war with Iran and Saudi having proxies and the US is not the main moral actor there even if what we're doing is bad.
But if you can't see the major differences between that shit show and the invasion of Ukraine then there's nothing I can do to change your perspective. One key point is that the reaction against Russia is OVERWHELMINGLY international and no one is more pissed than countries like German who have typically been "soft" on Putin.
It doesn't matter if the invasion of Ukraine is worse than the Yemen situation. Yemen is the one American citizens like myself have some modicum of agency over. If every American who is outraged over Ukraine put half of that energy into demanding their government stop supporting absolute monarchies in the destruction of another country, they could end it and make all the American cries about self determination and human rights ring a little less hollow.
Well that's the weird thing about this substack, Freddie is a communist, but he is not a "woke" communist so he does appear very herectical to the left.
There's no such thing as an unequivocal anything. This country has murdered and pillaged its way across the globe for a century and that is an indisputable fact. Pursuant to the conversation at hand, it has singlehandedly destroyed the self-determination of dozens of countries. So: why do you not give a shit about that while you weep for Ukraine?
I'm not weeping for Ukraine, and I do give a shit about that. How do you propose the United States now proceeds in the world? Perhaps the way the woke wish for white people to proceed in the world, with constant contrition and self-flagellation? I opposed the Iraq War. I oppose Putin taking Ukraine. I don't see how that doesn't make sense.
Is it too much to ask that the US take principled and consistent positions? I don't think that involves contrition or self-flagellation, just the abandonment of hypocrisy.
It's great that you opposed the war in Iraq, do you care as much about all of the interventions your country has made since? The value of this sort of post is it will hopefully cause people to scrutinize US action (relating to the Russian invasion and elsewhere) a bit more closely than they would have before.
No, it's not too much to ask. I think the US should abandon hypocrisy. And the invasion of Ukraine is still wrong. It seems like what FdB wants is for me to admit that the U.S. is bad, too. Ok it is. Again, now what?
I think when people approach things they way you do, you think that caring (or caring enough, because people never care enough) is going to be like a "woke" or "saved" experience, wherein the person will see your side and think like you when they care. You think you have come to your conclusions because you care and others do not. But, maybe they do care, do see your side, and still come to different conclusions.
TLDR: Your whole argument is I can tell you don't care because you don't think like me.
You're too arrogant to try to reason with. But I'm glad you're really boiling it down here to your contempt for the US. I've already left - best to you.
What moral framework are you operating under in which two bad things cannot be compared such that interning someone and eventually letting them go is just as bad as interning someone for the purpose of exterminating them?
How DOES it work then? If we only supported the morally pure or morally consistent or people who didn’t make moral errors we’d support no one. That would be anarchy. Which is what our MAGA & WOKE fringes want.
I genuinely, to some extent, don't understand where you're coming from. Let's compare the invasion of Ukraine to the assassination of Mossadegh. Russia announces it will never permit a NATO-aligned Ukraine; the US says it will never permit a USSR-aligned Iran. They attack to dismantle both regimes. Both are completely and obviously unacceptable. The Iraq war, by this line, was equally unacceptable. You could argue about Afghanistan, whether it attacked and the moral status of punitive war. All the others were wars of expanding spheres of influence for their own sake, and that is not morally unacceptable. These cases are clear. The Iranian did not 'cause' Mossadegh's assassination, and America did not 'cause' the invasion of Ukraine – you claim the latter, and that's the problem. It is the invader that transgressed morality, not the geopolitical actors who wanted to align away from them.
I also think you have a very America-centric view of this. Russia goes on about NATO, but the bigger danger is Ukraine joining the EU. Central and Eastern European countries have two competing vision – integration with the well-managed and affluent Western economies under relatively favorable terms, or domination by Russia. Anyone given the choice would easily choose the former, and most post-Communist regimes have. That's the dream of the West – the EU, not NATO – and America has very little to do with it. Ukraine wants to be Poland because, why wouldn't you? I say this writing from Poland – it's obvious you wouldn't want to be dominated by Russia.
Alignment with the EU or NATO is alignment with the West in general regardless of how you formulate it. Maybe a Finland solution could have worked, but may be not – you also seem to discount the possibility that Putin is anything but a rational pragmatist, and that revanchism in regaining Ukraine and national pride in general could motivate him. But overall, Ukraine chose pursuing EU/NATO membership at all costs as a defence against Russia and there's no reason to think giving up that defence would have resulted in anything other than domination. Of course you want to escape that – Ukraine tried and was succeeding, and Russia decided to fight a war to stop it. Your argument boils down to 'if they didn't want a war they should have just surrendered' – but isn't that their choice to make?
So you literally have no moral sentiment to share as you wave away the profoundly moral questions at hand. You just have "the west is good," and that's it. Literally, just the assertion that your way - the way you were propagandized info - is the good way. I do not find that compelling.
By the way the Eurozone is a inherently broken idea, ask the Greeks.
Yes, and my point was that the currency union is unrelated to the economic benefits Poland, Bulgaria, etc. have accrued from becoming EU states. You can be in the single market without being in the currency union.
I think invading countries because they are leaning away from you politically is bad, whether the West does it or not. I also think your argument that the West has violated this principle more often, and more brutally, is perfectly tenable, but it is not the case in this instance – I say this pretty clearly, that the Mossadegh assassination and Iraq war were not morally acceptable. Many of America's wars have not been morally acceptable. They killed an Afghan family while withdrawing, for God's sake.
The EU is also not the Eurozone, and conflating the two suggests you don't have that much familiarity with European politics, but I can tell you a resident and citizen of Poland (which is hardly the EU's favourite) that people here would take it, and even the Euro we've been resisting for years, in a heartbeat over Russian influence. I genuinely do think the EU has been a good moral project for its member countries, and a lot of the improvements you want to American society have been accomplished by its members. But the question of whether Ukraine is _right_ to want to be in the EU is completely separate from whether it should be allowed to – just like I think a country might be wrong to choose alignment with Russia but don't think it should be militarily stopped from doing so. As, you suggest, ask the Greeks which they prefer, given the choice, the Eurozone or Putin.
The EU and the West in general have malign influence in many areas – the conditions migrants are kept in to keep them from reaching European shores, for example, or of course some of the many inequities of the international trade system. But it's also not true that just because the West does a lot of unacknowledged harm it does no good, and 'anything the West does is bad' is no more of a principle than 'anything the West does is good.'
Because you're *rich*. This is either incredibly naive or dishonest. I may detest the ultra rich, but hell, I'd much rather be ultra rich! Especially if the alternative is ultra poor.
Do they want to come here because it's great and they "forgive us," or because the United States has blown their country to hell and left them with nothing there to live for?
Bombing at all was malicious; who gave the US the right to do that? This thinking is disgusting, it's USian thought at its height. The very notion that you should not have been there in the first place doesn't occur to you.
Legal doesn't mean moral, I'm sure you know this. And whatever moral standing the US had in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 surely must have been diluted over the 20-year occupation?
We spent half a century trying to assassinate Cuba's leader, we instigated a successful coup in Chile, we sparked a devastating civil war in Guatemala, we armed and funded the Contras in Nicaragua....
By "we did this" you mean "50 years ago, people did this because of the cold war, therefore it's something we would still do because reasons".....your position here appears to have been constructed with no consideration to the context or reasoning involved, or any consideration that maybe things have changed since 1980.
Military advisors told Kennedy to bomb and invade Cuba immediately when the Cuban Missile Crisis started. Most presidents would have done that, Kennedy didn't but do you think if they hadn't been able to negotiate a resolution, the US would have just thrown up our hands and said oh well.
You would oust their government. Ideally, with the help of their military, as has been the case until now. What do you think would happen if their military could not be convinced to depose the president? Do you think the US would really stop at "ban auto parts imports"?
No. But China is worse than American democracy. Putin is worse than American democracy.
American democracy may be worse than a truly Marxist state that you dream of. Your article about Marxism opened my eyes to that. I need to learn more but I bet we’d agree that unfettered capitalism is bad for both the planet as well as the human soul.
But……
Dictatorships & totalitarian regimes that openly crush all dissent, funnel money to oligarchs, poison enemies, destroy free speech, free press & free assembly……
The United States would be wrong to stop Mexico from joining a strategic partnership with China. It would then do it anyway. Being wrong doesn't stop things from happening.
That said, consideration for this is why China tends to seek power through economic and infrastructural imperialism first, then military extension later. It's a lot like 19th-20th century liberal imperialism, if you think about it. Still imperialism, though! The thing being, by that measure, China has already extended its strategic influence well into the Americas, including the United States.
What wild you do Freddie --allow every single migrant to migrate to their preferred destination? I never understand this sentiment. It's essentially a demand that the West lower its own quality of life to the lowest common denominator to help the less fortunate. We cannot take in the whole world nor should we. Why don't you grapple with the fact that the migrants aren't looking to go to Russia, but the West. This fact alone tells you what you refuse to acknowledge - despite the US or West's flaws, we are still the best and the greatest.
If you're better than everyone else, you are the best. People keep expecting the U.S. to live up to some grandiose ideal at all times. This ins unrealistic.
The west isn’t inherently “good”. It’s just much much much better than Putin. Who is a murderous dictator. Or have I just been propagandized? Did Putin poison his enemies or is that fake news? Does he jail peace protesters or do I need more context?
What is it about the support for Ukraine that bugs you so much if you admit that Putin isn’t good? Is Putin the lesser of two evils when impaired with the Biden administration? Of course not.
I agree the US Government and much of the American public has not been morally consistent nor has the the US foreign policy been a universal force for good. Fine, we all agree.
You are also glossing over a lot of European recent and not so recent history. A lot of Ukrainians live and work in Poland and elsewhere in the EU. Joining the single market and getting access to the big pot of EU development funds, as their neighbor Poland shows, would likely be in a really good thing. Shouldn't it be morally acceptable for their EU neighbors to defend Ukraine's desire to join the single market?
Feddie, if it makes you feel better, this post elicited me to finally *join*. As you are this Liberal Capitalist's favorite Marxist for what it is worth. At least you make us think.
I don't have good answers on this topic, so a few tentative thoughts, take them (or criticize them) as you will.
I don't especially believe in "national self-determination" in the nationalist sense as a desirable goal. I would ideally like a world where nearly everyone lives in a liberal democratic regime [edit because I think this was misunderstood: I didn't mean one single world regime, I meant that each person lives in some liberal democratic regime or other] with free and fair elections and proportional representation such that the elected branch is actually responsive to the interests and values of a broad cross section of society. Absent that, I would like to have an international order which encouraged peaceful coordination among democracies and non-democracies alike, and which fostered improvements in the well being of people in both.
I agree with you about NATO's reason for being. I do think that the expansion has been less America seeking to push its influence deeper into the former iron curtain, and more former iron curtain countries seeking ways of protecting themselves from Russia by securing promises of American power. But that doesn't change the fact that we did it (and as you say, we wouldn't accept that reasoning for Mexico entering into an alliance which involved Chinese military basis being established just below the Rio Grande).
Ultimately I think it works out best for everyone if the major players of the EU are the ones sought after as a balance against Russia in the region, rather than US. Ukraine becoming a member of the EU is in some ways less fraught than becoming a member of NATO, because, per your point, the EU is very much NOT a thing that exists solely to antagonize Russia.
Why do I think it would be bad for Ukraine to be conquered by Russia? Aside from the violence of the conquest itself (something which I do oppose but I also understand America can be criticized on the same grounds for its military actions around the world) Ukraine, however imperfect, was electing its leader through free and fair elections, and clearly on a shaky path towards more fully realizing liberal democracy. Conquest by Russia, even if bloodless, clearly means the imposition of a Russian puppet government, the strangling of liberal democracy in the cradle.
Of course you don't believe in "national self-determination." You want each country to be dissolved in the acid bath of cosmopolitan globalism, where all different cultures and languages are eventually homogenized into a liberal democratic regime, which means US-style progressivism with its materialism and consumer oriented culture that destroys all tradition. But this isn't imperialism or colonialism. Anything less than the liberal order (as conceded of in the US) is xenophobic, nationalistic and bigoted. You are actually anti-democratic because the people of a particular nation-state do not want this but the left will shove it down their throats regardless. I'm so tired of people without any culture, language or traditions of their own demand other countries give these up because of the lie of peace forever-lasting if they sign up for this new international order. I'd love to see you tell Japan, China, Jordan, South Africa, Mexico, etc. they need to do the same thing you demand of Western countries. Good luck!
Russia is a has been that never really was. They refuse to accept that they no longer are a world power and keep crushing problems trying to regain their lost prestige and power. Their attitude reminds me of Middle Eastern countries, who go on and on about how they gave the world algebra, had glorious libraries through the Middle East and North Africa and were a world power. They keep living in the past and trying to recapture the glory days.
Enough with the America = Russia. Complete and utter lies. Yes, America certainly had done terrible and even horrific things but the difference between us and Russia is a difference of magnitude, not degree. T
What do you mean by this then? How does opposing national self-determination work in practice? What happens to the nation-state? Is it wrong for a people to want to preserve their own language, culture and traditions within a nation-state populated by their own people?
I don't especially believe in "national self-determination" in the nationalist sense as a desirable goal. I would ideally like a world where nearly everyone lives in a liberal democratic regime with free and fair elections and proportional representation such that the elected branch is actually responsive to the interests and values of a broad cross section of society.
I see no reason to change the current state borders that exist. I believe in protecting (but not necessarily like, requiring) social, ethnic, religious, and cultural pluralism, globally and within specific states. If state borders are going to be changed, I believe it should be done through a democratic procedure involving the entire population of the territory to be newly created, and personally believe that a supermajority rather than simple majority should be required, because I don't think it's the kind of thing that should be done easily or based on the political sentiments of the moment.
It's fine to seek to preserve your language, culture, and traditions. Attempting to make use of the power of the machinery of government to do so and enforce it on everything within your borders, *especially when you don't have a responsive democratically elected government*, is NOT fine. That is all I am saying.
"Any minimally-honest answer would acknowledge that NATO exists as an antagonist to Russia. That’s it." But you're just begging the question. If that is the case, then the rest of this essay is unnecessary; if it isn't, the rest is wrong.
So you need to make that case: Why is it only an antagonist to Russia? Why not also a mutual defense pact against a powerful neighbor with wildly differing values of human rights and governance? Why is the onus on NATO to limit its members, instead of on Russia to join Europe in a peaceful trade-based future.
For example, it should be clear even to Russia that despite the American military bases in Germany, the US has no intention (or likely even capacity) to invade or topple governments. Which means if Russia gave up its antagonism to the West, it would merely become like Germany but even larger, so it really has nothing to lose and everything to gain.
Other commenters are here asserting that the statement is correct and yet continuing to argue as though there is a need to refute the rest. Why don't you disagree with them?
"Which means if Russia gave up its antagonism to the West,"
They tried that after the fall of the USSR and American leadership refused to meaningfully disarm, helping lead to Putin. Where is your opprobrium for those American leaders?
Mostly because I'm not interested in their opinion, I'm only really interested in yours.
And I'm not here judging either the Americans or the Russians; I'll happily concede that real geopolitics is so complicated any opinion I have is likely to be deeply unfounded. My interest here is only in keeping you intellectually honest... which you usually are unfailingly.
I don't believe the argument is that NATO is an antagonist to Russia, but that Russia perceives it to be. And so much of international diplomacy is about appearances, because so much of life is about appearances.
In an alternate history where NATO was disbanded in 1991, who knows what would have happened to Russia? I do know that faced with aggression from the Russian Federation, there would have been plenty of time for a new mutual defense treaty amongst parties who felt threatened by Russia.
What was the point of NATO post the fall of the Soviet Union? It was created because at the time the USSR had by far the greatest land army, an alliance with the US (and thus the threat of the bomb) was the only thing that could stop them.
Well, at this point, NATO is necessary precisely because Russia has shown itself to be led by a person intent on wars of conquest. But that does not preclude that IF NATO had been dissolved in 1991, that we might not be in a world where Russia is led by a person intent on wars of conquest.
They may not want to be Germany. Germany is an economically-powerful client state. Look at what Mearsheimer has said about the liberal hegemony and Russia's belief in it.
That's right, NATO exists to antagonize Russia by not allowing it to act like an imperial power that can coerce and dominate its smaller neighbors through military force. NATO is not hurting the interests of the Russian people. Putin is.
NATO expansion advocates ALSO predicted Russia would invade its weaker neighbors, particularly once Putin took power.
Putin is not crazy and not acting on a whim. He really believes in "Make Russia an Empire Again" as he has stated and acted.
"They don’t want to talk about our illegal bombing of Yugoslavia."
Ha. Why was it illegal to stop ethnic cleansing? Why did Russia veto that action?
Some of the issues you brought up are not in fact American sins because there is context. Some are inexcusable or just incompetent. America is far from perfect at home or abroad.
But the US track record is way better than the USSR or China or any historical empire I'm aware of despite its faults.
"Our rivers of blood are smaller than theirs" has got to be the all-time worst response I have ever heard, even if it's true, which is extremely debatable.
NATO not being dissolved (clearly wise it seems) has nothing to do with hurting the interests of the Russian people unless those Russian people are set on attacking their neighbors.
You've already established you do not operate from a moral framework that includes the hundreds of millions of deaths caused by the poor implementation of your preferred ideology and that you refuse to engage in the counterfactual analysis of what those powers would do/have done if they were not constrained by the US and its allies.
This has nothing to do with communism; Putin is nothing like a communist. This has to do with the United States maintaining a belligerent posture towards Russia when Russia gave the west the one thing it wanted most, the dissolution of the USSR. We responded by refusing to allow Russia to reintegrate fully into the world. That was short-sighted.
Putin has at least one thing in common with the communists: he thinks the breakup of the USSR was the biggest disaster of that century. He has imperialistic tendencies that Russia has had for centuries. So NATO's goal of defending its members remains useful even if communism is no longer the driving ideology behind the threat.
"Belligerent posture towards Russia" is just not true. NATO can't attack Russia directly without WWIII (and is explicitly defensive). Just existing as a voluntary defensive pact is not belligerence.
I'm also real skeptical how much the West "refused to allow" Russia to reintegrate vs. how much things went poorly at the Russian leadership level that led to Putin and his cronies taking over. See also: the more aggressive turn China took in the last ~20 years under Xi.
The invasion was wrong, and bad. It is good to fight against the unjust invasion, even if those fighting now against injustice now have been guilty of injustice in the past. Justice is a grey area.
Is the United States currently practicing the principle of self-determination in Yemen? No. So why do you not beat your chest as loudly for them as you do for Ukraine?
(For the record, while I don't think we should be involved in Yemen, I also don't really believe that we are hindering Yemeni "self-determination" there. So I think Freddie's premise is false from jump street.)
For me, I live next door in Slovakia, well aware of corruption from the pro-EU and pro- Russia oligarchs in Cen. Europe countries. Neither Yemen, nor war in the Congo threaten WWIII. The anti-Iran forces against the anti-Saudi forces are merely another tragedy so common in human history. Far less killing than the Iraq-Iran war, or the genocide in Rwanda.
Why is this your point, though? Assume that people are hypocritical. (I don't agree, but it seems clear you will not be budged.) Okay. Now what? Should we all rend our garments and lament? Sit in ashes until we're really, really sorry? In what way does hypocrisy make any critique of the Ukraine invasion wrong?
Suppose we articulate a principle but don't live up to it. Ben Affleck tells me not to smoke, but he smokes! Therefore, Ben Affleck can never talk about the dangers of smoking.
I guess I don't understand how this idea of yours, that American must be a pure and blessed virgin of foreign policy before Americans can speak against or resist violence done by others, does anything but enable even worse actors. It seems almost tailor-made for Putin's purposes -- paralyze the American public and its foreign policy establishment in endless hand-wringing about the mote in our eye so we can't speak as Russia jams a huge beam through Ukraine's skull.
For the record -- I am against the U.S. in Yemen, Iraq, Iran, etc. I literally did not vote for Obama for a second term because I believed our involvement in Libya was illegal. Do I need to preface every comment with that? Do we all have to go around shouting our moral credentials to you? Or could you, maybe, extend other people the teeniest, tiniest bit of good faith and argue on the issue at hand instead of trying to emotionally blackmail people into silence?
Or we could just apply a different standard and admit that morality has absolutely nothing to do with realpolitik. That of course means that all of the pro-sanction hysterics clogging Twitter right now are just useful idiots.
Yess, we're practicing self determination in Yeman. The Houthi solgan is in part "death to America, death to Israel, curse on the jews", they've decided to self determined themselves into declaring us and our allies as thier enemies, and so we've decided to treat them as such. Sucks to be them, maybe they shouldn't have declared war on the world hegemon that's really touchy about middle eastern religious nuts calling for thier destruction.
Swlf determination doesn't mean you can do whatever the hell you want and no one is allowed to object
> So why do you not beat your chest as loudly for them as you do for Ukraine?
If I do, are you satisfied here? If I show you dozens of comments going back for decades denouncing the US when it prevents self-determination of other countries, am I allowed to also believe Ukraine deserves the same? Am I allowed to have changed my mind about anything in the past? It's very hard to understand what point you are actually making here when you go into the inner thoughts of random commenters
Oh my god we wrote the same words at the same time. Eerie.
Maybe you want to join NATO. Whether or not you get in is dependent on US approval.
There is another question: from a practical standpoint the US when it extends its security umbrella to cover countries like Latvia is offering a lot and in exchange it is getting back almost nothing. If the underlying principle is that any country that is invited to join NATO should be able to contribute something valuable in terms of men, tanks, planes and military force to the overall alliance then the Baltic states should never have been admitted.
I'm cynical enough to think that the deal is the US MIC gets a few billion a year from each member and the member gets the US nuclear umbrella. The US citizen gets shafted, but hey.
For the record, I think this is a REALLY good deal for us Eastern Euros and the current invasion 1000% validates that paying tribute to the US is way better than having to worry about Russian soldiers on vacation.
"The US citizen gets shafted, but hey."
So, Trump.
Ukraine and Georgia badly wanted into NATO for obvious reasons. They never got membership precisely because while it would probably have been good for them it would have been bad for the United States. So it definitely isn't just about Eastern Europeans and it probably is mostly about the USA.
OK, to be fair, US economy benefits from arms sales in some regard. Trump was just a greedy hog and wanted more protection moolah.
I don't know what it means for it to be 'about' something. Obviously the US is dominant in this interaction, was I at any point suggesting anything else? But I think EE members are fine with that? We've more or less always had to hide behind one empire to guard against another.
All I'm saying is that EE strongly prefers being secondary(or maybe tertiary) partners in the western empire rather than in the russian one.
"I hate this endless US/Russian narcissism. "
But you just admitted that the primary dynamic here is great power competition and that small nations need to hide under the umbrella of bigger ones.
"All I'm saying is that EE strongly prefers being secondary(or maybe tertiary) partners in the western empire rather than in the russian one."
That's fine until you take it as far as Ukraine did, without the guarantees that come with NATO membership.
As an American my response is that this is an enormous fuck up that is going to consume huge amounts of US attention and resources over the coming years when, in the immediate future, the US has to worry about red hot inflation and a potential recession this year. It's a terrible deal for the US and the world at large.
It would be pretty cool if Freddie had an open thread where only Europeans were allowed to comment on the Russia situation. There isn't anyway to police that, but its still a cool idea.
Dan, this is the first introspective comment I’ve seen in a sea of nonsense on here lately (apologies to others I may have missed). I am sincerely grateful for your self-awareness, your humility, and your willingness to admit it aloud.
You think the tenor in the comments here has been, what - chill and respectful? I think you guys are encountering something inside yourself that you don't like. And I don't think there's any tone that could placate you when it comes to whoever forces you to see that thing.
You're quite full of yourself eh?
Comments are *usually* thought provoking in this substack, even when I do disagree. That said: People are remarkably shrill around here when it comes to insisting that America is the lesser-evil and that arguments to the contrary are inherently suspect and wrong. I sense hurt feelings.
And the dozens of foreign policy experts in the linked tweet who have been saying that exactly what's happened would happen? You think, what, you're better informed than they are?
How is "moral introspection" different from "whataboutism"? And I don't think there has to be a set of coherent principles applied equally to the US and Russia, because Vladimir Putin is an autocrat, a kleptocrat, and a doofus. What we're talking about here is not The United States and Russia; it's the international order vs. That One Guy Vladimir Putin. They're different things.
What's the difference between "One Guy Vladimir Putin" invading a country, and an undemocratic "International order" invading Iraq? To me the second one sounds more scary.
I opposed the Iraq War.
Your stance is literally "he's a baddie and we're goodies." But I just told you we are very much the baddies indeed. Check that list. Google around.
So "he who is without sin cast the first stone"? Ok, we're baddies, too. Now what? We send our president to go shake Putin's hand in Kyiv once his conquest is done?
Because he is and we are.
You realize that for the average Chinese the roles are exactly reversed? The US is the great villain and China is virtuous?
You think this might have something to do with how wars start?
China’s media is entirely censored and controlled by the government so they sweep all their misdeeds under the rug. They don’t let people endless lament Tibet, Tienemen, The Cultural Revolution, etc.
Again:
You think this might have something to do with how wars start?
If you care about the international order, why don't you lobby for the US to respect the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court instead of having a law that literally says we will invade the Netherlands if any American is ever prosecuted? Or to join the ban on Cluster Bombs? Or to stop vetoing resolutions against Israel's human rights abuses against Palestinians? Freddie's point is that the United States has no standing to call on Russia to respect the international order when it fails to do so itself, repeatedly.
WHO SAYS I DON'T? It seems FdB and others would, what, prefer the U.S. bow out of all geopolitics until we atone for the past?
Who said anything about the past? These are all things happening right now. And yes, get your own house in order before you try to fix someone else's. There is no reason to think that the United States is looking out for the interests of the Ukrainian people or that our involvement will benefit them.
Ok. Let's bring all the U.S. military home, close all bases around the world, and go to family therapy together. What kind of chaos would that sow? How is that more moral and consistent? You guys seem to think I'm wearing my American flag tshirt and screaming America fuck yeah, and I'm not. I'm saying this is what we have, right now, and what do we do?
https://c.tenor.com/zXlBfjivudkAAAAC/lionel-hutz-world-without-lawyers.gif
Yes. Let's abolish prisons, too, because that's what's causing crime.
The U.S. President should absolutely close all their foreign military bases and bring all the troops back home. From Japan all the way to Europe, close down all the bases.
It is time to end the occupation, which has been going on for so long that most people don't even realize that it was even there to begin with.
Are you Afraid that Japanese Hitler will come to power if the US were to ends its occupation?
I sure don't. But interesting you choose Japan. How about South Korea?
The new international order is a bipolar world compared to a unipolar one. Behaving responsibly in one entails significantly different behavior than the other.
Honestly detection of "logical fallacies" (like whataboutism) are abused. They aren't used to make argument more rigorous, they're employed to turn argument into a pattern matching game where if your opponent's sentence kind of matches the template on the logical fallacies website, you win.
"Whataboutism" is now literally invoked anytime any American crime is mentioned. I asked in my post when people who cheer for Ukraine grapple with, say, our current destruction of Yemen. As you can see from the comments here, the answer is never.
Not true. It seems the sanctions on Yemen are a terrible idea, and I support revoking them. But so is the invasion of Ukraine. You're asking for a coherent foreign policy--which from what you've written I'm interpreting as "universal"--and that cannot happen. It's not possible. Just like I can't have a "coherent parenting policy" with my three kids, to use a small-scale analogy. The west has heaped derision on Russia for its crimes during the USSR period. Would you not say Germany shouldered its share of derision after WWII? The difference in how they've evolved on the world stage to me seems clear: one embraced democratic values and the other didn't, which makes every country who does embrace democratic values Russia's enemy. So now Putin put on his sunglasses and has Taylor Swift's "Look what you made me do" on repeat.
Okay, let's grapple with Yemen. Why not write a post about it, if you want to highlight it?
NATO should have been dissolved in 1991 just as the Warsaw Pact was.
Perhaps, but that wouldn't make Russia a peaceful country. Even while they were "down on their knees" they managed to fuck up half the former republics pretty good. That behemoth occupying half the Eurasian continent did not just come into being out of the ether by the will of god. They've been killing their neighbors for a thousand years.
I recall all those IR classes I took in the late 90s/pre-9/11 00s and endlessly discussing this issue. So much of my youth was spent reading articles on the purpose of NATO. It's amazing that 20 years later we're still dealing with this issue.
That's a reasonable position, but the fact that the Warsaw Pact was fundamentally coercive and it dissolved because the member countries intentionally left it (and many almost immediately tried to get into NATO), and NATO states weren't clambering to get out probably has some relevance.
Who is your audience for this article? Are there leftists who are in favor of our constant meddling in other country's affairs? Who like our bombing / funding of various regimes that support our interests? I feel like a lot of your articles speak to me personally, but this one is way out of left field. Those who are on the right who make excuses for American meddling are currently those making excuses for Putin's actions in Ukraine.
Eh, there are the classic neocons who never stopped hating Putin but they are the "America, fuck yeah" types Freddie seems to not have a problem with in terms of their consistency.
He's aiming at us centrist liberal interventionists who sometimes agree with the necons and sometimes don't (and not all liberal interventionists agree about any given intervention).
He thinks liberal interventionists cannot be operating from a consistent moral framework because America has done bad things, but many of those bad things can be recognized as such (and, again, not all interventions were unanimously agreed to by liberal interventionists) and we move forward trying to do better.
They're happening right now. The US is supporting the destruction of Yemen right now. If we Americans could muster half the outrage about what's happening to Yemen as there is about Ukraine right now, we could end that war immediately. There's little to nothing the average American can do about the invasion of Ukraine. And yet, here we are. Ask yourself why.
Yemen is bad on all sides and obviously an immense tragedy in humanitarian terms. But it's a nasty civil war with Iran and Saudi having proxies and the US is not the main moral actor there even if what we're doing is bad.
But if you can't see the major differences between that shit show and the invasion of Ukraine then there's nothing I can do to change your perspective. One key point is that the reaction against Russia is OVERWHELMINGLY international and no one is more pissed than countries like German who have typically been "soft" on Putin.
It doesn't matter if the invasion of Ukraine is worse than the Yemen situation. Yemen is the one American citizens like myself have some modicum of agency over. If every American who is outraged over Ukraine put half of that energy into demanding their government stop supporting absolute monarchies in the destruction of another country, they could end it and make all the American cries about self determination and human rights ring a little less hollow.
Well that's the weird thing about this substack, Freddie is a communist, but he is not a "woke" communist so he does appear very herectical to the left.
God this is so bad.
People really, really don't want to be told that their country is a force for evil in the world.
But, go ahead: make an argument or leave.
People disagree that this country is an unequivocal force for evil.
There's no such thing as an unequivocal anything. This country has murdered and pillaged its way across the globe for a century and that is an indisputable fact. Pursuant to the conversation at hand, it has singlehandedly destroyed the self-determination of dozens of countries. So: why do you not give a shit about that while you weep for Ukraine?
I'm not weeping for Ukraine, and I do give a shit about that. How do you propose the United States now proceeds in the world? Perhaps the way the woke wish for white people to proceed in the world, with constant contrition and self-flagellation? I opposed the Iraq War. I oppose Putin taking Ukraine. I don't see how that doesn't make sense.
Is it too much to ask that the US take principled and consistent positions? I don't think that involves contrition or self-flagellation, just the abandonment of hypocrisy.
It's great that you opposed the war in Iraq, do you care as much about all of the interventions your country has made since? The value of this sort of post is it will hopefully cause people to scrutinize US action (relating to the Russian invasion and elsewhere) a bit more closely than they would have before.
No, it's not too much to ask. I think the US should abandon hypocrisy. And the invasion of Ukraine is still wrong. It seems like what FdB wants is for me to admit that the U.S. is bad, too. Ok it is. Again, now what?
I think when people approach things they way you do, you think that caring (or caring enough, because people never care enough) is going to be like a "woke" or "saved" experience, wherein the person will see your side and think like you when they care. You think you have come to your conclusions because you care and others do not. But, maybe they do care, do see your side, and still come to different conclusions.
TLDR: Your whole argument is I can tell you don't care because you don't think like me.
You're too arrogant to try to reason with. But I'm glad you're really boiling it down here to your contempt for the US. I've already left - best to you.
That is not an argument.
I joined - Freddie is making the point that US politics demand a bogeyman. Russia is a good fit for that role and the Ds & Rs use them when necessary.
The framing is that they have "evil oligarchs" but we just have billionaires.
Sure other countries are just a lot more evil. That part escapes you.
That is not an argument.
How is that not a argument?
America interning the Japanese is less bad than the Germans exterminating the Jews. Some bad things are worse than other bad things.
We treated a defeated Japan a lot better than Japan treated its defeated enemies.
That's not how morality works.
That’s how the world works. You know that.
What moral framework are you operating under in which two bad things cannot be compared such that interning someone and eventually letting them go is just as bad as interning someone for the purpose of exterminating them?
How DOES it work then? If we only supported the morally pure or morally consistent or people who didn’t make moral errors we’d support no one. That would be anarchy. Which is what our MAGA & WOKE fringes want.
I don’t.
I genuinely, to some extent, don't understand where you're coming from. Let's compare the invasion of Ukraine to the assassination of Mossadegh. Russia announces it will never permit a NATO-aligned Ukraine; the US says it will never permit a USSR-aligned Iran. They attack to dismantle both regimes. Both are completely and obviously unacceptable. The Iraq war, by this line, was equally unacceptable. You could argue about Afghanistan, whether it attacked and the moral status of punitive war. All the others were wars of expanding spheres of influence for their own sake, and that is not morally unacceptable. These cases are clear. The Iranian did not 'cause' Mossadegh's assassination, and America did not 'cause' the invasion of Ukraine – you claim the latter, and that's the problem. It is the invader that transgressed morality, not the geopolitical actors who wanted to align away from them.
I also think you have a very America-centric view of this. Russia goes on about NATO, but the bigger danger is Ukraine joining the EU. Central and Eastern European countries have two competing vision – integration with the well-managed and affluent Western economies under relatively favorable terms, or domination by Russia. Anyone given the choice would easily choose the former, and most post-Communist regimes have. That's the dream of the West – the EU, not NATO – and America has very little to do with it. Ukraine wants to be Poland because, why wouldn't you? I say this writing from Poland – it's obvious you wouldn't want to be dominated by Russia.
Alignment with the EU or NATO is alignment with the West in general regardless of how you formulate it. Maybe a Finland solution could have worked, but may be not – you also seem to discount the possibility that Putin is anything but a rational pragmatist, and that revanchism in regaining Ukraine and national pride in general could motivate him. But overall, Ukraine chose pursuing EU/NATO membership at all costs as a defence against Russia and there's no reason to think giving up that defence would have resulted in anything other than domination. Of course you want to escape that – Ukraine tried and was succeeding, and Russia decided to fight a war to stop it. Your argument boils down to 'if they didn't want a war they should have just surrendered' – but isn't that their choice to make?
So you literally have no moral sentiment to share as you wave away the profoundly moral questions at hand. You just have "the west is good," and that's it. Literally, just the assertion that your way - the way you were propagandized info - is the good way. I do not find that compelling.
By the way the Eurozone is a inherently broken idea, ask the Greeks.
The currency union is what I'm talking about.
Yes, and my point was that the currency union is unrelated to the economic benefits Poland, Bulgaria, etc. have accrued from becoming EU states. You can be in the single market without being in the currency union.
And don't forget access to the ERDF has built a lot infrastructure in Poland, Czech Republic, Bulgaria, etc etc
The European project is much, much bigger than a currency union.
I think invading countries because they are leaning away from you politically is bad, whether the West does it or not. I also think your argument that the West has violated this principle more often, and more brutally, is perfectly tenable, but it is not the case in this instance – I say this pretty clearly, that the Mossadegh assassination and Iraq war were not morally acceptable. Many of America's wars have not been morally acceptable. They killed an Afghan family while withdrawing, for God's sake.
The EU is also not the Eurozone, and conflating the two suggests you don't have that much familiarity with European politics, but I can tell you a resident and citizen of Poland (which is hardly the EU's favourite) that people here would take it, and even the Euro we've been resisting for years, in a heartbeat over Russian influence. I genuinely do think the EU has been a good moral project for its member countries, and a lot of the improvements you want to American society have been accomplished by its members. But the question of whether Ukraine is _right_ to want to be in the EU is completely separate from whether it should be allowed to – just like I think a country might be wrong to choose alignment with Russia but don't think it should be militarily stopped from doing so. As, you suggest, ask the Greeks which they prefer, given the choice, the Eurozone or Putin.
The EU and the West in general have malign influence in many areas – the conditions migrants are kept in to keep them from reaching European shores, for example, or of course some of the many inequities of the international trade system. But it's also not true that just because the West does a lot of unacknowledged harm it does no good, and 'anything the West does is bad' is no more of a principle than 'anything the West does is good.'
We killed an Afghan family because of bad intel, not out of malice.
That surviving family wants to come to the US!
That's American evil in a nutshell, we fuck up but people can forgive us because they can recognize it wasn't malicious.
are you fucking serious
Yes, I am.
America is so great that even when we fuck up people who we did immense and irreparable harm to still want to live here.
Because you're *rich*. This is either incredibly naive or dishonest. I may detest the ultra rich, but hell, I'd much rather be ultra rich! Especially if the alternative is ultra poor.
Do they want to come here because it's great and they "forgive us," or because the United States has blown their country to hell and left them with nothing there to live for?
“ America is so great that even when we fuck up people who we did immense and irreparable harm to still want to live here.”
In exactly the same way that a horribly abused child will insist they really, really still prefer to live with Mommy.
Bombing at all was malicious; who gave the US the right to do that? This thinking is disgusting, it's USian thought at its height. The very notion that you should not have been there in the first place doesn't occur to you.
We were in Afghanistan with UN approval there bud.
Of all the wars America has been engaged in of late, the Afghanistan one was at least legal.
Legal doesn't mean moral, I'm sure you know this. And whatever moral standing the US had in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 surely must have been diluted over the 20-year occupation?
Would the United States allow Mexico to join a strategic partnership with China, yes or no?
Will we invade and shell Mexico City till they surrender? No. Might we ban auto parts imports? Sure.
We spent half a century trying to assassinate Cuba's leader, we instigated a successful coup in Chile, we sparked a devastating civil war in Guatemala, we armed and funded the Contras in Nicaragua....
Did we invade and raze their cities though in an attempt to conquer them as part of a nationalist project?
Would we repeat those actions now, in the post-Cold War era?
And the Soviets weren’t up to shady shit as well? What about China their list of crimes is enormous.
No one is saying the US hasn’t done bad things. We just want you to rate the US relative to other counties like China or Russia/Soviet Union.
I really think China has us beat as does Russia/Soviets.
By "we did this" you mean "50 years ago, people did this because of the cold war, therefore it's something we would still do because reasons".....your position here appears to have been constructed with no consideration to the context or reasoning involved, or any consideration that maybe things have changed since 1980.
Military advisors told Kennedy to bomb and invade Cuba immediately when the Cuban Missile Crisis started. Most presidents would have done that, Kennedy didn't but do you think if they hadn't been able to negotiate a resolution, the US would have just thrown up our hands and said oh well.
You would oust their government. Ideally, with the help of their military, as has been the case until now. What do you think would happen if their military could not be convinced to depose the president? Do you think the US would really stop at "ban auto parts imports"?
No we’d ban a lot more things and really put their economy through the wringer. Would we secretly fund opposition campaigns in Mexico? Sure.
Oh you totally will invade and shell Mexico City.
If the U.S. invaded Mexico for joining a strategic partnership with China, that would be bad, and you would rightly condemn it.
No. But China is worse than American democracy. Putin is worse than American democracy.
American democracy may be worse than a truly Marxist state that you dream of. Your article about Marxism opened my eyes to that. I need to learn more but I bet we’d agree that unfettered capitalism is bad for both the planet as well as the human soul.
But……
Dictatorships & totalitarian regimes that openly crush all dissent, funnel money to oligarchs, poison enemies, destroy free speech, free press & free assembly……
Are. Worse.
No?
The United States would be wrong to stop Mexico from joining a strategic partnership with China. It would then do it anyway. Being wrong doesn't stop things from happening.
That said, consideration for this is why China tends to seek power through economic and infrastructural imperialism first, then military extension later. It's a lot like 19th-20th century liberal imperialism, if you think about it. Still imperialism, though! The thing being, by that measure, China has already extended its strategic influence well into the Americas, including the United States.
What wild you do Freddie --allow every single migrant to migrate to their preferred destination? I never understand this sentiment. It's essentially a demand that the West lower its own quality of life to the lowest common denominator to help the less fortunate. We cannot take in the whole world nor should we. Why don't you grapple with the fact that the migrants aren't looking to go to Russia, but the West. This fact alone tells you what you refuse to acknowledge - despite the US or West's flaws, we are still the best and the greatest.
We're better. That's not the same thing as being the best.
If you're better than everyone else, you are the best. People keep expecting the U.S. to live up to some grandiose ideal at all times. This ins unrealistic.
I'm sorry but I keep coming back to this: Michael is a troll on your substack..
If Michael is a troll, he makes good points. It goes along with what the few other people I know who've lived in Easter Europe say.
The west isn’t inherently “good”. It’s just much much much better than Putin. Who is a murderous dictator. Or have I just been propagandized? Did Putin poison his enemies or is that fake news? Does he jail peace protesters or do I need more context?
What is it about the support for Ukraine that bugs you so much if you admit that Putin isn’t good? Is Putin the lesser of two evils when impaired with the Biden administration? Of course not.
Mossadegh was not assassinated...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat
I agree the US Government and much of the American public has not been morally consistent nor has the the US foreign policy been a universal force for good. Fine, we all agree.
You are also glossing over a lot of European recent and not so recent history. A lot of Ukrainians live and work in Poland and elsewhere in the EU. Joining the single market and getting access to the big pot of EU development funds, as their neighbor Poland shows, would likely be in a really good thing. Shouldn't it be morally acceptable for their EU neighbors to defend Ukraine's desire to join the single market?
Feddie, if it makes you feel better, this post elicited me to finally *join*. As you are this Liberal Capitalist's favorite Marxist for what it is worth. At least you make us think.
I don't have good answers on this topic, so a few tentative thoughts, take them (or criticize them) as you will.
I don't especially believe in "national self-determination" in the nationalist sense as a desirable goal. I would ideally like a world where nearly everyone lives in a liberal democratic regime [edit because I think this was misunderstood: I didn't mean one single world regime, I meant that each person lives in some liberal democratic regime or other] with free and fair elections and proportional representation such that the elected branch is actually responsive to the interests and values of a broad cross section of society. Absent that, I would like to have an international order which encouraged peaceful coordination among democracies and non-democracies alike, and which fostered improvements in the well being of people in both.
I agree with you about NATO's reason for being. I do think that the expansion has been less America seeking to push its influence deeper into the former iron curtain, and more former iron curtain countries seeking ways of protecting themselves from Russia by securing promises of American power. But that doesn't change the fact that we did it (and as you say, we wouldn't accept that reasoning for Mexico entering into an alliance which involved Chinese military basis being established just below the Rio Grande).
Ultimately I think it works out best for everyone if the major players of the EU are the ones sought after as a balance against Russia in the region, rather than US. Ukraine becoming a member of the EU is in some ways less fraught than becoming a member of NATO, because, per your point, the EU is very much NOT a thing that exists solely to antagonize Russia.
Why do I think it would be bad for Ukraine to be conquered by Russia? Aside from the violence of the conquest itself (something which I do oppose but I also understand America can be criticized on the same grounds for its military actions around the world) Ukraine, however imperfect, was electing its leader through free and fair elections, and clearly on a shaky path towards more fully realizing liberal democracy. Conquest by Russia, even if bloodless, clearly means the imposition of a Russian puppet government, the strangling of liberal democracy in the cradle.
Of course you don't believe in "national self-determination." You want each country to be dissolved in the acid bath of cosmopolitan globalism, where all different cultures and languages are eventually homogenized into a liberal democratic regime, which means US-style progressivism with its materialism and consumer oriented culture that destroys all tradition. But this isn't imperialism or colonialism. Anything less than the liberal order (as conceded of in the US) is xenophobic, nationalistic and bigoted. You are actually anti-democratic because the people of a particular nation-state do not want this but the left will shove it down their throats regardless. I'm so tired of people without any culture, language or traditions of their own demand other countries give these up because of the lie of peace forever-lasting if they sign up for this new international order. I'd love to see you tell Japan, China, Jordan, South Africa, Mexico, etc. they need to do the same thing you demand of Western countries. Good luck!
Russia is a has been that never really was. They refuse to accept that they no longer are a world power and keep crushing problems trying to regain their lost prestige and power. Their attitude reminds me of Middle Eastern countries, who go on and on about how they gave the world algebra, had glorious libraries through the Middle East and North Africa and were a world power. They keep living in the past and trying to recapture the glory days.
Enough with the America = Russia. Complete and utter lies. Yes, America certainly had done terrible and even horrific things but the difference between us and Russia is a difference of magnitude, not degree. T
Don't put words in my mouth.
What do you mean by this then? How does opposing national self-determination work in practice? What happens to the nation-state? Is it wrong for a people to want to preserve their own language, culture and traditions within a nation-state populated by their own people?
I don't especially believe in "national self-determination" in the nationalist sense as a desirable goal. I would ideally like a world where nearly everyone lives in a liberal democratic regime with free and fair elections and proportional representation such that the elected branch is actually responsive to the interests and values of a broad cross section of society.
I see no reason to change the current state borders that exist. I believe in protecting (but not necessarily like, requiring) social, ethnic, religious, and cultural pluralism, globally and within specific states. If state borders are going to be changed, I believe it should be done through a democratic procedure involving the entire population of the territory to be newly created, and personally believe that a supermajority rather than simple majority should be required, because I don't think it's the kind of thing that should be done easily or based on the political sentiments of the moment.
It's fine to seek to preserve your language, culture, and traditions. Attempting to make use of the power of the machinery of government to do so and enforce it on everything within your borders, *especially when you don't have a responsive democratically elected government*, is NOT fine. That is all I am saying.
"Any minimally-honest answer would acknowledge that NATO exists as an antagonist to Russia. That’s it." But you're just begging the question. If that is the case, then the rest of this essay is unnecessary; if it isn't, the rest is wrong.
So you need to make that case: Why is it only an antagonist to Russia? Why not also a mutual defense pact against a powerful neighbor with wildly differing values of human rights and governance? Why is the onus on NATO to limit its members, instead of on Russia to join Europe in a peaceful trade-based future.
For example, it should be clear even to Russia that despite the American military bases in Germany, the US has no intention (or likely even capacity) to invade or topple governments. Which means if Russia gave up its antagonism to the West, it would merely become like Germany but even larger, so it really has nothing to lose and everything to gain.
Other commenters are here asserting that the statement is correct and yet continuing to argue as though there is a need to refute the rest. Why don't you disagree with them?
"Which means if Russia gave up its antagonism to the West,"
They tried that after the fall of the USSR and American leadership refused to meaningfully disarm, helping lead to Putin. Where is your opprobrium for those American leaders?
Mostly because I'm not interested in their opinion, I'm only really interested in yours.
And I'm not here judging either the Americans or the Russians; I'll happily concede that real geopolitics is so complicated any opinion I have is likely to be deeply unfounded. My interest here is only in keeping you intellectually honest... which you usually are unfailingly.
I don't believe the argument is that NATO is an antagonist to Russia, but that Russia perceives it to be. And so much of international diplomacy is about appearances, because so much of life is about appearances.
In an alternate history where NATO was disbanded in 1991, who knows what would have happened to Russia? I do know that faced with aggression from the Russian Federation, there would have been plenty of time for a new mutual defense treaty amongst parties who felt threatened by Russia.
What was the point of NATO post the fall of the Soviet Union? It was created because at the time the USSR had by far the greatest land army, an alliance with the US (and thus the threat of the bomb) was the only thing that could stop them.
What does that have to do with what I said? I've already stated that I think NATO should have been dissolved in 1991.
Maybe I misunderstood, but my point was: whether Russia perceives it to be or not, what is the point of NATO? Why shouldn't it be dissolved tomorrow?
Well, at this point, NATO is necessary precisely because Russia has shown itself to be led by a person intent on wars of conquest. But that does not preclude that IF NATO had been dissolved in 1991, that we might not be in a world where Russia is led by a person intent on wars of conquest.
They may not want to be Germany. Germany is an economically-powerful client state. Look at what Mearsheimer has said about the liberal hegemony and Russia's belief in it.
That's right, NATO exists to antagonize Russia by not allowing it to act like an imperial power that can coerce and dominate its smaller neighbors through military force. NATO is not hurting the interests of the Russian people. Putin is.
NATO expansion advocates ALSO predicted Russia would invade its weaker neighbors, particularly once Putin took power.
Putin is not crazy and not acting on a whim. He really believes in "Make Russia an Empire Again" as he has stated and acted.
"They don’t want to talk about our illegal bombing of Yugoslavia."
Ha. Why was it illegal to stop ethnic cleansing? Why did Russia veto that action?
Some of the issues you brought up are not in fact American sins because there is context. Some are inexcusable or just incompetent. America is far from perfect at home or abroad.
But the US track record is way better than the USSR or China or any historical empire I'm aware of despite its faults.
"NATO is not hurting the interests of the Russian people. Putin is."
Why was NATO not dissolved following the Cold War?
"But the US track record is way better than the USSR or China or any historical empire I'm aware of despite its faults."
Simply, factually untrue.
What metrics are you using for you “factually untrue” claims? Links, numbers, deaths, etc.
Are you unaware of the facts in any of the examples I mentioned? Or in Iraq or Vietnam? Even Wikipedia will tell you about the rivers of blood.
Our rivers of blood are a lot smaller. Do you really not know that?
The arrogance with which Americans assert this has yet to cease to amaze me.
Than Stalin or Mao? Do the math for me.
"Our rivers of blood are smaller than theirs" has got to be the all-time worst response I have ever heard, even if it's true, which is extremely debatable.
It’s not debatable at all. Mao and Stalin were really bad people.
NATO not being dissolved (clearly wise it seems) has nothing to do with hurting the interests of the Russian people unless those Russian people are set on attacking their neighbors.
You've already established you do not operate from a moral framework that includes the hundreds of millions of deaths caused by the poor implementation of your preferred ideology and that you refuse to engage in the counterfactual analysis of what those powers would do/have done if they were not constrained by the US and its allies.
This has nothing to do with communism; Putin is nothing like a communist. This has to do with the United States maintaining a belligerent posture towards Russia when Russia gave the west the one thing it wanted most, the dissolution of the USSR. We responded by refusing to allow Russia to reintegrate fully into the world. That was short-sighted.
Putin has at least one thing in common with the communists: he thinks the breakup of the USSR was the biggest disaster of that century. He has imperialistic tendencies that Russia has had for centuries. So NATO's goal of defending its members remains useful even if communism is no longer the driving ideology behind the threat.
"Belligerent posture towards Russia" is just not true. NATO can't attack Russia directly without WWIII (and is explicitly defensive). Just existing as a voluntary defensive pact is not belligerence.
I'm also real skeptical how much the West "refused to allow" Russia to reintegrate vs. how much things went poorly at the Russian leadership level that led to Putin and his cronies taking over. See also: the more aggressive turn China took in the last ~20 years under Xi.
The invasion was wrong, and bad. It is good to fight against the unjust invasion, even if those fighting now against injustice now have been guilty of injustice in the past. Justice is a grey area.
Is the United States currently practicing the principle of self-determination in Yemen? No. So why do you not beat your chest as loudly for them as you do for Ukraine?
"yes but what about this other thing"
"I believe in determination for Ukraine but not for Yemen"
-- said nobody
If you concede that this is what is happening in Ukraine and you are not out there marching every day that is de facto what you are saying.
BLM? Is that you? Silence is violence?
(For the record, while I don't think we should be involved in Yemen, I also don't really believe that we are hindering Yemeni "self-determination" there. So I think Freddie's premise is false from jump street.)
Two wrongs don’t make a right. Come on, dude.
For me, I live next door in Slovakia, well aware of corruption from the pro-EU and pro- Russia oligarchs in Cen. Europe countries. Neither Yemen, nor war in the Congo threaten WWIII. The anti-Iran forces against the anti-Saudi forces are merely another tragedy so common in human history. Far less killing than the Iraq-Iran war, or the genocide in Rwanda.
Why is this your point, though? Assume that people are hypocritical. (I don't agree, but it seems clear you will not be budged.) Okay. Now what? Should we all rend our garments and lament? Sit in ashes until we're really, really sorry? In what way does hypocrisy make any critique of the Ukraine invasion wrong?
Suppose we articulate a principle but don't live up to it. Ben Affleck tells me not to smoke, but he smokes! Therefore, Ben Affleck can never talk about the dangers of smoking.
I guess I don't understand how this idea of yours, that American must be a pure and blessed virgin of foreign policy before Americans can speak against or resist violence done by others, does anything but enable even worse actors. It seems almost tailor-made for Putin's purposes -- paralyze the American public and its foreign policy establishment in endless hand-wringing about the mote in our eye so we can't speak as Russia jams a huge beam through Ukraine's skull.
For the record -- I am against the U.S. in Yemen, Iraq, Iran, etc. I literally did not vote for Obama for a second term because I believed our involvement in Libya was illegal. Do I need to preface every comment with that? Do we all have to go around shouting our moral credentials to you? Or could you, maybe, extend other people the teeniest, tiniest bit of good faith and argue on the issue at hand instead of trying to emotionally blackmail people into silence?
Or we could just apply a different standard and admit that morality has absolutely nothing to do with realpolitik. That of course means that all of the pro-sanction hysterics clogging Twitter right now are just useful idiots.
Yess, we're practicing self determination in Yeman. The Houthi solgan is in part "death to America, death to Israel, curse on the jews", they've decided to self determined themselves into declaring us and our allies as thier enemies, and so we've decided to treat them as such. Sucks to be them, maybe they shouldn't have declared war on the world hegemon that's really touchy about middle eastern religious nuts calling for thier destruction.
Swlf determination doesn't mean you can do whatever the hell you want and no one is allowed to object
> So why do you not beat your chest as loudly for them as you do for Ukraine?
If I do, are you satisfied here? If I show you dozens of comments going back for decades denouncing the US when it prevents self-determination of other countries, am I allowed to also believe Ukraine deserves the same? Am I allowed to have changed my mind about anything in the past? It's very hard to understand what point you are actually making here when you go into the inner thoughts of random commenters
"When people demand denunciation, the purpose is always to exert power, never to invoke principle."
I'm totally stealing this
Except I feel like Freddie is demanding of me to denounce the United States.
Which is fine--it's well worth of denunciation. But let's name it.