[Sceptic]

Tl;dr

The international community placing blame on Russia and sanctions on ordinary Russians, takes tremendous emphasis away not only from the NATO alliances role in provoking the conflict in Ukraine but away from ongoing Western aggressions that are considerably worse and more antagonistic. We can only see this when we contextualise what is happening on the world stage globally and historically.

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Many of the justifications used by Russia, reasons that are condemned by all NATO-allied countries as inappropriate reasons to intervene in a sovereign nation have historically been used: Afghanistan/Iraq—where security concerns were cited, Kosovo—with very similar humanitarian concerns and ethnic disputes as within Ukraine (Article 51 of the UN Charter), the Cuban missile fiasco—where interference from a rival/competing superpower was present (the Monroe Doctrine).

Keep in mind, the Ukraine war not only has all of these arguments rolled into one, but that Russia has a close cultural and historical affiliation with Ukraine, begin with the Kievan Rus who relocated to Muscovy, before later taking Crimea and the now "Russo-Slavic" territories of Ukraine which later became closer tied to Russia than the now "Maidan-Slavic" territories that were historically invaded by the Polish, Ottomans, Germans and others.

After receiving much online hatred and abuse for my opinions on this subject (we discuss the existence of Russian troll farms and disinformation that comes from the Kremlin, but do not consider the very equally insidious nature of many Western institutions, troll farms like the North Atlantic Fellah Organisation, accused of crowd funding war criminals and the State propaganda that is driven by the likes of Anne Applebaum and other organisations we are very unaware of)...

After receiving so much hatred, I've realised that it is actually a lot more helpful to look at Ukraine in a bigger picture to really understand this issue and to help prevent World War 3 with Russia over NATO expansion, or China over conflicts in Taiwan and the South China Sea.

"There is no reasonable justification to consider a war can be provoked"

I think we have to stop and consider for a moment what we mean when we say something is "provoked" compared to what we mean when we say something is "justified". If a gang of bikers moves in next door and start having wild parties and barbecues, drinking all day and late into the night, blasting loud music, burning tires in their back garden, hitting birds down with catapults if they occasionally fly from your garden into theirs and then one day they decide to build a machine gun that has a very good direction at your own back window, then we can very much consider this a provocation. It is an escalation of something that could emerge into a conflict.

How you decide to handle this, for example going to your local police and council about the issue, or simply going next door and shooting everyone dead very much depends on the political culture you live in. We can argue that things are very different in a modern democracy to the way things would work for example if we were living in the Wild West.

Talking about "justified action" as a response to such escalations makes sense to us when we consider the world as if it is very much a Western Rules Driven Order with an International Criminal Court (justice) and NATO (the enforcer), but the reality is that in a relative state of global anarchy, these institutions are a lot more like the Sheriff and can be prone to a great deal more corruption than we realise, or than what they will let us know about.

If I am allowed to have this conversation at all, it is to promote the illusion of transparency, free debate and democracy, it is not because elite hawkish, neocon establishments that are very much in favour of NATO expansion want this conversation to be had. Do not be surprised if at some point in the future and with the current direction of mainstream media, opinions like these are outright censored or even penalised as hate crime for promoting some kind of perceived RussoChinese hegemony or war propaganda. I know there is a website I am on where I am accused of this daily and in the most malicious of ways.

I think that considering the mainstream media's co-ordinated resolve to repeatedly and determinedly portray Putin's invasion of Ukraine as "unprovoked" compared to other invasions like Bush's war in Iraq which have not received a fraction of the criticism, we really do have to stop for a moment and consider what it actually means to "provoke" something. Are we saying that something is "justified" because ipso facto it is "provoked" or are we just saying that there is reason to believe the event was not unilaterally aggressive?

Regardless, invoking fear or intimidation to keep a country under the economic or militaristic thumb of another large nuclear power could in many ways reasonably be considered provocation, given the former country's militaristic history. We like to assert that we are liberal democratic nations who mean no harm with the expansion of a defensive only alliance, but we have to remember here that many of our historic interventions in other countries have caused more harm than good, including those past the turn of the 21st Century.

Given the broader context of hostile relations between the West and Russia/China during the Cold War Era it is easier to understand why NATO expansion was seen as a threat at one point, but harder to understand with the dissolution of the USSR because we believe that things are different. But when diplomatic promises such as James Baker's "not one inch east" comment in Moscow of February 1990 are forgotten entirely, we can begin to understand Russia's scepticism and really that is when we start seeing this whole thing as more of a "post-Cold War Stalemate".

I would argue overall that, even if we cannot consider provocation a determiner of justification, we have to consider that there must be situations where an aggressor is in fact provoked, regardless what we think of it. So let's move to a more global basis, away from Ukraine, a country with historical ties to Banderite ideology, where CIA have trained and funded radicalised anti-Russian antagonists like Stetsko, Bandera, Lebed and Shukhevych since Allen Dulles helped them escape justice at the Nuremburg trials...

In what can only be described as a parallel to the way Mujahideen were trained and funded to destabilise the USSR before the outbreak of the Soviet-Afghan war, through the migration and panic of civil war, and the threat of assassination, terrorism and espionage from those who later became Al Qaeda. Let's consider for instance Taiwan.

And I think Taiwan is very different to Ukraine, there just isn't that same cultural integration with China, where a significant population want reintegration, so this would make things hazy in terms of radicalised American placed anti-China operatives could just cross a land border and start engaging in espionage/assassination/terrorism or a civil war could create migration and chaos. Everyone in Taiwan seems to agree on autonomy.

America's policy would surely be raging hypocrisy if after the history of US foreign policy since Kissinger, they declared Taiwan are independent because the peoples there overwhelmingly want it without a referendum approved of by China, considering their stance on Crimean independence. And I think America building military bases or nuclear bases in Taiwan could be a major escalation... I think doing military drills with Taiwan and these unathorised state department "diplomatic visits" are poorly judged to consider the decisions with the best of intentions.

It all raises questions, considering how plenty of nations act, if a ship merely steers too close to their borders. And I can give examples, for example when Thatcher bombed an Argentinian warship that decided to return from the Fawkland Isles as a "lesson". Well fuck, when we look at our own stances that are exactly the same and then we look at how the international community and mainstream media outlets are all united in condemnation of Russia right now for exactly the same type of shit, and all the pressure/scrutiny/scepticism China is being treated with over the 9 whole dash line thing... it makes you think.

Ok. If their aggression is so bad, where were the sanctions and international pressure over any number of NATO driven interventions since Kosovo and even before that really? Ok, so "the past is the past" and "past wrongs do not make rights in the present"... really? Ok! So America is still involved in 4 wars in the middle east. All the arguments about "Russia could end the war and leave today!"... how the hell does this same observation not apply to American intervention in Yemen, Somalia, Niger, Syria...? And Syria, like Ukraine is in Russia's sphere of influence.

I'm aware China is involved in building some military bases in South America right now, but overall where do we see the same levels of aggression, or antagonism towards European and American driven hegemony compared to all this undermining of Chinese/Russian global influence in the world right now? Where is the RussoChinese version of the Monroe Doctrine, how is it not equally valid to America's own vision?

Maybe stopping to look at the global context as a whole makes this a lot clearer than when focussing on Ukraine in isolation. going back to Ukraine we have to look at why it is different to Afghanistan/Iraq—where security concerns were cited, Kosovo—with very similar humanitarian concerns and ethnic disputes to Ukraine, the Cuban missile fiasco—where interference from a rival/competing superpower was present...

... you have to understand I am not making a blanket comment on whether the Ukraine war was justified. But if we consider what would ever make an intervention into a sovereign country justified, and then we take into account all of these justifications—that Western media has at one point or another gotten behind historically—are essentially rolled into one with the Ukraine, which has very close, cultural and historic ties with Russia...

... meaning that the proximity of Ukraine makes all of these concerns a lot more real, and hitting far closer to concern compared to these historical NATO interventions... then I mean, if we can ever agree that such a thing as "just war theory" exists in anyway whatsoever, and we can agree for whatever reason that Ukraine is not a "just war", then what the hell does a "just war" actually look like.

And if we agree considering all these things that the Ukraine war sure as hell is not a "just war" can we also agree that American presence in Somalia/Yemen/Niger/Syria... that in no fucking sane reality are any of these "just wars" either, if that not being the case much, much more so. And if "all Putin needs to do is leave tomorrow", pack his things and leave the "sovereign country" that fell prey to his "illegal / unprovoked / unjustified war" and that ordinary Russians deserve sanctions and Putin needs to go to the ICC now...

... Then we can sure as hell make the case that there is something deeply alarming Western media is not corralled behind a position that America should do exactly the same with Somalia/Yemen/Niger/Syria right now, and that any number of historic interventions were "illegal / unprovoked / unjustified"... we should be repeating these claims again and again in our media just like we are against Russia today, we should be putting sanctions on ordinary Americans, we should start listing a number of American generals and political leaders as well as those from Europe responsible for war crimes, and demanding they all go to the ICC today.

When we realise that the international reality is not like that right now, in the same way it is as towards Russia, you start to realise that joining in on the condemnation really is a huge distraction. In a way, by doing that, you are letting all of these other agents that are very much autonomous, and responsible in the same way as Russia/Putin off the hook by joining in on this unilateral condemnation. Staying neutral on the other hand, you realise that in a global context a lot of what's coming from Russia really is not "the greater evil".

Calling people who are sympathetic to the Russian perspective in a day and age of great mass hysteria against Russia and an anti-Russian driven media narrative, and foreign policy that is just not sympathetic to Russia's security concerns or sphere of influence in the same way we consider America's own Monroe Doctrine is a great injustice against these people who are actually speaking a great unspoken truth. We do need to consider what the hell is going on in Ukraine right now. It absolutely is relevant if this war was provoked, and if Ukraine has not been used for decades—since before the 2013/14 Maidan, even, to destabilise Russia.

Looking at this from a global perspective, starting with Brzezinski's whole "global chessboard theory", or perhaps even Churchill's "Operation Unthinkable", we do this and we start to realise that whatever wrongs Russia are committing right now... in the modern global context, there is actually a lot worse coming from our side of things. And these are not actions of the past, of earlier administrations that we have evolved from, of wrongs committed now that do not right the wrongs we perceive from Russia/China.

No, these are part of what is very much an ongoing, co-ordinated attempt to reinforce the American-led NATO militaristic dominance on a global level, essentially the whole agenda is to put most of BRICS and Global South under their economic thumb as a last bid to reignite a declining presence on the world stage, while countries and blocks like Canada, Australia, UK and Europe are essentially being used as vassals to accomplish this.

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Links/Further Reading:
Information War Over Ukraine | Novara Media

The Ghost of Zbigniew Brzezinski and NATO's War Against Russia | Harley Schlanger

Spreading “Values” With NATO Bombs And The Ukrainian Meat Grinder | Clare Daly and Mick Wallace | Neutrality Studies

US/NATO Needs to Stop Provoking World War III | Negotiate Peace In Ukraine Now | David T Pyne

The World Needs JFK’s Vision of Peace! | Schiller Institute

Seymour Hersh - Biden's Blackout: How America & Norway Blew Up The Nord Stream Pipelines | London Real

NUCLEAR WAR From Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant Attack Possible? | Patrick Lancaster

Colonel Douglas Macgregor - The US Government Lied About The Ukraine War | London Real

Ukraine Part 1 - A US-Proxy for the New Cold War Era Crawdads and Taters

Ukraine Explained : Everything You Wanted to Know and They Were Afraid You’d Ask | Aydin Paladin

How Pre-WW II Ukrainian Fascists Pioneered Brutal Terror Techniques; Later Improved By CIA, Now Ironically Taught to Descendants

Ukrainian Nazism | Birrion Sondahl

[late]

If you didn't write that, it needs a link..

Second, it's better than average propaganda. He raises the issue of morality, but then goes nowhere with it. He's implying equivalence, without bothering to discuss how aggression and war crimes is acceptable.

Third, subtle Putin ain't... He's a revanchist, meaning he wants to bring back the Russia empire. But some of those countries are part of NATO now.

Which raises the possibility of WW3 if we don't help Ukraine stop him. Which I consider to be the only sane choice.

[Sceptic]

@late
I wrote it, however this was not the first place I wrote it. But very well:

https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueUnpopularOpinion/comments/154ev06/in_a_global_context_russia_is_not_the_greater/

Of course, you should look to the links, as this is where I was influenced.

Third, subtle Putin ain't... He's a revanchist

This isn't the full truth. A lot of his quotes about Ukraine being "one people" have been taken out of context. For example in many ways the British and the Irish are "one people" as we have roots in our Gaelic ancestors before the Romans and the Anglo-Saxons and the Scandinavians, and the Normans came to our isles. If I say something like this though, it doesn't mean I want to recapture the Republic of Ireland, it is more likely to mean I want a peaceful solution to the Northern Irish border issue. I want trade and commerce. I want the autonomy of Irish Republicans in Northern Ireland to be respected. I want good diplomacy with the Irish Republic.

Similarly Russia had its roots in the Kievan Rus before they moved to Moscow. Ukrainians always talk about how it is Russia that invaded but the former Ottoman Empire parts of Ukraine like in the Donbas, Zaporhizhzhia and Crimea are actually where they located and moved Russian speaking people (originally). Now, the Maidan slavic parts of Ukraine which has historically been far more Russophobic (this dates back to before World War 2, and more relevantly, during the Cold War when the CIA entered and funded anti-Russian antagonists like Lebed, Bandera, Stetsko and Shukhevych) do not want peaceful relations with the Russoslavic communities.

They do not want to do diplomacy and trade with Russia. The West weaponised a corrupt deal with the EU and a huge IMF austerity loan which they characterised as being "the will of the people", and tried to impose this on Yanukovich. Later they bombed Russian speaking territories right up to Russia's borders, threatened to take Sevastopol which would cause a military and economic blockade in the black sea for Russia while Zelenskyy's rhetoric on NATO ascension would mean building a nuclear weapons program in Ukraine, and Russia were supposed to remain oblivious to the obvious security concerns...?

[Sceptic]

Which raises the possibility of WW3 if we don't help Ukraine stop him.

You should really look into America's own neocon institutions like RAND and what they had to say about the possibility of a long war in Ukraine escalating tensions and improving the possibilities of a World War 3 scenario in Ukraine:

https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PEA2510-1.html

These also make for good viewing:

[Sceptic]

He raises the issue of morality, but then goes nowhere with it. He's implying equivalence, without bothering to discuss how aggression and war crimes is acceptable.

This isn't what I was trying to say at all. I am saying, even if we can consider Russia's actions are unjust, let's look at this in a practical sense. Ok, we do not want to encourage Russia to think they can take as much land as they want. Has this historically been the case though? With Georgia, did Russia occupy the whole country after occupying Abkhazia and South Ossetia, or are they not autonomous regions within Georgia now that have a good relationship with Russia? Similarly with Ukraine, there is a war ongoing in Donbas, Zaporhizhzhia and Crimea so it is had to speak about their current relationship with Russia, but regardless, is there reason to believe Russia would take the whole of Ukraine? This isn't Czechoslovakia, Putin's incursions into Ukraine have been met with massive NATO-backed resistance. In fact, there is reason to believe that unlike the Munich Agreement which was imposed by Britain and France, Western Leaders actually went a long way to scuttling the Ankara Negotiations.

More to the point though, do we want to encourage the American-led NATO alliance to continually expand what is actually the most aggressive military organisation in the world (much more so than Russia or China), with ongoing interventions in Yemen, Somalia, Niger and Syria? Isn't that in itself a form of appeasement that we are always attributing to the possibility of diplomacy with Russia? Isn't there a stronger case to be made for preventing the military alliance that is a lot more prone towards creating global destabilisation, war and panic and has been doing this since Winston Churchill's proposal for Operation Unthinkable?

[late]

neocon institutions like RAND

RAND isn't neocon.

Putin has started 5 conflicts. He's not subtle...

One of the rooms he uses for media events has statues, all of them Russian conquerors. That's an example, like I said, he ain't subtle.

This war, all by it's lonesome, is prima facie proof of Putin's ambitions.

[Sceptic]

Regardless what his ambitions may or may not be, we have learned that he simply doesn't have the resources to steam roll through Ukraine, I don't even know that it is in his power to take Odessa and build a land bridge into Transnistria. Again, this isn't like Czechoslovakia—Hitler was able to steam roll through the country after Britain and France imposed the Munich Agreement. The greater world threat comes from the destabilising nature of NATO expansion which is undeniably the world's most aggressive military alliance. Russia and China promoting their interests within their own spheres of influence simply doesn't compare to our own provocations. We know that wars have been started over far less than NATO expansion, and ships have been blown up simply for being on the perimeter of another countries water boundaries. It is nothing novel for Russia to perceive a threat from a country with a history of anti-Russian antagonism and Banderite political cultural to ascend into NATO and build a nuclear weapons program. We know from the Monroe Doctrine and the Cuban Missile Fiasco that Americans would treat the issue with probably a lot less restraint. So again, as per the thread title: Russia is not the greater evil.

[late]

The greater world threat comes from the destabilising nature of NATO expansion

The threat comes from the guy doing the threatening...

The former Soviet countries were begging to be let into NATO, they knew this day would come.

[Rich]

Again, this isn't like Czechoslovakia—Hitler was able to steam roll through the country after Britain and France imposed the Munich Agreement.

The liberal seems almost incapable of critical thought, when it comes to Czechoslovakia. I mean the name of the country should start ringing bells, to anyone who isn't totally ignorant. Why wasn't it called CzechoGermania, or the like. Germans were the second biggest ethnic group, not Slovaks.

But the Germans were Nazis says the Liberal. Oh dear! Well of course Nazi did not have the meaning back then that it does now. But even if it had, The Czechs were the founders of Nazism. The German Nazis and Mussolini both to some extent modeled themselves on the Czech National Socialists. And it was this party that had by this time changed its name to the Czechoslovak National Socialist Party that led the government at the time of Munich.

Of course in the pathetic fantasy world of the liberals, Czechoslovakia was some sort of innocent nation state, its neighbours on the other hand saw it as a bigoted nationalist expansionist state and far from looking to defend its borders were eager to take part in its carve up. Austrians, Germans, Hungarians, Poles and Ukrainians all thought they were entitled to take territory from Czechoslovakia. In March 1939 The Nazi Soviet pact hadn't been signed, so the Ukrainians had to wait till they got their piece of the Czechoslovak pie.

[late]

The liberal seems almost incapable of critical thought

Which is 5 or 6 steps ahead of you.

You keep losing arguments, so you wind up arguing against strawmen than only exist in your demented fantasy world...

[Sceptic]

@late
Personally, I would be more interested to hear what you have to say on his points regarding Czechoslovakia than whatever comeback quip you have.

[late]

@late
Personally, I would be more interested to hear what you have to say on his points regarding Czechoslovakia than whatever comeback quip you have.

It's crap.

My understanding is the Italians were the first fascists. Not that it matters, Hitler was starting a world war... That matters.

Sounds like he's trying to whitewash fascism and Putin in one go. Not that there's much of a difference between Putin and fascism.

The reason NATO has new members, and is the most united they have ever been, is because when Putin invaded Ukraine a second time, they were outraged. They have good reason to be, after centuries of war on the continent, they had thought it was behind them.

Then Putin kicks over the table in such a way that says he's going to try to conquer parts of NATO.

In my distinctly unhumble opinion, we should have given Ukraine the good stuff earlier, as early as possible.

[Rich]

Sounds like ....

There you have Salem Liberalism in a nutshell. "Sounds like", that's why when I said I believed that the Earth was an oblate spheroid, one of the Liberals responded "So you are a flat Earther then." This is all the Liberal needs, something that sounds like a forbidden belief. It sounds like something a Flat Earther would say. In the same way if something sounds like something a Nazi / Fascist / White Supremacist / anti-Semite / fundamentalist Christian / holocaust denier / Climate Change denier / Putin lover/ homophobe etc would say that's enough for the Liberal. Note it doesn't matter if its actually something they would say. No flat earther would ever say that the earth is an oblate spheroid, that's been the view of the scientific establishment for hundreds of years. All that matters is that it sounds like, to the ignorant know nothing liberal.

My understanding is the Italians were the first fascists. Not that it matters, Hitler was starting a world war... That matters.

What does that even mean Hitler was starting a world war? In March 1938? How in God's name does demanding the Sudetenland which was overwhelmingly ethnic Germany and been party of German led state for most of the last thousand years count as starting a world war but Mussolini's invasion of Abyssinia did not?

Churchill opposed sending arms to Ethiopia. Hitler sent arms to Ethiopia.

[late]

What does that even mean Hitler was starting a world war?

He did start a world war...

In addition, intent counts. Hitler intended to conquer, and then went and did it. A lot of countries have some fascists, but somehow they don't invade their neighboring countries... Ignoring that is deranged.

[Rancid]

NATO alliances role in provoking the conflict

Which troops from which country invaded where?

[Rich]

Which troops from which country invaded where?

The first invasion that was resisted was the invasion of the Donbas Republics by the Ukrainian army and the Neo Nazi militias formed in western Ukraine. The Maidan was not a military coup, I can well believe that it had the support of the majority of Ukraine's population, but a very substantial part of the population of Ukraine did not support it and did not appreciate the overthrow of the elected president.

We had a similar thing in Britain in 1688. I think the overthrow of James II was a thoroughly good thing, But I can understand why many many people of the British Isles never excepted him as legitimate ruler. In fact the Catholics of Ireland never really accepted the regime after. Hence people were still killing each other over this event over three centuries later. In fact while the killing may have stopped the settlement of 1688 in the form of the Irish border is still a key dividing line of British politics.

[Sceptic]

:eh:

Which troops from which country invaded where?

Do you understand the meaning of the word "provoke"? If somebody approaches you in a bar, puts out their cigarette in your beer and tells you your wife is an ugly prostitute that would probably suck on their dick in front of you for a dollar, that is a provocation. The difference between this and the retaliation (the first punch) is that the person initiating the violence is not necessarily the one who created the situation.

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provocation
noun
1.
action or speech that makes someone angry, especially deliberately.
"you should remain calm and not respond to provocation"

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I mean, even if this concept wasn't biologically intuitive, it could be easily understood by simply looking in a dictionary.

[skinster]

[Deutschmania]

I feel that then Pres. George Herbert Walker Bush said it best when he warned the Ukrainians against ethnic hatred and national hostility. In addition, I will add the words of Maryana Naumova to Arnold Schwarzenegger .