420blazeit69 [he/him] @ 420blazeit69 @hexbear.net

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505

Joined

4 yr. ago

Why would Russia change its demands? It's winning. If the other side is winning, you want to negotiate because the terms will only get worse.

A coup leading to a more U.S.-aligned government. The U.S. has only done that 100 times, including once in the last decade right there in Ukraine.

Man extremely rare Truman W in there

Maybe kill time by reading something beyond Wikipedia

the extreme right Jewish Power party

Not even trying to be subtle with the ethnonationalism

this discussion is just not important enough for me

Lmao you've been commenting in this thread nonstop for a full day now

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/30/russia-ukraine-war-kiev-conflict

Legitimate national interests don't include attacking ethnic minorities, which is a major cause of the current war dating back to the early 2010s.

There's also a question of what "national interest" means when the U.S. coups your elected government, as it did to Ukraine in 2014.

Gaddafi's Libya didn't seem to fit any of liberal, free, non-oppressive or democratic.

That's the point: your "well they deserved it" excuse is nonsense. Taking your arbitrary definition of "bad" countries at face value, all NATO interventions have done is make situations worse. Its actions are much more consistent with destroying regional economic competitors than with any sort of good faith effort to help anyone.

And all that is setting aside how the U.S. and its allies have destroyed any "liberal, free, non-oppressive" countries that don't adequately toe the U.S. line (see Indonesia and Chile, among others). The countries that remain have to choose between being subservient to the U.S. (to varying degrees) or becoming the type of state liberals like you deem deserving of wholesale destruction.

that intervention was based on a UN Security Council resolution, which no member (not even Russia or China) opposed

Russia, China, and three other states abstained, and only NATO countries actually dropped bombs.

I'm not actually saying that Russia just existing close to us is a threat.

That's exactly what you said, although you said it about the USSR, which was even more absurd.

I don't immediately remember any particurarily good (liberal, free, non-oppressive, democratic) nations that NATO poses a risk to, however. Perhaps you can refresh my memory.

So clever to fall back on the "well if I did do it, they deserved it" defense.

Do you think the people of Libya, a country you'd say deserved it, prefer their country after the NATO attack on it? They went from one of the highest (if not the highest) living standards on the continent to a decade of civil war and open-air slave markets.

Like what has she really done with her given portfolio? Most people are barely aware of what it even is.

She told Hondurans

What's really funny is

Think about what you're saying.

• The USSR just existing next to you is a threat.
• But Russia is in the wrong for thinking NATO existing next to them is a threat.

Why is it OK when you say it but bad when they do? If you're encouraging others to put themselves in your shoes ("you had to be there"), why can't you put yourself in Russia's shoes and see how they could reasonably perceive NATO as a threat?

hovered over us for 50 years

"Their mere existence is a threat"

There is no harm reduction candidate. They're both far past the point of any reason to support them, they'd probably do different bad things, though.

Replacing the Person Doing The Genocide with the Person Who Stood Near The Levers Of Power And Did Nothing = harm reduction

Lmao what?

What nations are allowed to have their own interests, and act to secure those interests? Is that something only for the U.S. and (when the U.S. allows it) its allies? Or is it possible that some countries have legitimate interests that conflict with the U.S.?

NATO is a hostile military alliance formed for the sole purpose of destroying the Soviet Union. It did not go away when that purpose was achieved, but continued to creep closer to the USSR's main successor state despite assurances that it would not. In this post-USSR period it has undertaken multiple purely offensive actions (the former Yugoslavia and Libya come to mind). It also invaded Afghanistan as a response to 9/11, despite none of the hijackers being from Afghanistan, and despite the Afghan government offering to turn over bin Laden. Then you have the puppetmaster of NATO invading Iraq on completely false pretenses, and generally running a wide-ranging assassination program all over the world.

I wouldn't want NATO near me, either.

I think U.S. allies had long since internalized that they would occasionally have to eat shit from the U.S. The bargain was a place as a vassal state instead of a target, and if those are your choices being a vassal state has a lot of appeal. The occasional overt screwjob is much less damaging than a constant destabilization effort.

The deal will continue to get worse under any U.S. president, but what they seem to be getting at here is the possibility of it getting torn up altogether, opening the door for more direct U.S. hostility. As long as they support NATO they aren't likely to be the target of a coup like the 2014 one in Ukraine, but what if NATO is gone?

Trump isn't going to be allowed to unilaterally withdraw from NATO on a whim, but he could do a lot of damage to it, and he can rile up the reactionary hogs against it, which would at least lay the groundwork for a still more impactful change.

LinedUp

This map?