First off, apologies for not just quoting your post Werm, and for the novel-length response. I don’t come on here enough to know how to pick and choose parts of a post, and I don’t want to copy the whole thing and wasting a bunch of screen space with my original post. And I’m a Poli Sci major who has always had a passion for geopolitics, which I don’t get to express all that often.
To your first point, that’s why I chose the wording that I did. NATO has interfered with other countries (i.e. Libya, Bosnia/Serbia, I won’t include Afghanistan, because that was the entire point of NATO as an entity), but they never had any intention of expanding into them (territorially, gaining soft power and influence is a different story). I would have a hard time equating an internationally-backed peacekeeping mission (and I’m not saying that those missions don’t have their own whole host of issues and problems) with what Russia did in Chechnya (twice) or is doing in Ukraine right now. As far as throwing countries into chaos, winning the peace is absolutely more important than winning the war, and I do wish that the West as a whole had a better track record there. When it comes to overthrowing dictators being concerning to Putin…I guess I don’t really care? If cracking down on bad guys makes bad guys nervous, maybe they shouldn’t be bad guys. Being fearful that they might lose their power doesn’t give them the right to be authoritative, gynocidal, megalomaniacal D-bags. To me, that argument seems fairly close to the idea of feeling bad for gangbangers who flee from cops, or assault or shoot them, because the police’s history of arresting people who break the law made them nervous?
As far as NATO expanding in Eastern Europe, I’d just go back to my original post. It’s not NATO’s fault that they’re a better choice than Russia. Each country should have the freedom to choose the alliances and partners that it wants, without fear of reprisals from other countries. The fact is, as far as Russia is concerned, NATO is and has always been next to no threat. Do you really think that if an individual country chose to invade Russia, the rest of NATO would go along with it? Or that NATO would ever be able to convince Hungary or Turkey that offensive action against Russia is a good idea? Heck, the main powers in NATO would never even think of attacking Russia, because it makes no logical sense, and has many, many drawbacks. Russia is just mad because through its own choices over the decades, its sphere of influence has shrunk again and again. That’s not NATO’s fault, that’s Russia’s. I’m not sure if you’ve been following what’s been going on in Armenia and Azerbaijan, let alone what else the Russian version of NATO (the CSTO) has(n’t) been able to accomplish over the years, but if any country were to weigh that against the pros and cons of NATO membership, I can’t imagine the CSTO looks that appealing.
When it comes to the difference between 2014 and now, there are almost assuredly plenty of political differences, and probably plenty we aren’t aware of. Rather than speculating on that, I’ll discuss what we do know. In 2014, compared to now, the Ukrainian government showed very little interest in seriously opposing Russia’s occupation. Now they’re treating it like an existential threat, and much more willing to fight. Also, it IS an existential threat. In 2014 it was a territorial dispute, and a bit of a land grab. In 2022/2023, Putin has stated one of the official goals of the invasion is to overthrow the Ukrainian government, and essentially occupy the country. Yes NATO has conducted similar actions, but I would love to see someone try to argue that Zelensky is on the level of Hussein or Gaddafi, as far as evil dictators go. Again, comparing Russia’s actions in places like Georgia and Ukraine to NATO’s actions in Libya or Bosnia is very much apples to oranges. Also, if anything, NATO’s actions in 2014 are evidence of how little of a threat Russia actually faces from them. Russia got away with Crimea essentially scott-free, and even after fully invading and decimating a sovereign country, NATO can’t agree on what weapons to send or who Ukraine’s grain should be shipped through. It’s obvious that the last thing NATO wants to do is get into a shooting war with Russia.
As far as gearing up for WWIII, I think that’s a pretty big overreaction. We’re essentially in the 1939-1941 phase of WWII, where we’re sending everything to our allies and letting them fight for us. That didn’t work in WWII, but Nazi Germany was a much more powerful foe that Putin’s Russia. I highly doubt we would need boots on the ground to finish the fight in Ukraine, if we outfited the Ukrainians properly. But if we use halfway measures and drag our feet, we very well could have another Vietnam on our hands.
You’re not wrong about the benefits of spending the money elsewhere. But I’d again bring up the fact that a lot of this money is going into revitalizing our defense industry and our armed forces, not just a blank check to line corrupt politicians’ pocketbooks. I’d also point out the ridiculous “bang for the buck”, no pun intended, of hamstringing Russia and potentially catalyzing a regime change, for what in the grand scheme of things is a miniscule amount of our GDP. Also, doing this is a huge wake up call to China, as far as their intentions towards Taiwan. And if anyone is unclear on why a China-Taiwan (let alone China-Taiwan-US) war would be the most devastating global event since WWII, and honestly potentially the most devastating event in the history of the modern world, think about the COVID supply chain issues, multiplied by about a thousand. Stopping that from happening is worth quite a lot, in my opinion. And again, Ukraine has been quite public about their desire and progress in tamping down corruption. I’d argue that the fact that they’ve fought this war as well as they have proves, to a point, that they’re succeeding. If corruption was such a problem, they wouldn’t be getting all these supplies to fight with, which means they wouldn’t be as successful as they have been.
Oh and as far as propaganda goes, only an idiot would say that the US doesn’t have any, and that what we do have isn’t very dangerous to small-minded people. One way to take care of that would be looking into something called Ground News, it’s an app that collates news articles that cover the same story from different viewpoints, as well as gives the reader an idea of what biases the reporting agency may have, and allows the reader to view coverage of an event from agencies that have opposing viewpoints to their own. I don’t have any stake in it, but it’s a great way to makes sure you get the whole picture. It’s a lot faster than trying to cruise through FOX, CNN, and the BBC’s websites, trust me.
But to your point, Dutchboy, last time I checked, the US hasn’t codified laws that make reporting on certain subjects or certain viewpoints illegal and punishable by a decade or more in prison, and I can’t remember the last time a US reporter or media figure happened to fall out a window or die of painfully obvious mysterious circumstances. Oh, and as much as I dislike Kamala Harris, she isn’t on FOX or CNN explaining how easy it would be for our ICBMs to annihilate Russia, complete with CGI diagrams. Or regularly threatening or calling for nuclear war in general. Feel free to do the research on how many times Russia’s MOD and that cheerful guy Dimtri Medvedev have done stuff like that. So yeah, I’d say there’s a pretty big difference between our levels of propaganda.