Quote (Goomshill @ Feb 28 2023 05:22pm)
I've said before that its the kind of distinction that lost its relevance when the US decided to interfere. Its a what-if scenario. Yes, the US could have tried to wait on an organic pro-western movement to surge in Ukraine, which would have necessitated Russia to act first and intervene more directly in Ukrainian politics to keep their sphere of influence. But we didn't. When it comes to the legitimacy of democracy and the aggressors who change the status quo by force- we're the ones who acted first, we're the proximate cause. And that's not to quibble over how much of a role the CIA played- clearly micromanaging the government and pulling all the strings after the fact- or to point out that the existence of Nazi death squads really should indeed be a red line that overshadows any moral, legal, political complexity beneath it. I think even stripping that away and getting to the meat of what caused the Ukraine war, it pegs right into the form of the US color revolution.
and I think the complexity you're talking about is inherent to all US color revolutions and the threat that Russia and China have perceived from them. We were never talking about the CIA going in with 25,000 troops (editor's note- I mean, like, post bay of pigs), we were talking about deep ethnic/religious/political divisions that pre-exist our interventions, but that we can exploit to rile up a populace to overthrow their government. There are huge populations of dissidents in Iran, in Egypt, in Bolivia and Kazakhstan and China. The threat isn't a bunch of CIA goons in black trucks pulling up, its the organization and support that could reach the tipping point of revolution. Ukraine was one such society. That doesn't diminish American culpability for intervening or Russian culpability for invading, what it does is just describe the mechanics of the system, what it took for us to reach this point.
A larger part comes down to what sort of lens you want to use to analyze it. If its a moralizing lens, you need to look at who started it. You need to look at the value of democracy, its continuity and legitimacy and the right of people to their self-determination free from foreign masters. If its the lens of a geopolitical chessmatch, then who dealt the fart is irrelevant, all that matters is who has manuevered themselves to gain or lose from the Ukraine war, what effect its having on our international relations, oil markets, supply chains, whether NATO expansion is being pushed back.
well said.
Quote (thesnipa @ Feb 28 2023 05:42pm)
russian troll farms creating fake US accounts to organize protests and counter protests during the 2016 election to rile up the deeply divided populace. "no big deal, just a bit of tickling here and there, changed nothing" goomshill
CIA poking at an already angry minority voting block in the capital who just lost an election by a few percent "yup, the US did this, so the context doesnt matter much and we can NEVER know if they'd have coup'd without us" also you.
yet no one asks the question beyond this war. why cant putin simply let Ukraine fall to the west? because of some fantasy where we encircle a nation with thousands of nuclear warheads and say "put down the big red button and come out with your hands up"? decade after decade Putin refused to modernize his nation and relegated himself to a fuel supplier who also makes 2nd tier weapons for 3rd world despots. the responsibility to change is not on the victor, but rather the defeated whilst on their knees.
instead he sped up his own country's demise, they're being removed from fuel supplier more and more every day and they have nothing left to offer. they'll be left with selling coal to africa, begging china to buy oil/coal/gas at reduced prices, and hawking shit weapons to anyone willing to pay 3/4 of what they're worth. over Ukraine and the silly premise that it's movement westward spelled their doom. like we're going to have a cuban missile crisis over a corrupt wheat basket that likely would have been denied NATO membership for decades.
All major powers have a vested interest in the leaders of their rivals, and countries of interest, and to my mind, MOST major powers actively seek to sway elections in other countries. im sorry but this is the state of the world we live in.
This post was edited by ferdia on Feb 28 2023 12:41pm