Quote (ferdia @ 2 Mar 2023 16:53)
OFC i have a dog in this fight, escalating the war to WW3 is just mental. AFAIK you are in Germany? Do you want Germany to be at war, another world war? Why would any sane person just take the western position and ignore Russia's security concerns ? Merkel understood the situation very well, it was her JOB. The current crop of politicians are ignoring real concerns that seem to have been forgotten somewhere along the way.
I see the image you made above with me - i am flattered. ULTIMATELY someone is going to have to compromise. I posted a video the other day which to my mind explains why there will be no compromise in 2023. feel free to watch it if you have time.
where do you see any of us supporting Russia's invasion of Ukraine ? No one supports it. and calling out critical issues or concerns with current events is not the same thing as supporting the invasion, even if some people seem to think it does.
that's not a sound or reasonable position though. condemning russia and those that are promoting its excuses and narratives does NOT mean you want to "escalate to ww3" - that's just flawed logic.
any reasonable person would see how there are
a whole lot of other options between simply "allowing russia to annex ukraine in order to prevent ww3", and "oppose the russian invasion and thereby trigger ww3". it's a textbook false dichotomy.
helping the ukrainian people to defend themselves against russian invaders, trying to isolate russia diplomatically and economically, making it too costly to continue its war, is the current western approach. the "argument" that this will inevitably lead to further escalation and eventually nuclear annihilation is neither logical nor cogent. like starting this war in the first place, nuclear escalation would be
russia's decision. to suggest that's "inevitable" or "forced" is ridiculous - we can't just deny russia's agency when it's convenient for our position.
this weird
"russia is merely reacting logically to what the west does" narrative makes no sense, and the fact that even the biggest kremlin bots did not predict this full-blown invasion, many of them outright stating "pootin wouldn't be that dumb", proves that - even if they are now trying to pretend that never happened and want to portray the murdering of tens of thousands of innocent people and the destruction of a country as merely a logical and justified reaction to western "aggression".
the simple truth is that even they knew at the time that
a free and western-oriented ukraine would NOT be some kind of existential threat to russia as a country. just because pootin claims that publicly, in order to justify his war, doesn't mean he actually believes that, let alone that it's true - and it's for the same reason you pretend we have to do whatever russia says now: its ability to start (and finish) ww3,
its nuclear arsenal.
the main flaw with that approach, with the whole
"i don't think it's right what they're doing, but we have to give in because we don't want to risk ww3" angle is that it would affirm pootin's calculation: "it might be costly, but ultimately i get what i want because the west will eventually back down due to my threats". he literally learned that in abkhazia, south ossetia, crimea... some western sanctions, but in the end he got what he wanted.
if you don't put an end to that, it will never stop. after you give him donbas, he will go for the remaining black sea coast, the rest of ukraine, transnistria, then the rest of moldova...
do we just accept that by pretending only the west has the responsibility to "prevent ww3"? that might be the kind of simplistic logic that the cold war has imprinted on us, but in reality, the russians don't want to be blown up by nukes any more than the americans do. believe it or not, they are still human beings - well, most of them are at least...