Quote (JohnnyMcCoy @ 24 Mar 2023 01:33)
we both know that encroachment is a thing, only a matter of time until russia would experience all kinds of fuckery, if fully surrounded by NATO, it does not need an open war to threaten a country (not saying this is necessarily and 100% true here, but you can think that way)
there is obligation to help ukraine, switzerland rightfully rejects this notion, that you are either pro ukraine or pro putin
once again, you posted the video about "realism" yourself, what has happened was actually explained there
plenty of people predicted this and called for a neutral ukraine, ignored
the US themselves predicted both the ukraine and georgia scenarios (wikileaks documents), still rejected compromise
lets not act like putin invading for the sake of just invading and grabbing land was some kind of foregone conclusion, thats just wrong and was created as a talking point AFTER the invasion
even without the eastern ukraine mess, the sevastopol base alone would be enough to trigger russia, they will never give that up to let NATO march in there
again, this has nothing to do with downplaying or justifying what happened and is still happening
i did not expect putin to take the bait, thats why i was wrong when i said putin would just threaten to invade, unfortunately the realist geopolitics are undefeated
to clarify: of course you or me are not "the country", but, for example, the support for US invasions i talked about earlier is still the policy of our elected government and those before them
you can support it or not, to at least some degree we individuals are still on the hook for this as its the result of a collective decision
it seems like you fundamentally misunderstood what realism is and what it isn't. for you to portray mearsheimer's selected highlights (wildly popular in both far left "marxist" as well as MAGA bubbles, aiming to downplay russia's share of the blame), as THE realist perspective is just objectively wrong. there is no such thing. to be specific, mearsheimer is arguing from a cold war era american realist's perspective, aiming to preserve US hegemony in its competition between two opposing superpowers of roughly equal strength, regarding the hundreds of millions of europeans (including you) as mere poker chips to be balanced evenly between russia and america.
a european realist with a modern mindset would obviously argue from a fundamentally different perspective, realising that a largely united europe has long exceeded russia's power and would be playing for its own chips. in mearsheimer's world, russia could / should / would have already invaded many times before btw: poland, the baltic states, romania, hungary, bulgaria, czechia and slovakia - according to him, they all should belong to the russian sphere of influence again, to even out the eternal struggle of power between the old rivals. still a fan?
anyway, that part of his ideology, which the russia apologist on both sides apparently aren't aware of, is also the part that got debunked by reality more than anything else - through the collapse of the soviet union, and the peaceful unification of europe.
people post mearsheimer clips and act like the fact that one prediction of his finally came true was proof his ideology and therefore his assigning of blame is "correct", but that's just an incredibly lazy and simplistic approach to political theory, and not sound logic.
to be clear: i'm by no means saying that all of his assessments and conclusions about russian motives are wrong, of course not. in fact, everything suggests that pootin actually has a similar mindset, very much still feels entitled to that sphere of influence (despite being a post soviet president), and still tries to maintain at least the illusion of russia as a superpower - but that neither made this war inevitable, nor does it lay the blame squarely on american (remember, the rest of us are just poker chips without agency) shoulders. not even within the framework of realism as a whole - only from the anachronistic american cold war realist's perspective, that of the morgenthaus, kissingers, and mearsheimers of this world, and that of those who subscribe to their ideology - despite history having destroyed many of their core assumptions.
i urge you to watch the video again, it does a much better job explaining all of that in detail btw.
This post was edited by fender on Mar 24 2023 04:24am