https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/2135509
this is practically a child’s view of the world. good guy vs bad guy. Russia = bad, NATO = good. plus, someone should tell her she has it completely backwards: ending russia is kinda natos entire thing
If you’re anti soviet union then you’re pro nazi germany
ending the soviet union is kinda the nazis thing
Sorry I missed the part where NATO was an authoritarian regime that genocided people en masse.
Also hasn’t Russia repeatedly threatened countries to not join NATO? https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/12/russia-threatens-retaliatory-steps-if-finland-joins-nato.html
I get that NATO is a primary threat towards Russia because, y’know, they’re currently attempting genocide against Ukrainians, but to compare NATO to Nazi Germany is a little disingenuous don’t you think?
Sorry I missed the part where NATO was an authoritarian regime that genocided people en masse.
Where the fuck have you been the past decades you absolute buffoon
Libyans, Syrians and Eastern Europeans don’t count as people apparently. (Unless Russia is the one doing the killing of course).
Sorry I missed the part where NATO was an authoritarian regime that genocided people en masse.
For the first 40 years of NATO’s existence it sought to undermine democracy and reinforce the states of NATO aligned countries in Europe through terrorism and assassination.
They then rather genocidally carpet bombed Yugoslavia killing and wounding thousands of civilians ( many of whom were from Kosovo the people they purportedly wanted to help), 3 foreign diplomats by bombing a foreign embassy not in anyway involved in a conflict and completely destroying the infrastructure of Serbia.
They then genocidally invaded Afghanistan where they destabilized the country, toppled the government and then put pedophile psychos in charge because they were the ones willing to work with us, killed nearly 100,000 civilians, and then ended up putting the original government back in charge 20 years later.
Finally they genocidally took the most prosperous country in Africa, a country with universal college, healthcare, jobs programs, and housing, a desert country that had a 200 year supply of water and bombed the fuck out of it, destroying the water supply, plundering the gold, supporting the precursors to ISIS, and turned the country into a place with fucking slave auctions.
But yeah NATO isn’t genocidal, they just topple governments and bomb/terrorize civilians.
to compare NATO to Nazi Germany is a little disingenuous don’t you think?
No, it’s about right. I mean, the US is essentially Nazi Germany except successful. They even directly inspired Nazi Germany’s policies.
Also NATO was made up of literal Nazis from the jump, Adolf Heusinger was the fucking chairman of NATO like 15 years after being one of the heads of the Nazi army
to compare NATO to Nazi Germany is a little disingenuous don’t you think?
Hmm…
HMMMMMMM…
NATO gave informal promises to Gorbachev to not expand eastward (Gorbachev was stupid to believe these promises and not get them in writing as formal, legally-binding promises)
HMMMMMMMMMM?!?!?!?!
???
!!!
The countries in NATO have been engaged as aggressors in almost all wars in the 21st century.
I mean for sure, but also that’s not addressing the other points in my comment. Russia is clearly the aggressor in this case.
I’m not sure why people are whole-hog against NATO when there’s a more imminent threat against world peace pounding on the door of its neighbors. Y’know, the same one that was found to have directly affected the election of the US. The same one that’s also stomping human rights into the ground (okay the US is also doing this to its own people for this one, you got me).
Maybe once Putin keels over we can dissolve NATO.
You’re looking at this from an emotional standpoint, not geopolitical.
NATO’s existence is why Russia js aggressive. Think on it geopolitically, not emotionally:
You’re the leader of a country. The vast majority of your western border - the half of the country most inhabited by your population - is surrounded by hostile nations. The hostilities date back a few decades to the Cold War but that ended when the previous political system of the country dissolved. You spent the first decade or so of the new political system trying to make friends with these nations, but they keep refusing, all the while portraying you in all their media as the bad guys. Any move you make on the geopolitical scale for your own nation’s sake is tarred, while similar actions by the other countries are praised. No matter what you do, you cannot please these other countries, and they continue to threaten to put military bases and nuclear weapons on your border, eventually sealing your entire western border away behind hostilities.
What the fuck is one expected to do in this situation, and if this shit was happening to the US or anywhere in Europe, you know full well they wouldn’t take it lying down. Why is there an expectation that Russia does, when the world wouldn’t?
Maybe I’m drinking stupid juice, but I think that people hating Russia isn’t really a valid reason for them to invade Ukraine. I know that’s not specifically what you’re saying, but in essence that’s the line of reasoning that I’ve heard throughout this thread.
That said, Russia can’t be painted as “innocent” like so many posters here are stating. They routinely violate human rights. See:
Russian censorship of, among many other things, the internet: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Russia
Russia’s anti-lgbt policies: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/30/europe/russia-upper-parliament-lgbt-propaganda-law-intl/index.html
Russia’s anti-protest laws: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_assembly_in_Russia
Russia’s general laundry list of human rights violations: https://www.amnesty.org/en/location/europe-and-central-asia/russia/report-russia/
I’m not saying the US is much better, although it is marginally, but claiming that Russia is just “scared and defending itself” doesn’t really track. It’s an authoritarian regime.
If I’m misunderstanding this, somehow, please let me know.
Yes boss, you have catastrophically misunderstood the point.
The point isn’t that people were mean tk Russia and therefore they’re allowed little a invasion as a treat. The point is that they’ve been encircled by hostile nations since the 1990s despite all attempts at overture to them, and that the encirclement continues to get worse. NATO was formed explicitly to take on Russia, and the point of this thought experiment is to try and see this not from an emotional point of view (aka Russia bad) but from a geopolitical point of view of a nation’s leader.
Go back and read my post again. If you were the leader of Russia, knowing that decades of attempted détente didn’t work and that the organization who’s express goal is to break your country apart, and that that organization is doing its best to place troops and nuclear armaments on every inch of your border, would you accept that, or would you perhaps try and prevent that?
We know what happened when the shoe was on the other foot. The US placed nuclear missiles a thousand miles from Moscow on the Black Sea. When the USSR understandably got annoyed and placed nukes in Cuba, the US was seconds away from ending the entire world despite the Soviets repeatedly saying the nukes were defensive response to the Black Sea nukes.
So if we know that the US won’t accept hostile nations arming up on their border, why do we expect others to just kowtow to that?
Just to reiterate if the other post is not clear upon first reading, I could not imagine missing the points all over this thread more than the way you did in this comment. I would re-read it many more times. It’s a huge disagreement at basic ways of understanding geopolitics that the gap is either unbridgeable between you and these thoughts or it will seem like a mindfuck when you get what’s being said
Russia is clearly the aggressor in this case.
Why did Ukraine break two seperate ceasefires with the seperatist regions? If they didn’t this wouldn’t be a problem.
I’m not sure why people are whole-hog against NATO when there’s a more imminent threat against world peace pounding on the door of its neighbors.
Because you’re wrong and NATO is the much larger threat, demonstrated through their whole bloody history.
Y’know, the same one that was found to have directly affected the election of the US.
US allies also spend similar amounts or greater on advertisements around the US election. Russiagate was kind of just xenophobia applied to something everyone has been doing.
Maybe once Putin keels over we can dissolve NATO.
Oh, okay, you’re operating on great man theory and not material analysis. This makes your content make sense.
"The official Twitter account of the Donetsk rebels said in the early hours of Sunday that its forces were “taking Mariupol”, but later accused Ukraine of breaking the ceasefire. Fighters from the Azov battalion, who are defending the town, said their positions had come under Grad rocket fire.
Earlier on Saturday the truce had appeared to be holding, with only minor violations reported, as hopes mounted that the deal struck in Minsk on Friday could bring an end to the violence that has left more than 2,000 dead in recent months.
Both sides accused the other of violating the ceasefire, but there did not appear to be any serious exchanges of fire and no casualties were reported."
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/06/eastern-ukraine-ceasefire-russia
" The war began in April 2014 when armed Russian-backed separatists seized government buildings and the Ukrainian military launched an operation against them. It continued until it was subsumed by the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Donbas_(2014–2022)
At least be correct about what you’re citing. Russian backed separatists claim to be “taking Mariupol” and then backtrack with "oh no! We didn’t break the ceasefire! I promise! ".
Unsourced guardian article and Wikipedia lmao
The person I’m replying to did not even attempt to cite anything, but you’re gonna try and discredit my sources. Okay lol
Y’know, the same one that was found to have directly affected the election of the US
lol
How do you libs still believe in Russiagate?
Mostly based on the fact that Russian disinformation campaigns were found to have a widespread effect on the election and people’s voting decisions. There’s nothing to “believe” in, it’s just a fact that it happened.
no it isn’t
100,000 dollars in Facebook ads counts as “widespread effect on the election” to you? Are you being serious?
Russian disinformation campaigns were found to have a widespread effect on the election and people’s voting decisions
lmfao America is just full of reactionaries and racists who liked the idea of voting for a billionaire, building a wall, and killing immigrants. They didn’t need to be brainwashed by Putin into voting for Trump.
Do you think politics is just good guys and bad guys?
I remember back in 2003, when liberals were able to call Bush out on his “with us or against us” shit. I swear something badly broke liberals (more than usual) in the last decade.
If you’re pro-piss then you’re anti-shit. Makes perfect sense.
If we can support Syria and Iran critically, we can do the same for Russia in its fight against American imperialism.
amen. emphasis on critically tho. too many liberals think “critical support” means “super extra support”. all of us here understand that Russia is capitalist and pretty horrible on LGBTQ rights (not rlly worse than amerika tho). the difference is that NATO represents western empire: an institution that suppresses most of the world and extracts $10 trillion every year from the global south. Russia’s imperial ambitions are strictly regional, thus much easier to curtail by AES states. the global empire is infinitely more harmful to the proletariat of the world than a regional empire. im preaching to the choir here but i hope lemmy libs read this and understand
I agree on all your points except for the existence of Russian imperialism. By Lenin’s definition—correct me if I’m wrong—imperialism is when finance capital is consolidated enough in a given country for that country to begin exporting capital abroad. This might have been the case before the war since so many Russian oligarchs had their billions stashed in western banks, but the contradictions of imperialism itself—its need to grow and consume itself from the inside—now mean that this is no longer the case. Those Russian billions are either frozen or withdrawn as far as I know. Russia’s alignment with China and the BRICS, its long history of fighting for the global south (consider the images we’ve seen for years now of African protestors waving Russian flags), suggest to me that Russia is not actually imperialist and that it is indeed fighting for its life and existence (as it says). Putin is an opportunist appointed by Yeltsin (himself appointed by Clinton!), but opportunism can sometimes point in the right direction because there is no other way for it to survive. (The current president of South Africa is a criminal who likewise deserves our critical support due to his alignment with the BRICS, although none of us are going to be complaining if the EFF takes over next year.) All of us likewise know that a NATO victory in this war will just begin another nightmarish chapter of imperialism in eastern Europe, while a NATO defeat will present opportunities for workers around the world to throw off the American yoke.
Can you share more about your perspective concerning treatment of LGBTQ+ citizens between the two nations?
both countries treat queer ppl horribly
How can you think that? Being queer in one nation is a crime punishable with jail time in the other nation being queer is totally legal, celebrated with parades, and same sex marriage is valid nation wide.
lol which nation punishes being queer with jail time?
that was a rhetorical question. like i said, both nations have horrible track records w respect to LGBTQ communities, but neither jails ppl for being queer. at least not anymore, amerika had anti-sodomy laws until 2003. Russia does not jail ppl for gay sex
also the pride parades in amerika have been completely co-opted by capitalism. cops are allowed and even praised at most pride events and many of these events exclude different parts of the queer community
I was thinking of Chechnya which doesn’t represent the whole Russian Republic. I’ll update my info there. None the less persecution is ongoing.
You are still arguing a losing point. USA legally protects LGBT status and same sex marriages. The anti sodomy laws were invalidated 20 years ago.
Russia constitutionally banned same sex unions in 2020. There are no special protections for LGBT citizens.
It’s night and day.
if you are looking for a “night and day” comparison, compare either of these countries to Cuba, a country so legitimately dedicated to LGBTQ rights they amended their constitution to include them. the amerikan legal protections are flimsy and ineffective. i dont care abt being able to marry my partner as much as i care abt being denied health care, being assaulted or killed, and having our children taken away by the state. all of these acts of violence are permitted and perpetuated by the amerikan state.
Hasn’t Russia’s war on Ukraine done more to reinvigorate NATO than anything else in the past decade? If the goal is the diminishment of NATO, then Russia’s war on Ukraine is definitely bad for that goal.
The war with nato was always going to be “reinvigorated” whenever it chose to start a war with Russia. There’s nothing Russia can do about that. They just need to win. Also, it’s not as if the war wasn’t inevitable. There’s so much money to be pulled out of Russia while the nato armies are on their way to China. There’s no way the richest westerners were just gonna leave it on the table.
How do you think this war started?
Most immediately, a escalating genocide in the Donbas that Russia intervened in after several years. Otherwise it’s a story that would probably make the most sense to start in the early 20th century.
How can anyone be pro NATO? It’s part of the imperial core/triad’s powers monopoly on military force and intervention, that oppresses left wing or even general anti colonial movements globally, including within their own countries. There are plenty of people in the global south that are anti NATO and not even left wing! Imagine being to the right of Imran Khan on the issue of NATO and global monopolies of power!
If you are not against the imperial core/triad practicing a form of collective imperialism and neocolonialism by the use of organisations like NATO, the World Bank, IMF and the WTO, how can you even be on the left? Is the left not internationalist?
If you do not oppose the “monopoly of five advantages” the imperial core/the west aims to have in weapons of mass destruction, mass communication systems, financial and banking services, technology and access to natural resources through imperial rents, how can you even have hope for a better world?
If you’re pro-nato you’re not a “leftist”, you can be “on the left” or a “progressive”; but you’re not a leftist
I wonder how Libyans feel about this:
NATO gave informal promises to Gorbachev to not expand eastward (Gorbachev was stupid to believe these promises and not get them in writing as formal, legally-binding promises)
The Soviet Union tried to join NATO in 1954 but wasn’t allowed
Meanwhile NATO kept expanding
and including “former” nazis in its ranks
Gorbachev was stupid to believe these promises and not get them in writing as formal, legally-binding promises
If he had them as formal promises it wouldn’t matter. You can just break international agreements what are they gonna do call a cop
Good point. I made that point less about the actual prevention of NATO expansion, which, yes, wasn’t gonna happen either way, and more about NATO today taking advantage of Gorbachev’s stupidity and thus having plausible deniability that claims were ever made in the first place, since none of those promises were formal, legally binding, and documented outside of recently-declassified British archives.
well in that case critical support for comrade russia i guess??? these libs really aren’t doing a great job of stoking pro-russian sentiment tbh
I’m not going to act like Russia’s government isn’t all fucked up and stuff via neoliberalism, but insofar as multipolarity is concerned, they’re really keeping America from going totally hog-wild on their usual rape and murder across the global South.
Yeltsin and Putin both wanted to join NATO:
Even Stalin tried a little to join NATO
Wasn’t there an informal deal struck between Gorbachev and (I think) Clinton that Russia would be allowed to join NATO if the Soviet Union broke up? Or am I misremembering that
There was an informal deal around NATO not expanding to around Russia, which is what mearshimer and
have both talked about before.I think Russia tried to join NATO more to prove it was anti-russia
Another (rare) Kruschev W
The entire purpose of NATO was to destroy the USSR. But the USSR does not exist anymore. So now, its only purpose is to keep the military-industrial complex going. American corporations are 100% willing to immiserate the people of Eastern Europe and even Germany (Nordstream) to keep their weapons sales up. Hey, we abandoned Iraq and Afghanistan, and Taiwan is too risky - gotta use those weapons somewhere.
The goal is to “Latin Americanise” Eastern Europe and let them join the EU on unequal terms. Ask Greece how that goes when the EU has a financial crisis.
