And if previous actions justify later actions then the US shouldn't have meddled in 2014.
Thus "no need" to blame Russia, the US is responsible.
In reality, things are much more nuanced than that logic.
I hear this a lot, but living just a few hour drive from the conflict and sharing a border with Russia, my take is that the west is overthinking this.
This is Russian politics which spilled over to another country. You can see it in e.g. how Prigozhin is positioning himself politically.
They're trying to figure out who will lead Russia in the coming years and this invasion is used to further this goal.
Of course there are other objectives, but this is the main one.
If Russia didn't invade, Russia wouldn't be killing people and blowing up their stuff.
Russia's actions are Russia's responsibility, not America's.
Peaceful orientation: Russia started it
Warlike orientation: Ukraine winning this thing would defeat a major US rival
Budget conscious: sending $1 to Ukraine does more to cement US hegemony than sending it to the DoD
Social justice types: Russia has a horrific record on the human rights of anyone who isn’t Putin
Conservatives: Ukraine, formerly part of the USSR, is trying to align itself more with the Western way of doing things and Russia is violently trying to stop them
The biggest meme amongst conservatives now is how west all sucks. Amazing how quickly that spread. Reagan would be disgusted with traitors that calls themselves Republicans nowadays.
Finding Russia to be the aggressor and Ukraine to be the victim doesn't automatically imply you have to throw away all your mental faculties and gobble up wartime propaganda without questioning, reducing yourself to a binary classifier - "it says Ukraine good == it's good; otherwise, it's pro-Russian trolling".
War time is literally the last moment you want to take what anyone involved says at face value. The eagerness with which people in tech circles - including on this very website too - are jumping in to loudly signal their allegiance with a side (be it Ukraine in this conflict, or US in US vs. China threads, or...), whether or not it even makes sense, much less follows any kind of sensible reasoning - this is what keeps baffling me. As a teenager/young adult, I had the impression that STEM circles are better than this. The last decade has proven me wrong.
We can debate the merit of the idea of sacrificing the thing you value the most in order to protect it - but it's neither here, nor there. People on the ground, fighting to defend their homes, are going to do whatever they feel necessary, including plenty of nasty, ugly, underhanded things - as it has always been in the history of war. But people far away, safe from any ongoing conflict, have no excuse - they're not sacrificing anything but intellectual integrity, and they're not doing it for survival, but rather for internet points or a leg up in some domestic political games.
It's possible there's a secret plan which will turn things around, but it seems more likely that the only thing which benefits from our inevitable defeat is the arms industry.
The benefit of a Russia that is incapable of committing more or any forces to there numerous wars of conquest is a net benefit for the entirety of the Europe as it increases stability in the region.
Might be worth asking again in a year from now when this war will likely still be deadlocked.
I talked about politics that I don't like here it is: the west is not losing, it's winning substantially. Even if Ukraine doesn't win back territory, the west sees Russia bash itself against a wall losing men and equipment, and showing its hand operationally. And the amount spent is a pittance to western governments. We could, and imo we should, give Ukraine to means to win. But I would say there is a calculation going on the US about stringing out the war longer to weaken Russia even further and perhaps even pull out its alliances, see what happens.
Neither Russia nor Ukraine are going to "win" in the sense of coming out of things better than they went in. Ukraine obviously. But Russia has probably fallen further from higher. The war has essentially solidified Ukraine identity and politics, but it's starting to unravel Russian politics. Nobody can know what the future holds, but I cannot see a future now where Russia is not considerably weakened - it's turned it's western neighbours/customers into enemies, shown weakness to its vassal states, and gone begging to China for material and trade.
Also what outcome do you want? We surely don't want Russia to win this and think its great and start more wars and repress more people. I think we should care at least.
I don't consider well north of $100billion and climbing to be a pittance.
> We could, and imo we should, give Ukraine to means to win.
And yet we haven't. The Ukrainians are still rationing artillery fire, appear to have lost most of their air defence cover and long ago lost air cover.
If we were serious about winning the US government would have switched to a planned economy (as we did in WW2), taken control of munitions production and gotten a handle on our out of control military contract padding.
> But I would say there is a calculation going on the US about stringing out the war longer
That's certainly one way to spin trying to lose more slowly.
> Also what outcome do you want? We surely don't want Russia to win this and think its great and start more wars and repress more people. I think we should care at least.
a negotiated peace. Tricky given all of the times the US has betrayed Russian trust over the last ten years. The only plausible route feels like a massive neutral DMZ (probably everything east of the Dnipro) administered by a BRICS led UN peace keeping force.
Hugely embarrassing for the West and NATO, but would end the killing and devastation and allow us to concentrate on the real threat of climate change.
How is that even remotely plausible? It would be absolutely unprecedented in scale, Ukraine would have to cede protection of massive amounts of its territory in exchange for Russia doing what? Stop trying to unsuccessfully advance frontlines and be saved from counteroffensive?
It makes no sense to me.
You may not but the west does, the US is spending less then 10% of its yearly military budget and is mostly giving Ukraine stuff that was going go be replaced soon anyway.
> a negotiated peace. Tricky given all of the times the US has betrayed Russian trust over the last ten years. The only plausible route feels like a massive neutral DMZ (probably everything east of the Dnipro) administered by a BRICS led UN peace keeping force.
Why should Ukraine trust a negotiated peace with a country who already has multiple international agreements to not invade them?.
Ukraine already has a negotiated peace agreement with Russia it’s called the Budapest memorandum it didn’t stop them invading in 2014 or 2022.
All a negotiated peace does is allow Russia to rearm itself and try and grab more land.
We have tried appeasing Putin in the past when the west did nothing about what happened in Georgia, Chechnya and in Ukraine in 2014.
Appeasement doesn’t work, the only thing Russia understands is force so the only way this works out well for the rest of world is if they suffer a huge defeat.
I don’t see this working unless the DMZ starts on Russias side of the pre 2014 border.
> Hugely embarrassing for the West and NATO, but would end the killing and devastation and allow us to concentrate on the real threat of climate change.
If you want to really end these threats then get Russia to leave Ukraine. But I have a feeling you don’t want that to happen.
Would be nice to live in a world where there was no border conflicts or vile threats from governments.
No such point? I don't think you processed what a "moral blank cheque" means.
FredPret >moral blank cheque
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