Hacker News Reader

Comment by protomolecule | Hacker News Reader

So you think 36% is not a lot and I agree.

What do you think about whopping 34% that in 2008 supported the bid to join NATO submitted by the Ukrainian president, who came to power after the so called Orange Revolution? Or 'it is different'?

"The Institute for Strategic Research poll asked the following question: “The Russian leadership has put forward the condition that in order for Russia to have good neighborly relations with Ukraine, Ukraine must renounce its intent to join NATO. What do you think, should Ukraine agree to this?” While 45.4 percent supported renouncing the goal of NATO membership, 33.6 percent replied negatively and 21 percent were unable to answer." [0]

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20080912143617/http://www.jamest...

View on HN

I'm saying that people couldn't care less about Russia, most of the Romanians look towards West, not East. So when asked "what do you think about Russia?", a possible answer could have been "yeah, positive, why not? nothing bad happened lately".

As for Ukraine and NATO, who's Russia to decide what other countries do? I get it, polls are nice for armchair analysis, but in the end Ukrainians should probably organize a referendum and decide for themselves what they want now, not in 2008.

>As for Ukraine and NATO, who's Russia to decide what other countries do?

Who was the US in 1962 to decide what Cuba and the USSR do?

>Ukrainians should probably organize a referendum and decide for themselves what they want now, not in 2008

Sadly, the time for that has passed, now it is war that decides what will happen.

Except there's no analogy here of course, because unlike Cuba in 1962, Ukraine did not station nuclear missiles, or take any other action objectively posing a threat to Russia. But Putin invaded anyway, because as the world knows, the invasion was never about Russia's legitimate security concerns in the first place.

Meanwhile, if we were to draw an appropriate analogy to 1962 it would go like this: "Confrontation over missiles, Khrushchev backs down. However, JFK is not satisfied with Khrushchev's assurances that Cuba will not eventually form a NATO-like alliance with Russia, and doesn't like the idea of the countries forming close economic ties, and so decides to invade anyway, seeking regime change and a government in Cuba that is permanently friendly to US interests."

The latter (hypothetical) action would have been neocolonial aggression in the classic mold, of course - on top of being a transparent sham. And in exactly that vein, a much closer analogy to the course of action Putin actually took in Ukraine.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but negations regarding Cuba were peaceful. And there was no war for 50+ years.

Yeah, it's hard to join NATO even if you want to, while your country is invaded.

No, they were anything but peaceful. [0][1]

>And there was no war for 50+ years.

There is still no war between Russia and the US.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Missile_Crisis#Averted_n...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War#Kennedy's_escalati...

Fascinating, the degree to which Kennedy's delusion that he could "make his power credible" by taking a stand in Vietnam mirrors Putin's own delusion that he could win a similar degree of credibility by going into Ukraine:

  Kennedy believed another failure to stop communist expansion would irreparably damage US credibility. He was determined to "draw a line in the sand" and prevent a communist victory in Vietnam. He told James Reston of The New York Times after the Vienna summit with Khrushchev, "Now we have a problem making our power credible and Vietnam looks like the place."

As Žižek teaches us: everything happens twice -- first as tragedy, then as farce.

>As Žižek teaches us: everything happens twice -- first as tragedy, then as farce.

That line actually originates from Karl Marx's The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte: "Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice...the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce." Žižek often references this concept, but it’s Marx who coined it in his analysis of historical repetition.

You need to really work on the depth of your historical understanding and get off of Mastodon or Lemmy, which I'm guessing is why I mistook your addledness for Twitter.

Haven't been on either of those platforms, and couldn't even tell you what they look like.

But if that's the only defense you have for the current farce -- sure, go ahead and run with it.

Will do -- again. Hope that information helps. :)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com