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Comment by breppp | Hacker News Reader

During World War 2 it was believed that the Germans will never change and will always be a source of conflict in europe (or worse). There were wild ideas like the Morgenthau Plan to completely dismantle any German ability to wage war.

But it turns out a very militarized nation can become completely pacifist after suffering a complete utter defeat, suffering and destruction.

Culture can change, just like 1990s Russia was a break from past and future Russia. However the 1990s were a disaster and thus the culture changes went to the opposite side

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>after suffering a complete utter defeat, suffering and destruction

And if you were willing to be utterly destroyed in order to utterly destroy Russia, then maybe this would work?

But at that point you've succumbed to exactly what you were trying to prevent. Ie - Your own destruction.

What we, at least we in the US, want is to figure out how to turn Russia towards peace without being utterly destroyed.

That's what the difficulty is.

We, on this side of the pond, prefer ideas that don’t involve national suicide.

Before the 2014 conflict in Donbas and annexation of Krimea, things were going in the right direction with Europe and Russia being big commercial partners. The Ukrainian revolution is seen as good by most Westerners, but that was really what started the open hostilities with Russia. Russia had a deal with the Ukrainians and that deal was undone by the revolution in favor with a deal with the EU, not to mention the 2008 Bucharest Memorandum that said Ukraine was to become part of NATO eventually together with Georgia. The Russians immediately invaded Georgia to prevent that from happening and that should have made it clear Ukraine could be next… but the US didn’t care and went ahead with openly supporting the Maiden. The writing was on the wall and the war was just a matter of time after that. Both sides keep escalating since then. I’m quite sure that if Trump doesn’t manage to stop this war , it will spill into Europe very soon and as in world war 2, everyone will lose almost everything before any good comes of it.

There was no such thing as 2008 Bucharest Memorandum, you are probably confusing it with the 1994 Budapest Memorandum. But NATO did hold a summit in Bucharest in 2008. Ukraine and Georgia hoped to get invitations to join NATO. Under Russian pressure, they were denied entry, and that was the end of it. This left Georgia and Ukraine outside NATO's protective umbrella and enabled Russia to invade both without triggering a response from the entire alliance.

The "eventually" you are referring to was nothing more than a polite "no", issued in the final statement of the summit as a consolation (one day we will invite you), after allies had made their negative decision.

When you say eventually, clearly the other side should take it seriously , wouldn’t you? Or again are we going into “they should believe us, but only sometimes” ??

Polite rejection letters often end with an upbeat, noncommittal note about the possibility of things being different in an undefined future. Saying that this opened the door for Georgia and Ukraine into NATO is incorrect; the allies decided on the opposite at the summit.

Georgia and Ukraine hoped to receive an invitation to NATO and begin membership negotiations. Today, almost two decades later, they still haven't received an invitation nor started negotiations.

This is not a "Bucharest Memorandum", but a memorandum of a convo between Bush and Putin, which happened on April 6th of 2008. What you are talking about is from [0], and you should not believe Putin's words verbatim. Remember: he likes to "teach" history people from other side of the world. He cherrypicks some facts, omits other facts, distorts some other, and spits out some narrative to base his claims on it. Later these narratives get to school history books and become the history as russians know it. This practice is more than hundred years old by now in USSR and later Russia.

[0] https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/33711-document-3-memorand... page 5

The defeat in this context might be just being defeated by Ukraine

My point is that culture can change, being aggressive in eastern europe is not the essence of Russia just like being aggressive in central europe turned out not to be the essence of Germany.

A fascist regime promises war, victory and glory, when that collapses the regime also collapses

> But it turns out a very militarized nation can become completely pacifist after suffering a complete utter defeat, suffering and destruction.

Which was not really Germany's case. It was going to be, see the Morgenthau plan, but then the US realised they needed someone to help contain the Communists, and Germany become integrated into the wider West, not even 10 years after Hitler. Something that was willfully not allowed to Russia in the 1990s. (And thank Kohl for that, wouldn't want to be containing China!)

I see 1990s Russia more similar to Weimar Germany, a failed democracy experiment where everyone came out from wanting something else.

Regarding Germany, as opposed to 1918, defeat was not something they could escape, complete and utter destruction of cities, mass rapes, ethnic cleansing, POWs and occupation.

The strict contrast with the fascist promises of victory is the real engine of denazificatiom imo

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