It was the four decades that General Smedley Butler spent fighting wars of aggression on behalf of the United States that led him to write "War is a Racket". At no point in the history of the United States were we "pacifists" - despite the revisionist history of those who choose to ignore our long, bloody history throughout Central and South America before we embarked on our global imperial crusade in 1917.
>There would be no Holocaust and millions of lives would be saved if people attacked nazi germany preventively in 1935 as proposed by Piłsudski.
There would have been no Holocaust and no Nazi Germany if Woodrow Wilson didn't plunge the United States into the war between crumbling European empires in 1917, and had instead kept the United States out of the war (a message he campaigned on) and forced them to come to an equitable and lasting peace on their own terms. As Ferdinand Foch (The Supreme Allied Commander during WW1) said after Versailles, "This is not a peace, it is an armistice for 20 years". Instead, our interference allowing England and France to put their boot on the throat of Germany, destroying them economically and leading directly to the rise of Hitler and the Nazis.
>If Ukraine was accepted into NATO in 2008 as Eastern European countries and USA proposed - there would be no 2014 invasion of Crimea and Donbas and 2022 invasion of whole Ukraine.
If NATO didn't insist on expanding after the fall of the Soviet Union (as promised by James Baker and others) and the United States didn't spend billions of dollars to help overthrow the democratically elected government of Ukraine in 2014, there would have been no 2014 annexation of Crimea. If the NATO-aligned regime in Ukraine upheld its obligations outlined in the Minsk 1 and Minsk 2 treaties, there would have been no invasion of Donbas or Ukraine in 2022.
>You cannot solve problems with wishful thinking.
This is very true. Nor can you solve problems with delusional thinking. Since the fall of the Soviet Union the United States and NATO have invaded and destroyed Serbia, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan and Syria. We have been bombing countries around the world from Pakistan to Somalia - bombings which continue with little fanfare and practically no attention from the media. The rest of the world (everyone outside of the US, EU and Australia/New Zealand) are well aware of our complete lack of moral and legal authority due to our long and ongoing history of worldwide aggression. The incredibly hypocrisy of pointing the finger at Russia's invasion of Ukraine while our troops right now, today, illegally occupy Syria is only lost on those who are thoroughly propagandized and/or entirely ignorant of the situation.
>Pacifism only works if both sides believe in it.
The same goes for international law and a "rules based international system". It doesn't work when the unwritten rules don't apply to us, but apply to every country that we consider hostile. The US Congress passed a bill authorizing the invasion of the Hague if any US citizen was ever indicted for war crimes! At the end of the day we can either strive for a peaceful world where every country is held to the same standards for their behavior, or we can have the world we live in where might makes right - we can't have it both ways.
Virtually everything you write is a lie that present-day Russian government media bombards its population with in a desperate attempt to justify why their military leaves behind a trail of childrens' bodies, poured over with gasoline and lit aflame to hide the horrendous crimes in a mirror image of how Nazi Germany behaved in Ukraine.
You are not offering some nuanced alternative view, but reurgitating known proven lies.
Here is one example:
>> If NATO didn't insist on expanding after the fall of the Soviet Union (as promised by James Baker and others)
Prominent members of Soviet leadership have explicitly denied that such subject ever came up. Nor did Russian representatives ever mention anything like it when most of Eastern Europe joined NATO in late 1990s and early 2000s.
This conspiracy theory emerged in late 2000s, when Russia took a turn towards revanchism and declared a war on the western world at Munich security conference. When the conspiracy theory first appeared, it prompted interviews with people such as the Soviet foreign minister Shevardnadze, who denied that the subject of Eastern Europe in NATO ever came up.
Spiegel asked it from multiple angles, but all they got was a solid "No":
>> SPIEGEL ONLINE: In February 1990, Germany's foreign minister at the time, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, assured you that "NATO will not expand to the east," and that states like Poland and Hungary could never be part of the military alliance. Because the conversion had revolved mainly around East Germany, Genscher even became more explicit, saying that: "As far as the non-expansion of NATO is concerned, this also applies in general." According to reports, you replied that you believed everything he said. So why didn't you get this commitment from NATO on paper?
>> Shevardnadze: Times have changed. At the time we couldn't believe that the Warsaw Pact could be dissolved. It was beyond our realm of comprehension. None of the participating countries had doubts about the Warsaw Pact. And the three Baltic states, which are now part of NATO, were still part of the Soviet Union then. Eventually, we agreed that a united Germany could be part of NATO under certain conditions. For example, a national army limited to 370,000 members and Germany waives the right to nuclear weapons. An expansion of NATO beyond Germany's borders was out of the question.
>> SPIEGEL ONLINE: At the end of March 1990, Genscher and the then US Secretary of State James Baker, talked about the fact that there was interest among "central European states" about getting into NATO. You knew nothing of this?
>> Shevardnadze: This is the first I've heard of it.
>> SPIEGEL ONLINE: Did you have a conversation with your colleagues in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary about a possible eastward expansion of NATO in the spring of 1990?
>> Shevardnadze: No, that was never discussed in my presence.
>> SPIEGEL ONLINE: The German documents give the impression that Moscow counted on the dissolution of both the Warsaw Pact and NATO. Did you really think that would happen?
>> Shevardnadze: That may have been discussed after I resigned from the ministry of foreign affairs in December 1990. However during my time in office it was not.
>> SPIEGEL ONLINE: Was the eastward expansion of NATO ever discussed in the inner circles of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1990?
>> Shevardnadze: The question never came up.
>> SPIEGEL ONLINE: Nevertheless, the eastward expansion happened a few years later. Did you feel, at the time, that the German diplomats deceived you?
>> Shevardnadze: No. When I was the minister of foreign affairs in the Soviet Union, NATO's expansion beyond the German borders never came up for negotiation. To this day I don't see anything terrible in NATO's expansion.
>> SPIEGEL ONLINE: At the conference in Ottawa on German unity in February 1990, you had five telephone conversations with Gorbachev. Did you discuss a possible NATO enlargement -- beyond the GDR?
>> Shevardnadze: No. We only had German reunification on the agenda, nothing else.
>>> If NATO didn't insist on expanding after the fall of the Soviet Union (as promised by James Baker and others)
>Prominent members of Soviet leadership have explicitly denied that such subject ever came up. Nor did Russian representatives ever mention anything like it when most of Eastern Europe joined NATO in late 1990s and early 2000s.
>This conspiracy theory emerged in late 2000s
Some of us are actually old enough to have been adults when the Soviet Union fell and to have lived through that period of time. We were around to witness Baker promise that NATO would not expand "one inch Eastward" of Germany.
>You are not offering some nuanced alternative view, but reurgitating known proven lies
This is a comically bad effort to gaslight people who lived through the period and actually witnessed exactly what transpired. Unfortunately many younger people who weren't around to witness what actually happened, and many people who are uninformed and/or misinformed are easily misled by gaslighting like this.
>> Some of us are actually old enough to have been adults when the Soviet Union fell and to have lived through that period of time.
So am I, and I remember very well how this hoax appeared out of nowhere in late 2000s.
But as Shevardnadze points out, a suggestion of such talks in 1990 is anachronistic, because at the time, fall of the Warsaw Pact and the USSR was beyond comprehension and not discussed. According to him and other direct participants, the quotes that have been taken out of context to "prove" this hoax were in fact limited to German reunification.
Eastern Europe getting into NATO and under "American nuclear umbrella" wasn't a serious topic until mid-1990s, first such ideas were floated in 1992-1993 timeframe and initially thought to be very far-fetched, because Russian forces were still in former Eastern bloc countries. The last Russian forces left Poland only in September 1993. Actual negotiations for the first countries started in July 1997 and were preceded by a treaty in May 1997 between NATO and Russia affirming the respect towards third countries freely choosing their alliances.
To put it bluntly, the hoax doesn't fit the timeline of events.
Everyone needs to make their substantive points thoughtfully and respectfully, and to remember that this is a large community with a wide range of views on divisive topics.
Strong feelings naturally arise on topics one has deep personal connections to, but that's true of many users on every topic, and moreover, such topics exist for every user. Therefore we all have to manage our own responses in order to preserve this place as a commons.
Calling someone a Russian troll for offering an accurate and dispassionate recitation of history is offensive and defamatory. Reasonable, decent and intelligent people know how to disagree and offer conflicting opinions without flinging ad hominen attacks, which also run afoul of the rules of HN.
>Russia is afraid because countries joining NATO means Russians can't invade them.
Or perhaps they saw what happened to Serbia, Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. When the Soviets tried to install their bases in Cuba in 1962, we threatened all out nuclear war to prevent them from stationing their missiles and troops on our border. They wisely retreated.
>NATO is the main reason Eastern Europe isn't all conquered by Russia by now. With all the usual genociding that goes on whenever russia conquers somebody.
Russia has spent the last 15 months trying to conquer the eastern 20% of Ukraine. No matter how dastardly you think Russia is, it is delusional to believe they have the military might, let alone the desire, to conquer "all of Eastern Europe".
For the record, I don't think Russia is "the good guys" - any more than we are. There are no good guys in geopolitics, only bad guys. That is why if we want a peaceful world we need a neutral, universal standard of international law that applies equally to the actions of all countries. Unless we want world war 3 and nuclear holocaust, the current "rules based international order" that allows NATO/US to bomb and invade whoever they want while branding others who do so evil villains is not sustainable.
> Or perhaps they saw what happened to Serbia, Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. When the Soviets tried to install their bases in Cuba in 1962, we threatened all out nuclear war to prevent them from stationing their missiles and troops on our border. They wisely retreated.
None of those countries have nuclear stock piles or strike capabilities of Russia, no one is invading Russia because of this reason.
> Russia has spent the last 15 months trying to conquer the eastern 20% of Ukraine. No matter how dastardly you think Russia is, it is delusional to believe they have the military might, let alone the desire, to conquer "all of Eastern Europe".
They keep talking like they are mere minutes from launching an attack on all of Europe itself, at least weekly on tv.
Do they have the capability? no, its clear they barely have the capability to project power past 300km of there borders, but that does not mean that they don't want to.
> For the record, I don't think Russia is "the good guys" - any more than we are.
The Russians are the invaders, the US and most of the rest of the western world are helping the invaded resist the invasion.
This war is as clear cut as WW2, theres bad guys, and good guys.
> That is why if we want a peaceful world we need a neutral, universal standard of international law that applies equally to the actions of all countries. Unless we want world war 3 and nuclear holocaust, the current "rules based international order" that allows NATO/US to bomb and invade whoever they want while branding others who do so evil villains is not sustainable.
This will never happen when you have countries that can unilaterally ignore agreements they sign because they have the threat of nuclear weapons up their sleeve. Honestly, if you want any kinda semblance of a world that doesn't have insane levels of nuclear proliferation then you must root for Ukraine to win.
Otherwise why else would anyone give up nuclear weapons (like Ukraine did, when they gave up thousands of weapons and there strike capability), if the world will not help them when people will nukes do want to invade.
