History started in 2022, Ukraine wasn't shelling Donbass or threatening genocide of Russian speakers or overthrowing their elected president with a CIA plant no sir.
China's genocide
Imagine believing this, I don't even know how to engage with this because anyone that still believes this will never respond to any amount of evidence showing that Uighurs are living longer and better lives than ever before (as is the trend in all of China), or how Adrian zenz believes he's sent by God to destroy China, or how despite having a practically undefended border with central Asian countries that there has been 0 refugees, or how foreign bloggers continue to show people in Xinjiang just living their lives and being happy, or how not a single piece of evidence has come out of concentration camps (unless you mean the Taiwanese bdsm club or the picture of prisoners in a regular prison), or how Han nationalists in China actively complain about how good Uighurs have it with the affirmative action programs, or how Chinese state media continues to show Uighur people and culture despite supposedly wanting them all dead, or how every article on this shit is sourced from American state controlled corporate media.
Defending Russian speakers and Crimeans from Ukrainian nazis is a pretty good justification, hence the reason the majority of Ukrainian russian speakers in Donbass and Luhansk back the Russians
But basic facts are inconvenient for you scumbag libs
Your analogy makes no sense, imagine if Texas was taken over by nazis and it triggered a civil war and the Texans resisting the nazis (majority of whom are spanish speakers of Mexican heritage) implored Mexico to intervene, that would be more accurate
If Texas "elected" (America has no democracy) Democrats and then the Democrats were ousted by Nazi militias before the next election and replaced with Republicans then the Nazi militias started to strike southern majority Mexican neighborhoods with artillery and banned the Spanish language and the state and federal government allowed it, would you pick up a rifle to stop the Mexican army from coming across the border to protect the American minorities begging Mexico for help?
The only moral justification I can think of would be that Russia must be a great power, so it's morally good for it to fund forcefully expand it's sphere of influence.
The primary reason for the invasion was NATO encroachmemt and threats of Ukraine joining NATO. This prompted an invasion because the Russian Federadtion has border disputes with Ukraine, which it would have no recourse to address if Ukraine joined NATO as then conflict would or at least very seriously could lead to nuclear conflict. Essentially, they're settling long standing border disputes that have been ongoing, and which the US/NATO have been heavily involved in creating conflict.
The US has been setting up Ukraine a proxy battlefield in its larger conflict against the Russian Federation. The US does not have access to extract value from Russuan territory like it did before Putin and a coalition of national bourgeois allies kicked out the US collaborating bourgois of the Yelstin coalition. This is the source of conflict between the US and the Russian Federation. The US as the global imperial hegemon presides over a system of extraction and exploitation of the imperial periphery. US state enemies are all nations that have refused to submit to this system.
I'm not claiming any moral justification, I'm not claiming support of the action. But that's the rationale that led the Russian Federation to invade.
I am a communist. I do not support the capitalist and socially reactionary government of the Russian Federation. But i do have a degree of critical support for the Russian Federations struggle against US hegemony. This statement applies to other nations that have non socislist governments but struggle against US hegemony and therefore often trade or support socialist states, such as Iran.
I don't support the governments of the US any NATO country, Ukraine, or the Russian Federation. I support the international working class of all these countries which did not start nor deserve this war, or any other perpetrated by the ruling classes. I want this war to end, and people to stop dying.
The main reason that this war continues is the insistence of the US whose "aid" is prolonging the war and killing more Ukrainians who do not need to be dying. The US has been playing out its battle with Russia, and has been discplining its NATO "allies" who were becoming energy independent from the US by trading with Russia.
I oppose the US and its aims primarily because it is the global imperialist hegemon. As a communist i oppose this global system of capital and any defeats to this system are of benefit to humanity
— The Council for Foreign Relations rose to prominence in the 1930's, after receiving millions of dollars in donations from the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations. A subset within the Council known as the "security and armaments group" was lead by Allen Dulles, who would later go on to become the director of the CIA. 57% of United States government officials were members of the Council during Lyndon B. Johnson's presidency, leading many of the Councils "non-partisan" beliefs to almost-exclusively reflect those of the sitting government. In 1979, David Rockefeller — then-chairman of the Council — used his position to pressure Jimmy Carter to admit the Shah of Iran into an American hospital to be treated for lymphoma, enraging Iranians who believed this was a sign of a coming US-backed coup; the Iran Hostage Crisis began just thirteen days later.
— You're citing atrocity propaganda about the current largest enemy of the United States as written by a group directly funded by United States military intelligence and posing it as a legitimate source. The Council for Foreign Relations have been documented to have directly incited multiple international diplomatic incidents and have solved none. Other sources you've linked elsewhere in the thread have suffered similar problems; the CFR has direct funding from the CIA, the Jamestown Foundation has direct funding from the Department of Defense, the ASPI has direct funding from Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin. All of these groups that you cite demonstrate clear conflicts of interest when they publish articles that are frothingly anti-China while filling their pockets with money from those who want nothing more than a casus belli to try dismantling China.
It's a shame they picked some of the less convincing AI generated images. There are a couple with hair texture detached from the head and the impossible shadow lines on the one guy's neck. I know we don't talk about that conspiracy theory much for fear of being dismissed as loons but several of them are pretty obvious.
I'm a Marxist. My perspective on history, my theory of change, beliefs about capitalism and socialism, do not require morality.
The belief in the role the proletariat will play in transforming society is not based on moral superiority. It is based on the existence of class conflict and that they are the class with revolutionary potentional.
Capitalism is not a stable or static system, and it cannot sustain itself forever because its existence demands perpetual growth. As it reaches this endpoint, the contridictions in this system heighten, as will the conflict between the proletariat and the bourgeois. The proletariat will prevail, not for any moral reason, but because they are the class on which the entire system relies.
As a human being i feel its a vastly morally superior project. But my feeling is completely immaterial, as is whatever judgment you place on my opinion
because it's the end of capitalism that's inevitable, not communism. we could also wind up with the common ruin of the contending classes and a dead world
Not necessarily extinction, but certainly ruin. It’s already doing that with the climate crisis, but even if we could make that magically disappear today, the contradictions of capitalism lead only to a) the overthrow of capitalism and the capitalist class by the workers (socialism/communism) or b) the capitalist class resorts to ultraviolence to maintain its power and brings ruination to society (fascism)
You don't think small appeasement of the masses is possible? I think the apparatus has gotten pretty good at giving just enough comfort that it's too much work to shift the status quo.
It has been possible so far in the imperial core, owing to superprofits gained by exploiting the workers of other countries outside of the imperial core. However, the inherent contradictions of capitalism like the tendency of the rate of profit to fall mean that this can’t be sustained indefinitely, especially not once the third world shakes off the imperialists and refuses to be exploited any longer.
But seriously, the point i was making was not about inevitability. It was making a distinction that Marxism as an ideology is based on scientific principles (this was a differentiation from early utopian socialists). We believe in theory, practice, and refinement of theory informed by practice.
While i as an individual believe that communism is morally correct, that belief is immaterial from the truth that Marxism illuminates
So would actions by nations that move towards that good also be good?
Also, what do you mean by communism? Does it need to be democratic communism, or is USSR authoritarianism fine, or China's communism in name only? What makes communism good?
All socialism is democratic. It is a broadening of democracy and a transfer from a dictatorship of the bourgeois to a dictatorship of the proletariat. There us no "authoritarian" communism
They actually do have elections in the DPRK. The reason the Kims are so prominent goes back to Kim Il Sung. He led resistance against the Japanese colonizers and then against the US, as well as developing the political philosophy of their communist party called Juche. The Korean war killed something like 10 to 20 percent or the entire population and leveled nearky every building in the North.
So, Kim Il Sung is basically George Washington, Thomas Jeffferson, Eisenhower, Lincoln, all those fucks you libs love all roled into one, and he led the country in building back from the extreme destruction caused by the US imperialists.
This is why they have an outsized prominence. Their actual political power is much less than when Sung was alive. Both Jong-il and Jong-Un divested power from their position onto other roles not held by them or the family. They still have ceremonial head of state duties.
I'm not an expert on Juche or the DPRK but there are comrades here that know much, much more. And i invite them to correct me in case i have any of this wrong off the top of my head.
They do have elections, and they aren't a monarchy, contrary to your propoganda
I think it's a mistake to try to make this a moral argument, it's not one the West can win because they manifestly do not approach foreign policy as primarily moral actors.
War is bad, workers shouldn't die for bourgeois national rulers to protect lines on maps. But foreign policy is premised on the idea that national governments act in ways that are predictable and changeable. The war in Ukraine was avoidable, the reasons it is happening have been building for decades and deescalation was and remains an option on the table. US policy towards Russia could have prevented this, US leaders chose to play chicken with another country's citizens for its own reasons. And that is, in my opinion, bad.
So the US should have appeased Russia? Let Ukraine be sliced up?
Governments don't think morally, but that doesn't mean we can't. Public opinion is an important consideration in democracies. So if the public thinks a war is immoral, the government needs to take that into account.
Slicing up Ukraine wasn't what Russia asked for, it's a step they took in response to escalating pressure when non-alignment/security guarantees/ literally any negotiation at all proved to be impossible to achieve diplomatically. History didn't start in 2022. The US could and should have kept its commitments or taken one of the multiple offers to negotiate a deescalation between 1991 and 2022. We don't have to act as if the choice was a binary between appeasement and war, there were many many options that could have been pursued over the course of decades. The US didn't have to continue to expand NATO, they could have let Russia join when they asked, they had options.
The people who lived in Ukraine have had a variety of opinions about that question actually, it's part of the context of the conflict as I'm sure you know. Obviously they would have rather the USSR continued to exist as they made overwhelmingly clear when the question was put to them in a referendum, but that was not to be. But public opinion varies from place to place and over time in Ukraine. The entire reason the eastern section of Ukraine is the subject of conflict now is that Russia could plausibly say that there were Russian speakers and sympathizers who made up a significant portion of the population there, and the separatist regions separated over the question of aligning with the west and against Russia. So it's not a simple 'they did' or 'they didn't' want to align with one side or another, they were caught in the middle and weren't sure what they wanted for a significant part of this.
But to answer your question directly, yes, if US foreign policy cared about the lives of people in Ukraine they should have made it clear they would not admit Ukraine into NATO. A sane foreign policy analyst would have been able to see that was a provocation and reasoned that doing so put the lives of Ukrainians at risk, because it would risk escalation.
But you missed something I said before, I think: If the US was interested in peace and in deescalation they could have admitted Russia into NATO when they asked to join after the USSR folded. It wasn't even just Putin, Gorbachev and Yeltsin both made it clear that they were interested, hell even Molotov asked in the 50s. Then they could have had their cake and eaten it too, Russia's security concerns could have been totally assuaged if it was made clear to them that the alliance didn't still exist specifically to posture against them.
I guess it's a chicken and egg with Russia militarizing and nato, but it seems awfully trusting to dismantle the nato security apparatus against Russia in exchange for a pinky promise of peace.
But you have to see, then, that the US wasn't interested in deescalation. Peaceful options abounded, they won the cold war, their defeated enemy was literally asking to be admitted into an alliance and move forward as collaborators and they didn't take the offer.
They said they would stop expanding NATO towards Russia and then did so anyway.
There's only one realistic interpretation of that approach if you are Russia. You'd need to respond because the enemy you just lost to is making it obvious they aren't finished with you yet.
So then we're back full circle, where I say it's obviously not a moral question because these are states making calculations about their interests, and that history didn't start in 2022 and that deescalation was an option before this happened. Escalating was a policy decision that the US made. That's not Russian apologia, that's the history and context we went over in a good faith dialogue with each other. Ukraine is suffering because of US policy decisions. This doesn't justify an invasion, it doesn't make Putin a good guy, but the conflict was avoidable and the US decided to risk it.
If you recall, this entire chain is challenging the idea that the war is because of 'Russian aggression.' Would it be fair to say we have demonstrated that it's more nuanced than that?
I guess it's a chicken and egg with Russia militarizing and nato
Not a "chicken and egg problem" at all. NATO was created in 1949. Warsaw pact was created in 1955. USSR tried to join NATO in 1954. USSR made their own military pact only after getting rejected NATO membership, and seeing that West Germany was allowed in only 10 years after the holocaust. If NATO was willing to let "former" nazis like Adolf Heusinger into positions of power within NATO, while rejecting the USSR's overtures at joining, then it was obvious that NATO all along was not really interested in allowing socialist countries into collective security. Because NATO was always about bourgeois security against socialism, which the USSR was the face of.
Nuclear escalation wasn't a "chicken and egg problem" either. USA developed nuclear weapons first.
I like how you speak for Ukrainians on this matter. Ukraine as a whole did not want to "move more westward." There were strong separatists movements in the Russian-speaking parts of the country for many reasons (some obvious, some not). In fact, it was these separatist regions that voted heavily for Zelensky, and saw him as a peaceful alternative to Poroshenko (the US-backed right wing leader who took power after Euromaidan oversaw the beginning of the civil war in Ukraine). Which regions want to move westward? The westmost regions. Mostly Lviv. The part of Ukraine that was historically part of Poland, and has a lot of neo nazis and monuments to ultranationalists and WW2 nazi collaborators like Yaroslav Stetsko and Stepan Bandera. That's the most conservative and fascist leaning part of the country, and it's the part of the country that historically has received the most political support from US/NATO/EU, and of course, before that, Nazi Germany. The fascist territorial defense units like Azov come from there. The fascist gangs like C14 come from there. The anti-LGBT, antisemitic and anti-Muslim and anti-Roma sentiment largely (but not entirely) come from there. The discrimination against Russian-speaking Ukrainians come from there. This is the part of the country that most strongly resisted Zelensky's attempts at de-escalation, and they're also the part of the country most allied with the west. And they're the most destabilized and reactionary and capitalist and fascistic part of the country, that has been egging on NATO membership. They even contributed troops and mercenaries to the US-led NATO coalition that invaded Iraq.
History started in 2022, Ukraine wasn't shelling Donbass or threatening genocide of Russian speakers or overthrowing their elected president with a CIA plant no sir.
Imagine believing this, I don't even know how to engage with this because anyone that still believes this will never respond to any amount of evidence showing that Uighurs are living longer and better lives than ever before (as is the trend in all of China), or how Adrian zenz believes he's sent by God to destroy China, or how despite having a practically undefended border with central Asian countries that there has been 0 refugees, or how foreign bloggers continue to show people in Xinjiang just living their lives and being happy, or how not a single piece of evidence has come out of concentration camps (unless you mean the Taiwanese bdsm club or the picture of prisoners in a regular prison), or how Han nationalists in China actively complain about how good Uighurs have it with the affirmative action programs, or how Chinese state media continues to show Uighur people and culture despite supposedly wanting them all dead, or how every article on this shit is sourced from American state controlled corporate media.
Oh so your one of them too.
Are you open to a discussion? I'd love to have one, but only if your open to it.
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Sure. Let's talk Russia first. Does Russia have a moral obligation to be a great power?
what kind of baby-brained question is this
utter lib shit
What moral justification does Russia have to invade?
:galaxy-brain:
Wow! That's a great justification!
Defending Russian speakers and Crimeans from Ukrainian nazis is a pretty good justification, hence the reason the majority of Ukrainian russian speakers in Donbass and Luhansk back the Russians
But basic facts are inconvenient for you scumbag libs
Also, which polls are you referring to? Is that the election results from way back when? Or do you have a newer source?
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Your analogy makes no sense, imagine if Texas was taken over by nazis and it triggered a civil war and the Texans resisting the nazis (majority of whom are spanish speakers of Mexican heritage) implored Mexico to intervene, that would be more accurate
Bonus points for using Texas and Mexico since Texas used to be part of Mexico
If Texas "elected" (America has no democracy) Democrats and then the Democrats were ousted by Nazi militias before the next election and replaced with Republicans then the Nazi militias started to strike southern majority Mexican neighborhoods with artillery and banned the Spanish language and the state and federal government allowed it, would you pick up a rifle to stop the Mexican army from coming across the border to protect the American minorities begging Mexico for help?
To kill the Nazis?
God willing.
Moral obligation? WTF?
Countries aren't just one dude being moral or not lol
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The only moral justification I can think of would be that Russia must be a great power, so it's morally good for it to fund forcefully expand it's sphere of influence.
What moral justification does Russia have for invading Ukraine?
The primary reason for the invasion was NATO encroachmemt and threats of Ukraine joining NATO. This prompted an invasion because the Russian Federadtion has border disputes with Ukraine, which it would have no recourse to address if Ukraine joined NATO as then conflict would or at least very seriously could lead to nuclear conflict. Essentially, they're settling long standing border disputes that have been ongoing, and which the US/NATO have been heavily involved in creating conflict.
The US has been setting up Ukraine a proxy battlefield in its larger conflict against the Russian Federation. The US does not have access to extract value from Russuan territory like it did before Putin and a coalition of national bourgeois allies kicked out the US collaborating bourgois of the Yelstin coalition. This is the source of conflict between the US and the Russian Federation. The US as the global imperial hegemon presides over a system of extraction and exploitation of the imperial periphery. US state enemies are all nations that have refused to submit to this system.
I'm not claiming any moral justification, I'm not claiming support of the action. But that's the rationale that led the Russian Federation to invade.
I am a communist. I do not support the capitalist and socially reactionary government of the Russian Federation. But i do have a degree of critical support for the Russian Federations struggle against US hegemony. This statement applies to other nations that have non socislist governments but struggle against US hegemony and therefore often trade or support socialist states, such as Iran.
I don't support the governments of the US any NATO country, Ukraine, or the Russian Federation. I support the international working class of all these countries which did not start nor deserve this war, or any other perpetrated by the ruling classes. I want this war to end, and people to stop dying.
The main reason that this war continues is the insistence of the US whose "aid" is prolonging the war and killing more Ukrainians who do not need to be dying. The US has been playing out its battle with Russia, and has been discplining its NATO "allies" who were becoming energy independent from the US by trading with Russia.
I oppose the US and its aims primarily because it is the global imperialist hegemon. As a communist i oppose this global system of capital and any defeats to this system are of benefit to humanity
Is communism morally good?
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https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/china-xinjiang-uyghurs-muslims-repression-genocide-human-rights
I don't see how that connects? I'm just confused.
The CFR is a not a nuetral source. Its a mouth piece for natsec ghouls
sounds like Kremlin propaganda to me
I'm glad your against Kremlin propaganda
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ctrl-f "Zenz"
Would you look at that
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All the Xinjiang police files links, here and in the caard appear to be dead on my end. I've tried both firefox and chrome.
https://archive.is/jeCII < This one takes me to a bot check page that just refreshes every time I do the captcha.
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Thank you
It's a shame they picked some of the less convincing AI generated images. There are a couple with hair texture detached from the head and the impossible shadow lines on the one guy's neck. I know we don't talk about that conspiracy theory much for fear of being dismissed as loons but several of them are pretty obvious.
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I'm a Marxist. My perspective on history, my theory of change, beliefs about capitalism and socialism, do not require morality.
The belief in the role the proletariat will play in transforming society is not based on moral superiority. It is based on the existence of class conflict and that they are the class with revolutionary potentional.
Capitalism is not a stable or static system, and it cannot sustain itself forever because its existence demands perpetual growth. As it reaches this endpoint, the contridictions in this system heighten, as will the conflict between the proletariat and the bourgeois. The proletariat will prevail, not for any moral reason, but because they are the class on which the entire system relies.
As a human being i feel its a vastly morally superior project. But my feeling is completely immaterial, as is whatever judgment you place on my opinion
So why work for communism if it's inevitable?
because it's the end of capitalism that's inevitable, not communism. we could also wind up with the common ruin of the contending classes and a dead world
Hmm. Okay, so capitalism will drive us to extinction unless stopped?
Not necessarily extinction, but certainly ruin. It’s already doing that with the climate crisis, but even if we could make that magically disappear today, the contradictions of capitalism lead only to a) the overthrow of capitalism and the capitalist class by the workers (socialism/communism) or b) the capitalist class resorts to ultraviolence to maintain its power and brings ruination to society (fascism)
You don't think small appeasement of the masses is possible? I think the apparatus has gotten pretty good at giving just enough comfort that it's too much work to shift the status quo.
concessions have been increasingly off the table since 1991
https://redsails.org/concessions/
It has been possible so far in the imperial core, owing to superprofits gained by exploiting the workers of other countries outside of the imperial core. However, the inherent contradictions of capitalism like the tendency of the rate of profit to fall mean that this can’t be sustained indefinitely, especially not once the third world shakes off the imperialists and refuses to be exploited any longer.
Capitalism is doing such a great job mitigating climate change.
Because the entire theory of change is struggle
But why struggle for it? If it's going to happen anyways, may as well do what's best for yourself and not stick your head up.
Because I'm not a lib like you.
But seriously, the point i was making was not about inevitability. It was making a distinction that Marxism as an ideology is based on scientific principles (this was a differentiation from early utopian socialists). We believe in theory, practice, and refinement of theory informed by practice.
While i as an individual believe that communism is morally correct, that belief is immaterial from the truth that Marxism illuminates
So how does the truth Marxism illuminates determine policy decisions?
Can you rephrase the question? Are you asking how Marxists in positions of power, like in the former USSR or China use Marxism to determine policy?
Is this you being proud about being a coward?
yes
So would actions by nations that move towards that good also be good?
Also, what do you mean by communism? Does it need to be democratic communism, or is USSR authoritarianism fine, or China's communism in name only? What makes communism good?
https://redsails.org/why-marxism/
not that you'll read it, this is for other people who don't have their head up their ass
Thanks, that seems a little more digestible than the manifesto.
The Manifesto is a short pamphlet designed to be easily digestible
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As an ML I fully agree with this take. The manifesto is kind of shit
Socialism: Utopian and Scientific is a much better introduction to Marxism.
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All socialism is democratic. It is a broadening of democracy and a transfer from a dictatorship of the bourgeois to a dictatorship of the proletariat. There us no "authoritarian" communism
So is drnk not communist or not authoritarian?
Do you mean the DPRK? Yes they are a socialist nation
You think their hereditary supreme leadership is democratic?
That's not what they practice there. That's just what your lib propaganda tells you
Really? Is the supreme leader actually democracy elected?
They actually do have elections in the DPRK. The reason the Kims are so prominent goes back to Kim Il Sung. He led resistance against the Japanese colonizers and then against the US, as well as developing the political philosophy of their communist party called Juche. The Korean war killed something like 10 to 20 percent or the entire population and leveled nearky every building in the North.
So, Kim Il Sung is basically George Washington, Thomas Jeffferson, Eisenhower, Lincoln, all those fucks you libs love all roled into one, and he led the country in building back from the extreme destruction caused by the US imperialists.
This is why they have an outsized prominence. Their actual political power is much less than when Sung was alive. Both Jong-il and Jong-Un divested power from their position onto other roles not held by them or the family. They still have ceremonial head of state duties.
I'm not an expert on Juche or the DPRK but there are comrades here that know much, much more. And i invite them to correct me in case i have any of this wrong off the top of my head.
They do have elections, and they aren't a monarchy, contrary to your propoganda
They do seem to have lifetime terms.
So?
United States Supreme Court
are you gonna show us your penis yet or what
No
sad
Sorry to disappoint
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I think it's a mistake to try to make this a moral argument, it's not one the West can win because they manifestly do not approach foreign policy as primarily moral actors.
War is bad, workers shouldn't die for bourgeois national rulers to protect lines on maps. But foreign policy is premised on the idea that national governments act in ways that are predictable and changeable. The war in Ukraine was avoidable, the reasons it is happening have been building for decades and deescalation was and remains an option on the table. US policy towards Russia could have prevented this, US leaders chose to play chicken with another country's citizens for its own reasons. And that is, in my opinion, bad.
So the US should have appeased Russia? Let Ukraine be sliced up?
Governments don't think morally, but that doesn't mean we can't. Public opinion is an important consideration in democracies. So if the public thinks a war is immoral, the government needs to take that into account.
Slicing up Ukraine wasn't what Russia asked for, it's a step they took in response to escalating pressure when non-alignment/security guarantees/ literally any negotiation at all proved to be impossible to achieve diplomatically. History didn't start in 2022. The US could and should have kept its commitments or taken one of the multiple offers to negotiate a deescalation between 1991 and 2022. We don't have to act as if the choice was a binary between appeasement and war, there were many many options that could have been pursued over the course of decades. The US didn't have to continue to expand NATO, they could have let Russia join when they asked, they had options.
Does Ukraine's opinion matter in all this? Ukraine has wanted to move more westward. Should the US have prevented that for Russia?
The people who lived in Ukraine have had a variety of opinions about that question actually, it's part of the context of the conflict as I'm sure you know. Obviously they would have rather the USSR continued to exist as they made overwhelmingly clear when the question was put to them in a referendum, but that was not to be. But public opinion varies from place to place and over time in Ukraine. The entire reason the eastern section of Ukraine is the subject of conflict now is that Russia could plausibly say that there were Russian speakers and sympathizers who made up a significant portion of the population there, and the separatist regions separated over the question of aligning with the west and against Russia. So it's not a simple 'they did' or 'they didn't' want to align with one side or another, they were caught in the middle and weren't sure what they wanted for a significant part of this.
But to answer your question directly, yes, if US foreign policy cared about the lives of people in Ukraine they should have made it clear they would not admit Ukraine into NATO. A sane foreign policy analyst would have been able to see that was a provocation and reasoned that doing so put the lives of Ukrainians at risk, because it would risk escalation.
But you missed something I said before, I think: If the US was interested in peace and in deescalation they could have admitted Russia into NATO when they asked to join after the USSR folded. It wasn't even just Putin, Gorbachev and Yeltsin both made it clear that they were interested, hell even Molotov asked in the 50s. Then they could have had their cake and eaten it too, Russia's security concerns could have been totally assuaged if it was made clear to them that the alliance didn't still exist specifically to posture against them.
I guess it's a chicken and egg with Russia militarizing and nato, but it seems awfully trusting to dismantle the nato security apparatus against Russia in exchange for a pinky promise of peace.
But you have to see, then, that the US wasn't interested in deescalation. Peaceful options abounded, they won the cold war, their defeated enemy was literally asking to be admitted into an alliance and move forward as collaborators and they didn't take the offer.
They said they would stop expanding NATO towards Russia and then did so anyway.
There's only one realistic interpretation of that approach if you are Russia. You'd need to respond because the enemy you just lost to is making it obvious they aren't finished with you yet.
So then we're back full circle, where I say it's obviously not a moral question because these are states making calculations about their interests, and that history didn't start in 2022 and that deescalation was an option before this happened. Escalating was a policy decision that the US made. That's not Russian apologia, that's the history and context we went over in a good faith dialogue with each other. Ukraine is suffering because of US policy decisions. This doesn't justify an invasion, it doesn't make Putin a good guy, but the conflict was avoidable and the US decided to risk it.
If you recall, this entire chain is challenging the idea that the war is because of 'Russian aggression.' Would it be fair to say we have demonstrated that it's more nuanced than that?
NATO literally came first though lol
Not a "chicken and egg problem" at all. NATO was created in 1949. Warsaw pact was created in 1955. USSR tried to join NATO in 1954. USSR made their own military pact only after getting rejected NATO membership, and seeing that West Germany was allowed in only 10 years after the holocaust. If NATO was willing to let "former" nazis like Adolf Heusinger into positions of power within NATO, while rejecting the USSR's overtures at joining, then it was obvious that NATO all along was not really interested in allowing socialist countries into collective security. Because NATO was always about bourgeois security against socialism, which the USSR was the face of.
Nuclear escalation wasn't a "chicken and egg problem" either. USA developed nuclear weapons first.
I like how you speak for Ukrainians on this matter. Ukraine as a whole did not want to "move more westward." There were strong separatists movements in the Russian-speaking parts of the country for many reasons (some obvious, some not). In fact, it was these separatist regions that voted heavily for Zelensky, and saw him as a peaceful alternative to Poroshenko (the US-backed right wing leader who took power after Euromaidan oversaw the beginning of the civil war in Ukraine). Which regions want to move westward? The westmost regions. Mostly Lviv. The part of Ukraine that was historically part of Poland, and has a lot of neo nazis and monuments to ultranationalists and WW2 nazi collaborators like Yaroslav Stetsko and Stepan Bandera. That's the most conservative and fascist leaning part of the country, and it's the part of the country that historically has received the most political support from US/NATO/EU, and of course, before that, Nazi Germany. The fascist territorial defense units like Azov come from there. The fascist gangs like C14 come from there. The anti-LGBT, antisemitic and anti-Muslim and anti-Roma sentiment largely (but not entirely) come from there. The discrimination against Russian-speaking Ukrainians come from there. This is the part of the country that most strongly resisted Zelensky's attempts at de-escalation, and they're also the part of the country most allied with the west. And they're the most destabilized and reactionary and capitalist and fascistic part of the country, that has been egging on NATO membership. They even contributed troops and mercenaries to the US-led NATO coalition that invaded Iraq.