I have a friend who is trying to front as an armchair Russia/Ukraine expert. Seems like they're missing on a few of these points. Would love to hear from someone more knowledgable about the situation on how accurate they are. He's a standard neolib so I'm pretty skeptical of anything they say.

  • tudortudor [any]
    ·
    2 years ago

    1. Is true. In 2012 there were about 100k NATO troops (less than the number of Russian troops used for this invasion) operating in the whole world, and most of them were in the middle east for obvious reasons. Romney thought Russia was a big threat but Obama didn't, and Obama won. Generally the US has been shifting away from Europe and towards the Middle East and China for a while now. They felt that they beat Russia already so it's a spent force.

    2. Is hard to say, obviously NATO didn't attack Russia, but Russia has a view of it's own sphere of influence, where it should call the shots. So when some countries in that sphere of influence join NATO (Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia), Russia sees that as a threat. But from an outside perspective it's just a bunch of sovereign nations joining a defensive alliance, and should only be a problem if Russia was planning on attacking (turns out they were). This is all a matter of perspective, like if Mexico tried to host a Chinese military base, the US might see that as encroachment, but the Chinese would just say that Mexico has the right to choose it's own foreign policy.

    3. This is only partially true. Ukraine and other nations of course can make their own decisions, but being caught between two giant powers severely limits their options. The post-soviet states were basically given the option of being in the NATO camp or the Russia camp, and some chose Russia and others chose NATO. Playing both sides is a position very few nations can navigate properly, Israel and China are the only two I can think of off the top of my head. Pre-2014 Ukraine officially didn't want to be part of NATO, but that government did not enjoy a lot of popular support and after the revolution the new government did want to join NATO. Generally speaking the western areas are more pro-western, and the eastern areas more pro-Russia, but more people live in the western areas (and the eastern areas are losing population way faster).

    4. This is true but a bit misleading, in 2004 NATO added Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia. Notably Estonia and Latvia share both share a border with Russia.

    5. It's true that North Macedonia does not matter militarily or economically to Russia, really none of the post-2004 states have anything like the might to stand up to Russia, which is why so many of them joined NATO.