who the fuck is we're? russia is totally justified in not wanting nukes on their border. any other take is bullshit.
nato is literally begging putin to actually do something by supplying weapons to a country that isn't in nato. they don't give a fuck about their rules. they orchestrated this whole fucking thing.
- the cia has been training these mother fuckers for almost a decade to prepare for an attack.
- the us media has been shoving "fuck russia" down our throats like it's actively been the coldwar for the last 3 years. they blame russia for our fucked up elections, and anytime an opinion that they don't like gets popular it must be 'russian propaganda.'
- we literally fucking couped ukraine in 2014. people weren't buying it so they had to put in a fucking actor. literally a fucking actor.
A fucking actor whose most recent role was playing the president of Ukraine in a soap opera on tv.
Remember when Regan was the dumbass celebrity politician to mock? Simpler times.
NATO should not be sending weapons. NATO should not exist. It’s purpose was “supposedly” to counter the USSR and Warsaw Pact, but both of those have been gone for 30 years.
In reality, NATO is a way to soft coup the militaries of other nations and bring them under the control of the American Empire.
:jesse-wtf:
I thought the general baseline starting point around these parts is that NATO's chicanery is the "lighting of the fuse". To the point that we just don't need to keep repeating it, 'round here.
Yeah, that’s the baseline here and pretty much only here. Judging by some of the comments even in this post, it’s worth repeating to counter the chauvinism so many Americans feel entitled to and the mass propaganda going on all around us.
I mean I think the thing is that like, the US and NATO are going to be sending weapons to Ukraine whether Americans support it or not. Even if public opinion was firmly opposed, they'd just continue sending weapons but wouldn't broadcast it publicly. My real issue is that the argument that Russia is doing something bad is somehow implicitly linked to an argument for NATO escalation/involvement. But then so what, I can't say I think that Russia's imperialist invasion of Ukraine is a bad thing? Like what the fuck are we doing then? Can't we condemn Russia and NATO?
You can condemn both. Russia’s behavior here, however, is not in line with the definition of imperialism from what I’ve seen so far.
It’s also an aspect of degrees of condemnation. We can and should be condemning the Ukrainian and Russian governments for the bourgeoisie war they are waging.
Above all that, we should be condemning NATO for intentionally escalating this regional conflict into a full on hot war for their own gain. That is morally reprehensible and disgusting. NATO is drinking the blood of innocent people to justify its own existence. It has always done this, but it had grown frail and not fed in too long.
We should not be condemning the Donbas People’s Republics nor the proletariat of Ukraine and Russia. They are both innocent and held hostage by their capitalist states.
How would you define imperialism then?
To degrees of condemnation -- doesn't Russia deserve more condemnation in light of the fact that they are the aggressor state? Certainly, Ukraine is a capitalist country that exploits its population just like anywhere else, but the invasion by Russia is killing the proletariat of Ukraine.
And yes NATO is to blame, and that should absolutely be acknowledged when we assess this situation, but nonetheless, Russia is also to blame. Putin chose to invade. And by doing so, he's done more to strengthen NATO than anyone else since the end of the Cold War. Thus, not only has he strengthened the very institution that contributed to this situation, he's also responsible for the thousands of Ukrainian and Russian lives that have been lost in this war.
Oh I am, just not online. I think we're all pretty much in agreement here about de-escalation and that sending more weapons isn't going to achieve that. In my circles, it's mostly the radlibs chanting slava ukraini who think this is some kind of battle between good and evil who support sending more weapons. But then again, those are libs and that's what they do.
who think this is some kind of battle between good and evil
Baby-brained chauvinistic bleach demons.
It would be way easier to debate about NATO if, you know, Russia didn't invade Ukraine.
And neither will it stop NATO. But OP was talking in general, not on this site. This site doesn't debate NATO because literally every single person here agrees that NATO is bad. But in the general narrative there was a chance to debate about NATO which would be much easier if Russia listened to western leftists and didn't pull the trigger.
Maybe if we’re arguing with neoliberals or chuds. The total inability I’ve seen of so many people on even the left, however, to connect the basic dots and chain of events is honestly pathetic.
when russia annexed crimea and gave separatists in eastern Ukraine weapons they knew they were starting a proxy war
i don’t see how giving arms to a country to defend itself can be argued as bad if they are not the aggressor.
Like if Ukraine was trying to annex part of Russia yes, nato sending weapons would be bad. Idk i think of it like if the US was Russia and we took part of a country, every person here would be ok with China sending weapons to the country being invaded to defend vs the US
when russia annexed crimea and gave separatists in eastern Ukraine weapons they knew they were starting a proxy war
NATO has been arming and training with far right movements in post-soviet states since the early 90s. It didn't start in 2014. Gorbachev and Yeltsin were guaranteed "no NATO expansion" and it happened anyway. Several post-soviet states bordering Russia (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania) have already fallen into the NATO command hierarchy. What makes Ukraine particularly worrisome to the Russians is the proximity to the capital.
When countries don't appear to wish to join NATO, soft coups are utilized to make these countries more cooperative. Joining NATO isn't a democratic decision, the people aren't consulted. NATO is a military alliance, and post-soviet states are being coerced into joining that military alliance. The US continues to see its own preponderant power as a strategic necessity for the indefinite future. If this means subordinating post-soviet nations to the US military's command structure, then so be it. If this means arming and enabling fascists all over Europe to suppress the left, then so be it. If this means getting a bunch of civilians killed in proxy wars, then so be it.
When NATO began expanding, several people warned this would result in future conflicts. NATO isn't just giving Ukrainians weapons to defend themselves. Joining NATO means joint training exercises. It means profits for America's arms manufacturers, it means letting US troops into your country. It means letting US missiles be stationed in your country. The US has been coercing post-soviet states to join NATO since 1993, and NATO was created in 1949, before the Warsaw pact to combat "soviet aggression" right after they had freed Germany from fascism, and it was staffed by former nazis. This shit isn't a joke and there's a reason people react aversely to it. Furthermore ethnic cleansing in Ukraine provided an incentive to recognize the independence of the breakaway states. Putin shouldn't have invaded, but there were several on the Russian left that have been arguing for recognizing DPR and LPR for 8 years. Obviously he did this cynically in response to aggression when he should have done it a long time ago, but even if he had done it a long time ago, before the ethnic cleansing even started, it would have been framed as annexation or aggression. The thing to keep in mind is the absolute power the US and NATO forces hold over the situation and its evolution. They had several opportunities to fulfill a promise they made in the 90s, and instead they broke that promise at every opportunity because projecting power in the region was more important for their economic and strategic interests. They view everything as a zero sum game, and any amount of PR spin and power projection and pre-emptive expansion is permissible under their guiding neo-colonial, imperialist, capitalist ideology.
The US is operating with the specific and well-documented intent of destabilizing the region and creating a European military hierarchy that answers to the United States. Putin responded to this in an aggressive way, but the point is to recognize that the aggression of the US predates and eclipses.
from Washington Bullets by Vijay Prashad
The US already had bases in almost every country; now these were expanded through the use of ‘lily-pad bases’, or cooperative security locations where US forces can land, refuel, and relax. US Ambassador to NATO Victoria Nuland described these cooperative security locations as ‘unobtrusive bases’ run by ‘retired American non-combatants’ who would outsource or subcontract the base maintenance work. Most militaries around the world would be forced to train with the US military in joint exercises that plugged in the military commands of these lesser states to the US command structure. The term here is ‘inter-operatability’, with militaries required to operate in a coordinated fashion with the US armed forces; the Doctrine for Joint Operations (1993) of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff notes that ‘the nation providing the preponderance of forces and resources typically provides the commander of the coalition force’. No guesses for who provides the ‘preponderance’ of military personnel and equipment, and therefore who leads. To be inter-operatable, the militaries around the world would be encouraged to buy US military hardware and software; little wonder then that the US arms companies saw their overseas sales balloon as these military-to-military pacts were signed. This inter-operatability structure allowed the US to craft new regional alliances – such as the Indo-Pacific Strategy – to yoke countries through military arrangements as well as trade and aid deals to US power projections. Finally, the huge military technology advances, including the use of drones, provide the US with a total global footprint. Through a programme called Prompt Global Strike (PGS), the US military hopes to be able to strike any part of the world with a precision-guided conventional weapon within one hour.
Keep in mind also (this is extremely relevant) that there is already a precedent for NATO wiggling out of any post-war investigation into its actions. This precedent was set in 2011 and 2012 with the destruction of Libya:
In 2011, the United States and France whipped the world into a frenzy about Muammar Qaddafi and the possibility of genocide in Libya. There was no evidence of any such danger; Saudi news outlets became the source for the Western press. It was this frenzy that allowed the United States and France to get a UN resolution to attack Libya, which they did immediately. Part of the resolution demanded a post-conflict study of the war. Once the dust settled by 2012 – although the Libya war still continues by other means – the UN set up a Commission of Inquiry to study NATO’s actions in its bombing of Libya. This was a fairly straightforward action, with no ulterior motive behind the investigation. The Commission was tasked to look at the actions of all parties in the conflict that led to the decimation of Libya. NATO refused to cooperate with the inquiry. NATO’s legal advisor Peter Olson wrote to the UN that these ‘NATO incidents’ are not crimes of any kind. ‘We would accordingly request,’ he noted in his letter, ‘that in the event that the commission elects to include a discussion of NATO actions in Libya, its report clearly state that NATO did not deliberately target civilians and did not commit war crimes in Libya.’ In other words, that NATO get a free pass for its form of warfare. There was no liberal outrage at NATO’s refusal to cooperate, no howls from the establishment’s humanitarian champions. They simply assume that the imperialist bloc is innocent of any malevolent motive and that it cannot be seen to have deliberately targeted civilians or destroyed a nation. Even an investigation into such actions was not tolerable. This is the extent of the redecoration of colonialism.
yes, it's great. It's a bit unfocused, but that's because it talks about so many interlocking mechanisms of capitalist imperialism and neo colonialism. I actually find that it is more relevant now than when it came out 2 years ago because it specifically goes over a lot of the more subtle myths US media is throwing out there, such as that cooperation with the US military and the NATO hierarchy is consensual, or that the US's "targeted" sanctions don't hurt working class people. It's a bit of a "pop" book I guess in the sense that's meant to be read by anyone who wants to read it but it's not exactly something that you're gonna see people clamoring to read. It doesn't have the academic rigor of doctoral thesis. It doesn't have a bibliography twice as long as the text. Prashad instead cites the sources as he goes, in line, quoting US officials directly in the text, and mentioning what the sources is. To anyone trained to immediately go to the back it might make it look like it's poorly researched but it isn't. It's a lot like Blackshirts and Reds in that respect. It is meant to quickly and reliably convey a sense of urgent dissatisfaction with the present state of things.
I first took interest in Vijay Prashad after I saw an interview where he pushed back on someone telling him "China pollutes more than the US" by pointing out several important things that gets missed
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China has quadruple the population of the US
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China has a smaller per capita carbon footprint
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Carbon footprints are an incomplete measure of popllution since it doesn't take into account things like the US corporations and the US military polluting outside of US borders.
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China produces most of the goods consumed in the imperial core, and if the imperial core countries actually produced their own commodities, they would have a much larger carbon footprint.
I found his eloquence in dismantling the narrative to be very powerful and decided to start reading his works after that.
darker nations is next on my list. Right now I'm reading a book called "Wilmington's Lie" which is about a violent coup carried out in 1898 by white supremacists against black elected officials in Wilmington, North Carolina
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yeah but before that ukraine was cutting water to crimea and hoping theyd all die of thirst
turns out the collapse of the soviet union was a disaster for all mankind
I think it's important to consider whose hands the weapons will be used by and what the possible consequences of such actions may be. In this case (in my view) , more arms just prolongs the war and suffering of the Ukrainian working class and further lays the foundations of an ultranationalist insurgency, essentialy a traininground for western nazis.
:fidel-bat: Lick the boot of NATO some more, it’ll help soften the imperial leather.
i don’t see how giving arms to a country to defend itself can be argued as bad if they are not the aggressor.
The US gave “lethal aid” and training to literal neonazi groups in Ukraine after couping their elected government.
This is a “no investigation, no right to speak” moment. Have you looked at any of the posts or discussions on here this last week? Christ.
So, in your view both sides suck, right? Because both countries are fuelling conflicts.
I've brought this up to several libs, and they all just say "But we can't just let Putin get away with it!". Even if I can get them to concede that a prolonged war/insurgency will be way worse in terms of deaths/suffering than the worst-case outright Russian occupation, they still refuse to support surrender.
