Links and Stuff
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Add to the above list if you can, thank you.
Resources For Understanding The War Beyond The Bulletins
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map, who is an independent youtuber with a mostly neutral viewpoint.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have good analysis (though also a couple bad takes here and there)
Understanding War and the Saker: neo-conservative sources but their reporting of the war (so far) seems to line up with reality better than most liberal sources.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict and, unlike most western analysts, has some degree of understanding on how war works. He is a reactionary, however.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent journalist reporting in the Ukrainian warzones.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Yesterday's discussion post.
i'm not aware of nato membership obligating members to allow the US to install missile silos.
i agree that anyone joining nato aggravates russia but I also don't think russia is willing to trigger article 5 and that is the nuclear deterrent equivalent I think people who don't want to get invaded by russia will be attracted to.
It doesn't oblige them in a technical, legal sense, no. In practice, on the other hand, it's...ah, "difficult" to say no. Some "guest" troops in your bases here; some defense aid/contracts there; a military base or two sprinkled around; suddenly if you sneeze wrong there's a lot of shit the U.S. could "theoretically" bring to bear against you in critical ways if you ever thought about maybe getting uppity.
I don't think Russia wants to "trigger Article 5", but I think Russia is going to bring a realist analysis of the situation to the table when it gets threatened enough. Say it is completely surrounded and has first-strike weapons pointed at it from all sides. You think it's not then going to look around and pick the most vulnerable target that the U.S. likely gives the least shit about and start there? Certainly it's a better opportunity to try to prevent NATO membership in the first place, but just as lack of official, on-paper NATO membership didn't prevent the U.S. from flooding Ukraine with weapons, training, military exercises, etc., I think it's naïve to think that the official, on-paper membership is going to encourage the U.S. to defend a puppet state more than it would without.
NATO membership really isn't about who the U.S. will act outside its normal interests for; it's about subjugation TO the U.S.
i think that any non-nato state is a safer target than any nato state. i agree your analysis starts to play if literally everyone else is nato but we're not there yet and I think that matters way more for whoever is about to go last and, e.g. russia would sooner commit hard to taking all of ukraine than go after a nato finland.
a better argument against courting membership would be that natos own bylaws prevent admitting states with border disputes so if you look like you're gonna try to join then it's more incentive for russia to start shit with you, but that also mean now is the "safest" time to apply if you're on the fence.
you might be right but i don't think the liberals in charge think about it that way or if they do they think joining will reliably prevent hot invasion and prefer the quiet subjugation as it doesn't disrupt capital.