you need to watch this emoji gif in it’s entirety as it explains the war.

mmmm dats good Nazi

I’m a bit out of my depth here, I don’t know history enough and don’t retain knowledge well. I feel like monopolarity hasn’t been a great thing for anyone who isn’t part of the NATO aligned countries. The US has intentionally bombed and blockaded countries to the point of infrastructure collapse and kept them in this state sometimes for decades. We’ve supported and instigated coups that have been followed up with death squads murdering hundreds of thousands. On the other hand world wars have a huge death toll and a higher likelihood of life ending nuclear war. I feel like any perceived stability that comes with monopolarity is a mirage that only exists for a fraction of the population, and multipolarity while potentially deadly also represents a world where less powerful people and nations may find new options for support. Like many countries turning to the Chinese Yuan for global trade. Yet nuclear war and world war with their massive potential death toll seems real bad. Someone better at history and geopolitics help me determine what’s worse.

The general intensity and frequency of wars hasn’t actually increased or decreased since the bipolar world ended in 1991

Tens of millions died during the Cold War and tens of millions have died under US unipolarty

The matter isn’t decided by the number of players, but by nuclear deterrence, military buildup and class conflict in the Third World

oh yeah, so called “public opinion” is definitely crucial to liberal democracy and not just easily shaped by bourgeois media when class interests dictate. great analysis, very map-coloring brain. meanwhile you ignore things like Zelensky talking about leaving the Budapest memorandum or the imminent large-scale offensive against DPR and LPR just prior to the invasion

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2023/02/the-buildup-to-war-in-ukraine-february-13-2022.html series continues until Feb 22

I mean if you’re getting shelled from enemy territory then the way you stop it is by shooting at the enemy artillery in enemy territory. Do you not support the right of Ukrainians in Donbas to defend themselves?

Really no one should be shocked that an informal promise wasn’t honored. If a legally binding treaty can still be ignored by a sovereign power, informal promises are always worthless and no one should be pointing to them and going “but they promised!”

thanks for the correction

OK that sounds way more reasonable than what I said but I’m just gonna leave what I said because the underlying point still stands

That’s a very one-sided view of affairs though, it’s not like the Ukrainian govt was bombing them for fun, it was a war. Civilians died on both sides-that doesn’t excuse it, but it certainly does not justify an invasion!

show me where Russians attacked Ukrainian civilians from 2015-2021 (dont show me Russia funding separatists as evidence, the DPR and LPR have the right to defend their right to self determination). you can say “it was a war” all you want, it doesnt change the fact that there was a ceasefire agreement that was consistently violated by Ukraine.

The invasion has achieved the exact opposite of what the Russian leadership wanted.

Putin feared Ukraine aligning with NATO, and this invasion has drawn them vastly closer and has deepened cooperation more than it ever would have been otherwise.

Putin opposed the existence of an independent Ukrainian national identity, yet this war has solidified and reified it like nothing else ever could, among both Ukrainian- and Russian-speaking Ukrainians.

what do you think Russian leadership wanted? bc it looks like the DPR and LPR, as well as most of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, are occupied by Russia. and Zelenskyyy was supposed to be the “peace and neutrality” candidate, yet he was working towards joining NATO. the Ukrainians west of the Dnieper were already primed to join NATO, the war didnt change anything.

and what are those bs identity politics abt “Ukrainian national identity”? lets focus on material reality, not these flimsy ideas invented to justify imperialism and ur guesses on what Putin thinks abt them

Putin thought he had the support of the east, yet this invasion has wiped out any sympathy Russian-speakers might have had for the Russian state before.

yummy western propaganda!!

Putin (falsely) used ‘Denazification’ as a justification for the war, yet this war and Russian actions in 2014 have VASTLY empowered the far-right, giving them disproportionate power relative to their support base.

Putin claimed it was to protect people in Donbass from ‘genocide’ (pfft’), yet now they have been subjected to far worse horrors than in the 2014-2022 period (not to mention the fact Russian actions against Ukrainian civilians have been far worse than anything that occurred in 2014-2022).

no, Ukraine and the west have empowered (and armed) nazis for 90 years! and now you rely more on western propaganda and all their unfounded claims of atrocities. let’s focus on what we have proof for— the Ukrainian use of cluster munitions against civilians in the Donbas, Ukrainian pogroms and segregation against the Roma people, and state suppression of the Russian language. and what is wrong with you saying “pffft” regarding genocidal actions?

The invasion is completely ridiculous and unjustified + strategically idiotic, based on a complete misunderstanding of the realities on the ground from the Russian leadership, which has become increasingly personalist and isolated from reality since COVID.

lol you are the one isolated from reality. the world sees what the west is blind to. when the fighting is over and Russia still governs 4 previously Ukrainian oblasts, come here again and say the invasion is “strategically idiotic”, it will be funnier then.

this IS a war against NATO. and it was started by NATO. and it can be ended by NATO right now— Russia is open to peace negotiations

they are millions of real people whose lives have now been RUINED because of the war.

They’re only going to start becoming less ruined once they accept that they have to negotiate.

it’s not like the Ukrainian govt was bombing them for fun, it was a war. Civilians died on both sides-that doesn’t excuse it, but it certainly does not justify an invasion!

I don’t think separatists were fighting for fun but rather because they had no other means of seceding from a country that clearly only wanted their land and not them. I also struggle to imagine that the civilian deaths on the Ukraine side during the Civil War were a tenth as many as the civilian deaths in Donbas, because the dynamic of the war was principally one of aggression towards Donbas (just as the dynamic of the invasion is principally one of aggression towards Ukraine), whatever one might say about the justification of the aggression or the circumstances of it.

You are unsurprisingly distorting the past. Ukraine circa 2014 had two offers on the table for economic integration, one with the EU and one with Russia. The EU deal demanded the exclusion of Russia, the Russian deal did not demand exclusion of the EU. The sitting President chose the Russian deal, and then there was a west-backed coup that put him out of office and put in someone who would take the EU deal.

The “game” was one that Russia was not allowed to succeed at.

Russia could have stuck with the accepted modern method of Imperialism though, wherein you don’t invade countries with armies but instead you use soft power and economic integration.

If you’re talking about neocolonialism, neocolonialism still requires boots on the ground. Why do you think AFRICOM has military bases throughout Africa or why jihadist separatist groups like Boko Haram curiously always align with the strategic goals of the US state department? There were Danish troops rampaging around Mali before post-coup Mali told the Danes to fuck off back to Scandinavia. Just because Western troops were “invited” to those countries by neocolonial puppets doesn’t mean they don’t represent just another form of foreign occupation. At least when Russia invaded Ukraine, you could argue that Russia was trying to safeguard the Russian minority. Not sure what kind of excuse you could pull for French troops in “ex” French colony Niger (despite the coup, French troops are still in Niger).

Mexicans and other Spanish speakers are threatened in the United States, does that mean Mexico is entitled to invade Texas and Florida?

If Mexico could win that conflict, unequivocally yes I would support them. The US has repeatedly committed kidnappings, forced sterilization, and summary executions against those populations. The US government should be destroyed, but even just those state governments being destroyed would be great.

The idea that Russia has any right to protect anyone besides its own citizens in its own borders is based on the idea that Ukraine is “meant” to be in Russia’s sphere of influence, but I don’t believe in spheres of influence.

No, the idea is that countries are not people, people are people. If a country is going to fuck people over and those people want a specific other country to intervene, the people running that other country are free to intervene. Who gives a shit about what a federal government says about a region that deservedly hates it?

Francophone Belgians are not french. They barely were part of the same country. While for centuries there wasn’t an distinction between Ukrainian and Russian. Half of Ukraine has only been part of Ukraine since the 1920s.