Tom Switzer on why NATO Expansion Explains Russia’s Actions in Ukraine

[PurpleTree]

1 hour ago, zazen said:

you’re pulling from 300 years of history to justify eternal fear and hostility toward modern day Russia. Back then was the era of empires where conquest and constantly shifting borders was the norm, and the norms of modern day borders and international law didn’t exist. Romania happens to be caught between a few of empires (Ottoman, Hapsburg, Russian) due to its location and flat land terrain making it easier to penetrate.  But we're not in that century any more and now have international law, nuclear deterrence, global institutions, and much more rigid borders. Russia today isn't the Soviet Union trying to conquer Europe.

If past invasions justify eternal distrust of Russia, then shouldn’t the rest of the world be just as eternally distrustful of the West who colonized the planet? Ireland was invaded 8 times by Britain - should Ireland always paint Britain as a boogeyman and treat it as if its like the British empire from the old days? Or does it relate to it as it exists in the modern day which isn't an empire or trying to be one? If you're going to use those 300 years of history to define Russia now, then by the same logic, we should live in eternal fear of the West. We don’t do that because we judge a situation based on context and present day reality which is that Russia today isn’t an expanding empire with a demographic surplus - it’s a stagnant/declining power reacting to what it sees as a threat on its doorstep - just like how the Cuban missile crisis was reacted to by the US.

It;s not about defending Russia. You can’t apply 300 years of fear selectively. Either we all live in the past, or we try to deal with the world as it actually is. You're too emotional for geopolitics.

 

It’s not about should or shouldn’t. You can ask the Irish how they feel about the Brits and their leadership.

And then you can ask Georgians, Armenians, Polish, Ukrainians, Baltics, Fins etc. how they feel about Russia and Putin.

And then you can ask yourself why.

Edited June 6 by PurpleTree

[Daniel Balan]

@zazenDid you say all that with a straight face? Or you are trying to make fun of yourself? Bro, have you heard of the Helsinki accords? That's why Britain and Ireland no longer go to war. Is because we have treaties that we agreed to respect. Guess which country for the last 30 years has violated every treaty with its neighbors and provoked non stop wars! 2 Chechen wars, Georgia, Transnistria Moldova, Anexation of Crimea, Donbass, the full scale war since 2022. SURE!!!!!! Romania and Poland are total criminals for joining NATO to be safe from Russia. Russia is like a thief that complains that his victim has too many locks and shields that block him from entering the facility! As bad as the west can be, being under the Russian grip is deadly inferno. Bro, Russia is longing to be an empire once again, that's why they do all they do! And their last chance is now, until their demographics totally collapse! They do it now because the more they wait the more their demographics worsen, it won't get better! If you can't see that you are either ignorant, a Russian propaganda vehicle or you consume too much junk from social media. 

Edited June 6 by Daniel Balan

[Kid A]

16 hours ago, zazen said:

Russia today isn't the Soviet Union trying to conquer Europe.

If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck etc.

[Kid A]

15 hours ago, Daniel Balan said:

or you consume too much junk from social media. 

Nearly all his posts are filled with junk from social media, so I wouldn’t rule it out completely.

[zazen]

20 hours ago, PurpleTree said:

It’s not about should or shouldn’t. You can ask the Irish how they feel about the Brits and their leadership.

And then you can ask Georgians, Armenians, Polish, Ukrainians, Baltics, Fins etc. how they feel about Russia and Putin.

And then you can ask yourself why.

Emotional memory of past hostilities can't be a main driver of policy, especially in a nuclear world with higher stakes. We can see how Palestinians feel - many want a one-state solution with all their land back. But that feeling can't and won't translate into state policy - because states operate with constraints, risks, and survival calculations. That brings me to the next point which is that survival trumps legality.

I would love it if we lived in a world that stuck to laws and principles - but the reality of survival trumps the abstraction of laws inked on paper, like every time. That’s the real issue with Ukraine and NATO. It’s not about whether it’s “legal” for Ukraine to want to join - it’s how Russia perceives that move as a threat, especially with a history of invasions through that very terrain. If Romania can feel threatened due to past invasion, why can't Russia feel vulnerable about its weak spot? That's why Poland, Romania etc aren't really an issue to join NATO and why Ukraine in particular is the red line for Russia.

It's best to not have two nuclear armed nations side to side, and to keep a buffer zone between them. Look at how tense things just got with India-Pakistan. And this isn't just two nations, its Russia bordering a Ukraine which would be part of a Western bloc via NATO - its a clash of civilizationz (Russo-Western) who've unfortunately had a hostile past with the whole cold war era. That cold war hangover still persists today affecting accurate assessment of the current reality. Maybe lets hold off on that until we become Bhuddas able to co-exist that close to each other - maybe then they can go Russian banyan together butt naked.  

Imagine if Britain started militarizing the border with Ireland - stacking up missile systems, positioning rockets in striking distance of Irish cities, and there was talk of making Britain great again like the old empire days. Even if they hadn’t violated a single treaty, what do you expect Ireland to do?

Lets say there were also British think tank papers documenting how they want to 'encircle, contain and overextend' Ireland to bring it to its knees - making their intention clear as day. The US literally has think thank papers like this. So if this happened in the context of UK-Ireland, what should Ireland do?  To remain legally pure they should just do nothing until a law on paper has been violated?

In the UK, it's technically illegal in some cases to use excessive force against a burglar in your home. But if someone breaks into your house and you genuinely feel threatened, are you going to stop and think about the legals of breaking whats written with ink on paper or try not to have your blood on the floor instead? Survival trumps legality.

20 hours ago, Daniel Balan said:

Did you say all that with a straight face?

Yeah - serious conversations about war and peace require one. How does your face look when you rage type comments in anger? Jokes aside brother - see comment above.  And you guys should check out Jeffrey Sachs / Mearsheimer for an alternate view - not to excuse Russia but just to understand their actions.

 

Edited June 7 by zazen

[Daniel Balan]

@zazen I never laughed so hard on this forum until now! Bro had no response to me making fun of him for spreading Russian BS, asked his favorite AI to do a argumentated comeback to counter my narative! Haha 😂 All those mental gymnastics used to justify Putins war! Imagine making analogies to Great Britain and Ireland, which have less land than Poland combined, with a behemoth which spans 12 time zones, occupies 1/8th of the global land mass at a stagering 17 milion square kilometres! You have to be kidding! Have a nice day brother, may the light of reason and kindness reach your dark soul!

[Breakingthewall]

@zazen 

Man you are wasting a lot of energy to explain something that @Daniel Balan can't understand in those terms. Let's me explain: Putin is an evil person, same than Voldemort, or maybe Sauron, and he wants conquer the world while he pets a cat just because he's evil.

In the other hand is zelensky, he's like Frodo (you could see that he seems a hobbit), and he's good and noble. Then there is a war between the good and the evil, and are you defending the evil? Maybe are you a monster??? Seems so.

Edited June 7 by Breakingthewall

[zazen]

@Daniel Balan You think making fun of someone instead of critically thinking makes you look cool? I responded to you and purple together when I said read comment above.

It’s not about size. Strategic proximity can be threatening regardless of size. Small countries like UAE or Oman could choke 1/5 of the worlds oil supply at the Sraight of Hormuz - that would threaten stability for nations much larger than them. 

Being big doesn’t make a nation immune to feeling cornered or threatened if they are done so strategically. If anything, Russia’s size makes it paranoid because it has that much more land and long borders to protect.

Ukraine by itself isn’t threatening to Russia.  It’s that greater powers have invaded Russia through it, through mainland Europe (Napoleon, Hitler etc). It wasn’t some tiny border country alone but  a much larger force using that country as a corridor. Today that force would be US/NATO.

US think tank talking of overextending Russia:

https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB10014.html

 

Hmm Nordstream .. enjoy your high energy prices courtesy of the US. Enjoy beloved Europe being a vassal to the US - being a pawn in a larger geopolitical game.

You could actually use some AI to help round out your understanding. And going by your twitter bio it seems your the one with a dark soul 😂 “Night Sky Lover - Black Metal - Dark Ambient Music” Also, stop smoking it’s bad for you.

Edited June 7 by zazen

[Breakingthewall]

3 minutes ago, zazen said:

Ukraine by itself isn’t threatening to Russia.  

Ukraine is a threatening just for the very fact of being a declared enemy of Russia, Because 30% of the population is Russian or Russian-speaking, and instead of wanting to be a Ukrainian/Russian state, they've resorted to ancestral poisonous nationalism to declare Russians enemies.

There are 10 million people who have seen their status jeopardized, their language banned in schools and public spaces. In other words, they've seen steps taken to erase them as a group, so a war has begun. The Ukrainian option was to erase everything Russian, so that only Ukrainian culture would prevail. Seeing this fire, the US has poured tons of gasoline..

 If Russia remains powerless in the face of this, it defines itself as such: powerless. An impotent power dismembers itself in internal wars and is plundered, and Black Rock dances

[Daniel Balan]

48 minutes ago, Breakingthewall said:

@zazen 

Man you are wasting a lot of energy to explain something that @Daniel Balan can't understand in those terms. Let's me explain: Putin is an evil person, same than Voldemort, or maybe Sauron, and he wants conquer the world while he pets a cat just because he's evil.

In the other hand is zelensky, he's like Frodo (you could see that he seems a hobbit), and he's good and noble. Then there is a war between the good and the evil, and are you defending the evil? Maybe are you a monster??? Seems so.

Bro stop it! I can't stop laughing 😂😂😂 Voldemort? 😂😂😂😂 

[Daniel Balan]

51 minutes ago, zazen said:

And going by your twitter bio it seems your the one with a dark soul 😂 “Night Sky Lover - Black Metal - Dark Ambient Music” Also, stop smoking it’s bad for you.

 Here I admit defeat😂😂😂 You got me! You win! I'm the one with his soul darkened. I'm not kidding, upon self reflection I realized that I have in deed a dark soul. But I see it as something positive. I like darkness. It makes me feel alive. 

[Kid A]

Russia - the country of military aggression, corruption, authoritarianism, desinformation, undermining of democracies, mafia, political assassinations, doping and cheating in sports.
Feeling the need to spend a lot of time defending such a country, says a lot about your priorities. Not surprisingly, you can see the same guys defending Trump and MAGA.
Some people just want to watch The West burn.

[Daniel Balan]

2 hours ago, Breakingthewall said:

Ukraine is a threatening just for the very fact of being a declared enemy of Russia, Because 30% of the population is Russian or Russian-speaking, and instead of wanting to be a Ukrainian/Russian state, they've resorted to ancestral poisonous nationalism to declare Russians enemies.

There are 10 million people who have seen their status jeopardized, their language banned in schools and public spaces. In other words, they've seen steps taken to erase them as a group, so a war has begun. The Ukrainian option was to erase everything Russian, so that only Ukrainian culture would prevail. Seeing this fire, the US has poured tons of gasoline..

 If Russia remains powerless in the face of this, it defines itself as such: powerless. An impotent power dismembers itself in internal wars and is plundered, and Black Rock dances

Bro the amount of Russian bullshit you spread is staggering. You look pathetic. Imagine destroying an entire country, erasing from the face of the earth every city your army encounters because you don't agree with the language policies of Ukraine. Have you read any basic Russian and Ukrainian history? Since the very beginning of the idea of an Ukrainian separate identity, the Russians squashed them. Destroyed their history, suppressed them, enslaved them, wanted to genocide them with holodomor etc. Bro there is a reason most of the Ukrainians wanted to join Hitler in his fight against Russia! They had been squashed for centuries under the Russian boot! That's why all of eastern Europe joined NATO as soon as the USSR no longer existed. They capitalized on the weakness of Russia to break free once and for all from its grip. The number one reason why Ukraine should have joined NATO is because Russia is now on a quest to erase Ukraine off the map! I understand war, but I can't understand war crimes! bro I don't believe you are such brainwashed Russian shit eaters. Imagine wanting to kill someone for speaking in their country a language you don't agree with? And why don't the Russians hit only military facilities, what has protecting the Russian spirit have to do with blasting 10 story residential buildings and homes in Ukraine's cities? 

Edited June 7 by Daniel Balan

[zazen]

1 hour ago, Breakingthewall said:

Ukraine is a threatening just for the very fact of being a declared enemy of Russia, Because 30% of the population is Russian or Russian-speaking, and instead of wanting to be a Ukrainian/Russian state, they've resorted to ancestral poisonous nationalism to declare Russians enemies.

There are 10 million people who have seen their status jeopardized, their language banned in schools and public spaces. In other words, they've seen steps taken to erase them as a group, so a war has begun. The Ukrainian option was to erase everything Russian, so that only Ukrainian culture would prevail. Seeing this fire, the US has poured tons of gasoline..

 If Russia remains powerless in the face of this, it defines itself as such: powerless. An impotent power dismembers itself in internal wars and is plundered, and Black Rock dances

Can't tell if your sarcastic with that Voldemort good vs evil example lol - as you were understanding Russia's position on the previous pages.

Ukraine can be whoever they want to be and decide to be in terms of solidifying their identity - as long as they don't cause injustice to those they see as outside of the identity. That's no real threat to Russia in a security sense, only in pride - and if Russia were to be going to war for that reason its just pathetic.

It's more of a cultural wound than a security crisis - more emotional than survival logic. The primary reason prompting Russia is Western alignment in the sense of a Western military force being on its border and within reach of Moscow. 

Ukraine aligning culturally with the West or to be their own thing can however be a stepping stone to something worse which is that if Ukraine aligns with the West and gains a Western level military force right on Russia’s border - that’s not a small issue for Russia. We’re talking about a military bloc that openly speaks about containing Russia, that Russia has had historic hostilities with to put it mildly, and with whom the world almost ended in nuclear annihilation once during the Cold War. And people don't understand the gravity or re-igniting that level of tension.

@Kid A Understanding is not defending.

Edited June 7 by zazen

[Daniel Balan]

@zazenBro how about we dismantle NATO, The EU, let Russia annex every country it wants, let Russia dictate all the policies of this world.  How about that? I am 100% convinced if even all of what I said were to become true, those motherfucking Russians would still find something to complain about! They will go to war with the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter for being too close to Russia's borders! 😂😂😂😂😂😂

[Daniel Balan]

17 minutes ago, Kid A said:

Russia - the country of military aggression, corruption, authoritarianism, desinformation, undermining of democracies, mafia, political assassinations, doping and cheating in sports.
Feeling the need to spend a lot of time defending such a country, says a lot about your priorities. Not surprisingly, you can see the same guys defending Trump and MAGA.
Some people just want to watch The West burn.

That's their whole objective! Seed seeds of doubt in our preexisting alliances, to implement the principle divide and conquer! That's why the Russians bitch and moan against Nato and the EU, because as a group we are much harder to conquer. 

[Daniel Balan]

19 minutes ago, zazen said:

@Kid A Understanding is not defending. 

😂😂😂 By understanding you mean doing mental gymnastics and gaslighting or what? Russia doesn't accept that no country wants to be in its sphere of influence, thus resorting to imperialism to militarily defeat those countries and to grab them by force into its sphere of influence. How can you say that NATO is threatening Russia when all of the former Warsaw pact countries rushed to join NATO as soon as the USSR was no more? Russians spread bullshit that the " WEST encroached on their borders" when in fact everyone wants nothing to do with them! It was Russia who always forced its neighbors to serve as satellite states, without the fear of war and invasion no country in Europe wanted anything to do with Russia. There is no evil WEST that steals the Russian sphere of influence, Russians are the ones who bully and dominate and no one wants to be their slave 

Edited June 7 by Daniel Balan

[Kid A]

22 minutes ago, zazen said:

@Kid A Understanding is not defending.

Yeah, and it's completely coincidental that you prioritize understanding for Russia, right? Could just as well have been Ukraine? Or maybe Israel?

[Breakingthewall]

1 hour ago, zazen said:

That's no real threat to Russia in a security sense, only in pride - and if Russia were to be going to war for that reason its just pathetic.

It's not just pride , is a drift in a hostile direction, which was to culminate with Ukraine joining NATO as an advanced bulwark AGAINST Russia, with absolutely anti-Russian sentiment and an open bar for weapons.

[Breakingthewall]

1 hour ago, Daniel Balan said:

Bro the amount of Russian bullshit you spread is staggering. You look pathetic. Imagine destroying an entire country, erasing from the face of the earth every city your army encounters because you don't agree with the language policies of Ukraine. Have you read any basic Russian and Ukrainian history? Since the very beginning of the idea of an Ukrainian separate identity, the Russians squashed them. Destroyed their history, suppressed them, enslaved them, wanted to genocide them with holodomor etc. Bro there is a reason most of the Ukrainians wanted to join Hitler in his fight against Russia! They had been squashed for centuries under the Russian boot! That's why all of eastern Europe joined NATO as soon as the USSR no longer existed. They capitalized on the weakness of Russia to break free once and for all from its grip. The number one reason why Ukraine should have joined NATO is because Russia is now on a quest to erase Ukraine off the map! I understand war, but I can't understand war crimes! bro I don't believe you are such brainwashed Russian shit eaters. Imagine wanting to kill someone for speaking in their country a language you don't agree with? And why don't the Russians hit only military facilities, what has protecting the Russian spirit have to do with blasting 10 story residential buildings and homes in Ukraine's cities? 

All of that you've said is the nationalist poison that leads to war, which the US has exploited like the demons they are. They could have also given a billion trillion dollars' worth of weapons to the IRA to piss off the British at the time. The IRA surely had sound reasons, like everyone else. There are 10 million Russians in Ukraine. So you think that's because Stalin put them there and they shouldn't be there. As you said, they helped Hitler who wants to destroy Russia, and this spirit should be preserved?. Bingo! We have a war. Who's right now? Who wins it, like in all wars