So you're saying that a sovereign nation doesn't have a right to choose to join a military alliance, if that alliance will have them?
And Russia has the moral or legal authority to override the choice of that sovereign nation via invasion?
this is a
hilariously foolish and naive way of thinking about international politics. i repeat again,
no nation has a right to join a military alliance. a nation has a right to defend itself from attack, sure. but that's a
vastly different thing however from joining the military alliance of the most powerful country on earth. there was a mountain of diplomats, scholars, and politicians who were real players in US during the cold war- and almost all of them railed and warned against NATO expansion, and predicted the outcome we have now would be likely. turns out- they were right.
And who said anything about moral or legal authority? Not I. Moral or legal authority has not much relevance to this conversation. Countries either do or don't do something based on power and ability. There's no morality to it. States act in what they think is their best interests and they react to things they perceive as threats. Morality isn't a part of the equation. And if you're talking about an arbiter of morality- well..the US is
certainly not that. What moral or legal authority does/did the United States have to interfere with the internal affairs of a
sovereign nation like they did in Ukraine in 2014 and have been doing since? Oh yeah, none. They just do it, because:
they can. Ukraine happens to live in a bad neighborhood, surrounded by a much bigger, badder, and tougher neighbor. That just is what it is, and it's
not the US's problem. And it is
probably not wise to poke the bear lest ye get poked back. And that neighbor was mostly fine leaving them alone- until a new vehemently anti-russian government overthrew a
democratically elected one (with US support) and decided they wanted to accelerate joining said military alliance.
Anybody could've predicted (any many in fact did) that bringing in countries to a hostile military alliance on Russia's borders- but more specifically,
the most important country to those borders- was going to do nothing but put in danger
everyones national security.
And said alliance
isn't having them. As far as I can tell they've been kicking that can down the road and it appears that they're using them as a proxy. US gains
nothing by bringing Ukraine into it's orbit and picking it off from Moscow's. Literally nothing. It is of no strategic value or importance to the US, as Obama admitted in 2016 in an interview with The Atlantic. Yet his VP flew there like 14 or 15 times, and his head of the CIA flew there multiple times as well. Which is
sort of weird when you consider they just do not mean anything to the United States global interests. The
only strategic value I could possibly see from them is using them as a pawn to goad and incite Russia into what it's doing right now- which is stupidly get involved in an illegal invasion that will drain them economically and militarily, get their economy crushed with sanctions and ostracize and extricate them from the entire world financial system, and finally push them out of Europe forever- where they had been growing more and more influential and powerful via EU energy dependance- and secure US hegemony in Europe for the foreseeable future- and let Russia get bled slowly into the dirt forever.
Unless US was going to finally figure out a away to get Germany and France to finally agree to letting Ukraine in NATO (they weren't) or to sign some sort of pact with Ukraine that explicitly stated they would defend Ukraine should Russia invade (not sure 2/3rd Senate pass it though) none of the refusal to negotiate makes a whole lot of sense. They had to have known this was an option. It seems as if they armed Ukraine to the teeth and have basically just used Ukraine as a pawn- and said to hell with it and let them wrecked, no skin off our backs - we're not committing troops or going to war- not our problem if people die. You want to talk about morality? Seems like if you have the power to prevent a war, you should exercise options to at least try to stop it. US refused to even discuss halting NATO expansion and revoking Ukraine's open ended invitation.
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/ukraines-deadly-gamblehttps://www.cato.org/commentary/us-should-close-door-ukrainian-membership-natohttps://www.ft.com/content/b5886606-4d7d-41af-87c1-8d9993722e51
