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Majorian posted:The problem with you trying to use this piece as a silver bullet against the argument I'm espousing is that it was written in 1998 - before Putin came to power, before the Russian political system swung hard towards nationalism, before neoconservatism of the Bush era convinced the Russian public that the U.S. would act unilaterally to weaken or destroy any government it didn't like, seemingly on a whim. A lot has changed since 1998.
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Mar 9, 2015 22:00
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Majorian posted:There's a reason why the turn of phrase "the straw that broke the camel's back" is so ubiquitous. While there were other factors than just NATO expansion, it was a significant factor, and without it, Russia would likely not have been as aggressive as it currently is. *plus all the poo poo eigenstate is talking about. A Buttery Pastry fucked around with this message at 23:13 on Mar 9, 2015 |
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Mar 9, 2015 23:09
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Majorian posted:Yeah, well, therein lies the problem - because America's interests, and the interests of our Old European allies, do not align with the interests of New Europe all that much in this case.
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Mar 9, 2015 23:51
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Majorian posted:Well, first of all, Mexico is a pretty great country to be bordered with, all things considered. Majorian posted:Secondly, and more importantly, I also think that having stability, democracy, human rights, etc, in Eastern Europe, benefit the US and Old Europe. But I also think that the course of action that you and others advocate will not only not help those things in Eastern Europe, but they will also undermine American and Western European interests elsewhere.
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Mar 10, 2015 06:20
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Ardennes posted:If you are talking about economic growth and corruption, that is more the EU than anything.
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Mar 10, 2015 06:58
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Ardennes posted:It is possible to be in NATO not the EU though (Albania). Majorian posted:I don't see what's so hard to understand about this: NATO benefited those states that joined it, at least in the short-to-medium term. In the long-term, it has destabilized the region, threatens to turn Russia into a proliferation risk again, and will likely hurt U.S. interests worldwide. 2. I'm quite confident that the region would be less stable both short- and long-term if NATO had not expanded like it did. Majorian posted:e: You and others seem to have tunnel vision on this issue, where you think that the only people that could lose out from this crisis are those living in Poland, the Baltics, and Ukraine. But the fact of the matter is, the Baltics and Poland probably aren't going to get attacked in any meaningful way, Majorian posted:Ukraine is and has been beyond our salvation, and in the meantime, everybody else on Earth stands to lose (and lose big) if a new Cold War starts with Russia.
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Mar 10, 2015 14:15
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Majorian posted:Nope. NATO helped make Russia receptive to the political platform advocated by nationalists like Putin. Putin obviously manipulates and exploits his population, but our past mistakes, and the mistakes we continue to make, helps make that manipulation and exploitation possible.
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Mar 10, 2015 17:52
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Majorian posted:Nope. Not claiming that, and I don't believe that's what happened. Nor have I given any indication that I think anything similar to this, so it's kind of dishonest for you to suggest that this is an opinion I hold.
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Mar 10, 2015 18:11
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Majorian posted:No, you just don't have a response to my point, so you're dodging it. Majorian posted:Not really. NATO expansion has happened, the US hasn't taken expansion into Ukraine and Georgia off the table, the US has withdrawn from the ABM Treaty and planned to put ABM sites in former Eastern Bloc countries, and the US has adopted a neonconservative foreign policy. These are not made-up things; these are facts. Putin has certainly played them up to attain more public support, but it's silly to say that there aren't concrete things that we've done to help him in that regard.
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Mar 10, 2015 18:34
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Majorian posted:Doesn't matter - the underlying issues still exist, regardless of whether or not the inciting event (in this case, the overthrow of Yanukovych) happened as the Russian public believes it happened. If things hadn't reached a boiling point over this precise incident, they inevitably would have done so over something else.
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Mar 10, 2015 18:50
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Majorian posted:We'd better talk them down from the ledge, then, hadn't we?
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Mar 10, 2015 19:02
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Majorian posted:They certainly predict (correctly) that NATO expansion would lead to a rise in nationalism and an aggressive government. More importantly, though, I posted those to show you that this was not just an argument being made in hindsight, as you claimed. Majorian posted:Sure it is. If the US backs off on allowing Ukrainian and Georgian membership and says there will be no more eastward expansion for the foreseeable future, Putin can declare victory at home. He'll have thwarted NATO and poked the American imperialists in the eye. If that's accompanied with WMD reductions, everybody wins: the world has less nukes that could run loose at some point, the US and Russia don't have to pay to maintain the drat things, and their respective security situations are enhanced by having fewer warheads pointed at each others' countries.
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Mar 10, 2015 19:26
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CommieGIR posted:Because when you actively silence your critics, you should that popular support is something you don't actually seek or need.
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Mar 10, 2015 20:11
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Majorian posted:It's how the Russian public perceives things. If you want them to stop being so aggressive towards their neighbors, you're going to have to either change their viewpoint, or else go to war with them.
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Mar 10, 2015 20:57
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Majorian posted:Except that they were already well on the road to believing this before Putin came to power. You keep refusing to admit this, but it is unfortunately true. Majorian posted:I've posted it several times over the last couple pages, and throughout this thread. See if you can find it yourself. (because I don't think you're even reading most of what I'm writing at this point)
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Mar 10, 2015 21:05
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Majorian posted:I wasn't implying that anybody was proposing this. I was using it as an example of something that could ease the overall tensions. How is this confusing?
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Mar 12, 2015 17:26
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Majorian posted:It was part of a list of things we could do. That was hardly the only move forward that I included.
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Mar 12, 2015 17:48
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Majorian posted:I was trying to be as comprehensive as I could be at the moment. I don't get why this is a big deal. Go back to my pie analogy - are you going to quibble with me if someone asks me to list pie ingredients and I include something obvious like corn starch?
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Mar 12, 2015 18:07
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Majorian posted:It seems to me that it's distracting because you and MeLKoR are desperately trying to ding my argument on something, anything, because the main thrust of your argument is weak. e: Your 136 posts to my 19 makes you 7 times as desperate as me. A Buttery Pastry fucked around with this message at 19:00 on Mar 12, 2015 |
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Mar 12, 2015 18:56
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CommieGIR posted:Hilariously, Germany has been lukewarm on the alternate too: Confronting Russia is difficult due to their natural gas and coal ties.
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Mar 13, 2015 17:08
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Hambilderberglar posted:You've basically listed the reasons why EU membership was never, ever, ever going to be on the table then *or* now. What part of that is supposed to be an attractive prospect for membership? Bulgaria and Romania together accounted for not even a third of the population of Russia and we have seen the opprobrium their application generated. EU leaders would have shat a collective gold brick at the prospect of being financially responsible for Russia. Hypothetical risks or not, there's no way you could have time travelled back to 1998 and convinced anyone this would have been a good idea with the information available at the time. On top of the direct economic effects on the EU budget, there is also the political effect of Russia joining the EU. Would Russia be as eager to get rid of the corruption within itself, when it (unlike Romania) would be far more able to set the tone in the EU? Might it not instead hinder this process in its immediate neighborhood, not necessarily through any ill intentions, but simply through doing business as usual? Especially if Russia joining the EU meant less EU support for the rest of Eastern Europe. Russia might simply be too big a bite for the EU to process, even more so if it accompanied the rest of Eastern Europe. The alternative of stringing Russia along until Russians realize that Europe won't ever let them in probably wouldn't be ideal either. Finally there is of course the issue that the EU has a history of doing poo poo in the dumbest way possible, preferring to just make a treaty stating that bad poo poo isn't allowed, and pretending this means it won't. I can just imagine a Eurocrisis, except with Russia standing in for Greece.
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Mar 14, 2015 13:09
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Majorian posted:A Buttery Pastry: I do appreciate you posting all of that and crunching all those numbers - it was a really good post. But keep in mind, what you're talking about would only play a part if Russia were allowed to become a member immediately, without any prerequisites. What I'm talking about is promising a road to membership with concrete commitments. That's ignoring that letting a Russia like this join the EU would to some degree be handing over the reigns of Europe to it, or at the very least, that would be how it would be perceived in most of Europe. And Russian politicians aren't the only ones sensitive to that kind of thinking among the voters. Maybe it would have been a good thing for Russo-European relations, but politically it is and was a non-starter. Majorian posted:Well, wait a minute though. It looks to me like they did precisely that with their relatively recent austerity measures.
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Mar 14, 2015 22:17
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Well, at least we all got to see MAD in action.
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Mar 15, 2015 08:25
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MeLKoR posted:I know who he's referring to, I just don't understand why he makes sure to mention the word "Fishmech" in every reply instead of calling him by his name and what relevance it might have. Raenir Salazar posted:Further peace and collective security, the further demiliterizing of Russia as they no longer feel the need to maintain a military as a sign of great power status; Russia itself produces a very large number of engineers and highly educated individuals who I imagine would be great for the further technological advancement and innovation in the European market. Cheap labour for a time, more leverage when dealing with Arab states (because Russia will be less disposed or in fact disallowed to subordinate its energy industry to purely Russian national interest), reduced tensions as Ukraine and Russia likely won't be in dispute over the fate of Sevastopol; greater access to the Russian domestic market for European goods; preferential foreign investment treatment similar to the Chinese special economic zones?
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Mar 16, 2015 07:15
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Majorian posted:I think one factor you're missing here is that Russia was really, really economically weak during the 90's. They would have bent over backwards to get into the EU, and probably would have agreed to strong mechanisms that could keep Russia from playing too many games with their energy advantages. While I'm sure it would have had a substantial amount of pull over the EU, I doubt they would have occupied a bigger space than Germany. Quite frankly, they probably would have acted as a pretty useful counterbalance to the Germans.
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Mar 16, 2015 16:58
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Majorian posted:Keep in mind, though, we're talking about an ideal, hypothetical, alternate timeline in which we didn't drive the Russian voting public into the arms of nationalists. I would hope that in that situation, the dynamic between Germany and Russia would be different than it is today. Majorian posted:Also, it's hard for me to blame the Germans for focusing mainly on the economy when their military is still fairly limited. V. Illych L. posted:A big problem for France is that the current economic orthodoxy of the EU was defined by the UMP regimes of Chirac and Sarkozy in collaboration with the Germans, so now Hollande is in he isn't just up against a stronger German economy, he's also against the established order of things. Hollande is not a particularly strong player, but his hand is also very weak. Make no mistake, the French moderate right is perfectly happy with the way the EU is set up at the moment.
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Mar 16, 2015 18:16
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Majorian posted:There's nothing more realist than focusing on what a country can and can't do.
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Mar 16, 2015 18:28
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Hambilderberglar posted:Additionally, with the US gently prodding European allies to assume a greater share of the military burden, and with the Ukrainian crisis seemingly having contributed to an increasing awareness among Europeans (however little) that their current defensive posture is no longer adequate and the peace dividend honeymoon is over. How will Russia respond to the inevitable political and military consolidation that will take place? Is there room for an emerging European military identity that won't cause Moscow consternation? The US has come around to the emergence of an European third pole because it wants to be able to direct its attention elsewhere. How, if at all, can Moscow be persuaded that this new Europe doesn't necessarily strive to represent a threat to them? Russian politician responding to the idea of an EU army posted:"In the nuclear age extra armies do not provide any additional security. But they surely can play a provocative role," Klintsevich said, adding it was regrettable that such ideas had already met with some support. Not sure how you'd get around that either. Like, if the EU goes crazy and bulks out its military to near-US standards, and then tells the US to take a hike (to get around the NATO problem), would that really assuage Russia? An EU that isn't just a silent partner of the US would seem much more worrying to me as a neighbor than an EU where occasionally the smaller countries in the EU + the UK have a play date with the US in some Middle Eastern country while the country running the show is fine with just making money and buying Russian gas.
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Mar 16, 2015 20:25
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site posted:As someone who is coming in here not knowing anything and admittedly jumping in at the end, how unrealistic is it to think that the US could end up forming some kind of security partnership with China to head of Russia's antics? Would either side even be amenable to the concept?
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Mar 17, 2015 23:09
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Majorian posted:My personal reading of China is that they really don't have any aggressive plans or strong aspirations of worldwide military hegemony. As has historically been the case with China, their foreign policy is a conservative one - the Middle Kingdom has everything it needs in it, let the rest of the world rot for all they care (but keep buying our poo poo, guys!). As long as American and Russian money keeps flowing into their coffers, they don't have much of a stake in a conflict between us and Moscow. True, they'd probably be happy to wrench some of the Far East away from Russia so that they can tap into its resources, but that's a pretty long-term goal.
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Mar 18, 2015 06:48
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Majorian posted:There's a bit of a difference between wanting a few small islands off their coast that have historically been theirs, and seeking lebensraum on the other. There's not much evidence that they (or Putinist Russia, for that matter) have the global aspirations that you suggest.
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Mar 18, 2015 14:00
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Raenir Salazar posted:Everyone has a history of military adventures if you're counting the entire history of every nation ever as if it were yesterday.
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Mar 18, 2015 14:33
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Majorian posted:Well, look - nobody's saying that China won't take on an aggressive foreign policy or try to supplant the US militarily sometime in the future. But it doesn't look like it's going to happen anytime soon. The US didn't automatically switch from isolationist to not-isolationist at the drop of a hat; there was a lot of stuff that happened to lead from point A to point B. That stuff hasn't happened with China yet.
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Mar 18, 2015 18:16
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Majorian posted:But it kind of does - or least makes it less bad, or more preferable. It would be a little silly to say that someone like Putin or China's post-Mao leaders have been as evil as Hitler, Stalin, or Mao. Russia's and China's rulers may be authoritarian and pretty bad people on the whole, but if I have to choose between someone who is going to kill millions of his own countrymen and help start a war that kills 50 million others on the one hand, and someone who's going to make vague claims to the Spratly Islands, I don't think too many people could judge me harshly for picking the latter option. e: And really, using Hitler as the unit of badness seems kinda dishonest to me. Arguing that China has the potential for further imperialism on top of what it's already engaged in is not arguing that it's the next Nazi Germany. Nor does the existence of Hitler mean that Chinese imperialism isn't bad. A Buttery Pastry fucked around with this message at 23:29 on Mar 18, 2015 |
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Mar 18, 2015 23:24
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Raenir Salazar posted:Precisely. With the additional point that if you compare the expansionist periods of China to the expansionist periods of the West they are incomparable in terms of "bad stuff happening." Not that China didn't have its own share of "bad stuff happening" its more that if they had done anything remotely comparable its been lost to history.
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Mar 19, 2015 16:12
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Raenir Salazar posted:I don't recall the time where China conquered an entire continent an ocean away just for its resources while actively destroying the culture of indigenous peoples do you? Raenir Salazar posted:Are you really saying that China acquiring over a thousand years its hinterland of whats Han China today is comparable to the British colonialization of India?
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Mar 19, 2015 16:38
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Majorian posted:I see that you're making the wrong argument, yes. You seem to think that I'm playing the apologist for how China treats its minorities. I am not. What I am saying is that it's ridiculous to draw the conclusion that they will become a major world conqueror anytime soon purely from the way they treat their minorities.
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Mar 19, 2015 17:52
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Majorian posted:To a degree. I think it's managed to do so by other means than most other hegemons in history, but it has also done its share of conquering.
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Mar 19, 2015 18:12
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Raenir Salazar posted:Isn't obvious? Western domination comes after the establishment of the Westphalian system, where it became the norm that all states regardless of size or power have some nominal right to sovereignty and non-interference of their internal affairs. To justify circumnavigating this the West, in which Britain was no exception had to rationalize a world view where the states created by non-whites were somehow inherently inferior and not worthy of those statuses and protections; the people were inferior, their religion and customs were "dangerous" because it prevented them from going to heaven and so they must be converted at gunpoint and so on.
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Mar 20, 2015 06:19
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Majorian posted:When you make claims like "Russia is not a powerful country," your calling other people "child" or "kid" kind of loses its punch.
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Mar 23, 2015 23:43
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