What does Putin want (and whatabout it)
Ukraine was seeking a means to secure its borders, as it was concerned about invasion.
In response, Russia invades, proving Ukraine's point.
Putin wants to reassemble the Russian Empire circa 1938.
Putin doesn't want Eurocentric democracies as neighbors.
Beyond that, I will note that in 2014, Angela Merkel said, "Putin is living in another world".
https://theweek.com/speedreads/457115/germanys-merkel-vladimir-putin-living-another-world
Putin wanted to ensure that none of his neighbors are in NATO.
Except for the fact that if he takes over Ukraine, he would immediately have NATO members on his new border.
Makes sense.
drummerboy said:
Putin wants a bigger dick.
That is true of any number of men and such men become dangerous as they accumulate power.
Mother Nature's most calamitous mistake was not standardizing the penis. Second was not doing the same for breasts.
Such turmoil.
PVW said:
Huh. Not the whatabout turn I expected.
It's all about the peen.
drummerboy said:
PVW said:
Huh. Not the whatabout turn I expected.
It's all about the peen.
They can fix that unexpected turn, by the way.
If you ever wanted to know what keeps me coming back to MOL, it’s threads like this.
You guys are hilarious…. Can anybody speculate as to how Putin frees himself from the tar baby? We're a bit past the point of "Sorry, my bad".
He doesn't. He won't stop at this point until his military has control of Kyiv, then he'll install a Lukashenko figure and declare mission accomplished, and the real standoff between Russia and Europe will begin. Will Europe, the US, and their allies stand firm in the sanctions and other measures they've enacted as the years grind on and Ukraine remains occupied? Will the Russian public sink back into apathy out of resignation or fear? Or does this end in a palace coup in the Kremlin?
PVW said:
He doesn't. He won't stop at this point until his military has control of Kyiv, then he'll install a Lukashenko figure and declare mission accomplished, and the real standoff between Russia and Europe will begin. Will Europe, the US, and their allies stand firm in the sanctions and other measures they've enacted as the years grind on and Ukraine remains occupied? Will the Russian public sink back into apathy out of resignation or fear? Or does this end in a palace coup in the Kremlin?
I read an essay the other day on Quora in which the author argued that the 3 big winners from this crisis are China, France and the USA and the 3 biggest losers are Russia, Germany and India.
For China, the benefit is that the U.S. will refocus on Europe.
For the USA, the benefit is that NATO has remembered its purpose and U.S. intelligence assessments were very accurate.
For France, the benefit is that they are one of the few EU countries able to wield an effective mix of economic and military clout.
For India, the downside is that will China being Russia's only remaining "friend" of consequence, they will no longer be able to use a relationship with Russia to help balance pressure from China.
For Germany, the downside is the loss of a business relationship with Russia.
For Russia, the downside is economic isolation and, somewhat longer term, the loss of Europe as an energy market. Russia will be China's supply room and, as is done in international relations, you can expect China to drive a hard bargain.
I'm not going to debate whether this author's assessments of winners and losers is accurate with the exception of Russia. Putin has well and truly screwed Russia.
If you were duped by your ideological priors into thinking that any of this had to do with NATO expansion or Russia's "legitimate security concerns" rather than what Putin sees as his pet project to restore Russian empire, joke's on you.
— Dante Atkins (@DanteAtkins) February 28, 2022
Exactly this ^^^
Putin wants to get the band back together and recreate a new USSR. NATO is a defensive alliance and to suggest that Ukraine joining it would have resulted in a military threat to Russia is absurd.
Steve said:
Exactly this ^^^
Putin wants to get the band back together and recreate a new USSR. NATO is a defensive alliance and to suggest that Ukraine joining it would have resulted in a military threat to Russia is absurd.
That's not a correct way of looking at it. When countries assess threats, they usually look at capability, not intent. Having said that, if keeping Ukraine out of NATO was the only thing that Putin was worried about, there are many different options he could have pursued well short of bullying and invasion.
However, we know that Putin wants to reassemble the Russian Empire.
I think Fiona Hill has a pretty clear understanding of what is going on.
Steve said:
Exactly this ^^^
Putin wants to get the band back together and recreate a new USSR. NATO is a defensive alliance and to suggest that Ukraine joining it would have resulted in a military threat to Russia is absurd.
it could be both.
NATO obligates member countries to defend one another if attacked. It has zero to do with assisting others in misadventures.
Steve said:
NATO obligates member countries to defend one another if attacked. It has zero to do with assisting others in misadventures.
I will say this again: When countries assess threats, they usually look at capability, not intent.
Caveat -- when paranoid autocrats assess threats, they see them everywhere.
Sure, but that had nothing to do with the invasion of Ukraine. It has everything to do with restoring the old USSR and expanding economic might. The claims about NATO are nothing more than a fig leaf.
In the other thread, there was this exchange:
terp said:
PVW said:
terp said:
I don't think it's true that Putin hates the Ukrainians for their freedom. I do think he wants them back in his sphere. That's probably the reason he's not going scorched earth in the invasion.
To be in Russia's sphere is to lose freedoms -- freedom's of association, of expression, of self government, of all the other freedoms that open and democratic societies aspire to (even if, admittedly, they often fall short). I think it's perfectly accurate to say that Putin does not want Ukrainians to have any of this, that he sees a state pursuing this on his border as a threat, and that could one therefore truly, if somewhat reductively, say that he "hates them for their freedom."
I agree that he is not likely to champion their freedom. However, that country is divided. And the truth is that in many ways they have been pawns in a geopolitical game between 2 nuclear superpowers for quite some time. In other words, while you and I might care about Ukraniane freedom, I find it laughable to think that our government does.
This is an illustration of a point I made at the top of this thread -- what does the US government's feelings on Ukrainian freedom have to do with anything? It seems a complete non-sequitur. Though the preceding sentence provides a key -- per terp, Ukrainians are just "pawns in a geopolitical game between 2 nuclear superpowers." Poof -- Ukrainian agency vanished.
This is odd, especially in the context of the very active war currently being fought in Ukraine against Ukrainians. It's Ukrainians fighting Russia, not Americans. What exactly does terp believe the Ukrainians are fighting for?
What about the 2014 Ukrainian Revolution? I can't recall if terp has commented on this in MOL, but the common line among the anti-anti-Russians is that this was an American-led coup. Maybe, but let's ask one question -- suppose that the anti-anti-Russians are right and that was a fake revolution, just another example of American imperialism -- what would it have looked like if Ukrainians, on their own, had decided to overthrow the Yanukovych government? I suspect there's no answer here -- for the anti-anti-Russians, everything everywhere is due to the plottings and machinations of the American imperium.
PVW said:
In the other thread, there was this exchange:
terp said:
PVW said:
terp said:
I don't think it's true that Putin hates the Ukrainians for their freedom. I do think he wants them back in his sphere. That's probably the reason he's not going scorched earth in the invasion.
To be in Russia's sphere is to lose freedoms -- freedom's of association, of expression, of self government, of all the other freedoms that open and democratic societies aspire to (even if, admittedly, they often fall short). I think it's perfectly accurate to say that Putin does not want Ukrainians to have any of this, that he sees a state pursuing this on his border as a threat, and that could one therefore truly, if somewhat reductively, say that he "hates them for their freedom."
I agree that he is not likely to champion their freedom. However, that country is divided. And the truth is that in many ways they have been pawns in a geopolitical game between 2 nuclear superpowers for quite some time. In other words, while you and I might care about Ukraniane freedom, I find it laughable to think that our government does.
This is an illustration of a point I made at the top of this thread -- what does the US government's feelings on Ukrainian freedom have to do with anything? It seems a complete non-sequitur. Though the preceding sentence provides a key -- per terp, Ukrainians are just "pawns in a geopolitical game between 2 nuclear superpowers." Poof -- Ukrainian agency vanished.
This is odd, especially in the context of the very active war currently being fought in Ukraine against Ukrainians. It's Ukrainians fighting Russia, not Americans. What exactly does terp believe the Ukrainians are fighting for?
What about the 2014 Ukrainian Revolution? I can't recall if terp has commented on this in MOL, but the common line among the anti-anti-Russians is that this was an American-led coup. Maybe, but let's ask one question -- suppose that the anti-anti-Russians are right and that was a fake revolution, just another example of American imperialism -- what would it have looked like if Ukrainians, on their own, had decided to overthrow the Yanukovych government? I suspect there's no answer here -- for the anti-anti-Russians, everything everywhere is due to the plottings and machinations of the American imperium.
Now do the Houthis in Yemen.
PVW said:
This is an illustration of a point I made at the top of this thread -- what does the US government's feelings on Ukrainian freedom have to do with anything? It seems a complete non-sequitur. Though the preceding sentence provides a key -- per terp, Ukrainians are just "pawns in a geopolitical game between 2 nuclear superpowers." Poof -- Ukrainian agency vanished.
This is odd, especially in the context of the very active war currently being fought in Ukraine against Ukrainians. It's Ukrainians fighting Russia, not Americans. What exactly does terp believe the Ukrainians are fighting for?
What about the 2014 Ukrainian Revolution? I can't recall if terp has commented on this in MOL, but the common line among the anti-anti-Russians is that this was an American-led coup. Maybe, but let's ask one question -- suppose that the anti-anti-Russians are right and that was a fake revolution, just another example of American imperialism -- what would it have looked like if Ukrainians, on their own, had decided to overthrow the Yanukovych government? I suspect there's no answer here -- for the anti-anti-Russians, everything everywhere is due to the plottings and machinations of the American imperium.
For more information about Ukrainian history and US involvement, I recommend this movie. It's now free on YouTube.
Ukraine on Fire (Oliver Stone)
Comrade Nan,
Perhaps you can summarize the key points in the Youtube clip thus sparing us an hour and a half of torture.
And then, explain to me why Ukrainians are fighting so valiantly to remain free since they are apparently suffering under a Nazi U.S. imposed government.
terp said:
Now do the Houthis in Yemen.
Well, I guess this is the whatabout thread.
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I'll start off by noting one argument made by the anti-anti-Russians -- that Putin would not have invaded if NATO and Ukraine promised that Ukraine would never become part of NATO. In this telling, Putin is simply pursuing "legitimate" security interests.
I call B.S.
There's a lot of problems with this argument. First, it displays something I've complained about in the past in foreign policy, in that it strips other countries of agency. For a country to join NATO, NATO has to accept, but that country has to ask to join. NATO has never expanded by violently seizing a country's territory or leadership and forcing it to join -- all expansion has been voluntary. But the way the anti-anti-Russians frame it, all the agency is solely on NATO's side (or more often, only by the US). Why were the countries that joined after the cold war so eager to do so? What about their legitimate security interests? All that disappears in the anti-anti-Russian telling, where NATO members and potential members are little more than American puppets with no agency or motivation of their own.
But let's put that aside for now and say that the NATO alliance formally declared that Ukraine would never join. Would that have been enough for Putin? I think the answer is clearly no, because what Putin wants is a buffer of states who are little more than Russian puppets. The thing the anti-anti-Russians accuse the US of being and doing is what Putin's regime actually is. One need only look at Belarus to see Putin's aims.
A Ukraine seeking a more democratic, less corrupt, more open society is a Ukraine Putin cannot control and so which he cannot tolerate. Even if Ukraine never joined NATO, it would still be a threat to Putin, and so a truly independent Ukraine is something he could never tolerate. So when the anti-anti-Russians talk about Putin's "legitimate security interests," let's be clear that what they are really saying is that Putin has a legitimate interest in enforcing autocracy, brutality, and kleptocracy on society bordering Russia.