How should west respond to potential (likely) Russian invasion of Ukraine?

[barbos]

Do I still need to watch the entire video

Yes

 

[barbos]

The three Russia/Ukraine threads have been merged.

I don't like it

 

[Elixir]

The three Russia/Ukraine threads have been merged.

I don't like it

Maybe you can invade and fix it.

 

[barbos]

great stuff, especially questions.

 

[ZiprHead]

Neoliberals are so yesterday.

 

[Elixir]

Now that y'all have spent 3+ hours watching videos at barbos' command (yeah, right!), here's a little de-programming fer yez:

 

[Copernicus]

For the record that guy is not me, he does not have russian accent.
I do, though you will likely confuse it with something else.

So find the time and watch it

Gosh, barbos, I thought that you had no appreciation of academic fields such as history, sociology, and political science, etc., but here you are urging everyone to watch a video that is more than an hour long by a well-known political science professor from the University of Chicago. Kudos for overcoming your prejudice against those academic eggheads.

I am halfway through the video now and will finish watching it to see what Professor Mearsheimer's policy recommendations are. I hope that you actually did spend over an hour watching the whole thing, as I think you might learn a few things about political science from Mearsheimer's presentation. However, it is really difficult for those of us who are not experts in political science to understand all of the nuances of his argument or why his school of  Offensive Realism is rather unpopular among other political scientists--a fact that Mearsheimer himself admits. Anyone who takes the time to watch the video should at least read the Wikipedia pages on Offensive realism and the  Security Dilemma, which fundamentally underpins the stance that Mearsheimer takes on the Ukraine crisis and other global crises. BTW, you might be interested to know that Mearsheimer opposed Ukraine's decision to give up its nuclear weapons, because he felt that those weapons would deter Russia from doing exactly what it did in 2014--invade Ukraine. You may recall that Ukraine gave up those weapons in exchange for a guarantee from Russia that it would respect Ukraine's territorial borders. How well did that work out? Well, I still think it was the right decision, even though Mearsheimer was right that Russia might have hesitated to invade a nuclear power.

Anyway, I just want to recommend that those interested in the video read at least the two Wikipedia pages on  Offensive Realism (which lists criticisms of the theory) and the  Security Dilemma. Basically, the Security Dilemma is accepted by most political scientists, but Mearsheimer's school of Offensive Realism is not. The Security Dilemma is just that states often take measures to strengthen their security (e.g. stockpiling nuclear weapons and developing advanced delivery systems), and these measures have the opposite effect of causing other states to strengthen their security in reaction, thus raising the threat level against the state and causing it to take further measures. This is what causes arms races. Mearsheimer's Offensive Realism school is basically a theory about how states should behave in order to deal with the Security Dilemma. Hence, Mearsheimer's lecture focuses on the way in which NATO expansion was the "deep cause" that ultimately drove Russia to invade Ukraine. Of course, Mearsheimer blames the West for expanding NATO, although he doesn't address (or hasn't yet addressed at my point in the lecture) what drove NATO to incorporate those. A key criticism of Offensive Realism seems to be that it ignores domestic issues that drive events and places too much emphasis on great powers as primary drivers in events. There is a reason why all of those former Warsaw pact and former Soviet nations put pressure on NATO and the EU to let them join. They had their own security concerns.

 

[laughing dog]

Aww, poor Pootey! Spent so many of his (stolen) billions trying to keep Ukraine in his portfolio, and now the bad bad US wants to kick the poor humanitarian to the curb and let the Trumpy Ukranians ally themselves with the European aggressors who have been trying to invade Russia and annex it for its oil ever since Crimea volunteered to become part of Russia.

^^^
Your news sources have turned you into a laughingstock, barbos.
Putin's ambition to re-create the Soviet glory days has remained the one constant in his erratic behavior. You can dress it up with all kinds lies, you can cite corrupt American motives, real and imagined, but the fact of Russia's perennial aggression can't be magically disappeared by your whining.

Can't counter facts and resort to attacking the messenger?

If "the messenger" ever came up with actual facts that were relevant and in context, I probably wouldn't counter them since they would be facts. But your specious pro-Putin bullshit contains few facts, and those it does reference are warped beyond recognition by the bias forced upon you by your handlers.
Not worth addressing, when the overriding fact is that rationalizing Russia's expansionist ambitions are truly the sole focus of all the arguments you've been fed. All those whataboutisms and false fears of the mighty Ukranian Empire encroaching on Russian territory - it's all bullshit, no matter how many irrelevant facts (like Russian nukes in Cuba) you try to drag into it.

Tell your bosses they need to send you into battle better equipped than this! It will make for much better discussion.

I came with undeniable facts which refute your MSM "facts".

As usual, you are badly mistaken. It is not a "fact" that the Ukranian situation is due to "the West" - that is an ignorant opinion.

 

[laughing dog]

For the record that guy is not me, he does not have russian accent.
I do, though you will likely confuse it with something else.

So find the time and watch it

Gosh, barbos, I thought that you had no appreciation of academic fields such as history, sociology, and political science, etc., but here you are urging everyone to watch a video that is more than an hour long by a well-known political science professor from the University of Chicago. Kudos for overcoming your prejudice against those academic eggheads.

I am halfway through the video now and will finish watching it to see what Professor Mearsheimer's policy recommendations are. I hope that you actually did spend over an hour watching the whole thing, as I think you might learn a few things about political science from Mearsheimer's presentation. However, it is really difficult for those of us who are not experts in political science to understand all of the nuances of his argument or why his school of  Offensive Realism is rather unpopular among other political scientists--a fact that Mearsheimer himself admits. Anyone who takes the time to watch the video should at least read the Wikipedia pages on Offensive realism and the  Security Dilemma, which fundamentally underpins the stance that Mearsheimer takes on the Ukraine crisis and other global crises. BTW, you might be interested to know that Mearsheimer opposed Ukraine's decision to give up its nuclear weapons, because he felt that those weapons would deter Russia from doing exactly what it did in 2014--invade Ukraine. You may recall that Ukraine gave up those weapons in exchange for a guarantee from Russia that it would respect Ukraine's territorial borders. How well did that work out? Well, I still think it was the right decision, even though Mearsheimer was right that Russia might have hesitated to invade a nuclear power.

Anyway, I just want to recommend that those interested in the video read at least the two Wikipedia pages on  Offensive Realism (which lists criticisms of the theory) and the  Security Dilemma. Basically, the Security Dilemma is accepted by most political scientists, but Mearsheimer's school of Offensive Realism is not. The Security Dilemma is just that states often take measures to strengthen their security (e.g. stockpiling nuclear weapons and developing advanced delivery systems), and these measures have the opposite effect of causing other states to strengthen their security in reaction, thus raising the threat level against the state and causing it to take further measures. This is what causes arms races. Mearsheimer's Offensive Realism school is basically a theory about how states should behave in order to deal with the Security Dilemma. Hence, Mearsheimer's lecture focuses on the way in which NATO expansion was the "deep cause" that ultimately drove Russia to invade Ukraine. Of course, Mearsheimer blames the West for expanding NATO, although he doesn't address (or hasn't yet addressed at my point in the lecture) what drove NATO to incorporate those. A key criticism of Offensive Realism seems to be that it ignores domestic issues that drive events and places too much emphasis on great powers as primary drivers in events. There is a reason why all of those former Warsaw pact and former Soviet nations put pressure on NATO and the EU to let them join. They had their own security concerns.

It is also ignores the actual fact that NATO expansion does not necessitate a build-up of armed troops at Ukraine's borders. It is almost as if the analysis assumes that Putin and his cohorts are mindless paranoiac morons.

 

[Copernicus]

For the record that guy is not me, he does not have russian accent.
I do, though you will likely confuse it with something else.

So find the time and watch it

Gosh, barbos, I thought that you had no appreciation of academic fields such as history, sociology, and political science, etc., but here you are urging everyone to watch a video that is more than an hour long by a well-known political science professor from the University of Chicago. Kudos for overcoming your prejudice against those academic eggheads.

I am halfway through the video now and will finish watching it to see what Professor Mearsheimer's policy recommendations are. I hope that you actually did spend over an hour watching the whole thing, as I think you might learn a few things about political science from Mearsheimer's presentation. However, it is really difficult for those of us who are not experts in political science to understand all of the nuances of his argument or why his school of  Offensive Realism is rather unpopular among other political scientists--a fact that Mearsheimer himself admits. Anyone who takes the time to watch the video should at least read the Wikipedia pages on Offensive realism and the  Security Dilemma, which fundamentally underpins the stance that Mearsheimer takes on the Ukraine crisis and other global crises. BTW, you might be interested to know that Mearsheimer opposed Ukraine's decision to give up its nuclear weapons, because he felt that those weapons would deter Russia from doing exactly what it did in 2014--invade Ukraine. You may recall that Ukraine gave up those weapons in exchange for a guarantee from Russia that it would respect Ukraine's territorial borders. How well did that work out? Well, I still think it was the right decision, even though Mearsheimer was right that Russia might have hesitated to invade a nuclear power.

Anyway, I just want to recommend that those interested in the video read at least the two Wikipedia pages on  Offensive Realism (which lists criticisms of the theory) and the  Security Dilemma. Basically, the Security Dilemma is accepted by most political scientists, but Mearsheimer's school of Offensive Realism is not. The Security Dilemma is just that states often take measures to strengthen their security (e.g. stockpiling nuclear weapons and developing advanced delivery systems), and these measures have the opposite effect of causing other states to strengthen their security in reaction, thus raising the threat level against the state and causing it to take further measures. This is what causes arms races. Mearsheimer's Offensive Realism school is basically a theory about how states should behave in order to deal with the Security Dilemma. Hence, Mearsheimer's lecture focuses on the way in which NATO expansion was the "deep cause" that ultimately drove Russia to invade Ukraine. Of course, Mearsheimer blames the West for expanding NATO, although he doesn't address (or hasn't yet addressed at my point in the lecture) what drove NATO to incorporate those. A key criticism of Offensive Realism seems to be that it ignores domestic issues that drive events and places too much emphasis on great powers as primary drivers in events. There is a reason why all of those former Warsaw pact and former Soviet nations put pressure on NATO and the EU to let them join. They had their own security concerns.

It is also ignores the actual fact that NATO expansion does not necessitate a build-up of armed troops at Ukraine's borders. It is almost as if the analysis assumes that Putin and his cohorts are mindless paranoiac morons.

Putin had other options than to invade Ukraine. For example, Russia basically controls Ukraine's energy supply and has used it in the past to blackmail Ukraine. There never was much of a threat that Ukraine would join NATO or that NATO would seriously invade Russia, so much of Putin's behavior seems driven by his background as a Cold War partisan who saw an opportunity to assume control of Russia and keep himself in power. Putin was stunned by the collapse of the Soviet Union, and he seems obsessed with stitching back together the Russian/Soviet territorial hegemony, not to mention dominating former Warsaw Pact nations. Ukraine was a threat to Putin in that a popular democratic uprising in a neighboring country that overthrew a pro-Russia leader undermined his own grasp on power.

I had a lot of problems with Mearsheimer's claims and assumptions as I watched the first video (and I have no plans to watch the second, even longer, video). For example, he said that Ukraine "did not want to give up corruption", which is totally nonsensical. It is clear that many Ukrainians had a vested interest in the corruption inherent in the system, but that doesn't mean that the majority of Ukrainians favored corruption. In fact, I don't think that any country's majority actually wants to put up with corruption, and that certainly includes the majority of Russians. Putin knows this, and it threatens his grip on power, which very much does depend on a system of corruption. From what little I've read of Mearsheimer's critics, they think that he ignores many of the forces that drove events in Ukraine and other eastern European countries. Instead, he focuses on the roles of the US and Russian governments as primary drivers of those events. The US did not have anything to do with Yanukovych's downfall. That was all due to domestic politics in Ukraine.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

It's a pretty simple situation to understand and Putin's behavior makes it that more obvious. Poland was allied with England and France for very good reason. Ukraine ought to be allied with the US and the EU for the same fucking reason as long as someone like Putin is next door calling the shots. I sure as fuck would be.

 

[Copernicus]

It's a pretty simple situation to understand and Putin's behavior makes it that more obvious. Poland was allied with England and France for very good reason. Ukraine ought to be allied with the US and the EU for the same fucking reason as long as someone like Putin is next door calling the shots. I sure as fuck would be.

Right. The problem for Putin was that Ukraine was headed in the opposite direction from where Yanukovych was leading them--basically into a situation of going back to Russian domination. That was a principal reason for the Maidan revolt. Ukrainians were upset that Yanukovych had blocked a popular move to strike a deal with the EU.

Mearsheimer jumped to some other conclusions that I thought were very weak. For example, he seemed to confuse the difference between Ukrainians whose dominant language was Russian and those who wanted to remain separate from Russia. In the beginning of his Chicago lecture, he showed some charts that didn't appear to support what he was trying to claim. What they showed was that there was more pro-Russia sentiment in the East of the country when it came to staying out of NATO, but there was very little sentiment for joining in a political alliance with Russia. In fact, there appeared to be slightly more eastern Ukrainians who wanted to join with the EU (about 30%) than with Russia (about 27%). About half the people surveyed in the east either had no opinion or were undecided. In general, Ukrainians preferred to align more with the Western alliance than with Russia. However, Mearsheimer breezed past those facts to claim that his charts showed a general desire of eastern Russian-speaking Ukrainians to align more with Russia. Also, his chart struck me as misleading, because Russian-dominant speakers were far more numerous than Ukrainian-dominant speakers in the middle of the country, especially Kyiv (Kiev) and Odessa. The mere fact that a Ukrainian is dominant in Russian does not make that Ukrainian automatically pro-Kremlin or pro-Putin.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

It's economy stupid!
popularity of Putin is based on the fact that CIA led russian "democrats" (former communists) of 1990s utterly failed economically, whereas Putin authoritarianism did pretty well since 2000s.
As for democracy, after Jan 6 and even 2016 you really need to look at yourself more instead of teaching other countries.

After the fall Russia had a bunch of kleptocrats each trying to take as much of the pie as they could. Now that Putin has consolidated power less is wasted on infighting.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Here's my question, to which I expect an answer, given the title:

What would be the result if a plebiscite were held in east Ukraine? Would east Ukrainians vote to stay in Ukraine, or vote for independence? Or would they vote to join Russia?

How do we know what the sentiment is of east Ukrainians?

Is the West willing to submit to such a plebiscite, allowing pro-Russian Ukrainians to separate from Ukraine, if their number is large enough? If the West is not willing to have such a plebiscite and respect the results (whatever they might be), how can we blame Russia for its intervention there?

My guess is that they would not vote to join Russia. But if that's true, why should we be against a plebiscite? Why shouldn't we propose it? Are we afraid how the vote might turn out?

Such a plebiscite has already been held. Russia made sure it was far from fair--that means they didn't expect to win it if it was fair. Thus we can conclude that the takeover was undesired.

 

[barbos]

After the fall Russia had a bunch of kleptocrats each trying to take as much of the pie as they could. Now that Putin has consolidated power less is wasted on infighting.

and your point?

 

[barbos]

Here's my question, to which I expect an answer, given the title:

What would be the result if a plebiscite were held in east Ukraine? Would east Ukrainians vote to stay in Ukraine, or vote for independence? Or would they vote to join Russia?

How do we know what the sentiment is of east Ukrainians?

Is the West willing to submit to such a plebiscite, allowing pro-Russian Ukrainians to separate from Ukraine, if their number is large enough? If the West is not willing to have such a plebiscite and respect the results (whatever they might be), how can we blame Russia for its intervention there?

My guess is that they would not vote to join Russia. But if that's true, why should we be against a plebiscite? Why shouldn't we propose it? Are we afraid how the vote might turn out?

Such a plebiscite has already been held. Russia made sure it was far from fair--that means they didn't expect to win it if it was fair. Thus we can conclude that the takeover was undesired.

Complete and utter garbage. Your State Department neocons know results reflected actual opinion, that's why they were against it and more importantly they are not demanding for a redo.

 

[barbos]

Nobody watched the lecture it seems.

 

[Elixir]

You didn’t read Copernicus’ posts.
You also didn’t watch the fifty minute video I posted.
FAIL.

 

[TV and credit cards]

You didn’t read Copernicus’ posts.
You also didn’t watch the fifty minute video I posted.
FAIL.

Oh, Barbos read Copernicus’ post, I’m sure. Desiring to respond is another matter.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

The G7 just dropped the hammer on Poots. The ball is in his court again.