whiterock said:except that part in bold is not true. We do not have a right to place our weapons on the sovereign territory of any country, including NATO members. A country, including a Nato member, must agree to it. Further, NATO has always been an anti-Russian alliance. Russia has always been an expansionist power. It's ambitions in East Europe and the Caucasus have sparked wars several times. By contrast, when NATO expanded into the former Warsaw Pact nations and the Baltics, no permanent bases with standing maneuver units were stationed there. When Putin invaded in Feb 2022, we had to support combat air patrols over Romania from bases in Italy and Germany, with incredibly long lines of logistics. All refueling for those CAPs were provided by KC-46 from Italy & Germany (first hand info). So NATO not only did not place units on the Russian border, it did not place units on the Ukrainian and Belarusian borders, DESPITE the NATO members in question requesting permanent bases.Redbrickbear said:
[The United States has committed itself to expanding NATO to Russia's borders. NATO, of course, stands for "North Atlantic Treaty Organization." A nave onlooker might ask why countries like Bulgaria, Finland, and Poland would be included in such a treaty. The answer is pretty simple: NATO has nothing to do with the North Atlantic. It is an anti-Russian military alliance.
Russia knew (or, rather, knows) that Ukraine has been courting both the European Union and NATO. Kiev wants to unite itself politically, economically, and militarily to the West. That would mean the United States has a right to place more troops and artillery on Russia's border. Russia didn't like that, and so it lashed out.
But the question is why does the United States want to put troops and artillery on Russia's border? Why has it maintained and, indeed, expanded this anti-Russian alliance, even though its original objective (i.e., the destruction of the Soviet Union) has been accomplished?
Our leaders have been clear on that point. To quote Richard Moore, the current chief of MI6: "With the tragedy and destruction unfolding so distressingly in Ukraine, we should remember the values and hard-won freedoms that distinguish us from Putin, none more than LGBT+ rights."
This isn't Kremlin disinformation. These are the words coming from the horse's mouth. We hate Russia because they are mean to the gays.
Deacon Nicholas Kotar, the great novelist and translator, gave a wider view:Quote:
What the Russian government is doing is setting a red line to the spread of NGO-style liberal democracy. And Ukraine, unfortunately, has been a buffer zone, and a kind of test-case, for the spread, not of a political system, but of a system of values, that is espoused by the elites only....The problem is that with all these colored revolutions, no matter how you look at it, the thing that comes in together with the money is an insistence, unfortunately, on the adoption of the Western liberal cultural milieu. It happened in Georgia, it happened in Ukraine, it happened everywhere.
Ultimately, this isn't about Russia. It's not even about Ukraine. It's about us. Western elites want us to believe that the triumph of "NGO-style liberal democracy" is inevitable everywhere. But it's not. Russia is living proof of that.]
And yes, your last two paragraphs are correct. This is indeed about allowing any nation which wishes to belong to the western order, i.e. liberal democracy, to do so. That is not a threat to anyone, except expansionist totalitarian states. All they have to do to make that threat go away is to adopt liberal democracy. Or they can sit and stew in their own corrupt and incompetent systems. Liberal Democracy is not going invade and FORCE them to do either option. But neither is Liberal Democracy going to allow the likes of Russia to threaten liberal democracy with invasion. Would be insanity to do so.
Look at the premise of your argument.....Russia has a right to not only remain a totalitarian system, but a right to prevent its neighbors from establishing liberal democracy? A totalitarian system has a right to exist which includes the ability to impose totalitarianism upon OTHER sovereign nations which desire otherwise? How big of a cocoon are we obligated to provide to totalitarianism?
Does cancer have a right to not just exist in situ, but to expand into adjacent areas as necessary to survive?
Keep in mind, the doctors avoided touching any tissue around the cancer, for fear of provoking metastasis.
But the cancer broke out anyway.
And now, some are blaming the doctors.
You use a lot of words to say: "I love USA imperial expansion and don't like Russian expansion"