whiterock said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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[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.]

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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.

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"

Redbrickbear said:

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You think there is more reason to expand NATO into the east today than in 1990? What?

You think modern Russia is more of a threat than the super power that was the USSR?

---

Why does Russia have to be a threat for NATO to add nations that are like minded, want to join the EU and want freedom that security brings? Is Russia being a threat the only reason NATO can add? Or a nation that wants t o join NATO can join?

RMF5630 said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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You think there is more reason to expand NATO into the east today than in 1990? What?

You think modern Russia is more of a threat than the super power that was the USSR?

---

Why does Russia have to be a threat for NATO to add nations that are like minded, want to join the EU and want freedom that security brings? Is Russia being a threat the only reason NATO can add? Or a nation that wants t o join NATO can join?

---

What common values and "like mindedness" do you think Britain, France, Albania, Canada, Romania, Portugal, Croatia, Turkey, Estonia, Greece, and the USA have?

The "liked mindedness" idea becomes even more hilarious when you look at the government of Turkey and its neo-Ottoman/semi-Islamist autocratic leader Erdogan and the post-national liberal governments of places like Canada.

Redbrickbear said:

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RMF5630 said:

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Redbrickbear said:

---

You think there is more reason to expand NATO into the east today than in 1990? What?

You think modern Russia is more of a threat than the super power that was the USSR?

---

Why does Russia have to be a threat for NATO to add nations that are like minded, want to join the EU and want freedom that security brings? Is Russia being a threat the only reason NATO can add? Or a nation that wants t o join NATO can join?

---

What common values and "like mindedness" do you think Britain, France, Albania, Canada, Romania, Portugal, Croatia, Turkey, Estonia, Greece, and the USA have?

The "liked mindedness" idea becomes even more hilarious when you look at the government of Turkey and its neo-Ottoman/semi-Islamist autocratic leader Erdogan and the post-national liberal governments of places like Canada.

---

And what was Turkey's Government like when they joined? Turkey is also a top 20ish economy and very Capitalist. Even if not, what is wrong with joining for security? You know the real world is not just meet all three or NO.

RMF5630 said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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RMF5630 said:

---

Redbrickbear said:

---

You think there is more reason to expand NATO into the east today than in 1990? What?

You think modern Russia is more of a threat than the super power that was the USSR?

---

Why does Russia have to be a threat for NATO to add nations that are like minded, want to join the EU and want freedom that security brings? Is Russia being a threat the only reason NATO can add? Or a nation that wants t o join NATO can join?

---

What common values and "like mindedness" do you think Britain, France, Albania, Canada, Romania, Portugal, Croatia, Turkey, Estonia, Greece, and the USA have?

The "liked mindedness" idea becomes even more hilarious when you look at the government of Turkey and its neo-Ottoman/semi-Islamist autocratic leader Erdogan and the post-national liberal governments of places like Canada.

---

And what was Turkey's Government like when they joined? Turkey is also a top 20ish economy and very Capitalist. Even if not, what is wrong with joining for security? You know the real world is not just meet all three or NO.

---

In 1952 Turkey had a Kemalist government (same type of guys who mass murdered the Christian Armenians and Assyrian Christians during world war I)

Also committed the anti-Greek Christian pogroms that destroyed the native Greeks of Istanbul who had been there since the time of Constantine the great.


[In 67 September 1955 an anti-Greek pogrom was orchestrated in Istanbul by the Turkish military's Tactical Mobilization Group. The events were triggered by the news that the Turkish consulate in Thessaloniki, north Greece the house where Mustafa Kemal Atatrk was born in 1881 had been bombed the day before. A bomb planted by a Turkish usher of the consulate, who was later arrested and confessed, incited the events. The Turkish press conveying the news in Turkey was silent about the arrest and instead insinuated that Greeks had set off the bomb. Over a dozen people died during or after the pogrom as a result of beatings and arson. Jews, Armenians and others were also harmed. In addition to commercial targets, the mob clearly targeted property owned or administered by the Greek Orthodox Church. 73 churches and 23 schools were vandalized, burned or destroyed, as were 8 asperses and 3 monasteries.

The pogrom greatly accelerated emigration of ethnic Greeks from Turkey, and the Istanbul region in particular. The Greek population of Turkey declined from 119,822 persons in 1927, to about 7,000 by 1978. In Istanbul alone, the Greek population decreased from 65,108 to 49,081 between 1955 and 1960.]

whiterock said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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[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.]

---

By contrast, when NATO expanded into the former Warsaw Pact nations and the Baltics, no permanent bases with standing maneuver units were stationed there.

---

Again, this is not true. Poland hosts both the forward command of the Army V Corps, first announced in 2020, and the "semi-permanent" headquarters of the 3rd Armored Brigade Combat Team of the 4th Infantry Division, which has been there since 2017 (and also has a rotational presence in Estonia and Latvia).

Redbrickbear said:

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RMF5630 said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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RMF5630 said:

---

Redbrickbear said:

---

You think there is more reason to expand NATO into the east today than in 1990? What?

You think modern Russia is more of a threat than the super power that was the USSR?

---

Why does Russia have to be a threat for NATO to add nations that are like minded, want to join the EU and want freedom that security brings? Is Russia being a threat the only reason NATO can add? Or a nation that wants t o join NATO can join?

---

What common values and "like mindedness" do you think Britain, France, Albania, Canada, Romania, Portugal, Croatia, Turkey, Estonia, Greece, and the USA have?

The "liked mindedness" idea becomes even more hilarious when you look at the government of Turkey and its neo-Ottoman/semi-Islamist autocratic leader Erdogan and the post-national liberal governments of places like Canada.

---

And what was Turkey's Government like when they joined? Turkey is also a top 20ish economy and very Capitalist. Even if not, what is wrong with joining for security? You know the real world is not just meet all three or NO.

---

In 1952 Turkey had a Kemalist government (same type of guys who mass murdered the Christian Armenians and Assyrian Christians during world war I)

Also committed the anti-Greek Christian pogroms that destroyed the native Greeks of Istanbul who had been there since the time of Constantine the great.


[In 67 September 1955 an anti-Greek pogrom was orchestrated in Istanbul by the Turkish military's Tactical Mobilization Group. The events were triggered by the news that the Turkish consulate in Thessaloniki, north Greece the house where Mustafa Kemal Atatrk was born in 1881 had been bombed the day before. A bomb planted by a Turkish usher of the consulate, who was later arrested and confessed, incited the events. The Turkish press conveying the news in Turkey was silent about the arrest and instead insinuated that Greeks had set off the bomb. Over a dozen people died during or after the pogrom as a result of beatings and arson. Jews, Armenians and others were also harmed. In addition to commercial targets, the mob clearly targeted property owned or administered by the Greek Orthodox Church. 73 churches and 23 schools were vandalized, burned or destroyed, as were 8 asperses and 3 monasteries.

The pogrom greatly accelerated emigration of ethnic Greeks from Turkey, and the Istanbul region in particular. The Greek population of Turkey declined from 119,822 persons in 1927, to about 7,000 by 1978. In Istanbul alone, the Greek population decreased from 65,108 to 49,081 between 1955 and 1960.]

---

So Turkey should be out. The Baltics? Out. Finland, Sweden, Poland, Czech, Eastern Part of Germany, Australia, Romania... Basically, all of NATO should be disbanded and the US maybe pay reparations to most of the world while we are at it? How about adding Texas, NM, AZ and CA to give back to Mexico? Would giving AK to the Russians make up for all the harm we have done? HI needs to be reverted to a Kingdom, throw in the 7th Fleet to make up. That cover it? I am sure if you think about it there is someone else the US has harmed that we can pay. Maybe just dissolve the US. Would that suffice?


There is absolutely NOT ONE THING that NATO and US has done well according to you guys.

RMF5630 said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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RMF5630 said:

---

Redbrickbear said:

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RMF5630 said:

---

Redbrickbear said:

---

You think there is more reason to expand NATO into the east today than in 1990? What?

You think modern Russia is more of a threat than the super power that was the USSR?

---

Why does Russia have to be a threat for NATO to add nations that are like minded, want to join the EU and want freedom that security brings? Is Russia being a threat the only reason NATO can add? Or a nation that wants t o join NATO can join?

---

What common values and "like mindedness" do you think Britain, France, Albania, Canada, Romania, Portugal, Croatia, Turkey, Estonia, Greece, and the USA have?

The "liked mindedness" idea becomes even more hilarious when you look at the government of Turkey and its neo-Ottoman/semi-Islamist autocratic leader Erdogan and the post-national liberal governments of places like Canada.

---

And what was Turkey's Government like when they joined? Turkey is also a top 20ish economy and very Capitalist. Even if not, what is wrong with joining for security? You know the real world is not just meet all three or NO.

---

In 1952 Turkey had a Kemalist government (same type of guys who mass murdered the Christian Armenians and Assyrian Christians during world war I)

Also committed the anti-Greek Christian pogroms that destroyed the native Greeks of Istanbul who had been there since the time of Constantine the great.


[In 67 September 1955 an anti-Greek pogrom was orchestrated in Istanbul by the Turkish military's Tactical Mobilization Group. The events were triggered by the news that the Turkish consulate in Thessaloniki, north Greece the house where Mustafa Kemal Atatrk was born in 1881 had been bombed the day before. A bomb planted by a Turkish usher of the consulate, who was later arrested and confessed, incited the events. The Turkish press conveying the news in Turkey was silent about the arrest and instead insinuated that Greeks had set off the bomb. Over a dozen people died during or after the pogrom as a result of beatings and arson. Jews, Armenians and others were also harmed. In addition to commercial targets, the mob clearly targeted property owned or administered by the Greek Orthodox Church. 73 churches and 23 schools were vandalized, burned or destroyed, as were 8 asperses and 3 monasteries.

The pogrom greatly accelerated emigration of ethnic Greeks from Turkey, and the Istanbul region in particular. The Greek population of Turkey declined from 119,822 persons in 1927, to about 7,000 by 1978. In Istanbul alone, the Greek population decreased from 65,108 to 49,081 between 1955 and 1960.]

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There is absolutely NOT ONE THING that NATO and US has done well according to you guys.

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I don't believe this is true, but NATO's time has past. I object to the interconnecting treaty obligations.

RMF5630 said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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RMF5630 said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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RMF5630 said:

---

Redbrickbear said:

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You think there is more reason to expand NATO into the east today than in 1990? What?

You think modern Russia is more of a threat than the super power that was the USSR?

---

Why does Russia have to be a threat for NATO to add nations that are like minded, want to join the EU and want freedom that security brings? Is Russia being a threat the only reason NATO can add? Or a nation that wants t o join NATO can join?

---

What common values and "like mindedness" do you think Britain, France, Albania, Canada, Romania, Portugal, Croatia, Turkey, Estonia, Greece, and the USA have?

The "liked mindedness" idea becomes even more hilarious when you look at the government of Turkey and its neo-Ottoman/semi-Islamist autocratic leader Erdogan and the post-national liberal governments of places like Canada.

---

And what was Turkey's Government like when they joined? Turkey is also a top 20ish economy and very Capitalist. Even if not, what is wrong with joining for security? You know the real world is not just meet all three or NO.

---

In 1952 Turkey had a Kemalist government (same type of guys who mass murdered the Christian Armenians and Assyrian Christians during world war I)

Also committed the anti-Greek Christian pogroms that destroyed the native Greeks of Istanbul who had been there since the time of Constantine the great.


[In 67 September 1955 an anti-Greek pogrom was orchestrated in Istanbul by the Turkish military's Tactical Mobilization Group. The events were triggered by the news that the Turkish consulate in Thessaloniki, north Greece the house where Mustafa Kemal Atatrk was born in 1881 had been bombed the day before. A bomb planted by a Turkish usher of the consulate, who was later arrested and confessed, incited the events. The Turkish press conveying the news in Turkey was silent about the arrest and instead insinuated that Greeks had set off the bomb. Over a dozen people died during or after the pogrom as a result of beatings and arson. Jews, Armenians and others were also harmed. In addition to commercial targets, the mob clearly targeted property owned or administered by the Greek Orthodox Church. 73 churches and 23 schools were vandalized, burned or destroyed, as were 8 asperses and 3 monasteries.

The pogrom greatly accelerated emigration of ethnic Greeks from Turkey, and the Istanbul region in particular. The Greek population of Turkey declined from 119,822 persons in 1927, to about 7,000 by 1978. In Istanbul alone, the Greek population decreased from 65,108 to 49,081 between 1955 and 1960.]

---

So Turkey should be out. The Baltics? Out. Finland, Sweden, Poland, Czech, Eastern Part of Germany, Australia, Romania... Basically, all of NATO should be disbanded and the US maybe pay reparations to most of the world while we are at it? How about adding Texas, NM, AZ and CA to give back to Mexico? Would giving AK to the Russians make up for all the harm we have done? HI needs to be reverted to a Kingdom, throw in the 7th Fleet to make up. That cover it? I am sure if you think about it there is someone else the US has harmed that we can pay. Maybe just dissolve the US. Would that suffice?


There is absolutely NOT ONE THING that NATO and US has done well according to you guys.

---

Well of course that is a lie and no one on this thread ever said that.

NATO was a necessary military alliance to stop the spread of Communism and the massive socialist empire called the USSR. The communists being backed up by the Red Army that had 400 division stationed in Europe, 25,000 tanks, and 45,000 nukes. Along with 8 other Warsaw pact countries under communist rule with their armies.

The USSR and the Warsaw pact are now long long gone.

https://www.foreignexchanges.news/p/nato-has-outlived-its-usefulness
[In many ways, NATO was wildly successful in its time. But that time is over, and now it should be dismantled...

The decision to keep NATO operating after the Cold War ensured that it functioned as support for the US hegemon. During the Cold War, as NATO's website proudly affirms, the organization's "forces were not involved in a single military engagement." Instead, to borrow the historian Walter LaFeber's phrasing, NATO was mainly used "as a means to deal with more immediate problems [than a Soviet invasion]the integration of the Federal Republic of Germany into the West, the easing of Franco-German hatreds, the anchoring of a Great Britain tossed between continental and Atlantic-Commonwealth interests," and other intra-North Atlantic concerns. It was primarily a tool of integration.

But once the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, NATO rapidly became an arm of the US Empire. Or as NATO's website benignly puts it, with "changing conditions came new responsibilities. From being an exclusively defensive alliance for nearly half a century, NATO began to assume an increasingly proactive role within the international community." It participated in the Gulf War; the conflicts that rent the former Yugoslavia; the War on Terror; the Afghanistan War; and the Iraq War, to name only a few of its contributions. Indeed, by early 2021, NATO was partaking in operations in Afghanistan, Kosovo, the Mediterranean, Africa, and elsewhere.

The alliance has also grown to thirty members, and now includes many nations that were once in the Soviet sphere of influence, like Albania, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Romania. Unsurprisingly, the organization's wanton expansion into Eastern Europe has provoked Russia imagine how US decision-makers would have felt had Canada or Mexico joined the Warsaw Pact and NATO has been a useful foil for Russian President Vladimir Putin, helping him justify his revanchist foreign policy.

As this all suggests, there are significant drawbacks to NATO's continuing existence.]

whiterock said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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whiterock said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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whiterock said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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whiterock said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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whiterock said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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whiterock said:

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Osodecentx said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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How the United States was transformed from guardian to spoiler of the postwar international order. An excellent summary from Harper's magazine.

Quote:

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Why Are We in Ukraine?
On the dangers of American hubris
by Benjamin Schwarz, Christopher Layne

From the early Nineties, when Washington first raised the idea of NATO expansion, until 2008, when the U.S. delegation at the NATO summit in Bucharest advocated alliance membership for Ukraine and Georgia, U.S.-Russian exchanges were monotonous. While Russians protested Washington's NATO expansion plans, American officials shrugged off those protests--or pointed to them as evidence to justify still-further expansion. Washington's message to Moscow could not have been clearer or more disquieting: Normal diplomacy among great powers, distinguished by the recognition and accommodation of clashing interests--the approach that had defined the U.S.-Soviet rivalry during even the most intense stretches of the Cold War--was obsolete. Russia was expected to acquiesce to a new world order created and dominated by the United States.

The radical expansion of NATO's writ reflected the overweening aims that the end of the Cold War enabled Washington to pursue. Historically, great powers tend to focus pragmatically on reducing conflict among themselves. By frankly recognizing the realities of power and acknowledging each other's interests, they can usually relate to one another on a businesslike basis. This international give-and-take is bolstered by and helps engender a rough, contextual understanding of what's reasonable and legitimate--not in an abstract or absolute sense but in a way that permits fierce business rivals to moderate and accede to demands and to reach deals. By embracing what came to be called its "unipolar moment," Washington demonstrated--to Paris, Berlin, London, New Delhi, and Beijing, no less than to Moscow--that it would no longer be bound by the norms implicit in great power politics, norms that constrain the aims pursued as much as the means employed. Those who determine U.S. foreign policy hold that, as President George W. Bush declared in his second inaugural address, "the survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands." They maintain, as President Bill Clinton averred in 1993, that the security of the United States demands a "focus on relations within nations, on a nation's form of governance, on its economic structure."

Whatever one thinks of this doctrine, which prompted Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to dub America "the indispensable nation"--and which Gorbachev said defined America's "dangerous winner's mentality"--it lavishly expanded previously established conceptions of security and national interest. In its crusading universalism, it could be regarded by other states, with ample supporting evidence, as at best recklessly meddlesome and at worst messianically interventionist. Convinced that its national security depended on the domestic political and economic arrangements of ostensibly sovereign states--and therefore defining as a legitimate goal the alteration or eradication of those arrangements if they were not in accord with its professed ideals and values--the post-Cold War United States became a revolutionary force in world politics.

https://harpers.org/archive/2023/06/why-are-we-in-ukraine/

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Good article, difficult questions. I don't know the answer

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Again, we see the isolationist argument that we caused a war in which we had no interest. Both are patently false premises. Russia would have NEVER invaded or usurped Ukraine if Nato hadn't been meddling? Pfft. If NATO hadn't expanded eastward, Russia would have expanded westward. The issue at hand is merely about where the razor wire will be strung. NATO was slow, deliberate, and cautious in its move eastward, out of deference to Russia. And it is instructive that EVERYONE (except Belarus) wants to be on the west side of the wire.

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You continue to use the propagandist term of "isolationist"....and of course non-intervention and not engaging in war mongering adventurism is of course not the same as isolationism.

We are the major economic power on earth and have a two ocean navy along with bases in 80+ countries and territories around the world. No one has even said we should dismantle those fleets or bases.

What people have said is that we should not get involved in bloody conflicts that we have no vital interest in or that do not involved a ally of the USA. Ukraine is not a NATO ally.

And your argument that Russia (with a poverty level and per captia GDP like Mexico) is going to expand Westward is laughable...and then you contradict yourself by saying correctly that no one wants join them.....so then how can they expand Westward? Talk about grasping for reasons to get into a conflict with a nuclear power...fantasies of "imminent expansion into the West" lol

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Russia doesn't have to invade and defeat NATO, as your analysis presumes. Russia will try to undermine it from within, facilitated by gunboat diplomacy on NATO borders to make all players in the frontline states be more cautious in their pro-Nato/anti-=Russia policies. Then. One election. One coup. And we will have the prospect of Russia and Nato poised on opposite borders of a Nato state preparing to come to the rescue of a new government calling for help. THAT is something to lose sleep over, friend. And the only way to prevent it is to keep Russian armies IN RUSSIA.

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Russia had a similar predicament in Ukraine. Had we admitted such an unstable country to membership in NATO, and its government decided to take Crimea, Russia would have found itself at war without having lifted a finger.

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I have spoken often about the risks of admitting politically unstable states to Nato. Nato itself recognizes that risk. That's why it has not admitted Ukraine to membership, and only elevated it to partner status in 2020 (joining several other countries - Sweden, Finland, Australia, Jordan, Georgia). NATO is signaling unwavering support for Ukraine, as link demonstrates:
https://news.yahoo.com/nato-elevate-ukraine-partner-status-212000077.html
Some of that is genuine, and some of that is diplomatic posturing to keep up pressure on Russia....to force them to the table before the entirety of Ukraine slips away.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine unfortunately may well result in a faster-track to Ukraine Nato membership. I would prefer to put that off until after the war is won and we have a chance to observe a couple of election cycles, to ensure Ukraine can demonstrate that it is capable of peaceful transition to power. But Russia's weakness and looming defeat will be a powerful enticement to expand, which in retrospect perhaps should have been done 30 years ago when Russia was too weak to resist it.

Nato is itself engaging in mission creep, from a defense of Western Europe from Soviet attack, to a defense of democracy from attacks by autocracy. The admission of Jordan and Australia would be your clue.

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"Democracy," i.e. recycled Marxism warmed over by Western NGOs and served to an ungrateful populace.

Russia doesn't need to be dragged into modernity. They've been there already.

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That is not spin. That is detachment from reality.

Are you OK?

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You just told me, apparently without irony, that our foreign policy has something to do with sorting out democracies from autocracies and acting as the selfless champion of the former.

Are you okay?

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Unlike you, completely lucid. Tell us the rationale for Australia belonging to NATO.

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Australia doesn't belong to NATO.

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Correct. They have partner status along with Jordan. Same question applies. Why?

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Obviously not to defend Australian democracy, since partner status entails no such commitment on our part. I'm sure it was meant to provide our operations with financial and other assistance, as well as give us bragging rights to a bigger "international coalition."

A much better question is why we're considering member status for Ukraine, a notoriously corrupt regime known for ethnic, religious, and political persecutions. Defending democracy is hardly a plausible explanation there, either.

Redbrickbear said:

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RMF5630 said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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RMF5630 said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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RMF5630 said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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You think there is more reason to expand NATO into the east today than in 1990? What?

You think modern Russia is more of a threat than the super power that was the USSR?

---

Why does Russia have to be a threat for NATO to add nations that are like minded, want to join the EU and want freedom that security brings? Is Russia being a threat the only reason NATO can add? Or a nation that wants t o join NATO can join?

---

What common values and "like mindedness" do you think Britain, France, Albania, Canada, Romania, Portugal, Croatia, Turkey, Estonia, Greece, and the USA have?

The "liked mindedness" idea becomes even more hilarious when you look at the government of Turkey and its neo-Ottoman/semi-Islamist autocratic leader Erdogan and the post-national liberal governments of places like Canada.

---

And what was Turkey's Government like when they joined? Turkey is also a top 20ish economy and very Capitalist. Even if not, what is wrong with joining for security? You know the real world is not just meet all three or NO.

---

In 1952 Turkey had a Kemalist government (same type of guys who mass murdered the Christian Armenians and Assyrian Christians during world war I)

Also committed the anti-Greek Christian pogroms that destroyed the native Greeks of Istanbul who had been there since the time of Constantine the great.


[In 67 September 1955 an anti-Greek pogrom was orchestrated in Istanbul by the Turkish military's Tactical Mobilization Group. The events were triggered by the news that the Turkish consulate in Thessaloniki, north Greece the house where Mustafa Kemal Atatrk was born in 1881 had been bombed the day before. A bomb planted by a Turkish usher of the consulate, who was later arrested and confessed, incited the events. The Turkish press conveying the news in Turkey was silent about the arrest and instead insinuated that Greeks had set off the bomb. Over a dozen people died during or after the pogrom as a result of beatings and arson. Jews, Armenians and others were also harmed. In addition to commercial targets, the mob clearly targeted property owned or administered by the Greek Orthodox Church. 73 churches and 23 schools were vandalized, burned or destroyed, as were 8 asperses and 3 monasteries.

The pogrom greatly accelerated emigration of ethnic Greeks from Turkey, and the Istanbul region in particular. The Greek population of Turkey declined from 119,822 persons in 1927, to about 7,000 by 1978. In Istanbul alone, the Greek population decreased from 65,108 to 49,081 between 1955 and 1960.]

---

So Turkey should be out. The Baltics? Out. Finland, Sweden, Poland, Czech, Eastern Part of Germany, Australia, Romania... Basically, all of NATO should be disbanded and the US maybe pay reparations to most of the world while we are at it? How about adding Texas, NM, AZ and CA to give back to Mexico? Would giving AK to the Russians make up for all the harm we have done? HI needs to be reverted to a Kingdom, throw in the 7th Fleet to make up. That cover it? I am sure if you think about it there is someone else the US has harmed that we can pay. Maybe just dissolve the US. Would that suffice?


There is absolutely NOT ONE THING that NATO and US has done well according to you guys.

---

Well of course that is a lie and no one on this thread ever said that.

NATO was a necessary military alliance to stop the spread of Communism and the massive socialist empire called the USSR. The communists being backed up by the Red Army that had 400 division stationed in Europe, 25,000 tanks, and 45,000 nukes. Along with 8 other Warsaw pact countries under communist rule with their armies.

The USSR and the Warsaw pact are now long long gone.

https://www.foreignexchanges.news/p/nato-has-outlived-its-usefulness
[In many ways, NATO was wildly successful in its time. But that time is over, and now it should be dismantled...

The decision to keep NATO operating after the Cold War ensured that it functioned as support for the US hegemon. During the Cold War, as NATO's website proudly affirms, the organization's "forces were not involved in a single military engagement." Instead, to borrow the historian Walter LaFeber's phrasing, NATO was mainly used "as a means to deal with more immediate problems [than a Soviet invasion]the integration of the Federal Republic of Germany into the West, the easing of Franco-German hatreds, the anchoring of a Great Britain tossed between continental and Atlantic-Commonwealth interests," and other intra-North Atlantic concerns. It was primarily a tool of integration.

But once the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, NATO rapidly became an arm of the US Empire. Or as NATO's website benignly puts it, with "changing conditions came new responsibilities. From being an exclusively defensive alliance for nearly half a century, NATO began to assume an increasingly proactive role within the international community." It participated in the Gulf War; the conflicts that rent the former Yugoslavia; the War on Terror; the Afghanistan War; and the Iraq War, to name only a few of its contributions. Indeed, by early 2021, NATO was partaking in operations in Afghanistan, Kosovo, the Mediterranean, Africa, and elsewhere.

The alliance has also grown to thirty members, and now includes many nations that were once in the Soviet sphere of influence, like Albania, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Romania. Unsurprisingly, the organization's wanton expansion into Eastern Europe has provoked Russia imagine how US decision-makers would have felt had Canada or Mexico joined the Warsaw Pact and NATO has been a useful foil for Russian President Vladimir Putin, helping him justify his revanchist foreign policy.

As this all suggests, there are significant drawbacks to NATO's continuing existence.]

---

BS. NATO exists because it provides value to its members. It grows because there is value in being a member. Every Nation that joined NATO is better off economically, more secure and a higher quality of life.

There is also value because of thug Russia and its history of invading and taking what it wants. NATO has not invaded anyone and made them be a member. If you want to leave, you are allowed. All you crap is just that - crap. NATO is voluntary and whoever wants out can leave at any time.

Sam Lowry said:

---

whiterock said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

whiterock said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

whiterock said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

whiterock said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

whiterock said:

---

Redbrickbear said:

---

whiterock said:

---

Osodecentx said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

How the United States was transformed from guardian to spoiler of the postwar international order. An excellent summary from Harper's magazine.

Quote:

---

Why Are We in Ukraine?
On the dangers of American hubris
by Benjamin Schwarz, Christopher Layne

From the early Nineties, when Washington first raised the idea of NATO expansion, until 2008, when the U.S. delegation at the NATO summit in Bucharest advocated alliance membership for Ukraine and Georgia, U.S.-Russian exchanges were monotonous. While Russians protested Washington's NATO expansion plans, American officials shrugged off those protests--or pointed to them as evidence to justify still-further expansion. Washington's message to Moscow could not have been clearer or more disquieting: Normal diplomacy among great powers, distinguished by the recognition and accommodation of clashing interests--the approach that had defined the U.S.-Soviet rivalry during even the most intense stretches of the Cold War--was obsolete. Russia was expected to acquiesce to a new world order created and dominated by the United States.

The radical expansion of NATO's writ reflected the overweening aims that the end of the Cold War enabled Washington to pursue. Historically, great powers tend to focus pragmatically on reducing conflict among themselves. By frankly recognizing the realities of power and acknowledging each other's interests, they can usually relate to one another on a businesslike basis. This international give-and-take is bolstered by and helps engender a rough, contextual understanding of what's reasonable and legitimate--not in an abstract or absolute sense but in a way that permits fierce business rivals to moderate and accede to demands and to reach deals. By embracing what came to be called its "unipolar moment," Washington demonstrated--to Paris, Berlin, London, New Delhi, and Beijing, no less than to Moscow--that it would no longer be bound by the norms implicit in great power politics, norms that constrain the aims pursued as much as the means employed. Those who determine U.S. foreign policy hold that, as President George W. Bush declared in his second inaugural address, "the survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands." They maintain, as President Bill Clinton averred in 1993, that the security of the United States demands a "focus on relations within nations, on a nation's form of governance, on its economic structure."

Whatever one thinks of this doctrine, which prompted Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to dub America "the indispensable nation"--and which Gorbachev said defined America's "dangerous winner's mentality"--it lavishly expanded previously established conceptions of security and national interest. In its crusading universalism, it could be regarded by other states, with ample supporting evidence, as at best recklessly meddlesome and at worst messianically interventionist. Convinced that its national security depended on the domestic political and economic arrangements of ostensibly sovereign states--and therefore defining as a legitimate goal the alteration or eradication of those arrangements if they were not in accord with its professed ideals and values--the post-Cold War United States became a revolutionary force in world politics.

https://harpers.org/archive/2023/06/why-are-we-in-ukraine/

---

---

Good article, difficult questions. I don't know the answer

---

Again, we see the isolationist argument that we caused a war in which we had no interest. Both are patently false premises. Russia would have NEVER invaded or usurped Ukraine if Nato hadn't been meddling? Pfft. If NATO hadn't expanded eastward, Russia would have expanded westward. The issue at hand is merely about where the razor wire will be strung. NATO was slow, deliberate, and cautious in its move eastward, out of deference to Russia. And it is instructive that EVERYONE (except Belarus) wants to be on the west side of the wire.

---

You continue to use the propagandist term of "isolationist"....and of course non-intervention and not engaging in war mongering adventurism is of course not the same as isolationism.

We are the major economic power on earth and have a two ocean navy along with bases in 80+ countries and territories around the world. No one has even said we should dismantle those fleets or bases.

What people have said is that we should not get involved in bloody conflicts that we have no vital interest in or that do not involved a ally of the USA. Ukraine is not a NATO ally.

And your argument that Russia (with a poverty level and per captia GDP like Mexico) is going to expand Westward is laughable...and then you contradict yourself by saying correctly that no one wants join them.....so then how can they expand Westward? Talk about grasping for reasons to get into a conflict with a nuclear power...fantasies of "imminent expansion into the West" lol

---

Russia doesn't have to invade and defeat NATO, as your analysis presumes. Russia will try to undermine it from within, facilitated by gunboat diplomacy on NATO borders to make all players in the frontline states be more cautious in their pro-Nato/anti-=Russia policies. Then. One election. One coup. And we will have the prospect of Russia and Nato poised on opposite borders of a Nato state preparing to come to the rescue of a new government calling for help. THAT is something to lose sleep over, friend. And the only way to prevent it is to keep Russian armies IN RUSSIA.

---

Russia had a similar predicament in Ukraine. Had we admitted such an unstable country to membership in NATO, and its government decided to take Crimea, Russia would have found itself at war without having lifted a finger.

---

I have spoken often about the risks of admitting politically unstable states to Nato. Nato itself recognizes that risk. That's why it has not admitted Ukraine to membership, and only elevated it to partner status in 2020 (joining several other countries - Sweden, Finland, Australia, Jordan, Georgia). NATO is signaling unwavering support for Ukraine, as link demonstrates:
https://news.yahoo.com/nato-elevate-ukraine-partner-status-212000077.html
Some of that is genuine, and some of that is diplomatic posturing to keep up pressure on Russia....to force them to the table before the entirety of Ukraine slips away.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine unfortunately may well result in a faster-track to Ukraine Nato membership. I would prefer to put that off until after the war is won and we have a chance to observe a couple of election cycles, to ensure Ukraine can demonstrate that it is capable of peaceful transition to power. But Russia's weakness and looming defeat will be a powerful enticement to expand, which in retrospect perhaps should have been done 30 years ago when Russia was too weak to resist it.

Nato is itself engaging in mission creep, from a defense of Western Europe from Soviet attack, to a defense of democracy from attacks by autocracy. The admission of Jordan and Australia would be your clue.

---

"Democracy," i.e. recycled Marxism warmed over by Western NGOs and served to an ungrateful populace.

Russia doesn't need to be dragged into modernity. They've been there already.

---

That is not spin. That is detachment from reality.

Are you OK?

---

You just told me, apparently without irony, that our foreign policy has something to do with sorting out democracies from autocracies and acting as the selfless champion of the former.

Are you okay?

---

Unlike you, completely lucid. Tell us the rationale for Australia belonging to NATO.

---

Australia doesn't belong to NATO.

---

Correct. They have partner status along with Jordan. Same question applies. Why?

---

Obviously not to defend Australian democracy, since partner status entails no such commitment on our part. I'm sure it was meant to provide our operations with financial and other assistance, as well as give us bragging rights to a bigger "international coalition."

A much better question is why we're considering member status for Ukraine, a notoriously corrupt regime known for ethnic, religious, and political persecutions. Defending democracy is hardly a plausible explanation there, either.

---

Why is it so bad to admit nations that want to join the Western Economy and have security? Why do they have to pass some moral barometer to be worthy? Being strategically located is not enough? Having more Ag land than the rest of Europe combined doesn't count?

RMF5630 said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

whiterock said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

whiterock said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

whiterock said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

whiterock said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

whiterock said:

---

Redbrickbear said:

---

whiterock said:

---

Osodecentx said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

How the United States was transformed from guardian to spoiler of the postwar international order. An excellent summary from Harper's magazine.

Quote:

---

Why Are We in Ukraine?
On the dangers of American hubris
by Benjamin Schwarz, Christopher Layne

From the early Nineties, when Washington first raised the idea of NATO expansion, until 2008, when the U.S. delegation at the NATO summit in Bucharest advocated alliance membership for Ukraine and Georgia, U.S.-Russian exchanges were monotonous. While Russians protested Washington's NATO expansion plans, American officials shrugged off those protests--or pointed to them as evidence to justify still-further expansion. Washington's message to Moscow could not have been clearer or more disquieting: Normal diplomacy among great powers, distinguished by the recognition and accommodation of clashing interests--the approach that had defined the U.S.-Soviet rivalry during even the most intense stretches of the Cold War--was obsolete. Russia was expected to acquiesce to a new world order created and dominated by the United States.

The radical expansion of NATO's writ reflected the overweening aims that the end of the Cold War enabled Washington to pursue. Historically, great powers tend to focus pragmatically on reducing conflict among themselves. By frankly recognizing the realities of power and acknowledging each other's interests, they can usually relate to one another on a businesslike basis. This international give-and-take is bolstered by and helps engender a rough, contextual understanding of what's reasonable and legitimate--not in an abstract or absolute sense but in a way that permits fierce business rivals to moderate and accede to demands and to reach deals. By embracing what came to be called its "unipolar moment," Washington demonstrated--to Paris, Berlin, London, New Delhi, and Beijing, no less than to Moscow--that it would no longer be bound by the norms implicit in great power politics, norms that constrain the aims pursued as much as the means employed. Those who determine U.S. foreign policy hold that, as President George W. Bush declared in his second inaugural address, "the survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands." They maintain, as President Bill Clinton averred in 1993, that the security of the United States demands a "focus on relations within nations, on a nation's form of governance, on its economic structure."

Whatever one thinks of this doctrine, which prompted Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to dub America "the indispensable nation"--and which Gorbachev said defined America's "dangerous winner's mentality"--it lavishly expanded previously established conceptions of security and national interest. In its crusading universalism, it could be regarded by other states, with ample supporting evidence, as at best recklessly meddlesome and at worst messianically interventionist. Convinced that its national security depended on the domestic political and economic arrangements of ostensibly sovereign states--and therefore defining as a legitimate goal the alteration or eradication of those arrangements if they were not in accord with its professed ideals and values--the post-Cold War United States became a revolutionary force in world politics.

https://harpers.org/archive/2023/06/why-are-we-in-ukraine/

---

---

Good article, difficult questions. I don't know the answer

---

Again, we see the isolationist argument that we caused a war in which we had no interest. Both are patently false premises. Russia would have NEVER invaded or usurped Ukraine if Nato hadn't been meddling? Pfft. If NATO hadn't expanded eastward, Russia would have expanded westward. The issue at hand is merely about where the razor wire will be strung. NATO was slow, deliberate, and cautious in its move eastward, out of deference to Russia. And it is instructive that EVERYONE (except Belarus) wants to be on the west side of the wire.

---

You continue to use the propagandist term of "isolationist"....and of course non-intervention and not engaging in war mongering adventurism is of course not the same as isolationism.

We are the major economic power on earth and have a two ocean navy along with bases in 80+ countries and territories around the world. No one has even said we should dismantle those fleets or bases.

What people have said is that we should not get involved in bloody conflicts that we have no vital interest in or that do not involved a ally of the USA. Ukraine is not a NATO ally.

And your argument that Russia (with a poverty level and per captia GDP like Mexico) is going to expand Westward is laughable...and then you contradict yourself by saying correctly that no one wants join them.....so then how can they expand Westward? Talk about grasping for reasons to get into a conflict with a nuclear power...fantasies of "imminent expansion into the West" lol

---

Russia doesn't have to invade and defeat NATO, as your analysis presumes. Russia will try to undermine it from within, facilitated by gunboat diplomacy on NATO borders to make all players in the frontline states be more cautious in their pro-Nato/anti-=Russia policies. Then. One election. One coup. And we will have the prospect of Russia and Nato poised on opposite borders of a Nato state preparing to come to the rescue of a new government calling for help. THAT is something to lose sleep over, friend. And the only way to prevent it is to keep Russian armies IN RUSSIA.

---

Russia had a similar predicament in Ukraine. Had we admitted such an unstable country to membership in NATO, and its government decided to take Crimea, Russia would have found itself at war without having lifted a finger.

---

I have spoken often about the risks of admitting politically unstable states to Nato. Nato itself recognizes that risk. That's why it has not admitted Ukraine to membership, and only elevated it to partner status in 2020 (joining several other countries - Sweden, Finland, Australia, Jordan, Georgia). NATO is signaling unwavering support for Ukraine, as link demonstrates:
https://news.yahoo.com/nato-elevate-ukraine-partner-status-212000077.html
Some of that is genuine, and some of that is diplomatic posturing to keep up pressure on Russia....to force them to the table before the entirety of Ukraine slips away.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine unfortunately may well result in a faster-track to Ukraine Nato membership. I would prefer to put that off until after the war is won and we have a chance to observe a couple of election cycles, to ensure Ukraine can demonstrate that it is capable of peaceful transition to power. But Russia's weakness and looming defeat will be a powerful enticement to expand, which in retrospect perhaps should have been done 30 years ago when Russia was too weak to resist it.

Nato is itself engaging in mission creep, from a defense of Western Europe from Soviet attack, to a defense of democracy from attacks by autocracy. The admission of Jordan and Australia would be your clue.

---

"Democracy," i.e. recycled Marxism warmed over by Western NGOs and served to an ungrateful populace.

Russia doesn't need to be dragged into modernity. They've been there already.

---

That is not spin. That is detachment from reality.

Are you OK?

---

You just told me, apparently without irony, that our foreign policy has something to do with sorting out democracies from autocracies and acting as the selfless champion of the former.

Are you okay?

---

Unlike you, completely lucid. Tell us the rationale for Australia belonging to NATO.

---

Australia doesn't belong to NATO.

---

Correct. They have partner status along with Jordan. Same question applies. Why?

---

Obviously not to defend Australian democracy, since partner status entails no such commitment on our part. I'm sure it was meant to provide our operations with financial and other assistance, as well as give us bragging rights to a bigger "international coalition."

A much better question is why we're considering member status for Ukraine, a notoriously corrupt regime known for ethnic, religious, and political persecutions. Defending democracy is hardly a plausible explanation there, either.

---

Why is it so bad to admit nations that want to join the Western Economy and have security? Why do they have to pass some moral barometer to be worthy? Being strategically located is not enough? Having more Ag land than the rest of Europe combined doesn't count?

---

It's not entirely an either/or choice between participating in the Western economy and the Russian economy. To the extent that it is a choice, Russia has interests in Ukraine which were undisputed at the time NATO was formed. Those interests didn't disappear with the Soviet Union. Both Russia and the West have made offers to Ukraine. Ukraine was prepared to accept what it considered a better deal from Russia. The 2014 coup changed that, and now of course we recognize the post-coup policy as the only legitimate one. Quite convenient for us, but there's more to it than we like to pretend.

Sam Lowry said:

---

RMF5630 said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

whiterock said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

whiterock said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

whiterock said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

whiterock said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

whiterock said:

---

Redbrickbear said:

---

whiterock said:

---

Osodecentx said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

How the United States was transformed from guardian to spoiler of the postwar international order. An excellent summary from Harper's magazine.

Quote:

---

Why Are We in Ukraine?
On the dangers of American hubris
by Benjamin Schwarz, Christopher Layne

From the early Nineties, when Washington first raised the idea of NATO expansion, until 2008, when the U.S. delegation at the NATO summit in Bucharest advocated alliance membership for Ukraine and Georgia, U.S.-Russian exchanges were monotonous. While Russians protested Washington's NATO expansion plans, American officials shrugged off those protests--or pointed to them as evidence to justify still-further expansion. Washington's message to Moscow could not have been clearer or more disquieting: Normal diplomacy among great powers, distinguished by the recognition and accommodation of clashing interests--the approach that had defined the U.S.-Soviet rivalry during even the most intense stretches of the Cold War--was obsolete. Russia was expected to acquiesce to a new world order created and dominated by the United States.

The radical expansion of NATO's writ reflected the overweening aims that the end of the Cold War enabled Washington to pursue. Historically, great powers tend to focus pragmatically on reducing conflict among themselves. By frankly recognizing the realities of power and acknowledging each other's interests, they can usually relate to one another on a businesslike basis. This international give-and-take is bolstered by and helps engender a rough, contextual understanding of what's reasonable and legitimate--not in an abstract or absolute sense but in a way that permits fierce business rivals to moderate and accede to demands and to reach deals. By embracing what came to be called its "unipolar moment," Washington demonstrated--to Paris, Berlin, London, New Delhi, and Beijing, no less than to Moscow--that it would no longer be bound by the norms implicit in great power politics, norms that constrain the aims pursued as much as the means employed. Those who determine U.S. foreign policy hold that, as President George W. Bush declared in his second inaugural address, "the survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands." They maintain, as President Bill Clinton averred in 1993, that the security of the United States demands a "focus on relations within nations, on a nation's form of governance, on its economic structure."

Whatever one thinks of this doctrine, which prompted Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to dub America "the indispensable nation"--and which Gorbachev said defined America's "dangerous winner's mentality"--it lavishly expanded previously established conceptions of security and national interest. In its crusading universalism, it could be regarded by other states, with ample supporting evidence, as at best recklessly meddlesome and at worst messianically interventionist. Convinced that its national security depended on the domestic political and economic arrangements of ostensibly sovereign states--and therefore defining as a legitimate goal the alteration or eradication of those arrangements if they were not in accord with its professed ideals and values--the post-Cold War United States became a revolutionary force in world politics.

https://harpers.org/archive/2023/06/why-are-we-in-ukraine/

---

---

Good article, difficult questions. I don't know the answer

---

Again, we see the isolationist argument that we caused a war in which we had no interest. Both are patently false premises. Russia would have NEVER invaded or usurped Ukraine if Nato hadn't been meddling? Pfft. If NATO hadn't expanded eastward, Russia would have expanded westward. The issue at hand is merely about where the razor wire will be strung. NATO was slow, deliberate, and cautious in its move eastward, out of deference to Russia. And it is instructive that EVERYONE (except Belarus) wants to be on the west side of the wire.

---

You continue to use the propagandist term of "isolationist"....and of course non-intervention and not engaging in war mongering adventurism is of course not the same as isolationism.

We are the major economic power on earth and have a two ocean navy along with bases in 80+ countries and territories around the world. No one has even said we should dismantle those fleets or bases.

What people have said is that we should not get involved in bloody conflicts that we have no vital interest in or that do not involved a ally of the USA. Ukraine is not a NATO ally.

And your argument that Russia (with a poverty level and per captia GDP like Mexico) is going to expand Westward is laughable...and then you contradict yourself by saying correctly that no one wants join them.....so then how can they expand Westward? Talk about grasping for reasons to get into a conflict with a nuclear power...fantasies of "imminent expansion into the West" lol

---

Russia doesn't have to invade and defeat NATO, as your analysis presumes. Russia will try to undermine it from within, facilitated by gunboat diplomacy on NATO borders to make all players in the frontline states be more cautious in their pro-Nato/anti-=Russia policies. Then. One election. One coup. And we will have the prospect of Russia and Nato poised on opposite borders of a Nato state preparing to come to the rescue of a new government calling for help. THAT is something to lose sleep over, friend. And the only way to prevent it is to keep Russian armies IN RUSSIA.

---

Russia had a similar predicament in Ukraine. Had we admitted such an unstable country to membership in NATO, and its government decided to take Crimea, Russia would have found itself at war without having lifted a finger.

---

I have spoken often about the risks of admitting politically unstable states to Nato. Nato itself recognizes that risk. That's why it has not admitted Ukraine to membership, and only elevated it to partner status in 2020 (joining several other countries - Sweden, Finland, Australia, Jordan, Georgia). NATO is signaling unwavering support for Ukraine, as link demonstrates:
https://news.yahoo.com/nato-elevate-ukraine-partner-status-212000077.html
Some of that is genuine, and some of that is diplomatic posturing to keep up pressure on Russia....to force them to the table before the entirety of Ukraine slips away.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine unfortunately may well result in a faster-track to Ukraine Nato membership. I would prefer to put that off until after the war is won and we have a chance to observe a couple of election cycles, to ensure Ukraine can demonstrate that it is capable of peaceful transition to power. But Russia's weakness and looming defeat will be a powerful enticement to expand, which in retrospect perhaps should have been done 30 years ago when Russia was too weak to resist it.

Nato is itself engaging in mission creep, from a defense of Western Europe from Soviet attack, to a defense of democracy from attacks by autocracy. The admission of Jordan and Australia would be your clue.

---

"Democracy," i.e. recycled Marxism warmed over by Western NGOs and served to an ungrateful populace.

Russia doesn't need to be dragged into modernity. They've been there already.

---

That is not spin. That is detachment from reality.

Are you OK?

---

You just told me, apparently without irony, that our foreign policy has something to do with sorting out democracies from autocracies and acting as the selfless champion of the former.

Are you okay?

---

Unlike you, completely lucid. Tell us the rationale for Australia belonging to NATO.

---

Australia doesn't belong to NATO.

---

Correct. They have partner status along with Jordan. Same question applies. Why?

---

Obviously not to defend Australian democracy, since partner status entails no such commitment on our part. I'm sure it was meant to provide our operations with financial and other assistance, as well as give us bragging rights to a bigger "international coalition."

A much better question is why we're considering member status for Ukraine, a notoriously corrupt regime known for ethnic, religious, and political persecutions. Defending democracy is hardly a plausible explanation there, either.

---

Why is it so bad to admit nations that want to join the Western Economy and have security? Why do they have to pass some moral barometer to be worthy? Being strategically located is not enough? Having more Ag land than the rest of Europe combined doesn't count?

---

It's not entirely an either/or choice between participating in the Western economy and the Russian economy. To the extent that it is a choice, Russia has interests in Ukraine which were undisputed at the time NATO was formed. Those interests didn't disappear with the Soviet Union. Both Russia and the West have made offers to Ukraine. Ukraine was prepared to accept what it considered a better deal from Russia. The 2014 coup changed that, and now of course we recognize the post-coup policy as the only legitimate one. Quite convenient for us, but there's more to it than we like to pretend.

---

As US citizens, shouldn't that be a good thing that is convenient for us and works out?

RMF5630 said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

RMF5630 said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

whiterock said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

whiterock said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

whiterock said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

whiterock said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

whiterock said:

---

Redbrickbear said:

---

whiterock said:

---

Osodecentx said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

How the United States was transformed from guardian to spoiler of the postwar international order. An excellent summary from Harper's magazine.

Quote:

---

Why Are We in Ukraine?
On the dangers of American hubris
by Benjamin Schwarz, Christopher Layne

From the early Nineties, when Washington first raised the idea of NATO expansion, until 2008, when the U.S. delegation at the NATO summit in Bucharest advocated alliance membership for Ukraine and Georgia, U.S.-Russian exchanges were monotonous. While Russians protested Washington's NATO expansion plans, American officials shrugged off those protests--or pointed to them as evidence to justify still-further expansion. Washington's message to Moscow could not have been clearer or more disquieting: Normal diplomacy among great powers, distinguished by the recognition and accommodation of clashing interests--the approach that had defined the U.S.-Soviet rivalry during even the most intense stretches of the Cold War--was obsolete. Russia was expected to acquiesce to a new world order created and dominated by the United States.

The radical expansion of NATO's writ reflected the overweening aims that the end of the Cold War enabled Washington to pursue. Historically, great powers tend to focus pragmatically on reducing conflict among themselves. By frankly recognizing the realities of power and acknowledging each other's interests, they can usually relate to one another on a businesslike basis. This international give-and-take is bolstered by and helps engender a rough, contextual understanding of what's reasonable and legitimate--not in an abstract or absolute sense but in a way that permits fierce business rivals to moderate and accede to demands and to reach deals. By embracing what came to be called its "unipolar moment," Washington demonstrated--to Paris, Berlin, London, New Delhi, and Beijing, no less than to Moscow--that it would no longer be bound by the norms implicit in great power politics, norms that constrain the aims pursued as much as the means employed. Those who determine U.S. foreign policy hold that, as President George W. Bush declared in his second inaugural address, "the survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands." They maintain, as President Bill Clinton averred in 1993, that the security of the United States demands a "focus on relations within nations, on a nation's form of governance, on its economic structure."

Whatever one thinks of this doctrine, which prompted Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to dub America "the indispensable nation"--and which Gorbachev said defined America's "dangerous winner's mentality"--it lavishly expanded previously established conceptions of security and national interest. In its crusading universalism, it could be regarded by other states, with ample supporting evidence, as at best recklessly meddlesome and at worst messianically interventionist. Convinced that its national security depended on the domestic political and economic arrangements of ostensibly sovereign states--and therefore defining as a legitimate goal the alteration or eradication of those arrangements if they were not in accord with its professed ideals and values--the post-Cold War United States became a revolutionary force in world politics.

https://harpers.org/archive/2023/06/why-are-we-in-ukraine/

---

---

Good article, difficult questions. I don't know the answer

---

Again, we see the isolationist argument that we caused a war in which we had no interest. Both are patently false premises. Russia would have NEVER invaded or usurped Ukraine if Nato hadn't been meddling? Pfft. If NATO hadn't expanded eastward, Russia would have expanded westward. The issue at hand is merely about where the razor wire will be strung. NATO was slow, deliberate, and cautious in its move eastward, out of deference to Russia. And it is instructive that EVERYONE (except Belarus) wants to be on the west side of the wire.

---

You continue to use the propagandist term of "isolationist"....and of course non-intervention and not engaging in war mongering adventurism is of course not the same as isolationism.

We are the major economic power on earth and have a two ocean navy along with bases in 80+ countries and territories around the world. No one has even said we should dismantle those fleets or bases.

What people have said is that we should not get involved in bloody conflicts that we have no vital interest in or that do not involved a ally of the USA. Ukraine is not a NATO ally.

And your argument that Russia (with a poverty level and per captia GDP like Mexico) is going to expand Westward is laughable...and then you contradict yourself by saying correctly that no one wants join them.....so then how can they expand Westward? Talk about grasping for reasons to get into a conflict with a nuclear power...fantasies of "imminent expansion into the West" lol

---

Russia doesn't have to invade and defeat NATO, as your analysis presumes. Russia will try to undermine it from within, facilitated by gunboat diplomacy on NATO borders to make all players in the frontline states be more cautious in their pro-Nato/anti-=Russia policies. Then. One election. One coup. And we will have the prospect of Russia and Nato poised on opposite borders of a Nato state preparing to come to the rescue of a new government calling for help. THAT is something to lose sleep over, friend. And the only way to prevent it is to keep Russian armies IN RUSSIA.

---

Russia had a similar predicament in Ukraine. Had we admitted such an unstable country to membership in NATO, and its government decided to take Crimea, Russia would have found itself at war without having lifted a finger.

---

I have spoken often about the risks of admitting politically unstable states to Nato. Nato itself recognizes that risk. That's why it has not admitted Ukraine to membership, and only elevated it to partner status in 2020 (joining several other countries - Sweden, Finland, Australia, Jordan, Georgia). NATO is signaling unwavering support for Ukraine, as link demonstrates:
https://news.yahoo.com/nato-elevate-ukraine-partner-status-212000077.html
Some of that is genuine, and some of that is diplomatic posturing to keep up pressure on Russia....to force them to the table before the entirety of Ukraine slips away.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine unfortunately may well result in a faster-track to Ukraine Nato membership. I would prefer to put that off until after the war is won and we have a chance to observe a couple of election cycles, to ensure Ukraine can demonstrate that it is capable of peaceful transition to power. But Russia's weakness and looming defeat will be a powerful enticement to expand, which in retrospect perhaps should have been done 30 years ago when Russia was too weak to resist it.

Nato is itself engaging in mission creep, from a defense of Western Europe from Soviet attack, to a defense of democracy from attacks by autocracy. The admission of Jordan and Australia would be your clue.

---

"Democracy," i.e. recycled Marxism warmed over by Western NGOs and served to an ungrateful populace.

Russia doesn't need to be dragged into modernity. They've been there already.

---

That is not spin. That is detachment from reality.

Are you OK?

---

You just told me, apparently without irony, that our foreign policy has something to do with sorting out democracies from autocracies and acting as the selfless champion of the former.

Are you okay?

---

Unlike you, completely lucid. Tell us the rationale for Australia belonging to NATO.

---

Australia doesn't belong to NATO.

---

Correct. They have partner status along with Jordan. Same question applies. Why?

---

Obviously not to defend Australian democracy, since partner status entails no such commitment on our part. I'm sure it was meant to provide our operations with financial and other assistance, as well as give us bragging rights to a bigger "international coalition."

A much better question is why we're considering member status for Ukraine, a notoriously corrupt regime known for ethnic, religious, and political persecutions. Defending democracy is hardly a plausible explanation there, either.

---

Why is it so bad to admit nations that want to join the Western Economy and have security? Why do they have to pass some moral barometer to be worthy? Being strategically located is not enough? Having more Ag land than the rest of Europe combined doesn't count?

---

It's not entirely an either/or choice between participating in the Western economy and the Russian economy. To the extent that it is a choice, Russia has interests in Ukraine which were undisputed at the time NATO was formed. Those interests didn't disappear with the Soviet Union. Both Russia and the West have made offers to Ukraine. Ukraine was prepared to accept what it considered a better deal from Russia. The 2014 coup changed that, and now of course we recognize the post-coup policy as the only legitimate one. Quite convenient for us, but there's more to it than we like to pretend.

---

As US citizens, shouldn't that be a good thing that is convenient for us and works out?

---

Probably depends on if you are in a position to capitalize financially on the USA adding another province-vassal to the empire.

For instance out sourcing our manufacturing base made some Americans insanely wealthy…and impoverished millions more working class men and women.

Mixed bag in the end

RMF5630 said:

---

Redbrickbear said:

---

RMF5630 said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

RMF5630 said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

whiterock said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

whiterock said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

whiterock said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

whiterock said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

whiterock said:

---

Redbrickbear said:

---

whiterock said:

---

Osodecentx said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

How the United States was transformed from guardian to spoiler of the postwar international order. An excellent summary from Harper's magazine.

Quote:

---

Why Are We in Ukraine?
On the dangers of American hubris
by Benjamin Schwarz, Christopher Layne

From the early Nineties, when Washington first raised the idea of NATO expansion, until 2008, when the U.S. delegation at the NATO summit in Bucharest advocated alliance membership for Ukraine and Georgia, U.S.-Russian exchanges were monotonous. While Russians protested Washington's NATO expansion plans, American officials shrugged off those protests--or pointed to them as evidence to justify still-further expansion. Washington's message to Moscow could not have been clearer or more disquieting: Normal diplomacy among great powers, distinguished by the recognition and accommodation of clashing interests--the approach that had defined the U.S.-Soviet rivalry during even the most intense stretches of the Cold War--was obsolete. Russia was expected to acquiesce to a new world order created and dominated by the United States.

The radical expansion of NATO's writ reflected the overweening aims that the end of the Cold War enabled Washington to pursue. Historically, great powers tend to focus pragmatically on reducing conflict among themselves. By frankly recognizing the realities of power and acknowledging each other's interests, they can usually relate to one another on a businesslike basis. This international give-and-take is bolstered by and helps engender a rough, contextual understanding of what's reasonable and legitimate--not in an abstract or absolute sense but in a way that permits fierce business rivals to moderate and accede to demands and to reach deals. By embracing what came to be called its "unipolar moment," Washington demonstrated--to Paris, Berlin, London, New Delhi, and Beijing, no less than to Moscow--that it would no longer be bound by the norms implicit in great power politics, norms that constrain the aims pursued as much as the means employed. Those who determine U.S. foreign policy hold that, as President George W. Bush declared in his second inaugural address, "the survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands." They maintain, as President Bill Clinton averred in 1993, that the security of the United States demands a "focus on relations within nations, on a nation's form of governance, on its economic structure."

Whatever one thinks of this doctrine, which prompted Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to dub America "the indispensable nation"--and which Gorbachev said defined America's "dangerous winner's mentality"--it lavishly expanded previously established conceptions of security and national interest. In its crusading universalism, it could be regarded by other states, with ample supporting evidence, as at best recklessly meddlesome and at worst messianically interventionist. Convinced that its national security depended on the domestic political and economic arrangements of ostensibly sovereign states--and therefore defining as a legitimate goal the alteration or eradication of those arrangements if they were not in accord with its professed ideals and values--the post-Cold War United States became a revolutionary force in world politics.

https://harpers.org/archive/2023/06/why-are-we-in-ukraine/

---

---

Good article, difficult questions. I don't know the answer

---

Again, we see the isolationist argument that we caused a war in which we had no interest. Both are patently false premises. Russia would have NEVER invaded or usurped Ukraine if Nato hadn't been meddling? Pfft. If NATO hadn't expanded eastward, Russia would have expanded westward. The issue at hand is merely about where the razor wire will be strung. NATO was slow, deliberate, and cautious in its move eastward, out of deference to Russia. And it is instructive that EVERYONE (except Belarus) wants to be on the west side of the wire.

---

You continue to use the propagandist term of "isolationist"....and of course non-intervention and not engaging in war mongering adventurism is of course not the same as isolationism.

We are the major economic power on earth and have a two ocean navy along with bases in 80+ countries and territories around the world. No one has even said we should dismantle those fleets or bases.

What people have said is that we should not get involved in bloody conflicts that we have no vital interest in or that do not involved a ally of the USA. Ukraine is not a NATO ally.

And your argument that Russia (with a poverty level and per captia GDP like Mexico) is going to expand Westward is laughable...and then you contradict yourself by saying correctly that no one wants join them.....so then how can they expand Westward? Talk about grasping for reasons to get into a conflict with a nuclear power...fantasies of "imminent expansion into the West" lol

---

Russia doesn't have to invade and defeat NATO, as your analysis presumes. Russia will try to undermine it from within, facilitated by gunboat diplomacy on NATO borders to make all players in the frontline states be more cautious in their pro-Nato/anti-=Russia policies. Then. One election. One coup. And we will have the prospect of Russia and Nato poised on opposite borders of a Nato state preparing to come to the rescue of a new government calling for help. THAT is something to lose sleep over, friend. And the only way to prevent it is to keep Russian armies IN RUSSIA.

---

Russia had a similar predicament in Ukraine. Had we admitted such an unstable country to membership in NATO, and its government decided to take Crimea, Russia would have found itself at war without having lifted a finger.

---

I have spoken often about the risks of admitting politically unstable states to Nato. Nato itself recognizes that risk. That's why it has not admitted Ukraine to membership, and only elevated it to partner status in 2020 (joining several other countries - Sweden, Finland, Australia, Jordan, Georgia). NATO is signaling unwavering support for Ukraine, as link demonstrates:
https://news.yahoo.com/nato-elevate-ukraine-partner-status-212000077.html
Some of that is genuine, and some of that is diplomatic posturing to keep up pressure on Russia....to force them to the table before the entirety of Ukraine slips away.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine unfortunately may well result in a faster-track to Ukraine Nato membership. I would prefer to put that off until after the war is won and we have a chance to observe a couple of election cycles, to ensure Ukraine can demonstrate that it is capable of peaceful transition to power. But Russia's weakness and looming defeat will be a powerful enticement to expand, which in retrospect perhaps should have been done 30 years ago when Russia was too weak to resist it.

Nato is itself engaging in mission creep, from a defense of Western Europe from Soviet attack, to a defense of democracy from attacks by autocracy. The admission of Jordan and Australia would be your clue.

---

"Democracy," i.e. recycled Marxism warmed over by Western NGOs and served to an ungrateful populace.

Russia doesn't need to be dragged into modernity. They've been there already.

---

That is not spin. That is detachment from reality.

Are you OK?

---

You just told me, apparently without irony, that our foreign policy has something to do with sorting out democracies from autocracies and acting as the selfless champion of the former.

Are you okay?

---

Unlike you, completely lucid. Tell us the rationale for Australia belonging to NATO.

---

Australia doesn't belong to NATO.

---

Correct. They have partner status along with Jordan. Same question applies. Why?

---

Obviously not to defend Australian democracy, since partner status entails no such commitment on our part. I'm sure it was meant to provide our operations with financial and other assistance, as well as give us bragging rights to a bigger "international coalition."

A much better question is why we're considering member status for Ukraine, a notoriously corrupt regime known for ethnic, religious, and political persecutions. Defending democracy is hardly a plausible explanation there, either.

---

Why is it so bad to admit nations that want to join the Western Economy and have security? Why do they have to pass some moral barometer to be worthy? Being strategically located is not enough? Having more Ag land than the rest of Europe combined doesn't count?

---

It's not entirely an either/or choice between participating in the Western economy and the Russian economy. To the extent that it is a choice, Russia has interests in Ukraine which were undisputed at the time NATO was formed. Those interests didn't disappear with the Soviet Union. Both Russia and the West have made offers to Ukraine. Ukraine was prepared to accept what it considered a better deal from Russia. The 2014 coup changed that, and now of course we recognize the post-coup policy as the only legitimate one. Quite convenient for us, but there's more to it than we like to pretend.

---

As US citizens, shouldn't that be a good thing that is convenient for us and works out?

---

Probably depends on if you are in a position to capitalize financially on the USA adding another province-vassal to the empire.

For instance out sourcing our manufacturing base made some Americans insanely wealthy…and impoverished millions more working class men and women.

Mixed bag in the end

---

Wait a minute. Nations going from Russian-based economic system to the EU/US/Japanese based economic system do much better and the quality of life goes up. So, how is the US "adding another province-vassal" bad for the province-vassal state? You are telling us that Latvia, Lithiuania, Estonia, Poland, Romania, and all the rest were better off under Russia's grip? Venezuela is a better place now??? North Korea is a better qualit of life than South Korea? Who are you trying to kid?

---

You asked how it helped Americans.

Venezuela deciding to go full socialist and ruin their economy has had zero effect on the American people.

Romania becoming a market economy and joining the EU has been nothing but a financial drain on the EU taxpayers and has flooded the euro-zone with criminal gypsies and ruthless criminal syndicates who specialize in running drugs, human trafficking, and auto theft.

It's complicated

RMF5630 said:

---

Redbrickbear said:

---

RMF5630 said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

RMF5630 said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

whiterock said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

whiterock said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

whiterock said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

whiterock said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

whiterock said:

---

Redbrickbear said:

---

whiterock said:

---

Osodecentx said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

How the United States was transformed from guardian to spoiler of the postwar international order. An excellent summary from Harper's magazine.

Quote:

---

Why Are We in Ukraine?
On the dangers of American hubris
by Benjamin Schwarz, Christopher Layne

From the early Nineties, when Washington first raised the idea of NATO expansion, until 2008, when the U.S. delegation at the NATO summit in Bucharest advocated alliance membership for Ukraine and Georgia, U.S.-Russian exchanges were monotonous. While Russians protested Washington's NATO expansion plans, American officials shrugged off those protests--or pointed to them as evidence to justify still-further expansion. Washington's message to Moscow could not have been clearer or more disquieting: Normal diplomacy among great powers, distinguished by the recognition and accommodation of clashing interests--the approach that had defined the U.S.-Soviet rivalry during even the most intense stretches of the Cold War--was obsolete. Russia was expected to acquiesce to a new world order created and dominated by the United States.

The radical expansion of NATO's writ reflected the overweening aims that the end of the Cold War enabled Washington to pursue. Historically, great powers tend to focus pragmatically on reducing conflict among themselves. By frankly recognizing the realities of power and acknowledging each other's interests, they can usually relate to one another on a businesslike basis. This international give-and-take is bolstered by and helps engender a rough, contextual understanding of what's reasonable and legitimate--not in an abstract or absolute sense but in a way that permits fierce business rivals to moderate and accede to demands and to reach deals. By embracing what came to be called its "unipolar moment," Washington demonstrated--to Paris, Berlin, London, New Delhi, and Beijing, no less than to Moscow--that it would no longer be bound by the norms implicit in great power politics, norms that constrain the aims pursued as much as the means employed. Those who determine U.S. foreign policy hold that, as President George W. Bush declared in his second inaugural address, "the survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands." They maintain, as President Bill Clinton averred in 1993, that the security of the United States demands a "focus on relations within nations, on a nation's form of governance, on its economic structure."

Whatever one thinks of this doctrine, which prompted Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to dub America "the indispensable nation"--and which Gorbachev said defined America's "dangerous winner's mentality"--it lavishly expanded previously established conceptions of security and national interest. In its crusading universalism, it could be regarded by other states, with ample supporting evidence, as at best recklessly meddlesome and at worst messianically interventionist. Convinced that its national security depended on the domestic political and economic arrangements of ostensibly sovereign states--and therefore defining as a legitimate goal the alteration or eradication of those arrangements if they were not in accord with its professed ideals and values--the post-Cold War United States became a revolutionary force in world politics.

https://harpers.org/archive/2023/06/why-are-we-in-ukraine/

---

---

Good article, difficult questions. I don't know the answer

---

Again, we see the isolationist argument that we caused a war in which we had no interest. Both are patently false premises. Russia would have NEVER invaded or usurped Ukraine if Nato hadn't been meddling? Pfft. If NATO hadn't expanded eastward, Russia would have expanded westward. The issue at hand is merely about where the razor wire will be strung. NATO was slow, deliberate, and cautious in its move eastward, out of deference to Russia. And it is instructive that EVERYONE (except Belarus) wants to be on the west side of the wire.

---

You continue to use the propagandist term of "isolationist"....and of course non-intervention and not engaging in war mongering adventurism is of course not the same as isolationism.

We are the major economic power on earth and have a two ocean navy along with bases in 80+ countries and territories around the world. No one has even said we should dismantle those fleets or bases.

What people have said is that we should not get involved in bloody conflicts that we have no vital interest in or that do not involved a ally of the USA. Ukraine is not a NATO ally.

And your argument that Russia (with a poverty level and per captia GDP like Mexico) is going to expand Westward is laughable...and then you contradict yourself by saying correctly that no one wants join them.....so then how can they expand Westward? Talk about grasping for reasons to get into a conflict with a nuclear power...fantasies of "imminent expansion into the West" lol

---

Russia doesn't have to invade and defeat NATO, as your analysis presumes. Russia will try to undermine it from within, facilitated by gunboat diplomacy on NATO borders to make all players in the frontline states be more cautious in their pro-Nato/anti-=Russia policies. Then. One election. One coup. And we will have the prospect of Russia and Nato poised on opposite borders of a Nato state preparing to come to the rescue of a new government calling for help. THAT is something to lose sleep over, friend. And the only way to prevent it is to keep Russian armies IN RUSSIA.

---

Russia had a similar predicament in Ukraine. Had we admitted such an unstable country to membership in NATO, and its government decided to take Crimea, Russia would have found itself at war without having lifted a finger.

---

I have spoken often about the risks of admitting politically unstable states to Nato. Nato itself recognizes that risk. That's why it has not admitted Ukraine to membership, and only elevated it to partner status in 2020 (joining several other countries - Sweden, Finland, Australia, Jordan, Georgia). NATO is signaling unwavering support for Ukraine, as link demonstrates:
https://news.yahoo.com/nato-elevate-ukraine-partner-status-212000077.html
Some of that is genuine, and some of that is diplomatic posturing to keep up pressure on Russia....to force them to the table before the entirety of Ukraine slips away.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine unfortunately may well result in a faster-track to Ukraine Nato membership. I would prefer to put that off until after the war is won and we have a chance to observe a couple of election cycles, to ensure Ukraine can demonstrate that it is capable of peaceful transition to power. But Russia's weakness and looming defeat will be a powerful enticement to expand, which in retrospect perhaps should have been done 30 years ago when Russia was too weak to resist it.

Nato is itself engaging in mission creep, from a defense of Western Europe from Soviet attack, to a defense of democracy from attacks by autocracy. The admission of Jordan and Australia would be your clue.

---

"Democracy," i.e. recycled Marxism warmed over by Western NGOs and served to an ungrateful populace.

Russia doesn't need to be dragged into modernity. They've been there already.

---

That is not spin. That is detachment from reality.

Are you OK?

---

You just told me, apparently without irony, that our foreign policy has something to do with sorting out democracies from autocracies and acting as the selfless champion of the former.

Are you okay?

---

Unlike you, completely lucid. Tell us the rationale for Australia belonging to NATO.

---

Australia doesn't belong to NATO.

---

Correct. They have partner status along with Jordan. Same question applies. Why?

---

Obviously not to defend Australian democracy, since partner status entails no such commitment on our part. I'm sure it was meant to provide our operations with financial and other assistance, as well as give us bragging rights to a bigger "international coalition."

A much better question is why we're considering member status for Ukraine, a notoriously corrupt regime known for ethnic, religious, and political persecutions. Defending democracy is hardly a plausible explanation there, either.

---

Why is it so bad to admit nations that want to join the Western Economy and have security? Why do they have to pass some moral barometer to be worthy? Being strategically located is not enough? Having more Ag land than the rest of Europe combined doesn't count?

---

It's not entirely an either/or choice between participating in the Western economy and the Russian economy. To the extent that it is a choice, Russia has interests in Ukraine which were undisputed at the time NATO was formed. Those interests didn't disappear with the Soviet Union. Both Russia and the West have made offers to Ukraine. Ukraine was prepared to accept what it considered a better deal from Russia. The 2014 coup changed that, and now of course we recognize the post-coup policy as the only legitimate one. Quite convenient for us, but there's more to it than we like to pretend.

---

As US citizens, shouldn't that be a good thing that is convenient for us and works out?

---

Probably depends on if you are in a position to capitalize financially on the USA adding another province-vassal to the empire.

For instance out sourcing our manufacturing base made some Americans insanely wealthy%85and impoverished millions more working class men and women.

Mixed bag in the end

---

Wait a minute. Nations going from Russian-based economic system to the EU/US/Japanese based economic system do much better and the quality of life goes up. So, how is the US "adding another province-vassal" bad for the province-vassal state? You are telling us that Latvia, Lithiuania, Estonia, Poland, Romania, and all the rest were better off under Russia's grip? Venezuela is a better place now??? North Korea is a better qualit of life than South Korea? Who are you trying to kid?

---

It sounds like we're back in 1980. You know Russia isn't communist any more, right?

Sam Lowry said:

---

RMF5630 said:

---

Redbrickbear said:

---

RMF5630 said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

RMF5630 said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

whiterock said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

whiterock said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

whiterock said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

whiterock said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

whiterock said:

---

Redbrickbear said:

---

whiterock said:

---

Osodecentx said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

How the United States was transformed from guardian to spoiler of the postwar international order. An excellent summary from Harper's magazine.

Quote:

---

Why Are We in Ukraine?
On the dangers of American hubris
by Benjamin Schwarz, Christopher Layne

From the early Nineties, when Washington first raised the idea of NATO expansion, until 2008, when the U.S. delegation at the NATO summit in Bucharest advocated alliance membership for Ukraine and Georgia, U.S.-Russian exchanges were monotonous. While Russians protested Washington's NATO expansion plans, American officials shrugged off those protests--or pointed to them as evidence to justify still-further expansion. Washington's message to Moscow could not have been clearer or more disquieting: Normal diplomacy among great powers, distinguished by the recognition and accommodation of clashing interests--the approach that had defined the U.S.-Soviet rivalry during even the most intense stretches of the Cold War--was obsolete. Russia was expected to acquiesce to a new world order created and dominated by the United States.

The radical expansion of NATO's writ reflected the overweening aims that the end of the Cold War enabled Washington to pursue. Historically, great powers tend to focus pragmatically on reducing conflict among themselves. By frankly recognizing the realities of power and acknowledging each other's interests, they can usually relate to one another on a businesslike basis. This international give-and-take is bolstered by and helps engender a rough, contextual understanding of what's reasonable and legitimate--not in an abstract or absolute sense but in a way that permits fierce business rivals to moderate and accede to demands and to reach deals. By embracing what came to be called its "unipolar moment," Washington demonstrated--to Paris, Berlin, London, New Delhi, and Beijing, no less than to Moscow--that it would no longer be bound by the norms implicit in great power politics, norms that constrain the aims pursued as much as the means employed. Those who determine U.S. foreign policy hold that, as President George W. Bush declared in his second inaugural address, "the survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands." They maintain, as President Bill Clinton averred in 1993, that the security of the United States demands a "focus on relations within nations, on a nation's form of governance, on its economic structure."

Whatever one thinks of this doctrine, which prompted Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to dub America "the indispensable nation"--and which Gorbachev said defined America's "dangerous winner's mentality"--it lavishly expanded previously established conceptions of security and national interest. In its crusading universalism, it could be regarded by other states, with ample supporting evidence, as at best recklessly meddlesome and at worst messianically interventionist. Convinced that its national security depended on the domestic political and economic arrangements of ostensibly sovereign states--and therefore defining as a legitimate goal the alteration or eradication of those arrangements if they were not in accord with its professed ideals and values--the post-Cold War United States became a revolutionary force in world politics.

https://harpers.org/archive/2023/06/why-are-we-in-ukraine/

---

---

Good article, difficult questions. I don't know the answer

---

Again, we see the isolationist argument that we caused a war in which we had no interest. Both are patently false premises. Russia would have NEVER invaded or usurped Ukraine if Nato hadn't been meddling? Pfft. If NATO hadn't expanded eastward, Russia would have expanded westward. The issue at hand is merely about where the razor wire will be strung. NATO was slow, deliberate, and cautious in its move eastward, out of deference to Russia. And it is instructive that EVERYONE (except Belarus) wants to be on the west side of the wire.

---

You continue to use the propagandist term of "isolationist"....and of course non-intervention and not engaging in war mongering adventurism is of course not the same as isolationism.

We are the major economic power on earth and have a two ocean navy along with bases in 80+ countries and territories around the world. No one has even said we should dismantle those fleets or bases.

What people have said is that we should not get involved in bloody conflicts that we have no vital interest in or that do not involved a ally of the USA. Ukraine is not a NATO ally.

And your argument that Russia (with a poverty level and per captia GDP like Mexico) is going to expand Westward is laughable...and then you contradict yourself by saying correctly that no one wants join them.....so then how can they expand Westward? Talk about grasping for reasons to get into a conflict with a nuclear power...fantasies of "imminent expansion into the West" lol

---

Russia doesn't have to invade and defeat NATO, as your analysis presumes. Russia will try to undermine it from within, facilitated by gunboat diplomacy on NATO borders to make all players in the frontline states be more cautious in their pro-Nato/anti-=Russia policies. Then. One election. One coup. And we will have the prospect of Russia and Nato poised on opposite borders of a Nato state preparing to come to the rescue of a new government calling for help. THAT is something to lose sleep over, friend. And the only way to prevent it is to keep Russian armies IN RUSSIA.

---

Russia had a similar predicament in Ukraine. Had we admitted such an unstable country to membership in NATO, and its government decided to take Crimea, Russia would have found itself at war without having lifted a finger.

---

I have spoken often about the risks of admitting politically unstable states to Nato. Nato itself recognizes that risk. That's why it has not admitted Ukraine to membership, and only elevated it to partner status in 2020 (joining several other countries - Sweden, Finland, Australia, Jordan, Georgia). NATO is signaling unwavering support for Ukraine, as link demonstrates:
https://news.yahoo.com/nato-elevate-ukraine-partner-status-212000077.html
Some of that is genuine, and some of that is diplomatic posturing to keep up pressure on Russia....to force them to the table before the entirety of Ukraine slips away.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine unfortunately may well result in a faster-track to Ukraine Nato membership. I would prefer to put that off until after the war is won and we have a chance to observe a couple of election cycles, to ensure Ukraine can demonstrate that it is capable of peaceful transition to power. But Russia's weakness and looming defeat will be a powerful enticement to expand, which in retrospect perhaps should have been done 30 years ago when Russia was too weak to resist it.

Nato is itself engaging in mission creep, from a defense of Western Europe from Soviet attack, to a defense of democracy from attacks by autocracy. The admission of Jordan and Australia would be your clue.

---

"Democracy," i.e. recycled Marxism warmed over by Western NGOs and served to an ungrateful populace.

Russia doesn't need to be dragged into modernity. They've been there already.

---

That is not spin. That is detachment from reality.

Are you OK?

---

You just told me, apparently without irony, that our foreign policy has something to do with sorting out democracies from autocracies and acting as the selfless champion of the former.

Are you okay?

---

Unlike you, completely lucid. Tell us the rationale for Australia belonging to NATO.

---

Australia doesn't belong to NATO.

---

Correct. They have partner status along with Jordan. Same question applies. Why?

---

Obviously not to defend Australian democracy, since partner status entails no such commitment on our part. I'm sure it was meant to provide our operations with financial and other assistance, as well as give us bragging rights to a bigger "international coalition."

A much better question is why we're considering member status for Ukraine, a notoriously corrupt regime known for ethnic, religious, and political persecutions. Defending democracy is hardly a plausible explanation there, either.

---

Why is it so bad to admit nations that want to join the Western Economy and have security? Why do they have to pass some moral barometer to be worthy? Being strategically located is not enough? Having more Ag land than the rest of Europe combined doesn't count?

---

It's not entirely an either/or choice between participating in the Western economy and the Russian economy. To the extent that it is a choice, Russia has interests in Ukraine which were undisputed at the time NATO was formed. Those interests didn't disappear with the Soviet Union. Both Russia and the West have made offers to Ukraine. Ukraine was prepared to accept what it considered a better deal from Russia. The 2014 coup changed that, and now of course we recognize the post-coup policy as the only legitimate one. Quite convenient for us, but there's more to it than we like to pretend.

---

As US citizens, shouldn't that be a good thing that is convenient for us and works out?

---

Probably depends on if you are in a position to capitalize financially on the USA adding another province-vassal to the empire.

For instance out sourcing our manufacturing base made some Americans insanely wealthy%85and impoverished millions more working class men and women.

Mixed bag in the end

---

Wait a minute. Nations going from Russian-based economic system to the EU/US/Japanese based economic system do much better and the quality of life goes up. So, how is the US "adding another province-vassal" bad for the province-vassal state? You are telling us that Latvia, Lithiuania, Estonia, Poland, Romania, and all the rest were better off under Russia's grip? Venezuela is a better place now??? North Korea is a better qualit of life than South Korea? Who are you trying to kid?

---

It sounds like we're back in 1980. You know Russia isn't communist any more, right?

---

Does it matter? Russia is autocratic and the quality of life is poor, definitely lower than EU or NATO nations. Does it matter if it is Communist? I could care less, it still lacks freedom and opportunity.

RMF5630 said:

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Sam Lowry said:

---

RMF5630 said:

---

Redbrickbear said:

---

RMF5630 said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

RMF5630 said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

whiterock said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

whiterock said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

whiterock said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

whiterock said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

whiterock said:

---

Redbrickbear said:

---

whiterock said:

---

Osodecentx said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

How the United States was transformed from guardian to spoiler of the postwar international order. An excellent summary from Harper's magazine.

Quote:

---

Why Are We in Ukraine?
On the dangers of American hubris
by Benjamin Schwarz, Christopher Layne

From the early Nineties, when Washington first raised the idea of NATO expansion, until 2008, when the U.S. delegation at the NATO summit in Bucharest advocated alliance membership for Ukraine and Georgia, U.S.-Russian exchanges were monotonous. While Russians protested Washington's NATO expansion plans, American officials shrugged off those protests--or pointed to them as evidence to justify still-further expansion. Washington's message to Moscow could not have been clearer or more disquieting: Normal diplomacy among great powers, distinguished by the recognition and accommodation of clashing interests--the approach that had defined the U.S.-Soviet rivalry during even the most intense stretches of the Cold War--was obsolete. Russia was expected to acquiesce to a new world order created and dominated by the United States.

The radical expansion of NATO's writ reflected the overweening aims that the end of the Cold War enabled Washington to pursue. Historically, great powers tend to focus pragmatically on reducing conflict among themselves. By frankly recognizing the realities of power and acknowledging each other's interests, they can usually relate to one another on a businesslike basis. This international give-and-take is bolstered by and helps engender a rough, contextual understanding of what's reasonable and legitimate--not in an abstract or absolute sense but in a way that permits fierce business rivals to moderate and accede to demands and to reach deals. By embracing what came to be called its "unipolar moment," Washington demonstrated--to Paris, Berlin, London, New Delhi, and Beijing, no less than to Moscow--that it would no longer be bound by the norms implicit in great power politics, norms that constrain the aims pursued as much as the means employed. Those who determine U.S. foreign policy hold that, as President George W. Bush declared in his second inaugural address, "the survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands." They maintain, as President Bill Clinton averred in 1993, that the security of the United States demands a "focus on relations within nations, on a nation's form of governance, on its economic structure."

Whatever one thinks of this doctrine, which prompted Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to dub America "the indispensable nation"--and which Gorbachev said defined America's "dangerous winner's mentality"--it lavishly expanded previously established conceptions of security and national interest. In its crusading universalism, it could be regarded by other states, with ample supporting evidence, as at best recklessly meddlesome and at worst messianically interventionist. Convinced that its national security depended on the domestic political and economic arrangements of ostensibly sovereign states--and therefore defining as a legitimate goal the alteration or eradication of those arrangements if they were not in accord with its professed ideals and values--the post-Cold War United States became a revolutionary force in world politics.

https://harpers.org/archive/2023/06/why-are-we-in-ukraine/

---

---

Good article, difficult questions. I don't know the answer

---

Again, we see the isolationist argument that we caused a war in which we had no interest. Both are patently false premises. Russia would have NEVER invaded or usurped Ukraine if Nato hadn't been meddling? Pfft. If NATO hadn't expanded eastward, Russia would have expanded westward. The issue at hand is merely about where the razor wire will be strung. NATO was slow, deliberate, and cautious in its move eastward, out of deference to Russia. And it is instructive that EVERYONE (except Belarus) wants to be on the west side of the wire.

---

You continue to use the propagandist term of "isolationist"....and of course non-intervention and not engaging in war mongering adventurism is of course not the same as isolationism.

We are the major economic power on earth and have a two ocean navy along with bases in 80+ countries and territories around the world. No one has even said we should dismantle those fleets or bases.

What people have said is that we should not get involved in bloody conflicts that we have no vital interest in or that do not involved a ally of the USA. Ukraine is not a NATO ally.

And your argument that Russia (with a poverty level and per captia GDP like Mexico) is going to expand Westward is laughable...and then you contradict yourself by saying correctly that no one wants join them.....so then how can they expand Westward? Talk about grasping for reasons to get into a conflict with a nuclear power...fantasies of "imminent expansion into the West" lol

---

Russia doesn't have to invade and defeat NATO, as your analysis presumes. Russia will try to undermine it from within, facilitated by gunboat diplomacy on NATO borders to make all players in the frontline states be more cautious in their pro-Nato/anti-=Russia policies. Then. One election. One coup. And we will have the prospect of Russia and Nato poised on opposite borders of a Nato state preparing to come to the rescue of a new government calling for help. THAT is something to lose sleep over, friend. And the only way to prevent it is to keep Russian armies IN RUSSIA.

---

Russia had a similar predicament in Ukraine. Had we admitted such an unstable country to membership in NATO, and its government decided to take Crimea, Russia would have found itself at war without having lifted a finger.

---

I have spoken often about the risks of admitting politically unstable states to Nato. Nato itself recognizes that risk. That's why it has not admitted Ukraine to membership, and only elevated it to partner status in 2020 (joining several other countries - Sweden, Finland, Australia, Jordan, Georgia). NATO is signaling unwavering support for Ukraine, as link demonstrates:
https://news.yahoo.com/nato-elevate-ukraine-partner-status-212000077.html
Some of that is genuine, and some of that is diplomatic posturing to keep up pressure on Russia....to force them to the table before the entirety of Ukraine slips away.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine unfortunately may well result in a faster-track to Ukraine Nato membership. I would prefer to put that off until after the war is won and we have a chance to observe a couple of election cycles, to ensure Ukraine can demonstrate that it is capable of peaceful transition to power. But Russia's weakness and looming defeat will be a powerful enticement to expand, which in retrospect perhaps should have been done 30 years ago when Russia was too weak to resist it.

Nato is itself engaging in mission creep, from a defense of Western Europe from Soviet attack, to a defense of democracy from attacks by autocracy. The admission of Jordan and Australia would be your clue.

---

"Democracy," i.e. recycled Marxism warmed over by Western NGOs and served to an ungrateful populace.

Russia doesn't need to be dragged into modernity. They've been there already.

---

That is not spin. That is detachment from reality.

Are you OK?

---

You just told me, apparently without irony, that our foreign policy has something to do with sorting out democracies from autocracies and acting as the selfless champion of the former.

Are you okay?

---

Unlike you, completely lucid. Tell us the rationale for Australia belonging to NATO.

---

Australia doesn't belong to NATO.

---

Correct. They have partner status along with Jordan. Same question applies. Why?

---

Obviously not to defend Australian democracy, since partner status entails no such commitment on our part. I'm sure it was meant to provide our operations with financial and other assistance, as well as give us bragging rights to a bigger "international coalition."

A much better question is why we're considering member status for Ukraine, a notoriously corrupt regime known for ethnic, religious, and political persecutions. Defending democracy is hardly a plausible explanation there, either.

---

Why is it so bad to admit nations that want to join the Western Economy and have security? Why do they have to pass some moral barometer to be worthy? Being strategically located is not enough? Having more Ag land than the rest of Europe combined doesn't count?

---

It's not entirely an either/or choice between participating in the Western economy and the Russian economy. To the extent that it is a choice, Russia has interests in Ukraine which were undisputed at the time NATO was formed. Those interests didn't disappear with the Soviet Union. Both Russia and the West have made offers to Ukraine. Ukraine was prepared to accept what it considered a better deal from Russia. The 2014 coup changed that, and now of course we recognize the post-coup policy as the only legitimate one. Quite convenient for us, but there's more to it than we like to pretend.

---

As US citizens, shouldn't that be a good thing that is convenient for us and works out?

---

Probably depends on if you are in a position to capitalize financially on the USA adding another province-vassal to the empire.

For instance out sourcing our manufacturing base made some Americans insanely wealthy%85and impoverished millions more working class men and women.

Mixed bag in the end

---

Wait a minute. Nations going from Russian-based economic system to the EU/US/Japanese based economic system do much better and the quality of life goes up. So, how is the US "adding another province-vassal" bad for the province-vassal state? You are telling us that Latvia, Lithiuania, Estonia, Poland, Romania, and all the rest were better off under Russia's grip? Venezuela is a better place now??? North Korea is a better qualit of life than South Korea? Who are you trying to kid?

---

It sounds like we're back in 1980. You know Russia isn't communist any more, right?

---

Does it matter? Russia is autocratic and the quality of life is poor, definitely lower than EU or NATO nations. Does it matter if it is Communist? I could care less, it still lacks freedom and opportunity.

---

So russia is poor with low quality of life…or a massive advanced military threat to the USA-EU?

You have to pick it can't be both at the same time

p.s

The USA elites literally interfere in our elections, monitor the private communications of American citizens, engage in warrantless search and seizures, are spending the nation into trillions in debt, fighting endless foreign wars, all while importing in millions of hostile foreigners for semi-slave labor. Take off the rose colored classes and look around at the increasingly tyrannical State you are living under.

Moscow and Beijing are bad actors…that does not make DC good guys

RMF5630 said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

RMF5630 said:

---

Redbrickbear said:

---

RMF5630 said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

RMF5630 said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

whiterock said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

whiterock said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

whiterock said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

whiterock said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

whiterock said:

---

Redbrickbear said:

---

whiterock said:

---

Osodecentx said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

How the United States was transformed from guardian to spoiler of the postwar international order. An excellent summary from Harper's magazine.

Quote:

---

Why Are We in Ukraine?
On the dangers of American hubris
by Benjamin Schwarz, Christopher Layne

From the early Nineties, when Washington first raised the idea of NATO expansion, until 2008, when the U.S. delegation at the NATO summit in Bucharest advocated alliance membership for Ukraine and Georgia, U.S.-Russian exchanges were monotonous. While Russians protested Washington's NATO expansion plans, American officials shrugged off those protests--or pointed to them as evidence to justify still-further expansion. Washington's message to Moscow could not have been clearer or more disquieting: Normal diplomacy among great powers, distinguished by the recognition and accommodation of clashing interests--the approach that had defined the U.S.-Soviet rivalry during even the most intense stretches of the Cold War--was obsolete. Russia was expected to acquiesce to a new world order created and dominated by the United States.

The radical expansion of NATO's writ reflected the overweening aims that the end of the Cold War enabled Washington to pursue. Historically, great powers tend to focus pragmatically on reducing conflict among themselves. By frankly recognizing the realities of power and acknowledging each other's interests, they can usually relate to one another on a businesslike basis. This international give-and-take is bolstered by and helps engender a rough, contextual understanding of what's reasonable and legitimate--not in an abstract or absolute sense but in a way that permits fierce business rivals to moderate and accede to demands and to reach deals. By embracing what came to be called its "unipolar moment," Washington demonstrated--to Paris, Berlin, London, New Delhi, and Beijing, no less than to Moscow--that it would no longer be bound by the norms implicit in great power politics, norms that constrain the aims pursued as much as the means employed. Those who determine U.S. foreign policy hold that, as President George W. Bush declared in his second inaugural address, "the survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands." They maintain, as President Bill Clinton averred in 1993, that the security of the United States demands a "focus on relations within nations, on a nation's form of governance, on its economic structure."

Whatever one thinks of this doctrine, which prompted Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to dub America "the indispensable nation"--and which Gorbachev said defined America's "dangerous winner's mentality"--it lavishly expanded previously established conceptions of security and national interest. In its crusading universalism, it could be regarded by other states, with ample supporting evidence, as at best recklessly meddlesome and at worst messianically interventionist. Convinced that its national security depended on the domestic political and economic arrangements of ostensibly sovereign states--and therefore defining as a legitimate goal the alteration or eradication of those arrangements if they were not in accord with its professed ideals and values--the post-Cold War United States became a revolutionary force in world politics.

https://harpers.org/archive/2023/06/why-are-we-in-ukraine/

---

---

Good article, difficult questions. I don't know the answer

---

Again, we see the isolationist argument that we caused a war in which we had no interest. Both are patently false premises. Russia would have NEVER invaded or usurped Ukraine if Nato hadn't been meddling? Pfft. If NATO hadn't expanded eastward, Russia would have expanded westward. The issue at hand is merely about where the razor wire will be strung. NATO was slow, deliberate, and cautious in its move eastward, out of deference to Russia. And it is instructive that EVERYONE (except Belarus) wants to be on the west side of the wire.

---

You continue to use the propagandist term of "isolationist"....and of course non-intervention and not engaging in war mongering adventurism is of course not the same as isolationism.

We are the major economic power on earth and have a two ocean navy along with bases in 80+ countries and territories around the world. No one has even said we should dismantle those fleets or bases.

What people have said is that we should not get involved in bloody conflicts that we have no vital interest in or that do not involved a ally of the USA. Ukraine is not a NATO ally.

And your argument that Russia (with a poverty level and per captia GDP like Mexico) is going to expand Westward is laughable...and then you contradict yourself by saying correctly that no one wants join them.....so then how can they expand Westward? Talk about grasping for reasons to get into a conflict with a nuclear power...fantasies of "imminent expansion into the West" lol

---

Russia doesn't have to invade and defeat NATO, as your analysis presumes. Russia will try to undermine it from within, facilitated by gunboat diplomacy on NATO borders to make all players in the frontline states be more cautious in their pro-Nato/anti-=Russia policies. Then. One election. One coup. And we will have the prospect of Russia and Nato poised on opposite borders of a Nato state preparing to come to the rescue of a new government calling for help. THAT is something to lose sleep over, friend. And the only way to prevent it is to keep Russian armies IN RUSSIA.

---

Russia had a similar predicament in Ukraine. Had we admitted such an unstable country to membership in NATO, and its government decided to take Crimea, Russia would have found itself at war without having lifted a finger.

---

I have spoken often about the risks of admitting politically unstable states to Nato. Nato itself recognizes that risk. That's why it has not admitted Ukraine to membership, and only elevated it to partner status in 2020 (joining several other countries - Sweden, Finland, Australia, Jordan, Georgia). NATO is signaling unwavering support for Ukraine, as link demonstrates:
https://news.yahoo.com/nato-elevate-ukraine-partner-status-212000077.html
Some of that is genuine, and some of that is diplomatic posturing to keep up pressure on Russia....to force them to the table before the entirety of Ukraine slips away.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine unfortunately may well result in a faster-track to Ukraine Nato membership. I would prefer to put that off until after the war is won and we have a chance to observe a couple of election cycles, to ensure Ukraine can demonstrate that it is capable of peaceful transition to power. But Russia's weakness and looming defeat will be a powerful enticement to expand, which in retrospect perhaps should have been done 30 years ago when Russia was too weak to resist it.

Nato is itself engaging in mission creep, from a defense of Western Europe from Soviet attack, to a defense of democracy from attacks by autocracy. The admission of Jordan and Australia would be your clue.

---

"Democracy," i.e. recycled Marxism warmed over by Western NGOs and served to an ungrateful populace.

Russia doesn't need to be dragged into modernity. They've been there already.

---

That is not spin. That is detachment from reality.

Are you OK?

---

You just told me, apparently without irony, that our foreign policy has something to do with sorting out democracies from autocracies and acting as the selfless champion of the former.

Are you okay?

---

Unlike you, completely lucid. Tell us the rationale for Australia belonging to NATO.

---

Australia doesn't belong to NATO.

---

Correct. They have partner status along with Jordan. Same question applies. Why?

---

Obviously not to defend Australian democracy, since partner status entails no such commitment on our part. I'm sure it was meant to provide our operations with financial and other assistance, as well as give us bragging rights to a bigger "international coalition."

A much better question is why we're considering member status for Ukraine, a notoriously corrupt regime known for ethnic, religious, and political persecutions. Defending democracy is hardly a plausible explanation there, either.

---

Why is it so bad to admit nations that want to join the Western Economy and have security? Why do they have to pass some moral barometer to be worthy? Being strategically located is not enough? Having more Ag land than the rest of Europe combined doesn't count?

---

It's not entirely an either/or choice between participating in the Western economy and the Russian economy. To the extent that it is a choice, Russia has interests in Ukraine which were undisputed at the time NATO was formed. Those interests didn't disappear with the Soviet Union. Both Russia and the West have made offers to Ukraine. Ukraine was prepared to accept what it considered a better deal from Russia. The 2014 coup changed that, and now of course we recognize the post-coup policy as the only legitimate one. Quite convenient for us, but there's more to it than we like to pretend.

---

As US citizens, shouldn't that be a good thing that is convenient for us and works out?

---

Probably depends on if you are in a position to capitalize financially on the USA adding another province-vassal to the empire.

For instance out sourcing our manufacturing base made some Americans insanely wealthy%85and impoverished millions more working class men and women.

Mixed bag in the end

---

Wait a minute. Nations going from Russian-based economic system to the EU/US/Japanese based economic system do much better and the quality of life goes up. So, how is the US "adding another province-vassal" bad for the province-vassal state? You are telling us that Latvia, Lithiuania, Estonia, Poland, Romania, and all the rest were better off under Russia's grip? Venezuela is a better place now??? North Korea is a better qualit of life than South Korea? Who are you trying to kid?

---

It sounds like we're back in 1980. You know Russia isn't communist any more, right?

---

Does it matter? Russia is autocratic and the quality of life is poor, definitely lower than EU or NATO nations. Does it matter if it is Communist? I could care less, .

---

Speaking of qualify of life…


https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/why-life-expectancy-in-the-us-is-falling-202210202835#:~:text=Why%20is%20life%20expectancy%20falling,and%20liver%20disease%20and%20suicides.

[Life expectancy continues to decline in the U.S. as it rebounds in other countries]

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/03/25/1164819944/live-free-and-die-the-sad-state-of-u-s-life-expectancy

[The number of deaths of despair in the United States has been estimated at 150,000 per year in 2017.]

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/article-abstract/2788767

[U.S. drug overdose deaths surpass 107,000 last year, another record
More than 1 million Americans have died from drug overdoses since 2001.]

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/05/11/drug-overdose-deaths-2021-record-00031709

Redbrickbear said:

---

RMF5630 said:

---

Redbrickbear said:

---

RMF5630 said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

RMF5630 said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

whiterock said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

whiterock said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

whiterock said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

whiterock said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

whiterock said:

---

Redbrickbear said:

---

whiterock said:

---

Osodecentx said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

How the United States was transformed from guardian to spoiler of the postwar international order. An excellent summary from Harper's magazine.

Quote:

---

Why Are We in Ukraine?
On the dangers of American hubris
by Benjamin Schwarz, Christopher Layne

From the early Nineties, when Washington first raised the idea of NATO expansion, until 2008, when the U.S. delegation at the NATO summit in Bucharest advocated alliance membership for Ukraine and Georgia, U.S.-Russian exchanges were monotonous. While Russians protested Washington's NATO expansion plans, American officials shrugged off those protests--or pointed to them as evidence to justify still-further expansion. Washington's message to Moscow could not have been clearer or more disquieting: Normal diplomacy among great powers, distinguished by the recognition and accommodation of clashing interests--the approach that had defined the U.S.-Soviet rivalry during even the most intense stretches of the Cold War--was obsolete. Russia was expected to acquiesce to a new world order created and dominated by the United States.

The radical expansion of NATO's writ reflected the overweening aims that the end of the Cold War enabled Washington to pursue. Historically, great powers tend to focus pragmatically on reducing conflict among themselves. By frankly recognizing the realities of power and acknowledging each other's interests, they can usually relate to one another on a businesslike basis. This international give-and-take is bolstered by and helps engender a rough, contextual understanding of what's reasonable and legitimate--not in an abstract or absolute sense but in a way that permits fierce business rivals to moderate and accede to demands and to reach deals. By embracing what came to be called its "unipolar moment," Washington demonstrated--to Paris, Berlin, London, New Delhi, and Beijing, no less than to Moscow--that it would no longer be bound by the norms implicit in great power politics, norms that constrain the aims pursued as much as the means employed. Those who determine U.S. foreign policy hold that, as President George W. Bush declared in his second inaugural address, "the survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands." They maintain, as President Bill Clinton averred in 1993, that the security of the United States demands a "focus on relations within nations, on a nation's form of governance, on its economic structure."

Whatever one thinks of this doctrine, which prompted Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to dub America "the indispensable nation"--and which Gorbachev said defined America's "dangerous winner's mentality"--it lavishly expanded previously established conceptions of security and national interest. In its crusading universalism, it could be regarded by other states, with ample supporting evidence, as at best recklessly meddlesome and at worst messianically interventionist. Convinced that its national security depended on the domestic political and economic arrangements of ostensibly sovereign states--and therefore defining as a legitimate goal the alteration or eradication of those arrangements if they were not in accord with its professed ideals and values--the post-Cold War United States became a revolutionary force in world politics.

https://harpers.org/archive/2023/06/why-are-we-in-ukraine/

---

---

Good article, difficult questions. I don't know the answer

---

Again, we see the isolationist argument that we caused a war in which we had no interest. Both are patently false premises. Russia would have NEVER invaded or usurped Ukraine if Nato hadn't been meddling? Pfft. If NATO hadn't expanded eastward, Russia would have expanded westward. The issue at hand is merely about where the razor wire will be strung. NATO was slow, deliberate, and cautious in its move eastward, out of deference to Russia. And it is instructive that EVERYONE (except Belarus) wants to be on the west side of the wire.

---

You continue to use the propagandist term of "isolationist"....and of course non-intervention and not engaging in war mongering adventurism is of course not the same as isolationism.

We are the major economic power on earth and have a two ocean navy along with bases in 80+ countries and territories around the world. No one has even said we should dismantle those fleets or bases.

What people have said is that we should not get involved in bloody conflicts that we have no vital interest in or that do not involved a ally of the USA. Ukraine is not a NATO ally.

And your argument that Russia (with a poverty level and per captia GDP like Mexico) is going to expand Westward is laughable...and then you contradict yourself by saying correctly that no one wants join them.....so then how can they expand Westward? Talk about grasping for reasons to get into a conflict with a nuclear power...fantasies of "imminent expansion into the West" lol

---

Russia doesn't have to invade and defeat NATO, as your analysis presumes. Russia will try to undermine it from within, facilitated by gunboat diplomacy on NATO borders to make all players in the frontline states be more cautious in their pro-Nato/anti-=Russia policies. Then. One election. One coup. And we will have the prospect of Russia and Nato poised on opposite borders of a Nato state preparing to come to the rescue of a new government calling for help. THAT is something to lose sleep over, friend. And the only way to prevent it is to keep Russian armies IN RUSSIA.

---

Russia had a similar predicament in Ukraine. Had we admitted such an unstable country to membership in NATO, and its government decided to take Crimea, Russia would have found itself at war without having lifted a finger.

---

I have spoken often about the risks of admitting politically unstable states to Nato. Nato itself recognizes that risk. That's why it has not admitted Ukraine to membership, and only elevated it to partner status in 2020 (joining several other countries - Sweden, Finland, Australia, Jordan, Georgia). NATO is signaling unwavering support for Ukraine, as link demonstrates:
https://news.yahoo.com/nato-elevate-ukraine-partner-status-212000077.html
Some of that is genuine, and some of that is diplomatic posturing to keep up pressure on Russia....to force them to the table before the entirety of Ukraine slips away.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine unfortunately may well result in a faster-track to Ukraine Nato membership. I would prefer to put that off until after the war is won and we have a chance to observe a couple of election cycles, to ensure Ukraine can demonstrate that it is capable of peaceful transition to power. But Russia's weakness and looming defeat will be a powerful enticement to expand, which in retrospect perhaps should have been done 30 years ago when Russia was too weak to resist it.

Nato is itself engaging in mission creep, from a defense of Western Europe from Soviet attack, to a defense of democracy from attacks by autocracy. The admission of Jordan and Australia would be your clue.

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"Democracy," i.e. recycled Marxism warmed over by Western NGOs and served to an ungrateful populace.

Russia doesn't need to be dragged into modernity. They've been there already.

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That is not spin. That is detachment from reality.

Are you OK?

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You just told me, apparently without irony, that our foreign policy has something to do with sorting out democracies from autocracies and acting as the selfless champion of the former.

Are you okay?

---

Unlike you, completely lucid. Tell us the rationale for Australia belonging to NATO.

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Australia doesn't belong to NATO.

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Correct. They have partner status along with Jordan. Same question applies. Why?

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Obviously not to defend Australian democracy, since partner status entails no such commitment on our part. I'm sure it was meant to provide our operations with financial and other assistance, as well as give us bragging rights to a bigger "international coalition."

A much better question is why we're considering member status for Ukraine, a notoriously corrupt regime known for ethnic, religious, and political persecutions. Defending democracy is hardly a plausible explanation there, either.

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Why is it so bad to admit nations that want to join the Western Economy and have security? Why do they have to pass some moral barometer to be worthy? Being strategically located is not enough? Having more Ag land than the rest of Europe combined doesn't count?

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It's not entirely an either/or choice between participating in the Western economy and the Russian economy. To the extent that it is a choice, Russia has interests in Ukraine which were undisputed at the time NATO was formed. Those interests didn't disappear with the Soviet Union. Both Russia and the West have made offers to Ukraine. Ukraine was prepared to accept what it considered a better deal from Russia. The 2014 coup changed that, and now of course we recognize the post-coup policy as the only legitimate one. Quite convenient for us, but there's more to it than we like to pretend.

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As US citizens, shouldn't that be a good thing that is convenient for us and works out?

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Probably depends on if you are in a position to capitalize financially on the USA adding another province-vassal to the empire.

For instance out sourcing our manufacturing base made some Americans insanely wealthy…and impoverished millions more working class men and women.

Mixed bag in the end

---

Wait a minute. Nations going from Russian-based economic system to the EU/US/Japanese based economic system do much better and the quality of life goes up. So, how is the US "adding another province-vassal" bad for the province-vassal state? You are telling us that Latvia, Lithiuania, Estonia, Poland, Romania, and all the rest were better off under Russia's grip? Venezuela is a better place now??? North Korea is a better qualit of life than South Korea? Who are you trying to kid?

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You asked how it helped Americans.

Venezuela deciding to go full socialist and ruin their economy has had zero effect on the American people.

Romania becoming a market economy and joining the EU has been nothing but a financial drain on the EU taxpayers and has flooded the euro-zone with criminal gypsies and ruthless criminal syndicates who specialize in running drugs, human trafficking, and auto theft.

It's complicated

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So you don't think the trade with Japan, South Korea, the EU and the others help American's have a high quality of life? Those economies are not where they are without the US investment and part of the defense. You really think if the US doesn't help, rebuild and support those that US citizens will be better off??

Redbrickbear said:

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whiterock said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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[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:

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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.

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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.]

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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.

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.

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You use a lot of words to say: "I love USA imperial expansion and don't like Russian expansion"

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Words mean things. "Imperial expansion." That means invading and incorporating territory into your political and economic system. We have not done that. Never have. Russia, on the other hand, has done that. Always has. We are supporting Ukraine to resist an actual military invasion to seize all/part of the country for incorporation into greater Russia, because opposing Russian imperial expansion mitigates threats to the NATO alliance. To be clear: providing funds and arms to Ukraine is, by definition, NOT territorial expansion. That is a win/win foreign policy that benefits the American people on multiple levels. Allowing Ukraine to apply for NATO partner status or even membership is, by definition, NOT territorial expansion. That is win/win foreign policy that benefits the American people on multiple levels.

Spreading NATO into new countries who desperately want to join is not imperial expansion.
Taking out a dictator flirting with nuclear weapons and an international terror organization is not imperial expansion.
Taking out a regime that fostered a terror plot against our homeland is not imperial expansion.
Maintaining a 300-ship navy, 1m man Army, and the most potent AF in the world is not imperial expansion.
(I could go on at length here...)
If we were about ACTUAL imperial expansion, Alexander wouldn't be able to hold our beer truck.

your argument implies the conclusion over and over and over but never makes the case and often proves the opposite.

Redbrickbear said:

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RMF5630 said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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You think there is more reason to expand NATO into the east today than in 1990? What?

You think modern Russia is more of a threat than the super power that was the USSR?

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Why does Russia have to be a threat for NATO to add nations that are like minded, want to join the EU and want freedom that security brings? Is Russia being a threat the only reason NATO can add? Or a nation that wants t o join NATO can join?

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What common values and "like mindedness" do you think Britain, France, Albania, Canada, Romania, Portugal, Croatia, Turkey, Estonia, Greece, and the USA have?

The "liked mindedness" idea becomes even more hilarious when you look at the government of Turkey and its neo-Ottoman/semi-Islamist autocratic leader Erdogan and the post-national liberal governments of places like Canada.

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All are nations with democratic political processes according to traditions of classical liberalism. Yes, Canada is in many senses post-liberal, while Turkey comes with a big asterisk on the classical liberalism part, but neither is an autocracy in the classic sense and Turkey in particular does provide long understood geopoltical value in maintaining balance in the Black Sea region. (and that's before we get to the question of the degree to which NATO membership has attenuated Turkish ambitions in its part of the globe....)

So, while it is true that your list of nations are not identically minded, it is quite clear that all of the nations you listed have a lot in common, most especially the goal of resisting Russian hegemony. What else does an alliance need other than a clear set of common values and a basis for common defense?

"distinction without a difference" is the problem with your argument here.

Redbrickbear said:

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RMF5630 said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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RMF5630 said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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RMF5630 said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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You think there is more reason to expand NATO into the east today than in 1990? What?

You think modern Russia is more of a threat than the super power that was the USSR?

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Why does Russia have to be a threat for NATO to add nations that are like minded, want to join the EU and want freedom that security brings? Is Russia being a threat the only reason NATO can add? Or a nation that wants t o join NATO can join?

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What common values and "like mindedness" do you think Britain, France, Albania, Canada, Romania, Portugal, Croatia, Turkey, Estonia, Greece, and the USA have?

The "liked mindedness" idea becomes even more hilarious when you look at the government of Turkey and its neo-Ottoman/semi-Islamist autocratic leader Erdogan and the post-national liberal governments of places like Canada.

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And what was Turkey's Government like when they joined? Turkey is also a top 20ish economy and very Capitalist. Even if not, what is wrong with joining for security? You know the real world is not just meet all three or NO.

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In 1952 Turkey had a Kemalist government (same type of guys who mass murdered the Christian Armenians and Assyrian Christians during world war I)

Also committed the anti-Greek Christian pogroms that destroyed the native Greeks of Istanbul who had been there since the time of Constantine the great.


[In 67 September 1955 an anti-Greek pogrom was orchestrated in Istanbul by the Turkish military's Tactical Mobilization Group. The events were triggered by the news that the Turkish consulate in Thessaloniki, north Greece the house where Mustafa Kemal Atatrk was born in 1881 had been bombed the day before. A bomb planted by a Turkish usher of the consulate, who was later arrested and confessed, incited the events. The Turkish press conveying the news in Turkey was silent about the arrest and instead insinuated that Greeks had set off the bomb. Over a dozen people died during or after the pogrom as a result of beatings and arson. Jews, Armenians and others were also harmed. In addition to commercial targets, the mob clearly targeted property owned or administered by the Greek Orthodox Church. 73 churches and 23 schools were vandalized, burned or destroyed, as were 8 asperses and 3 monasteries.

The pogrom greatly accelerated emigration of ethnic Greeks from Turkey, and the Istanbul region in particular. The Greek population of Turkey declined from 119,822 persons in 1927, to about 7,000 by 1978. In Istanbul alone, the Greek population decreased from 65,108 to 49,081 between 1955 and 1960.]

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So Turkey should be out. The Baltics? Out. Finland, Sweden, Poland, Czech, Eastern Part of Germany, Australia, Romania... Basically, all of NATO should be disbanded and the US maybe pay reparations to most of the world while we are at it? How about adding Texas, NM, AZ and CA to give back to Mexico? Would giving AK to the Russians make up for all the harm we have done? HI needs to be reverted to a Kingdom, throw in the 7th Fleet to make up. That cover it? I am sure if you think about it there is someone else the US has harmed that we can pay. Maybe just dissolve the US. Would that suffice?


There is absolutely NOT ONE THING that NATO and US has done well according to you guys.

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Well of course that is a lie and no one on this thread ever said that.

NATO was a necessary military alliance to stop the spread of Communism and the massive socialist empire called the USSR. The communists being backed up by the Red Army that had 400 division stationed in Europe, 25,000 tanks, and 45,000 nukes. Along with 8 other Warsaw pact countries under communist rule with their armies.

The USSR and the Warsaw pact are now long long gone.

https://www.foreignexchanges.news/p/nato-has-outlived-its-usefulness
[In many ways, NATO was wildly successful in its time. But that time is over, and now it should be dismantled...

The decision to keep NATO operating after the Cold War ensured that it functioned as support for the US hegemon. During the Cold War, as NATO's website proudly affirms, the organization's "forces were not involved in a single military engagement." Instead, to borrow the historian Walter LaFeber's phrasing, NATO was mainly used "as a means to deal with more immediate problems [than a Soviet invasion]the integration of the Federal Republic of Germany into the West, the easing of Franco-German hatreds, the anchoring of a Great Britain tossed between continental and Atlantic-Commonwealth interests," and other intra-North Atlantic concerns. It was primarily a tool of integration.

But once the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, NATO rapidly became an arm of the US Empire. Or as NATO's website benignly puts it, with "changing conditions came new responsibilities. From being an exclusively defensive alliance for nearly half a century, NATO began to assume an increasingly proactive role within the international community." It participated in the Gulf War; the conflicts that rent the former Yugoslavia; the War on Terror; the Afghanistan War; and the Iraq War, to name only a few of its contributions. Indeed, by early 2021, NATO was partaking in operations in Afghanistan, Kosovo, the Mediterranean, Africa, and elsewhere.

The alliance has also grown to thirty members, and now includes many nations that were once in the Soviet sphere of influence, like Albania, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Romania. Unsurprisingly, the organization's wanton expansion into Eastern Europe has provoked Russia imagine how US decision-makers would have felt had Canada or Mexico joined the Warsaw Pact and NATO has been a useful foil for Russian President Vladimir Putin, helping him justify his revanchist foreign policy.

As this all suggests, there are significant drawbacks to NATO's continuing existence.]

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That part in bold is HOOEY. What empire? Where?

Who said the fall of the USSR ended Russian desires for hegemony?

Doesn't the Russian invasion of Ukraine demonstrate that oldest Russian desires for empire are alive and well?

Sam Lowry said:

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"Democracy," i.e. recycled Marxism warmed over by Western NGOs and served to an ungrateful populace.

Russia doesn't need to be dragged into modernity. They've been there already.

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That is not spin. That is detachment from reality.

Are you OK?

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You just told me, apparently without irony, that our foreign policy has something to do with sorting out democracies from autocracies and acting as the selfless champion of the former.

Are you okay?

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Unlike you, completely lucid. Tell us the rationale for Australia belonging to NATO.

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Australia doesn't belong to NATO.

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Correct. They have partner status along with Jordan. Same question applies. Why?

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Obviously not to defend Australian democracy, since partner status entails no such commitment on our part. I'm sure it was meant to provide our operations with financial and other assistance, as well as give us bragging rights to a bigger "international coalition."

A much better question is why we're considering member status for Ukraine, a notoriously corrupt regime known for ethnic, religious, and political persecutions. Defending democracy is hardly a plausible explanation there, either.

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Well, that last sentence actually is the answer.

Australian partner status (as well as Jordanian partner status) is a sign that NATO is indeed engaging in mission creep, but not at all in the way you and Red are alleging.

NATO is morphing into an alliance of liberal democracies.

Why is that a bad thing? Stable, pro-west, free-market countries with democratic processes banding together for common defense? I mean, reasonable people can argue costs and merits to the US taxpayer. But how on earth could that be "imperial ambition" to borrow Red's concept?

RMF5630 said:

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Obviously not to defend Australian democracy, since partner status entails no such commitment on our part. I'm sure it was meant to provide our operations with financial and other assistance, as well as give us bragging rights to a bigger "international coalition."

A much better question is why we're considering member status for Ukraine, a notoriously corrupt regime known for ethnic, religious, and political persecutions. Defending democracy is hardly a plausible explanation there, either.

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Why is it so bad to admit nations that want to join the Western Economy and have security? Why do they have to pass some moral barometer to be worthy? Being strategically located is not enough? Having more Ag land than the rest of Europe combined doesn't count?

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It's not entirely an either/or choice between participating in the Western economy and the Russian economy. To the extent that it is a choice, Russia has interests in Ukraine which were undisputed at the time NATO was formed. Those interests didn't disappear with the Soviet Union. Both Russia and the West have made offers to Ukraine. Ukraine was prepared to accept what it considered a better deal from Russia. The 2014 coup changed that, and now of course we recognize the post-coup policy as the only legitimate one. Quite convenient for us, but there's more to it than we like to pretend.

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As US citizens, shouldn't that be a good thing that is convenient for us and works out?

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Probably depends on if you are in a position to capitalize financially on the USA adding another province-vassal to the empire.

For instance out sourcing our manufacturing base made some Americans insanely wealthy…and impoverished millions more working class men and women.

Mixed bag in the end

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Wait a minute. Nations going from Russian-based economic system to the EU/US/Japanese based economic system do much better and the quality of life goes up. So, how is the US "adding another province-vassal" bad for the province-vassal state? You are telling us that Latvia, Lithiuania, Estonia, Poland, Romania, and all the rest were better off under Russia's grip? Venezuela is a better place now??? North Korea is a better qualit of life than South Korea? Who are you trying to kid?

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if we are to call the American-led liberal order an empire, it would be the first voluntary empire in the world which every single member begged to join, in which not a single member had to be invaded to join.

Red: The "empire" jargon is straight-up Russian agitprop.

Rule number one of politics: Follow the money.

Do people genuinely still believe that America wants to stop the meat grinder’ization of Ukraine.

Clearly we want the place vacated. Dunno

Blinken said that United States has new plans for export controls against Russia that will constrain tech for the production of drones pic.twitter.com/UmPUsheoHu

— Adam Townsend (@adamscrabble) May 30, 2023

Look at the staggering amount of western investment in Ukraine immediately prior to the war.
Also martial law and the total destruction of union labor and employees ability for collective bargaining, laws that stay in place after martial law has been lifted https://t.co/OJSAzLffvG

— Adam Townsend (@adamscrabble) May 30, 2023

whiterock said:

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RMF5630 said:

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Obviously not to defend Australian democracy, since partner status entails no such commitment on our part. I'm sure it was meant to provide our operations with financial and other assistance, as well as give us bragging rights to a bigger "international coalition."

A much better question is why we're considering member status for Ukraine, a notoriously corrupt regime known for ethnic, religious, and political persecutions. Defending democracy is hardly a plausible explanation there, either.

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Why is it so bad to admit nations that want to join the Western Economy and have security? Why do they have to pass some moral barometer to be worthy? Being strategically located is not enough? Having more Ag land than the rest of Europe combined doesn't count?

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It's not entirely an either/or choice between participating in the Western economy and the Russian economy. To the extent that it is a choice, Russia has interests in Ukraine which were undisputed at the time NATO was formed. Those interests didn't disappear with the Soviet Union. Both Russia and the West have made offers to Ukraine. Ukraine was prepared to accept what it considered a better deal from Russia. The 2014 coup changed that, and now of course we recognize the post-coup policy as the only legitimate one. Quite convenient for us, but there's more to it than we like to pretend.

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As US citizens, shouldn't that be a good thing that is convenient for us and works out?

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Probably depends on if you are in a position to capitalize financially on the USA adding another province-vassal to the empire.

For instance out sourcing our manufacturing base made some Americans insanely wealthy…and impoverished millions more working class men and women.

Mixed bag in the end

---

Wait a minute. Nations going from Russian-based economic system to the EU/US/Japanese based economic system do much better and the quality of life goes up. So, how is the US "adding another province-vassal" bad for the province-vassal state? You are telling us that Latvia, Lithiuania, Estonia, Poland, Romania, and all the rest were better off under Russia's grip? Venezuela is a better place now??? North Korea is a better qualit of life than South Korea? Who are you trying to kid?

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if we are to call the American-led liberal order an empire, it would be the first voluntary empire in the world which every single member begged to join, in which not a single member had to be invaded to join.

Red: The "empire" jargon is straight-up Russian agitprop.

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1. Read up on how the Roman and British "empires" were actually built. Had you been transported back in time to ancient Rome the Romans would have denied they even had an empire...simply a large area of allied states, kingdoms, and cities who looked to Rome for trade and protection.

Thomas Madden does a great job of mapping this out and explaining how (outside of places like Gaul) the vast majority of places that ended up in the Roman sphere of influence or "empire" did so voluntarily and as equal partners and allies.

https://www.amazon.com/Empires-Trust-Built-America-Building/dp/0452295459
[Madden shows that the power of the ancient Roman republic and the U.S. was built on trust between allies, not the conquest of enemies. The far-reaching implications of this fact are essential reading for anyone who cares about the challenges we face now and in the years ahead.]

So its not the first time in history that empires have been forged by trade, alliance, and voluntary association. Far from it.

2. You seem to know a lot about Russian antiprop...far more than us regular guys. But the contention that the USA is now a global "empire" is pretty standard discourse here at home and has been since 1945. From Noam Chomsky liberals to Pat Buchanan paleo-cons it's a standard assessment. Some place that date of the accession to imperial power at different places within our history....Lincoln's victory over the States in 1865 (southern paleo-cons) or the USA's involvement in Vietnam (progressive RFK types) or the Spanish American war (Louis A. Perez leftists) but the contention that we are now a empire is simply not that controversial.

Liberal interventionist and neo-con types now come out and unabashedly defend the idea as a positive good for the world.

[Max Boot defends U.S. imperialism, writing, "U.S. imperialism has been the greatest force for good in the world during the past century. It has defeated communism and Nazism and has intervened against the Taliban and Serbian ethnic cleansing."]

[Schiller's formulation of the concept, cultural imperialism refers to the American Empire's "coercive and persuasive agencies, and their capacity to promote and universalize an American 'way of life' in other countries without any reciprocation of influence." According to Schiller, cultural imperialism "pressured, forced and bribed" societies to integrate with the U.S.'s expansive capitalist model but also incorporated them with attraction and persuasion by winning "the mutual consent, even solicitation of the indigenous rulers."

Newer research on cultural imperialism sheds light on how the US national security state partners with media corporations to spread US foreign policy and military-promoting media goods around the world. In Hearts and Mines: The US Empire's Culture Industry, Tanner Mirrlees builds upon the work of Herbert I. Schiller to argue that the US government and media corporations pursue different interests on the world stage (the former, national security, and the latter, profit), but structural alliances and the synergistic relationships between them support the co-production and global flow of Empire-extolling cultural and entertainment goods.]

3. Military power alone even within a network of trust and alliance between U.S. partners could be defined as empire or to make people feel better...an area of Imperium. The two ocean navy keeps the world sea lanes open and free of piracy of instance and our military bases in Europe keep the peace. "In 2015, David Vine's book Base Nation, found 800 U.S. military bases located outside of the U.S., including 174 bases in Germany, 113 in Japan, and 83 in South Korea. The total cost was estimated at $100 billion a year."

4. You simply have to determine how you feel about the Global Empire the the USA has built....good for the world or not. Good for the average America or not. But the idea that it does not exist would be the only thing that would be strange to argue.

[The Oxford dictionary defines empire as: 'Paramount influence, absolute sway, supreme command or control'; how suiting such terminology is to define the current disposition of the United States. Over the past century the U.S. has risen to be the undisputed world power, with its tentacles of influence sprawled across the globe, leaving almost no state untouched.]

https://www.e-ir.info/2009/05/28/the-united-states-global-empire/

Redbrickbear said:

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whiterock said:

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RMF5630 said:

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Obviously not to defend Australian democracy, since partner status entails no such commitment on our part. I'm sure it was meant to provide our operations with financial and other assistance, as well as give us bragging rights to a bigger "international coalition."

A much better question is why we're considering member status for Ukraine, a notoriously corrupt regime known for ethnic, religious, and political persecutions. Defending democracy is hardly a plausible explanation there, either.

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Why is it so bad to admit nations that want to join the Western Economy and have security? Why do they have to pass some moral barometer to be worthy? Being strategically located is not enough? Having more Ag land than the rest of Europe combined doesn't count?

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It's not entirely an either/or choice between participating in the Western economy and the Russian economy. To the extent that it is a choice, Russia has interests in Ukraine which were undisputed at the time NATO was formed. Those interests didn't disappear with the Soviet Union. Both Russia and the West have made offers to Ukraine. Ukraine was prepared to accept what it considered a better deal from Russia. The 2014 coup changed that, and now of course we recognize the post-coup policy as the only legitimate one. Quite convenient for us, but there's more to it than we like to pretend.

---

As US citizens, shouldn't that be a good thing that is convenient for us and works out?

---

Probably depends on if you are in a position to capitalize financially on the USA adding another province-vassal to the empire.

For instance out sourcing our manufacturing base made some Americans insanely wealthy…and impoverished millions more working class men and women.

Mixed bag in the end

---

Wait a minute. Nations going from Russian-based economic system to the EU/US/Japanese based economic system do much better and the quality of life goes up. So, how is the US "adding another province-vassal" bad for the province-vassal state? You are telling us that Latvia, Lithiuania, Estonia, Poland, Romania, and all the rest were better off under Russia's grip? Venezuela is a better place now??? North Korea is a better qualit of life than South Korea? Who are you trying to kid?

---

if we are to call the American-led liberal order an empire, it would be the first voluntary empire in the world which every single member begged to join, in which not a single member had to be invaded to join.

Red: The "empire" jargon is straight-up Russian agitprop.

---

1. Read up on how the Roman and British "empires" were actually built. Had you been transported back in time to ancient Rome the Romans would have denied they even had an empire...simply a large area of allied states, kingdoms, and cities who looked to Rome for trade and protection.

Thomas Madden does a great job of mapping this out and explaining how (outside of places like Gaul) the vast majority of places that ended up in the Roman sphere of influence or "empire" did so voluntarily and as equal partners and allies.

https://www.amazon.com/Empires-Trust-Built-America-Building/dp/0452295459
[Madden shows that the power of the ancient Roman republic and the U.S. was built on trust between allies, not the conquest of enemies. The far-reaching implications of this fact are essential reading for anyone who cares about the challenges we face now and in the years ahead.]

So its not the first time in history that empires have been forged by trade, alliance, and voluntary association. Far from it.

2. You seem to know a lot about Russian antiprop...far more than us regular guys. But the contention that the USA is now a global "empire" is pretty standard discourse here at home and has been since 1945. From Noam Chomsky liberals to Pat Buchanan paleo-cons it's a standard assessment. Some place that date of the accession to imperial power at different places within our history....Lincoln's victory over the States in 1865 (southern paleo-cons) or the USA's involvement in Vietnam (progressive RFK types) or the Spanish American war (Louis A. Perez leftists) but the contention that we are now a empire is simply not that controversial.

Liberal interventionist and neo-con types now come out and unabashedly defend the idea as a positive good for the world.

[Max Boot defends U.S. imperialism, writing, "U.S. imperialism has been the greatest force for good in the world during the past century. It has defeated communism and Nazism and has intervened against the Taliban and Serbian ethnic cleansing."]

[Schiller's formulation of the concept, cultural imperialism refers to the American Empire's "coercive and persuasive agencies, and their capacity to promote and universalize an American 'way of life' in other countries without any reciprocation of influence." According to Schiller, cultural imperialism "pressured, forced and bribed" societies to integrate with the U.S.'s expansive capitalist model but also incorporated them with attraction and persuasion by winning "the mutual consent, even solicitation of the indigenous rulers."

Newer research on cultural imperialism sheds light on how the US national security state partners with media corporations to spread US foreign policy and military-promoting media goods around the world. In Hearts and Mines: The US Empire's Culture Industry, Tanner Mirrlees builds upon the work of Herbert I. Schiller to argue that the US government and media corporations pursue different interests on the world stage (the former, national security, and the latter, profit), but structural alliances and the synergistic relationships between them support the co-production and global flow of Empire-extolling cultural and entertainment goods.]

3. Military power alone even within a network of trust and alliance between U.S. partners could be defined as empire or to make people feel better...an area of Imperium. The two ocean navy keeps the world sea lanes open and free of piracy of instance and our military bases in Europe keep the peace. "In 2015, David Vine's book Base Nation, found 800 U.S. military bases located outside of the U.S., including 174 bases in Germany, 113 in Japan, and 83 in South Korea. The total cost was estimated at $100 billion a year."

4. You simply have to determine how you feel about the Global Empire the the USA has built....good for the world or not. Good for the average America or not. But the idea that it does not exist would be the only thing that would be strange to argue.

[The Oxford dictionary defines empire as: 'Paramount influence, absolute sway, supreme command or control'; how suiting such terminology is to define the current disposition of the United States. Over the past century the U.S. has risen to be the undisputed world power, with its tentacles of influence sprawled across the globe, leaving almost no state untouched.]

https://www.e-ir.info/2009/05/28/the-united-states-global-empire/

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I think you are confusing protecting trade with empire. I would counter by saying the Roman Alliances could not go against Rome or leave if they chose. In addition, many of these areas felt occupied. Name one Nation in NATO, in Asia or elsewhere that has to go with US demands.

How many times has airspace been denied or economic moves made contrary to US desires? Oil production cuts? That did not happen in Rome, everything was for the Glory of Rome or tribute.

Geez, I can't think of much retribution against our alliances.

When was the last time a Nation paid tribute to the US? No, disagree that Empire in the sense you mean it is applicable to the US.

Maybe equity partner, but definitely not majority partner.

RMF5630 said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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whiterock said:

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RMF5630 said:

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Obviously not to defend Australian democracy, since partner status entails no such commitment on our part. I'm sure it was meant to provide our operations with financial and other assistance, as well as give us bragging rights to a bigger "international coalition."

A much better question is why we're considering member status for Ukraine, a notoriously corrupt regime known for ethnic, religious, and political persecutions. Defending democracy is hardly a plausible explanation there, either.

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Why is it so bad to admit nations that want to join the Western Economy and have security? Why do they have to pass some moral barometer to be worthy? Being strategically located is not enough? Having more Ag land than the rest of Europe combined doesn't count?

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It's not entirely an either/or choice between participating in the Western economy and the Russian economy. To the extent that it is a choice, Russia has interests in Ukraine which were undisputed at the time NATO was formed. Those interests didn't disappear with the Soviet Union. Both Russia and the West have made offers to Ukraine. Ukraine was prepared to accept what it considered a better deal from Russia. The 2014 coup changed that, and now of course we recognize the post-coup policy as the only legitimate one. Quite convenient for us, but there's more to it than we like to pretend.

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As US citizens, shouldn't that be a good thing that is convenient for us and works out?

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Probably depends on if you are in a position to capitalize financially on the USA adding another province-vassal to the empire.

For instance out sourcing our manufacturing base made some Americans insanely wealthy…and impoverished millions more working class men and women.

Mixed bag in the end

---

Wait a minute. Nations going from Russian-based economic system to the EU/US/Japanese based economic system do much better and the quality of life goes up. So, how is the US "adding another province-vassal" bad for the province-vassal state? You are telling us that Latvia, Lithiuania, Estonia, Poland, Romania, and all the rest were better off under Russia's grip? Venezuela is a better place now??? North Korea is a better qualit of life than South Korea? Who are you trying to kid?

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if we are to call the American-led liberal order an empire, it would be the first voluntary empire in the world which every single member begged to join, in which not a single member had to be invaded to join.

Red: The "empire" jargon is straight-up Russian agitprop.

---

[The Oxford dictionary defines empire as: 'Paramount influence, absolute sway, supreme command or control'; how suiting such terminology is to define the current disposition of the United States. Over the past century the U.S. has risen to be the undisputed world power, with its tentacles of influence sprawled across the globe, leaving almost no state untouched.]

https://www.e-ir.info/2009/05/28/the-united-states-global-empire/

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I think you are confusing protecting trade with empire. I would counter by saying the Roman Alliances could not go against Rome or leave if they chose. In addition, many of these areas felt occupied. Name one Nation in NATO, in Asia or elsewhere that has to go with US demands.

---

Buddy...we had a war in 1861 that killed close to 700,000+ people when 11 American States tried to leave.

Even if you draw a distinction between American States and Allied foreign States....nothing over the past 40 years has given us any indication that the USA powers that be would allow say Poland to leave the Western sphere and enter into the Russian sphere.

Or would allow say S. Korea to leave the Western bloc and enter the orbit of Red China.

The Empire of the USA is a fact....how you feel about it is up to you.

p.s.

The Roman empire was built and trade and trust...the same as the modern USA empire. That is part of what made/makes both so strong. Far stronger than its competitors.

Redbrickbear said:

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RMF5630 said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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whiterock said:

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RMF5630 said:

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Obviously not to defend Australian democracy, since partner status entails no such commitment on our part. I'm sure it was meant to provide our operations with financial and other assistance, as well as give us bragging rights to a bigger "international coalition."

A much better question is why we're considering member status for Ukraine, a notoriously corrupt regime known for ethnic, religious, and political persecutions. Defending democracy is hardly a plausible explanation there, either.

---

Why is it so bad to admit nations that want to join the Western Economy and have security? Why do they have to pass some moral barometer to be worthy? Being strategically located is not enough? Having more Ag land than the rest of Europe combined doesn't count?

---

It's not entirely an either/or choice between participating in the Western economy and the Russian economy. To the extent that it is a choice, Russia has interests in Ukraine which were undisputed at the time NATO was formed. Those interests didn't disappear with the Soviet Union. Both Russia and the West have made offers to Ukraine. Ukraine was prepared to accept what it considered a better deal from Russia. The 2014 coup changed that, and now of course we recognize the post-coup policy as the only legitimate one. Quite convenient for us, but there's more to it than we like to pretend.

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As US citizens, shouldn't that be a good thing that is convenient for us and works out?

---

Probably depends on if you are in a position to capitalize financially on the USA adding another province-vassal to the empire.

For instance out sourcing our manufacturing base made some Americans insanely wealthy…and impoverished millions more working class men and women.

Mixed bag in the end

---

Wait a minute. Nations going from Russian-based economic system to the EU/US/Japanese based economic system do much better and the quality of life goes up. So, how is the US "adding another province-vassal" bad for the province-vassal state? You are telling us that Latvia, Lithiuania, Estonia, Poland, Romania, and all the rest were better off under Russia's grip? Venezuela is a better place now??? North Korea is a better qualit of life than South Korea? Who are you trying to kid?

---

if we are to call the American-led liberal order an empire, it would be the first voluntary empire in the world which every single member begged to join, in which not a single member had to be invaded to join.

Red: The "empire" jargon is straight-up Russian agitprop.

---

[The Oxford dictionary defines empire as: 'Paramount influence, absolute sway, supreme command or control'; how suiting such terminology is to define the current disposition of the United States. Over the past century the U.S. has risen to be the undisputed world power, with its tentacles of influence sprawled across the globe, leaving almost no state untouched.]

https://www.e-ir.info/2009/05/28/the-united-states-global-empire/

---

I think you are confusing protecting trade with empire. I would counter by saying the Roman Alliances could not go against Rome or leave if they chose. In addition, many of these areas felt occupied. Name one Nation in NATO, in Asia or elsewhere that has to go with US demands.

---

Buddy...we had a war in 1861 that killed close to 700,000+ people when 11 American States tried to leave.

Even if you draw a distinction between American States and Allied foreign States....nothing over the past 40 years has given us any indication that the USA powers that be would allow say Poland to leave the Western sphere and enter into the Russian sphere.

Or would allow say S. Korea to leave the Western bloc and enter the orbit of Red China.

The Empire of the USA is a fact....how you feel about it is up to you.

p.s.

The Roman empire was build and trade and trust...the same as the modern USA empire. That is part of what made/makes both so strong. Far stronger than its competitors.

---

You are so full of it. Comparing the Civil War to Roman expansion? Yeah, Judea, Gaul and Egypt were comparable to South Caroline, Virginia and Florida?

Rome was build with trust? Rome was built with the Legions. Or, I guess the Legions were decorative? Rome was a military state! Read some of the Histories. They didn't say Romans were born readily armed because they were known for peace and trust! They campaigned for 1300 years! Trust and Trade? They traded with who was left and killed who they didn't trust. Rome was one of the greatest militaries ever, the father God was Mars! Geez, some of the crap this board comes up with.



Should I add more? Pompeii? Octavius? Constantine? Trajan? I can go on. Rome expanded by conquest.

RMF5630 said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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RMF5630 said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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whiterock said:

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RMF5630 said:

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Quote:

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Quote:

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Quote:

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Quote:

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Quote:

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Obviously not to defend Australian democracy, since partner status entails no such commitment on our part. I'm sure it was meant to provide our operations with financial and other assistance, as well as give us bragging rights to a bigger "international coalition."

A much better question is why we're considering member status for Ukraine, a notoriously corrupt regime known for ethnic, religious, and political persecutions. Defending democracy is hardly a plausible explanation there, either.

---

Why is it so bad to admit nations that want to join the Western Economy and have security? Why do they have to pass some moral barometer to be worthy? Being strategically located is not enough? Having more Ag land than the rest of Europe combined doesn't count?

---

It's not entirely an either/or choice between participating in the Western economy and the Russian economy. To the extent that it is a choice, Russia has interests in Ukraine which were undisputed at the time NATO was formed. Those interests didn't disappear with the Soviet Union. Both Russia and the West have made offers to Ukraine. Ukraine was prepared to accept what it considered a better deal from Russia. The 2014 coup changed that, and now of course we recognize the post-coup policy as the only legitimate one. Quite convenient for us, but there's more to it than we like to pretend.

---

As US citizens, shouldn't that be a good thing that is convenient for us and works out?

---

Probably depends on if you are in a position to capitalize financially on the USA adding another province-vassal to the empire.

For instance out sourcing our manufacturing base made some Americans insanely wealthy…and impoverished millions more working class men and women.

Mixed bag in the end

---

Wait a minute. Nations going from Russian-based economic system to the EU/US/Japanese based economic system do much better and the quality of life goes up. So, how is the US "adding another province-vassal" bad for the province-vassal state? You are telling us that Latvia, Lithiuania, Estonia, Poland, Romania, and all the rest were better off under Russia's grip? Venezuela is a better place now??? North Korea is a better qualit of life than South Korea? Who are you trying to kid?

---

if we are to call the American-led liberal order an empire, it would be the first voluntary empire in the world which every single member begged to join, in which not a single member had to be invaded to join.

Red: The "empire" jargon is straight-up Russian agitprop.

---

[The Oxford dictionary defines empire as: 'Paramount influence, absolute sway, supreme command or control'; how suiting such terminology is to define the current disposition of the United States. Over the past century the U.S. has risen to be the undisputed world power, with its tentacles of influence sprawled across the globe, leaving almost no state untouched.]

https://www.e-ir.info/2009/05/28/the-united-states-global-empire/

---

I think you are confusing protecting trade with empire. I would counter by saying the Roman Alliances could not go against Rome or leave if they chose. In addition, many of these areas felt occupied. Name one Nation in NATO, in Asia or elsewhere that has to go with US demands.

---

Buddy...we had a war in 1861 that killed close to 700,000+ people when 11 American States tried to leave.

Even if you draw a distinction between American States and Allied foreign States....nothing over the past 40 years has given us any indication that the USA powers that be would allow say Poland to leave the Western sphere and enter into the Russian sphere.

Or would allow say S. Korea to leave the Western bloc and enter the orbit of Red China.

The Empire of the USA is a fact....how you feel about it is up to you.

p.s.

The Roman empire was build and trade and trust...the same as the modern USA empire. That is part of what made/makes both so strong. Far stronger than its competitors.

---

You are so full of it. Comparing the Civil War to Roman expansion? Yeah, Judea, Gaul and Egypt were comparable to South Caroline, Virginia and Florida?

Rome was build with trust?

---

Yes you non-educated googootz ...it was in fact built with trust.

Read the link I gave you and buy a ****ing book.

The Roman Republic and later Empire was built on a foundation of trust and alliance...the conquest part was and is exaggerated.

Had you shown a Roman the Mediterranean sea filled in as red or purple and said that was their empire they would not have known or understood what you were talking about. They had allied and trade partners...but did not consider themselves to have an empire for many many generations into the future. And even then they gave Roman citizenship to all the peoples of their allies in 12 CE, when Caracalla granted citizenship to all free inhabitants of the Empire.

https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/empires-of-trust-how-rome-built--and-america-is-building--a-new-world_thomas-f-madden/337339/item/2934730/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=high_vol_backlist_standard_shopping_customer_aquistion&utm_adgroup=&utm_term=&utm_content=659174113139&gclid=CjwKCAjwg-GjBhBnEiwAMUvNW7XR4bhLJ9kluoW1D81tfQ8w0xjg_OEBFevZzmVlAqWPNK4McVdZdxoC6OkQAvD_BwE#idiq=2934730&edition=4575846

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/capsule-review/2009-11-01/empires-trust-how-rome-built-and-america-building-new-world

p.s.

A multi-ethnic, multi-linguist empire that spanned an enormous 5 million square kilometres and spanned from London to Babylon could not have been built and sustained over the centuries on mere conquest alone.

Redbrickbear said:

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RMF5630 said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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RMF5630 said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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whiterock said:

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RMF5630 said:

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Quote:

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Quote:

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Quote:

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Quote:

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Quote:

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Obviously not to defend Australian democracy, since partner status entails no such commitment on our part. I'm sure it was meant to provide our operations with financial and other assistance, as well as give us bragging rights to a bigger "international coalition."

A much better question is why we're considering member status for Ukraine, a notoriously corrupt regime known for ethnic, religious, and political persecutions. Defending democracy is hardly a plausible explanation there, either.

---

Why is it so bad to admit nations that want to join the Western Economy and have security? Why do they have to pass some moral barometer to be worthy? Being strategically located is not enough? Having more Ag land than the rest of Europe combined doesn't count?

---

It's not entirely an either/or choice between participating in the Western economy and the Russian economy. To the extent that it is a choice, Russia has interests in Ukraine which were undisputed at the time NATO was formed. Those interests didn't disappear with the Soviet Union. Both Russia and the West have made offers to Ukraine. Ukraine was prepared to accept what it considered a better deal from Russia. The 2014 coup changed that, and now of course we recognize the post-coup policy as the only legitimate one. Quite convenient for us, but there's more to it than we like to pretend.

---

As US citizens, shouldn't that be a good thing that is convenient for us and works out?

---

Probably depends on if you are in a position to capitalize financially on the USA adding another province-vassal to the empire.

For instance out sourcing our manufacturing base made some Americans insanely wealthy…and impoverished millions more working class men and women.

Mixed bag in the end

---

Wait a minute. Nations going from Russian-based economic system to the EU/US/Japanese based economic system do much better and the quality of life goes up. So, how is the US "adding another province-vassal" bad for the province-vassal state? You are telling us that Latvia, Lithiuania, Estonia, Poland, Romania, and all the rest were better off under Russia's grip? Venezuela is a better place now??? North Korea is a better qualit of life than South Korea? Who are you trying to kid?

---

if we are to call the American-led liberal order an empire, it would be the first voluntary empire in the world which every single member begged to join, in which not a single member had to be invaded to join.

Red: The "empire" jargon is straight-up Russian agitprop.

---

[The Oxford dictionary defines empire as: 'Paramount influence, absolute sway, supreme command or control'; how suiting such terminology is to define the current disposition of the United States. Over the past century the U.S. has risen to be the undisputed world power, with its tentacles of influence sprawled across the globe, leaving almost no state untouched.]

https://www.e-ir.info/2009/05/28/the-united-states-global-empire/

---

I think you are confusing protecting trade with empire. I would counter by saying the Roman Alliances could not go against Rome or leave if they chose. In addition, many of these areas felt occupied. Name one Nation in NATO, in Asia or elsewhere that has to go with US demands.

---

Buddy...we had a war in 1861 that killed close to 700,000+ people when 11 American States tried to leave.

Even if you draw a distinction between American States and Allied foreign States....nothing over the past 40 years has given us any indication that the USA powers that be would allow say Poland to leave the Western sphere and enter into the Russian sphere.

Or would allow say S. Korea to leave the Western bloc and enter the orbit of Red China.

The Empire of the USA is a fact....how you feel about it is up to you.

p.s.

The Roman empire was build and trade and trust...the same as the modern USA empire. That is part of what made/makes both so strong. Far stronger than its competitors.

---

You are so full of it. Comparing the Civil War to Roman expansion? Yeah, Judea, Gaul and Egypt were comparable to South Caroline, Virginia and Florida?

Rome was build with trust?

---

Yes you non-educated googootz ...it was in fact built with trust.

Read the link I gave you and buy a ****ing book.

The Roman Republic and later Empire was built on a foundation of trust and alliance...the conquest part was and is exaggerated.

Had you shown a Roman the Mediterranean sea filled in as red or purple and said that was their empire they would not have known or understood what you were talking about. They had allied and trade partners...but did not consider themselves to have an empire for many many generations into the future. And even then they gave Roman citizenship to all the peoples of their allies in 12 CE, when Caracalla granted citizenship to all free inhabitants of the Empire.

https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/empires-of-trust-how-rome-built--and-america-is-building--a-new-world_thomas-f-madden/337339/item/2934730/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=high_vol_backlist_standard_shopping_customer_aquistion&utm_adgroup=&utm_term=&utm_content=659174113139&gclid=CjwKCAjwg-GjBhBnEiwAMUvNW7XR4bhLJ9kluoW1D81tfQ8w0xjg_OEBFevZzmVlAqWPNK4McVdZdxoC6OkQAvD_BwE#idiq=2934730&edition=4575846

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/capsule-review/2009-11-01/empires-trust-how-rome-built-and-america-building-new-world

p.s.

A multi-ethnic, multi-linguist empire that spanned an enormous 5 million square kilometres and spanned from London to Babylon could not have been built and sustained over the centuries on mere conquest alone.

---

I know the book you are talking about, it is one persons view. I think you are missing the Author's point, he was arguing that you can't just compare the two. It was a response to "Bush = Hilter" comparisons, an entertaining comparison of the Roman and American empires. Are you always swayed by one book?

Loved this review: "Americans are famously illiterate in their knowledge of history. This, of course, does not stop them from pontificating noisily about history, and drawing inapt parallels between contemporary events and their supposed historic analogues. The most popular in the last decade is probably "Bush = Hitler," but a hardy perennial is the cry "America is the new Rome!"

We are not an Empire in the terms that Rome was an Empire. Second, Rome was built and maintained through conquest. The Republic grew through war. See below, the map does not agree with your opinion. Each expansion by the Republic, was a war and finally Julius Caesar, not a very warlike guy. A regular Peace-nik!