The United States is bad at being the British Empire
So, Russia has an evil authoritarian leader who's going to annex Crimea from Ukraine, and that's like Hitler.
Except one of the three leaders of the good liberal Ukrainian government the plucky democratic protestors installed actually believes in Nazism.
So whether we're going to refight the Crimean War with a different English-speaking government comes down to whose use of Godwin's Law is more convincing?
At least when the British Empire made weakening Russia's geopolitical position a key part of its foreign policy, it was honest enough to call it a game.
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Comments
or we could acknowledge that in a conflict fundamentally about nationalisms there are going to be racist shitbags everywhere, such as the "people's governor" of donetsk
or we could make crimean war comparisons as if this is more like the context of open warfare and the ottoman collapse and religious warfare than the more recent and obviously relevant pattern of russian sponsorship of semi-popular independence movements in transnistria, south ossetia, and abkhazia that result from/in high populations of russian ethnicity in states controlled by russian military units with little open warfare resistance from anyone due to the way war works nowadays
personally i'm rooting for the khanate
lol at "[I] have jewish friends"
ooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhh snap
The story from the West is that a small but brave country decided to overthrow its government of crooks and move away from Russia, and big evil Russia decided to enter in force and grab some territory with no justification whatsoever.
The story from Russia is that manipulative West deliberately staged the color revolution, as it has a history of doing. Russia did not react to that, even though it could, but had to heroically move in when it's people are threatened by neo-Nazis.
I suspect that noone was really innocent innthat one - that is, that the unrest in Ukraine was definitely staged by the West and that there are some very suspicious characters in power now, but that is not a good justification for invasion. However, we certainly have better justification for meddling in Ukraine than USA ever had for meddling in Afghanistan, Laos, Iraq, Lybia, the list does on, so I suspect that a great part of international outcry has to do with the fact that it's Russia doing something bad, not that something bad is done. Bunch of hypocrites.
Thing is, I can't even think of a good realpolitik justification for what we are doing, as we are simply not strong enough to get away with it. We have lost all the allies over it, definitely lost larger Ukraine, and are about to face sanctions that would hurt. Very worried personally about whether I'd be able to travel, or to maintain the lifestyle I am used to.
Putin got hugely popular, though. I guess that was the point.
rather than like, foundations of geopolitics
i think everyone can agree that war is undesirable, whatever happens. This shouldn't be an East vs West issue imo.
i'm concerned about the possibility of increased violence within Ukraine, though. i don't know how likely that is.