this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2023
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Unfortunately isn't that simple. If you would like to know more about the Ukrain conflict than please read "How the West Brought War to Ukraine: Understanding How U.S. and NATO Policies Led to Crisis, War, and the Risk of Nuclear Catastrophe" by Benjamin Abelow. It gives a far more balanced en factual analysis about the conflict.
I got a free pdf version here if you are interested.
https://annas-archive.org/md5/193c4b51b5aa5c3270c9163200f0d475
You want to condense a 65 page book, into a fucking TL;DR and still somehow get a detailed or coherent summary? Fucking really, like who do you think we are? Just read the book, or just go with the goddamn title lacking the How on front.
If they read books they probably wouldn't be here making that argument.
I haven't read the book but here are the broad strokes: NATO is essentially an organization the USA uses to consolidate its vassals in order to destroy Russia, from its very inception. They expanded eastward, breaking promises and treaties and rejecting Russian attempts to join themselves or calls for peace or diplomacy. The war in UKR was purposefully orchestrated with the goal to 1) bleed Russia, eventually leading to hopefully coup and/or balkanization of Russia, 2) force the EU to become more uncritically loyal to the US, cut off their economic ties with RUS and buy USA oil/energy, 3) make a shitload of money for the military industrial complex, make UKR an eternally indebted colony and clean out stock of old ordinance.
Much has happened in the Baltics since WW2, but TLDR USA has trained, armed, bankrolled and PR'd Neo Nazism since forever. The Banderites are UKR's most popular Neo Nazi movement.
UKR used to be neutral. In 2014 USA violently couped their gov't and installed a pro-NATO pro-Nazi puppet. Nazis gained power in the military, economic and political bodies. Not wanting to live under Nazis, the ethnically, linguistically, culturally Russian eastern peoples of UKR in the Donbas tried to secede from UKR. For 8 years, UKR Neo Nazi paramilitaries, again abetted by NATO, and eventually the UKR military proper, began slaughtering Donbas civilians, killing about 14k men women and children with snipers, mortars, bombs and ethnic pogroms.
RUS, for 8 years, tried (as they did the entire Cold War) to invoke peace and diplomacy. UKR signed the Minsk II agreements but quickly resumed ignoring and breaking this treaty.
The violence against these ethnic Russians began spilling over the border. The cherry on the cake was that, despite RUS saying years that it was an unacceptable security redline for them, USA began to push UKR to join NATO, wherein nukes would be installed where they could strike Moscow in minutes. Not only were the Banderites killing their own people, and their Russian cousins, and indoctrinating children in school to Nazi ideology, but now a proverbial loaded gun was en route to be pointed in RUS's face. RUS knew war with UKR was essentially war with USA and the rest of the EU and they prepared their economy for years to withstand the sanctions. They also knew that they essentially had no choice if they wanted to survive in the long term; it was now or never.
It is also important to note that these strategies have much precedent, they are all right out of the USA's imperial playbook in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East. Build up fascists to use as proxy forces, coup sanction assassinate terrorize balkanize villify and nuclearly threaten gov'ts who don't bend the knee, and above all always provoke war between neighbors; USA is a capitalist oligarchy and its singular most powerful entity is its war lobby.
There is a lot more to say, both broadly and in detail, but that is a summary of the truth, to counter the USA's narrative where RUS invaded UKR because •checks notes• because Putin is evil and was bored.
I genuinely recommend reading the book, it won't take you that long.
Key points I got are:
Summary of the US policy toward Russia post USSR up to present
There is a history of NATO moving east, and also a history of US weapons testing near the border and backing out of nuclear and arms treaties.
Preliminary integration of Ukraine military and economy prior to any admittance into NATO, effectively making them an arm of NATO without formal admission
A bunch of other history which contextualizes things. Seriously good extra context if you are not familiar with the history.
Ultimately, the US and NATO are far more at fault for the tensions that led to the current crisis.
Maybe how the conflict itself came to be isn’t simple (and calling anything simple that involves politics is probably always wrong). But the situation for the people in the Ukraine itself is pretty simple. They’re being attacked and they’re defending themselves.
Yet another lib who thinks the conflict started in 2022, and thus has little understanding of it
You could say the same for the people in Palestine. They're forced to live under the boot of an oppressive apartheid regime and they're trying to free themselves. Pretty simple, right?
Apparently that’s an unpopular opinion, but to free themselves the ideal path forward is to conduct terrorist attacks on civilians? That certainly didn’t seem to improve things. And bombing civilians isn’t a great response either.
"Terrorism" is a meaningless word used to create a false separation between the small violence of the oppressed and the massive violence of the oppressor. The Nazis also called resistance fighters under their occupation "terroristic barbarians" and claimed this proved that slaughtering them was justified.
"I'm all for liberation, but not like that" headass
frrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
Didn't Ukraine literally just launch missile/artillery attacks at random civilian targets in Donetsk... The same thing they've been doing for almost a decade?
also they've been carrying out improvised drone bombings on Russian civilian centres like Moscow
You sound like you can't be fucked to even try understanding how settler-colonial ethnic cleansing and oppression justifies violence from the oppressed-- which scans, considering your considerably treat-obsessed techbro posting background.
basically, it all sounds like
to me where you're concerned.
I‘m not trying to argue for one side here and I’m certainly no expert in this conflict. All I’ve been saying is that violence is probably not going to be the solution here. Especially not the kind of violence that Israel is and has been putting Palestinians through.
Unfortunately, violence is a part of the solution at this point. Violence is the only thing that stopped the Nazis' genocidal conquest, it is what enabled the Black South Africans to take back their country from their colonizers. Palestinians tried diplomacy for years, and all it got them was softer genocide. They tried peaceful protest, and their were shot dead by the hundreds. Listen, I get it, violence is not pretty, but when you are dealing with fascists such as the Israelis, you end up not having much choice in the matter. The violence will stop when Israeli apartheid and genocide stops, and that likely won't stop until Israel as it exists is defeated, as fascism is baked deeply into its political structure.
Then what is the solution to a settler-colonial menace kicking in your door and demanding your land? Acquiescence and surrender? You'd see done to the Palestinians what Amerika has done to the Indigenous and Black populations in their country. Like I said.
What’s the solution that involves violence? It can be a wake up call to start a discussion, but I don’t see how things are going to be solved by it. But you tell me.
When your rip out your intruder by his roots, and cast him into the fire. You cannot really be sitting here trying to justify to someone whose lineage still bears the scars of Amerika's colonialism, that another people's settler-colonialism should go unopposed. You can't be. Expecting the settler to just fuck off back to wherever he came from is idealistic and patently impossible, as Amerika's example shows us; so what's left from the perspective of the colonized? Like I said.
Don't bother replying; I don't 'debate' with settlers(and settlers aren't just Amerikan; it's a state of mind-- but cute 'gotcha!' attempt) and you've already shown your hand.
No way am I saying it should go unopposed. But I also don’t think "ripping out intruders and casting them into fire" is going to be a feasible solution in this case.
I don’t live in the US btw, if that’s what you mean by "Settler".
(Are we continuing the discussion by editing the comments now? ^^)
All you've done is complain about the solution the Palestinians have come up with in order to liberate themselves. If an occupying state is doing everything it can to eradicate you and your people what do you think their only choices are going to be?
That peckerwood was still going off over on his instance even after his ban lmfao. Debate pervs gonna debate perv, especially the crackerish ones
People like this can't even bother to think outside the framework of simplistic logic of "violence bad". Like motherfucker if someone is trying to kill me I'm not just gonna let them... it's the same dumbfuck horseshoe theory of "violence against oppressors makes you just as bad as the oppressors"
Honestly, much love to the ancestors who paved our way; but I stand on the assertion that the likes of Dr. King and other non-violent activists fucked us all up giving the peckerwoods an 'idealistically higher' option to cudgel us with. I don't doubt they'd have come up with a way to get to the same old horseshoe horseshit "just as bad" nonsense-- but the deliberately-half taught beliefs of Dr. King and nem (because they NEVER teach about the whole "that dream I had, has in many ways become a nightmare" quote, or how he was getting closer in ideology to Ture, and Seale, and el-Shabazz before the government had him murdered) allows these crackers to feel so morally superior when they stare down their nose and hem and haw about how "absolutely evil directly fighting back against one's oppressor is".
That's a fact. I also know that a lot of our people tend to be religious and that plays a factor in the whole "nonviolent" tactic. I don't like the idea of the tragic martyr, that the oppressors will grow a heart and that's how we can "earn" our freedom. If they had a heart they wouldn't have dehumanized and enslaved us in the first place
I know you've already been banned, but just in case another lib stumbles across the thread I will reply anyway.
They've tried peaceful marches. Israel shot the peaceful protestors and the world largely ignored it. The fact you didn't know about them shows how easily ignored they were.
Which, I understand, is entirely what ghouls like you want, something easily ignored.
Real talk these the same crackers that call NFAC a domestic terrorist org.
Isn't there ample evidence that Ukraine's been forcibly conscripting citizens, many of whom are ethnically Russian and don't feel that motivated to fight against, well, Russians?
Look at a demographic map. Ethnic Ukrainians are in the northwest, ethnic Russians are in the south and east. Guess where Russia is attacking?
Russia did attack from the northwest to start with, but that failed fairly spectacularly
Many people in Ukraine support Russia's invasion. Many more are indifferent and just want to steer clear of the war path; millions with consent were evacuated and placed in safety with shelter and food within Russia. On the other hand, Nazi blocking squads working for the Ukraine puppet government will violently, sometimes lethally stop any able bodied people trying to escape. They violently conscripted the men until they started running out and now have been targetting old men, older children and women (not dissimilar to the OG Nazi late war policy of Volksturm). That is to say, even many of the UKR soldiers don't want to fight against RUS. RUS's target is not the people of UKR, it is their Neo Nazi NATO puppet government.
By contrast, the target of Israel's violence is the Palestinian people themselves, they want genocide and expulsion of all non-Jews and Arabs.