Yes, and Russia had similar "we won't be the first to be aggressive" language for many years as well. You can see that with new leadership comes new interpretations of when "peaceful means" are no longer sufficient.
From Russia's perspective, NATO has been infringing on both Russia's sphere of influence and on her buffer states. Russia has _twice_ been invaded by the Europeans, she hasn't forgotten that. And with Ukraine in NATO, there are no natural barriers between European powers and Russia.
Need I remind you how the US responded when the USSR set up missile positions in Cuba?
You were absolutely, unequivocally were dodging the commenter's question.
I don't care one way or the other.
If you plainly don't care, and won't answer questions, and since you obviously don't invest the time to keep even basic tabs on the actual situation on the ground anyway -- then it's extremely difficult to see why you're bothering to engage at all, here. It looks like you're just out to stir the pot, basically.
> You were absolutely, unequivocally were dodging the commenter's question.
Because I didn't answer in an hour? I'm not glued to HN all day to argue. And if I don't feel like engaging with someone looking for an argument, I don't engage them.
For. How. Long. Has. NATO. Been. On. Russia’s. Border.
Again, you are dodging the question.
Either you will say they aren’t, in service of your argument that russia invaded Ukraine to prevent NATO from coming up to their border, in which case you would be wrong since NATO has shared a border with russia in Europe for at least the past 24 years.
Or, you will say at least the past 24 years, which undermines your argument that russia only invaded Ukraine to prevent NATO appearing at their immediate borders, since they were already there. For at least the past 24 years.
We can do this all day.
I’ve got another question for you. Almost certainly you will dodge it, because it is blindingly obvious that you are not impartial as you pretend to be, and that you have a strong bias for the Putin regime and its illegal war and genocide, but let’s go through the motions anyway.
Some other guy already answered you on your post with the original question: "4 April 1949 the day NATO was founded"
> How did the Moskva sink?
Didn't the Ukrainians shoot it with either an anti-ship missile or a drone jetski? Is this some test to see "what side I'm on"? I frankly don't care - like I said I was demonstrating the other side of the coin. But I see that was extremely offensive to you. I'm neither European nor Russian, I really don't care who's right. But I do listen to both sides of the story.
> Some other guy already answered you on your post with the original question: "4 April 1949 the day NATO was founded"
Let’s go with that answer. If NATO has been on russia’s border since before Putin was born, how could russia’s justification for invading Ukraine, annexing territory, and slaughtering thousands of civilians possibly be that they were nervous about NATO coming closer to their borders?
It also doesn’t explain why earlier you said “And with Ukraine in NATO, there are no natural barriers between European powers and Russia.”
How does that make any sense at all? There have been “no natural barriers between European powers and russia” for decades already. It has nothing to do with Ukraine.
> Didn't the Ukrainians shoot it with either an anti-ship missile or a drone jetski?
Interesting! That’s not what the russian government said. Surely you’re not suggesting the russian government would lie, are you?!
> I really don't care who's right. But I do listen to both sides of the story.
This is hard to believe given the strong bias you have shown towards Kremlin propaganda.
Dude you need to calm down and realize the person you are discussing this with is not nearly as partisan as you. You are confusing discourse for propaganda and explanation for excuse.
Well, there was the Cuba missile equivalent of stationing missiles in Turkey. Which, seemingly as part of the negotiation to end the crisis, were removed from Turkey afterwards.
What Tomahawks, where? If this is supposed to be some kind of clever hint about weapons in countries that have joined NATO since the end of the Cold War, then unfortunately none of them have Tomahawks, or anything close to them, or anything at all beyond the domestic conventional forces, so this entire comparision bears no resemblance to reality.
NATO has deployed Tomahawks in the past and threatened to put them in Ukraine in the not so distant past. Tomahawks were used during the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia.
Tomahawks are designed to carry nuclear weapons.
I find your ignorance of this fact deplorable. Please inform yourself.
Would you find the deployment of Kalibr (the Tomahawk analog on the other side) to your borders, within 7 minutes flight time of your capitol city, to be an acceptable state of affairs - especially if the deploying party had recently torn up any involvement in the treaties designed to reduce their proliferation?
> NATO has deployed Tomahawks in the past and threatened to put them in Ukraine in the not so distant past.
Not true.
> Would you find the deployment of Kalibr (the Tomahawk analog on the other side) to your borders, within 7 minutes flight time of your capitol city, to be an acceptable state of affairs - especially if the deploying party had recently torn up any involvement in the treaties designed to reduce their proliferation?
>That is already a reality with Russian missiles in the middle of Europe, in Kaliningrad
Russians deploying Russian nuclear weapons on Russian territory, versus Americans deploying NATO nuclear weapons on non-NATO territory: whats the difference?
>Should we bomb Moscow to get rid of them?
That depends - do you want to die in a thermonuclear blast?
Because that's how you die in a thermonuclear blast.
No, not true. Nothing in any of the provided sources says that Tomahawks have ever been given to Eastern Europe nor that there is any intention to. Ukraine has requested them, but your own source says that Ukraine is "unlikely" to receive them.
> Tomahawks used in the illegal attacks on Yugoslavia
They put an end to 10 years of wars in Yugoslavia and brought a lasting peace to the region. In worst massacres, more people were killed by Serbs over a single weekend than died in the entire NATO aerial bombardment campaign that lasted several months.
> Russians deploying Russian nuclear weapons on Russian territory, versus Americans deploying NATO nuclear weapons on non-NATO territory: whats the difference?
Again, nothing you say is true. No-one has given anyone Tomahawks, but Russia has deployed their missiles to Belarus: "Putin confirms first nuclear weapons moved to Belarus" https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65932700
> That depends - do you want to die in a thermonuclear blast?
That's the question Russians should ask themselves when they keep pushing westwards with their nukes and attacks on European countries. Do Russians want to die in a thermonuclear blast that they act so recklessly?
>No, not true. Nothing in any of the provided sources
Read my words again: the threat was made. Russia responded to that threat, as the notion that nuclear-capable missiles would be deployed on borders within minutes of Moscow was deemed intolerable, and thus the deployment was cancelled.
>They put an end to 10 years of wars in Yugoslavia and brought a lasting peace to the region.
How many years of war occurred between the coup-government of Ukraine and the territory of Donbass before Russia invaded? And, again, the duplicity of your argument is clear: illegal wars are 'okay' as long as they result in peace and quiet afterwards?
That's not working out much for Gaza though, is it?
> No-one has given anyone Tomahawks,
I didn't say they did - I said that the threat to do so was made, and it was made - and as a result, we have war and calamity in Europe where we could have had a real, lasting peace between aligned nations.
If not for that coup.
>Russia has deployed their missiles to Belarus
Ah, and the USA has deployed their missiles all over Europe - so do allies have a right to engage in military agreements, or do they not?
You can't have it both ways. This is the entire point of MAD, which you seem to think doesn't apply to Washington, but does to Moscow.
You are making things up at this point. Eastern Europe has no Tomahawks, and nor has anyone given any indication that this would change, nor does the extreme caution in supplying much weaker weapons give a reason to even speculate about Tomahawks.
However, supplying more advanced weapons to Ukraine would be justified, given that Russia has broken the promises given to Ukraine in exchange for dismantling their nuclear weapons. I hope to see it happen!
> How many years of war occurred between the coup-government of Ukraine and the territory of Donbass before Russia invaded?
Zero. The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that there were no "separatists" in Donbas except for unmarked members of Russian armed forces and security services, fully under Russian command. And as in Yugoslavia, many lives could've been saved if NATO was more assertive in bombing the aggressor and establishing peace instead of looking the other way.
> Ah, and the USA has deployed their missiles all over Europe
American missiles stand where they stood when Nixon was still in office and countries that have joined alliances since the Cold War host none of them.
"“We know the plan is realistic. U.S. own military studied it and said it is realistic,” a Ukrainian official familiar with the matter told POLITICO when granted anonymity to be able to speak about a sensitive foreign policy issue."
Pay attention to the dates.
>American missiles stand where they stood when Nixon was still in office and countries that have joined alliances since the Cold War host none of them.
Why abandon involvement in a treaty designed to prevent proliferation, if not to proliferate?
Believe it or not, this is the basis of international law.
You don't get to have standards for one nation but entirely different standards for another.
The USA can deploy missiles anywhere it wants - on its territory, or on the territories of its allies. But of course it needs to suffer the consequences if it decides to forward-deploy them on someone elses territory.
Same goes for Russia. Or, is there some other standard that you're applying that makes it okay for the USA to put nuclear-capable missiles on the borders of its enemies, but not okay for any other nation to do it?
The issue here is that you're shifting the goalposts.
Here's a boiled-down transcript what just transpired between yourself and the other commenter:
You: NATO seeks to deploy missiles within 7 minutes flight time of Russia's capitol. That's bad, threatening.
They: But we already have Russian missiles in the middle of Europe, in Kaliningrad.
You: But those missiles are on Russian territory, so that makes it OK.
There's simply no logic in your follow-up. Either the concern is missile proximity as you initially stated, or it isn't. And if it is -- you can't simply say it's intrinsically threatening and destabilizing when one country does it, but somehow benign and non-threatening when another country does (simply because in their case the missiles happen to be on their own territory).
Plus there's Russia's announcment of its intent to employ actual nuclear-armed missiles in Belarus, which no one has mentioned. Which would seem to make its complaint about non-nuclear deployments in Ukraine (which everyone knows will be exactly that) largely moot.
Does Russia have the right to apply policies equivalent to the US' own Monroe Doctrine, or doesn't it?
If not, why do you think Russia doesn't have that right, when the USA does?
Also, your entire position assumes that Europe==USA, when in fact it simply doesn't. The USA is forward-deploying its missile systems in (currently) friendly states - what happens when those states turn against the USA? Does the USA simply invade and retrieve its missile systems?
> Does Russia have the right to apply policies equivalent to the US' own Monroe Doctrine, or doesn't it?
Yes it does, but I think you've misunderstood what the Monroe Doctrine was. The Monroe Doctrine was not a blank license for the US to invade other countries and kill people there. The point of Monroe Doctrine was to protect western hemisphere from wars initiated by European colonial empires. A good example of this is the French invasion of Mexico in 1862 in an attempt to turn the newly-independent Mexico into a colony and install European aristocrat from the Habsburg dynasty as the emperor of Mexico. Americans offered military aid to Mexico, and after a few years of fighting, that emperor got executed by a firing squad and French forces were expulsed. Sounds familiar?
Russia is acting like one of those colonial empires that sought to conquer and exploit the Americas. The Monroe Doctrine was formulated against such behavior.
And yet when in 1962 the USSR at the invitation of the legitimate Cuban government tried to install missiles in Cuba, the US stopped them through a naval blockade.
Also, if government of Mexico ever decides to invite the People's Liberation Army into Mexico to help Mexico defend itself, and the PLA accepts the invitation, I want and expect my government (i.e., Washington) to stop them -- with organized violence if necessary such as is currently happening in Ukraine.
Also not really about the Monroe Doctrine, as the US action was in response strictly to the deployment of offensive missiles (what it saw as a de facto aggressive action against it) -- not the simple fact of Cuba forming a close relationship with the USSR per se.
Also, if government of Mexico ever decides to invite the People's Liberation Army into Mexico to help Mexico defend itself
And if that invitation happened only after Mexico was invaded by the US (on as grounds as equally stupid and unprovoked as Russia's current invasion of Ukraine) -- then I'm sure we can trust that you will not only unequivocally condemn that aggression, but solidly champion Mexico's right to defend itself against it by whatever means necessary.
Legitimate is an interesting choice of words for any government in a country that has not had free elections since 1948. Fidel Castro was in charge of Cuba for 50 years without receiving a single ballot cast in his name, despite promising free elections in his first year.
Such dictatorships propped by a foreign power from another side of the planet at the expense of the safety and well-being of people in the Americas looks exactly the kind of thing Monroe Doctrine sought to prevent.
To be fair to the other commenter -- this was back in 1962, when Fidel's regime was (elections or no) by all accounts quite popular and broadly supported, and in any case much more legitimate than the regime which preceded it. Meanwhile, the US never had even borderline free elections until some 130 years after its founding (and they were never really quite free until the 1960s). Ironically, by 1962 its elections were still not "free" by modern standards.
Still, "legitimate" is a weird choice of words to describe unnecessary and provocative WMD deployments in any context.
Even by such early point in time, Cuba had already banned free elections. Castro proclaimed in 1961 that "the revolution has no time for elections" and that his dictatorship represents the highest form of democracy. If anyone argues for legitimacy after this point, then they have more faith in the loyality of Cuban people to Castro than he himself apparently had.
Does Russia have the right to apply policies equivalent to the US' own Monroe Doctrine, or doesn't it?
No country has a "right" to apply the Monroe Doctrine, anywhere, of course.
The idea that we should defend or empathize with (or "understand") Russia's current smash-and-grab operation underway in Ukraine, based on a perceived similarity between its actions and whatever bad things other empires have done, way back when -- I find to be really quite bizarre.
Why do you think Russia doesn't have that right, when the USA does?
I don't think the US has any such right -- and I find it quite strange that pretend to "know" that I would.
