Mitch McConell says the quiet part out loud.
Exact full quote from CNN:
“People think, increasingly it appears, that we shouldn’t be doing this. Well, let me start by saying we haven’t lost a single American in this war,” McConnell said. “Most of the money that we spend related to Ukraine is actually spent in the US, replenishing weapons, more modern weapons. So it’s actually employing people here and improving our own military for what may lie ahead.”
cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/4085063
If NATO, as we both agree, is an aggressive group of countries that has a contemporary history of attacking countries that are not aligned with the West, despite many of these countries trying to align themselves with the West in good faith (Libya, Russia, and Iran all helped the West in the war on terror), then what is the appropriate way for Russia to react to the expansion of NATO to their doorstep? And I’m asking this as a genuine question, you’re Russia how are you reacting to the West surrounding you despite assisting them, when do you stop tolerating increased military encroachment?
I don’t think that Russia invaded Ukraine because of only NATO expansion, but it obviously played a role given that the peace agreement that was nearly agreed upon April 2022 had Ukraine agree to neutrality. I think a lot of it came down to the genocide of ethnically Russian Ukrainians in the East and Ukraine’s increased shelling of the region in February 2022 is probably what escalated the war into what we see today.
That’s a good question. Let me tackle it from a different angle though - why do ex USSR/Warsaw Pact countries actively want to join NATO?
As a resident of one, I think it’s because they feel that Russia after Yeltsin has the exact same imperialistic principles USSR did. And it doesn’t matter to them that Russia did cooperate with the West, because they see those principles as enough threat. Thus, they have the same reason to fear Russia as Russia has to fear NATO.
Perhaps if NATO disbanded before 1999 we wouldn’t have current Russia, but that’s alt history.
Because they are run by right-wing oligarchies that want to consolidate and protect their accumulated wealth and power? The imperialism is coming from inside the house.
Disappointing. The other Hexbear folk at least tried to have a discussion, you just show up with the old ‘everything left of my position is fascist’ argument, expecting what exactly?
Bro one of the Baltics is sueing holocaust survivors for trying to reclaim their property. Orban just straight is fascist. Poland has a reactionary right wing theocratic government that rather famously banned abortion. What do you want from us? If it looks like a goose and goosesteps like a goose. The reactionary right wing takeover of eastern europe is well documented. The spread of the double-holocaust narrative and it’s acceptance by the us and eu is well documented. The antisemitism, anti-lgbt violence, anti-romani violence, is all well documents. What do you want from us?
No, a good understanding of fascism and imperialism includes understanding that countries at the periphery either find a way to do the imperialism to their east/south (geographically right now) or to their ethnic others within or be the ones consumed by it.
Poland got to join the imperialists, though with significant disadvantage of being at the behest of exploitation, in exchange for becoming the people who perform (at least partially) the expropriation towards he east at Russia/Belorussia/Ukraine. The ruling class of capitalists always takes this bargain as long as they continue to benefit
Russia during Yeltsin rolled in the tanks on its own parliament. The absence of foreign invasions was not for lack of malice, but for lack of capability.
The reason why ex-Warsaw Pact countries are flocking to NATO is because when the communists left power, the reactionaries resurged. And naturally the reactionaries in power wanted to be part of a right-wing alliance. But no matter what revanchists might tell you, living standards across Eastern Europe were better in the 1980s than they were in the 2000s.
Yeah, Russia had nukes. That’s the only thing that will stop NATO.
I live in eastern Europe, and I agree that the 90s and early 2000 sucked for us. Big time. My country government absolutely botched the transition to free market economy.
Still, I feel we traded stable but shit for volatile yet hopeful.
there’s no way to sell public infrastructure to the highest bidder that won’t result in a massive drop in quality of life. it’s got very little to do with your government and entirely to do with the introduction of bourgeois rule.
I’d agree in a vacuum. Even though I’d prefer state owned stuff, quality of life does not depend solely on who owns the infrastructure.
Stuff we take for granted like buying food product at the deli (meat, cheese) required either being lucky, knowing the right people or having US dollars in your pocket.
The only way the transition was “botched” was that the west wasn’t able to loot as much as they wanted.
Because the US starts color revolutions in those countries until a pro-western government is in power.
Fellow ex Warsaw Pact resident here.
They wanted to join NATO because after the dissolution of the USSR these countries were pushed into a deep economic crisis, to which one of the solutions, apart from relentless austerity programs was the privatization of the shit ton of public assets they had. Of course lots of western companies were in on this since for them these assets were really cheap and they had a lot of money. The city hall of the town i went to university to became a fucking McDonald’s.
Thing is, a lot of people didnt like this, not just the austerity, but the handing of domestic assets to western companies. And they were not even that wrong about it! In Albania, in 1997 a series of bankruptcies of asset managing companies (most western owned) who were basically scamming people who barely came into contact with capitalism, telling them theyll get 50% interest rates for their money, led to a brutal uprising where ordinary people were sacking military bases, setting up machine gun nests in the borders of cities and overthrew the government (after half a year of protests).
In the meantime Russia was led by well-known alcoholic, Boris Yeltsin, who doesn’t strike me as the napoleonic conqueror people make him out to be.
So why did these countries join NATO? Because they DESPERATELY needed the money, but western companies wouldnt invest in (exploit) them if they dont have insurances (troops that could be sent against the people anytime an Albanian-type revolt breaks out or an anti-western government come in power who would try to renationalize assets) that their investments (exploitation) runs as smoothly as possible. And it works. People like to say that “ackshually the living standards went up in Eastern Europe”, but they never stop to check that it only went up because the rich got richer, pulling the average up. The working class’ lives stagnated at best, except the social net around them is rapidly brought down. Older people are not nostalgic for socialism here because theyre becoming senile, but because they see every time that they go to a hospital that the increasingly privatized healthcare system is crumbling.
Don’t believe me? It’s fine. But i would suggest that you examine who the current pariahs are in NATO: Hungary, whose government has to rely in a lot of things to the cheapest due to a ravaged economy (both by corruption and privatization), so they rely a lot on domestic production and trying to hand off as little stuff to western corporations as possible (and still fail at it, hence why they are still intact), and Turkey, who makes no secret of wanting to standing on its own feet and not rely on western corporations.
probably worth mentioning that I think he also couped the government to prevent the Communist party from being voted back in to power in I want to say '94.