This is an important perspective, particularly if all you have been exposed to is hawkish anti-Russian propaganda in the last couple of weeks. I found it easy enough to find more balanced views, but I’m sure that’s not the modal case, so thank you Darryl for laying out the other side with your usual thorough and spirited clarity.
This is an important perspective, particularly if all you have been exposed to is hawkish anti-Russian propaganda in the last couple of weeks. I found it easy enough to find more balanced views, but I’m sure that’s not the modal case, so thank you Darryl for laying out the other side with your usual thorough and spirited clarity.
I’m sympathetic to this viewpoint, to a point, but it treats the West a bit too monolithically and seems to overstate the importance of the hidden hand of America in foreign policy developments. We can’t forget that the EU, the West, and even NATO is not a monolith. There are many independent points of view here, and they all come together (or fail to come together) to give us exactly the balance of power and result we see today.
Poland and the Baltics have very good reasons to want to be in NATO without any prodding from Washington. If Putin saw this as American aggression, that is, in part, because he is overlooking the absolutely apocalyptic threat that these countries face from anyone who sees the fall of the Soviet Union as a catastrophic collapse. The proximity between Estonia and St. Petersburg runs both ways, but the power differential does not without NATO. (And it would probably be better for everyone involved if these countries had a European-only security alliance to join, but you face the future with the choices you have, not the ones you wish you had).
Also, I don’t think it would be possible for the US to institute (relatively) bloodless regime change if the organic support for it wasn’t there already. One just has to look at cases that have gone against the US to see why this is necessary (Bay of Pigs, 1979 Iran, Iraq 2, Afghanistan). So I see Euromaidan more as the US putting a thumb on the scale of a pre-existing conflict and not creating the conflict itself. And, roughly speaking for most cases, that is probably fair game because the other side(s) is putting their thumb on the scale too. The fact that hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians right now are willing to risk their lives to resist the Russian invasion shows that there is a measure of organic support for the West (globohomo and all) over whatever Putin may have to offer them. And I think Ukrainians are in a unique position to be able to discern between the two alternative visions. And yes, the usual caveat about masses being swayed by propaganda applies because it always applies in every case.
This was probably the most well-researched case that I’ve heard on the NATO-is-to-blame side of things. And I’m a huge Darryl Cooper fan. I’ve been listening since he was only on part two of Fear and Loathing. But I think he’s a little worked up (aren’t we all?) I found the Unraveling episode he did with Jocko back in early February before the war started a bit more balanced.
I did want to add: whichever podcast or sub stack you listen to or read, it is critically important to resist the crazy voices in our midst calling for a no-fly zone (or more!) Whoever doesn’t get the stakes here or thinks that Putin wouldn’t call our bluff (looking at you Garry Kasparov) is extremely dangerous and has to have their arguments dismembered thoroughly and publicly before we stumble into global catastrophe. It’s fine to support the Ukrainians and wage the usual economic struggles, but we have to bend over backwards to avoid any actual possibility of a shooting war with Russia.
This is an important perspective, particularly if all you have been exposed to is hawkish anti-Russian propaganda in the last couple of weeks. I found it easy enough to find more balanced views, but I’m sure that’s not the modal case, so thank you Darryl for laying out the other side with your usual thorough and spirited clarity.
I’m sympathetic to this viewpoint, to a point, but it treats the West a bit too monolithically and seems to overstate the importance of the hidden hand of America in foreign policy developments. We can’t forget that the EU, the West, and even NATO is not a monolith. There are many independent points of view here, and they all come together (or fail to come together) to give us exactly the balance of power and result we see today.
Poland and the Baltics have very good reasons to want to be in NATO without any prodding from Washington. If Putin saw this as American aggression, that is, in part, because he is overlooking the absolutely apocalyptic threat that these countries face from anyone who sees the fall of the Soviet Union as a catastrophic collapse. The proximity between Estonia and St. Petersburg runs both ways, but the power differential does not without NATO. (And it would probably be better for everyone involved if these countries had a European-only security alliance to join, but you face the future with the choices you have, not the ones you wish you had).
Also, I don’t think it would be possible for the US to institute (relatively) bloodless regime change if the organic support for it wasn’t there already. One just has to look at cases that have gone against the US to see why this is necessary (Bay of Pigs, 1979 Iran, Iraq 2, Afghanistan). So I see Euromaidan more as the US putting a thumb on the scale of a pre-existing conflict and not creating the conflict itself. And, roughly speaking for most cases, that is probably fair game because the other side(s) is putting their thumb on the scale too. The fact that hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians right now are willing to risk their lives to resist the Russian invasion shows that there is a measure of organic support for the West (globohomo and all) over whatever Putin may have to offer them. And I think Ukrainians are in a unique position to be able to discern between the two alternative visions. And yes, the usual caveat about masses being swayed by propaganda applies because it always applies in every case.
This was probably the most well-researched case that I’ve heard on the NATO-is-to-blame side of things. And I’m a huge Darryl Cooper fan. I’ve been listening since he was only on part two of Fear and Loathing. But I think he’s a little worked up (aren’t we all?) I found the Unraveling episode he did with Jocko back in early February before the war started a bit more balanced.
I did want to add: whichever podcast or sub stack you listen to or read, it is critically important to resist the crazy voices in our midst calling for a no-fly zone (or more!) Whoever doesn’t get the stakes here or thinks that Putin wouldn’t call our bluff (looking at you Garry Kasparov) is extremely dangerous and has to have their arguments dismembered thoroughly and publicly before we stumble into global catastrophe. It’s fine to support the Ukrainians and wage the usual economic struggles, but we have to bend over backwards to avoid any actual possibility of a shooting war with Russia.