So you’re saying that Russia didn’t invade Ukraine first, before the separatist-controlled areas were shelled?

You mean when Russia first invaded Ukraine?

New here. I was reading all the snarky strawman comments here and thinking “what the fuck are these people on?”. Then I read your comment, which is clearly and concisely written, and makes good points. I hadn’t thought of it that way and it makes a lot of sense. Not saying my view is totally flipped around, but that’s some food for thought and I’ll be snacking down.

Now will the rest of you calm down about owning libs and speak nicely to each other?

I appreciate the answer, if you don’t mind me asking, are you American? If so, it just seems strange to me that you don’t want your own country to be a strong political and economic power.

I’m an American and I don’t want my county to be a strong geopolitical power. It’s only the rich who gain any benefit from that, and they are engaged in class war against us, so the stronger they get the more they can hurt us. Instead of (the upper class of) my nation getting stronger, I want my class to become stronger. The interests of the working people of all nations are aligned against the common foe of the rich and powerful, and the richest and most powerful people in the world benefit from America getting stronger - not us.

Our politicians are wasting money that could be spent on schools, infrastructure, healthcare, or any number of things, on pointless weapons and slaughter because it allows them to line their own pockets through the military industrial complex. How on earth does the average American benefit from that?

Bruv I’ve never had armed Chinese soldiers occupy my city to crush a pro-democracy movement, but I have starred down the barrel of US army M4s in Minneapolis.

America is NATO. Go look at the relative spending per member.

it isn’t only the US that is aiding Ukraine, it’s NATO.

you don’t want your own country to be a strong political and economic power.

If the influence of my country is a detriment to the healthy development and peoples of other countries then yes it absolutely is fine to not wish my country to be ‘strong’ in the sense you’ve defined.

I am American. I know you called yourself a commie jokingly, but I, and most people on Hexbear, am a principled communist.

We don’t view the world through the lens of patriotism or defending “our” nation. The working class of America is also oppressed and exploited by the capitalist class of America. The exploitation is amplified when it is turned towards non-American states, especially those in the periphery. While we as Americans benefit from the exploitation of the periphery nations, we (the working class) have more in common with the working class of other countries than we do with our exploiters. Through this lens, we do not seek for our country to be “stronger” (read: globally militarily dominant). We want our country to be liberated from capitalist oppression, and we want other countries under our grip to be liberated, too.

I take your point about the US not acting alone because NATO countries are participating. I think if you look into the history and structure of NATO, you would find that the US has an outsized influence within NATO, and that most people who subscribe to realpolitik recognize that NATO is largely an arm of the US military. This is because of the global presence of the US military all over the world. Many of these countries depend on the US for defense, and the US can leverage its military strength to pressure the host countries into all kinds of policies. Look up a map of US military bases to get a real picture of the influence the US has over the NATO countries. If you really wanna make a comparison, then look at the number of foreign military bases held by the US vs. the number held by Russia or China. It’s a staggering difference.

I want my country to be powerful

It’s not your country though, the state there is not subordinated to the social class you belong to. No matter how much you cheer on the bourgeoisie they will not stop being your class enemy.

a stronger u.s. means more death squads, more right-wing coups, more death. it means no leftist movements worldwide will be allowed to gain any meaningful ground. as a citizen of the u.s. i hope every day for its collapse

Others in the thread have helpfully outlined Russia’s goals for this conflict, but it is important to note that this didn’t come out of nowhere one day (even if that is how the western press tries to present it.) This has been escalating since the coup in Ukraine in 2013, Russia has repeatedly tried to be diplomatic, and has had their concerns dismissed. Hell, Russia doesn’t even want to be antagonistic towards NATO if they don’t have to be (they even tried to join them in the early 2000s).

As others have said, we don’t support Russia, we aren’t Russian nationalists. We do however, want to try to understand a conflict and why it happens, and if there was any way to prevent it from happening so we can make sure similar conflicts don’t happen in the future.

The problem with the western media (US media in particular) is that it tends to just point to another nation and just call them bad guys, like the villain in a movie. This doesn’t analyse anything or provide any preventative power (in fact, for the US, it is usually the opposite, they want wars so they can keep their military industrial complex ticking over and making profit off of death and destruction.)

If people uncritically accept that an “enemy nation” is a bad guy, they can easily fall for the next bad guy, and the next, and so on forever. The only way to actually prevent stuff like this is to try and understand why it happens.

To be totally honest, for me personally, I’m not exactly for Ukraine as much as I’m against Russia

If nothing else, your honesty is refreshing lol

Ah, silly me, I forgot, history began in Febuary 2022. War is peace, we can’t negotiate with the enemy. We just need to keep selling weapons for profit, I’m sure there’s no issue with that. Not like a country profiting off this conflict would encourage their citizens to think that Russia is a nation of mindless demonspawn who only understand violence. Just got to keep selling ineffectual and very profitable weapons and fight Russia down to every last man, woman and child in Ukraine. That’ll help the Ukrainian people! Much better than trying for that silly peace nonsense. After all, Russia did a bad guy thing. So we can’t talk, or discuss terms or try to understand them or their motivations. They the bad guys. It’s not like Ukrainian’s lives matter anyway, as the average smug American, I can’t even point to it on the map! And there’s plenty more people to die for our profits when those guys are all gone!

Peace looks like guaranteeing Ukrainian neutrality by taking NATO membership off the table and likely ceding the DPR and LPR to the Russian federation at this point.

At this point if Ukraine gained back the DPR it would almost certainly result in an ethnic cleansing.

How far do you want to go? Absolute peace would be the end of the nation-state and the use of violence to uphold class society. That’s an useless idea for this, though. Maybe a more useful goal for peace is stopping the encirclement, sanctioning, and blockading of all countries. Or not conducting coups to install puppet governments right next to geopolitical enemies. Or at the very least accepting diplomatic solutions to a war when they arise instead of slipping your proxy another check and sending a couple thousand more people to get killed.

In short, we’re a long way out from peace, but NATO’s actions have arguably put the world in more peril and violence than even Russia’s. Even if that weren’t the case, unless you’re Russian yourself, you probably have a lot more you can do to pressure the NATO countries to stop fighting to the last Ukrainian, rather than somehow pray Putin into surrendering.

A good comparison might be “what if Maine really wanted to be independent, or maybe even join Canada?”

Would it make sense to:

• Give American neo-Nazi paramilitaries free reign to attack Maine
• Seek an alliance with a group of nations expressly designed to fight a war with Canada
• Get into a bloody stalemate of a war with Canada if they invade on behalf of the people of Maine, who don’t want to be here anyway
• Keep fighting that war long after the point it becomes apparent that we will not be retaking Maine

A better solution would have been to negotiate with Maine separatists, perhaps addressing the reason they want to leave, and at bare minimum act like a sovereign state with a monopoly on legitimate violence and destroy the neo-Nazi paramilitaries in your own house. Might also help to avoid the “fuck Canada” military alliance, too.

all of your landlords are liberals too