Nice try, but liberal democracies do actually practice democracy, with the likes of elections, free press, right to protest, etc. if not always perfectly.
None of these things really happened in Greece during that time so...
Not because they were allied to NATO though. Unlike the Soviet block which was that way by design.
NATO's fundamental goal is to safeguard the Allies' freedom and security by political and military means.
Not sure what the problem with that is, so it seems very much a question of how to go about it.
If you believe the label, yeah.
Not entirely, but more than I believe the excuses I hear for Russia’s current actions, or the idea that they were just the plucky underdogs in the Cold War protecting themselves from nasty NATO.
Does include the bigger picture that letting Putin get away with this bullshit, not only is he likely to push further, but China will be emboldened to make a move on Taiwan. But fuck Taiwan too, right?
What does Taiwan have to do with Ukraine? Also, do we seriously have to look at China too as a massive aggressive threat to world peace now? Sorry but China is objectively by far the least (militarily) threatening superpower to anyone external to it right now. They've been involved in no major wars with anyone for decades.
China is a military threat to Taiwan. You’re the one who said to look at the big picture.
Also Taiwan isn't even recognized as a country by most other countries, kinda like, you know, Donetsk lol
It’s nothing like Donetsk. There’s no separatists fighting the government, it’s a peaceful democratic country. It’s not officially recognized, but the status quo has been accepted for decades. It was a mistake not to fully recognize it ages ago and that’s kind of the problem now.
I believe it’s Russia that annexed part of it and have active military forces in their borders supporting separatists. You know that the interim Ukraine government intended to stay neutral and on friendly terms with Russia
That's not entirely accurate. They didn't say they'd join NATO but they did express intentions of joining the EU. Crimea strongly supported Yanukovych and got pissed when he was couped. Go see polls before this all happened for Yanukovych in eastern Ukraine and what people living in Crimea now think. They got even more pissed as the new nationalist government moved to repeal language laws for ethnic minorities. Before that there was a law which let the minorities use their own languages in schools and government etc. The new government wanted to take that back, so they saw the new status quo as a direct threat against them, and they were completely right. It's the kind of stuff that people got pissed at China for trying to enforce on Hong Kong. And it's not even just the russians. Other ethnic minorities in eastern Ukraine are also very ambivalent, although they don't tend to support a russian invasion unlike many ethnic russians. Meanwhile Ukraine had already pled to join NATO and NATO accepted a few years ago, right before Yanukovych. What the interim government said at the time is not relevant, because the whole point of the interim government was that it would only be there for a little while. It's simply not accurate that Ukraine was not intending to join NATO and that NATO wasn't actively pushing for expansion. Again you can't look at things like completely separate moments.
Whoa! Opinion polls and language curriculums! Great justification for sending troops into another country and carving bits off it. If only we had opinion polls for Afghanistan and Iraq, and I might have supported those wars.
Again that would be Putin threatening to plunge Europe into war.
What does the rest of Europe have to do with the shitfest that is eastern Ukraine? Literally no one would move an inch if the same thing happened to some other country that NATO doesn't care about. I know that for a fact because again no one moved an inch for Azerbaijan vs Armenia. Should Europe have gone to war over that? I don't like that Azerbaijan attacked Artsakh. Do I want to be shipped over to Nagorno Karabakh to shoot at stuff? And then maybe also provoke Turkey into war supporting Azerbaijan so that the entire Mediterranean can blow up? No. Is it my country's concern to go do that? Again no. Why Americans still think that their government just cares about justice and they should let it do this exact thing is beyond me. I guess maybe for some of them it's safe game to think about it because they don't have to fight if they don't want to and they're on the other side of the earth anyways.
None of this makes any sense. Russia has built up a huge force, enough for a full scale invasion. NATO hasn’t deployed anything like enough to engage, nor have they threatened to. Economic sanctions are the deterrent here.
But maybe you’ll be conscripted as an accountant or something?
Like, we were talking about Georgia before. Do you know what preceded the war with Georgia? The Bucharest summit of NATO, where Georgia AND UKRAINE said they were planning to join NATO and NATO accepted, and directly expressed plans for expansion. And then Putin sent troops to help Abkhazia and South Ossetia. It was a consequence, not a cause. If you look at NATO as some innocent thing and not something vital for the expansion of US geopolitical interests, a way to put US military bases everywhere, and a tool to clobber countries if need be (including directly going against its supposed rules), then maybe it's surprising that Russia reacts like that. But obviously Russia knows what NATO is and they do perceive it as a threat to their interests. Like, we know what happens every time NATO tries to inch closer to Russia. Why do we act surprised when it does happen?
Surprised? No. Russia is doing what you accuse NATO of, using military weight to expand it’s political and strategic goals. Russia doesn’t fear a NATO attack, it fears losing influence, and that is not justification to start a war.
I don’t think NATO is entirely benign, but at least Eastern European countries joined out of choice, not because they feared invasion.
For the record I was wary of expanding NATO back in the 90s, but the idea that anyone is entitled to a “sphere of influence” was always kind of bollocks. No country should have to bend to the will of their neighbours, just because they’re big, mean and likely to lose their shit if anyone falls out of line.
Russia is the one clobbering countries like Georgia and the Ukraine for who they might make alliances with. It’s not just a consequence, Russia has a choice. They choose to use military force to get their way, and the possibility of them pulling this shit is why many neighbours wanted to join NATO in the first place.