It's not about how we perceive a threat to them, but how they perceive it. It makes no sense to destroy one's economy for Ukraine, yet here we are, so their calculation considered it more important.
They are signaling. Push came to shove and the unfortunate reality is that Ukraine isn't that important to most countries and the risk of a greater war is worse.
The lesson here is that every country should learn to defend itself.
I don't think there's anyone on the planet that doesn't understand that the aim here is to put Ukraine under effective Russian control. But the article is interesting for a number of other reasons.
And it's also a very convenient propaganda technique used by Russia all the time - "look we didn't really want to do this, it's the foreign interference in Ukrainian politics that made us attack them!". Like, ok, sure - but you are still the ones pulling the trigger.
You don't have to listen to what the parties are saying. Look at what they are doing.
Consider the change in the amount and type of arms sent in support to Ukraine over the course of the war. I think that reflects a change in the true assessments of the possible outcome of the war.
Because they are under the - in my opinion mistaken - belief that they will be able to deal with this using sanctions and external pressure alone. For some reason people seem to want to believe that the counterparty here is rational even if all of the evidence is against that.
It is very much like the run up to World War II, when countries were making all kinds of deals with Hitler regarding neutrality because they believed that that would keep them out of the firing line, when in fact it enabled a war on a much larger scale than would have ever materialized if the allied sphere had immediately struck back. But even the United States only responded after Pearl Harbor. So, now we have a real problem, and the people of the Ukraine get to choose between abandoning their country, fighting back or living under the Russian jackboot for as long as it takes to plunder their country.
The complexity of such a situation seems to escape some. Instead they assume (and accuse) we are making a dedicated effort to arm Nazis in Ukraine. This is clearly not the case, it's more akin to collateral damage. In that regard, there is one point we should keep in mind though:
Once weapons are brought into any theatre of conflict they are very hard to control.
We aren't? Obviously the primary goal is to influence Ukrainian morale, but an important secondary objective is to convince Westerners to petition their leaders to send Ukraine weapons, money, and materiel. Part of that involves convincing people that Ukraine has a fighting chance.
The inclusion of Ukraine's territorial defense does a good job of showing that what really animates these types of discussions is anti-Americanism, not any sort of principled opposition to violence.
Are you aware of the Monroe doctrine? Cuban missile crisis? Can you imagine the US reaction if Russia placed missiles in Canada or Mexico?
Mearsheimer explains the perceived threat aspect very well: it doesn't matter what YOU, the Americans or any outside observer thinks. What does matter is what the Russians think,
and they've made their thinking on having Ukraine be part of NATO very clear.
They clearly miscalculated since they thought Ukraine
would surrender in days, and offered Zelensky a plane
to fly out of there
That's a contingency plan, not a miscalculation. Of course it makes sense to be prepared for as many possible outcomes as possible.
If Zelensky was willing to fight, we were ready to arm him. If Zelensky was not willing to fight, we were willing to offer him safety because he would be much more useful in American hands than Russian ones, and we would have armed insurgents.
To call this a "miscalculation" makes about as much sense as calling it a "miscalculation" to have fire extinguishers in your house if a fire never actually occurs.
They had expected to sacrifice the Ukrainian people
"Sacrificing" implies we're merely using them. This is a mutual arrangement. Nobody is forcing Ukraine to fight. They are willing, and we are arming and assisting them. No, it's not idealistic altruism but we share common goals.
It always backfires when you try to push people around.
Better to simply listen to them and care about their issues.
I don't disagree with the second half of your post, but it's a massive non-sequitur. Nobody is pushing Ukraine into fighting.
It may be a Kremlin talking point, but that doesn't make it baseless. It's a pretty well-known (and I should actually think uncontroversial) fact that Washington and its allies have been bolstering Ukrainian military capabilities in various ways for several years now. How else do you think Europe's poorest country has been able to withstand an invasion from Europe's strongest army so well?
They knew perfectly well it would involve massive death and possibly years of fighting. But they know their long history with their "brotherly" neighbors to the north, and hence, that even these costs would be preferable to perpetual subjugation.
If you can't recognize this fact -- if you think they're just passive puppets who do whatever the US tells them to; or that they aren't capable of evaluating the costs and risks and making a decision to side with their families and their future -- then not only have you not been following the chain of events since the start of the invasion (in which the US basically told them capitulate, after all); you really have no understanding of how human beings work when their families and communities are threatened.
Best defence is a good offence. They're flailing under strategic pressure from the US.
Nobody pressured them to do anything. Russia's actions are all offense, full stop.
So this is accurate in my opinion, but you're essentially saying the quiet part out loud. You're saying the war has nothing to do with saving Ukraine, but rather protecting the hegemony of the US dollar.
I suspect if everybody understood that's what we're really concerned with, support for Ukraine would drop precipitously.
I said less concerned, which still means concerned... but apparently a lot less than the US. What I was referring to is this disagreement:
"US warns Russian attack may be 'imminent,' Ukraine disagrees"
From President Volodymyr Zelenskyy down, the Ukrainian government has tried to urge calm, with senior officials making clear in recent days they don't see the risks now as any more heightened than over the last eight years of Russian-stoked conflict in eastern Ukraine.
“The United States calculated that Russian threats to go to war over Ukrainian neutrality were bluff”
I want to push back in that. The war in eukraine is (was?) arguably the desired end result of many years of effort by a number of Ukraine/russia hawks like Nuland. I don’t think she was surprised at all by Russia’s actions. It was on everyone’s bingo card. It had been predicted (described?) by prominent experts like John mearshiemer. It was very much a known risk, and a likely risk as anyone can go and assess from historical records.
So no, the United States (whomever you mean by that) certainly did not calculate that Putin would be unprovokeable. Russia’s red line was clear, we chose to cross it knowing the result ahead of time.
Ukraine is receiving a fraction of our allocated defense budget. It’s also strange to hear it described as “war making” rather than defense against an aggressor. Kind of betrays your motivations.
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