- So many questions...
#10 | POSTED BY ONEIRONAUT
You might not have so many questions were you to read the Russian history scholars that point out the obvious; Putin has from Day One wanted to restore the old Soviet Union.... whether there was a NATO or not.
The problem with their argument is that it assumes that, had nato not expanded, Russia wouldn't be the same or very likely close to what it is today.
What we have today in Russia is not some kind of surprise. It's not some kind of deviation from a historical pattern.
Way before nato existed"in the nineteenth century"Russia looked like this: it had an autocrat. It had repression. It had militarism. It had suspicion of foreigners and the West.
This is a Russia that we know, and it's not a Russia that arrived yesterday or in the nineteen-nineties. It's not a response to the actions of the West. There are internal processes in Russia that account for where we are today.
I would even go further. I would say that nato expansion has put us in a better place to deal with this historical pattern in Russia that we're seeing again today.
Where would we be now if Poland or the Baltic states were not in nato? They would be in the same limbo, in the same world that Ukraine is in.
In fact, Poland's membership in nato stiffened nato's spine. Unlike some of the other nato countries, Poland has contested Russia many times over.
In fact, you can argue that Russia broke its teeth twice on Poland: first in the nineteenth century, leading up to the twentieth century, and again at the end of the Soviet Union, with Solidarity."
www.newyorker.com
Russia is what it has always been; NATO hasn't pushed it anywhere it wasn't already.
- For the same damn thing.
In the same damn state?
Where this prosecution has been used 10k times before.
Your whataboutisms am lame.