

Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault - mixmax
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/141769/john-j-mearsheimer/why-the-ukraine-crisis-is-the-wests-fault

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anigbrowl
_Foreign Affairs_ is an interesting periodical, but it might be worth bearing
in mind that it's something of a talking shop between various International
Relations academics and policy wonks. It's not uncommon to see people
completely contradicting each other in successive issues or even the same one
- which is not altogether unreasonable since International Relations is far
from an exact science and seeing the different viewpoints is educational in
itself. However individual articles can often come off as tendentious -
sources are not required and arguments are often implicitly based on a
worldview that is expected to be known to regular readers, whether or not it
is agreed with. It's not a scholarly journal, despite the scholarly
affiliations of many contributors.

This article strikes me as unusually shallow - while I agree with the basic
premise that Vladimir Putin finds western encroachment on Russia's borders
intolerable, the author argues as if he had little choice other than to annex
Crimea or to announce a referendum and then move it to an earlier date, twice.
One might ask why Putin didn't go through the motions of presenting his
complaints to an international body like the UNSC or levying sanctions, even
if only as a fig leaf for his eventual strategy.

Lastly, I think it's quite reasonable to have some articles about this complex
topic here on HN, even quite partisan ones. It's not just that it's generally
newsworthy, but the strong possibility of international conflict casts a long
shadow over topics that hackers care about, from network security to
surveillance to path-dependent technology trends. If, as seems likely, we are
headed for a new and protracted cold war, or worse, some sort of hot one,
there will be major feedback effects in the sphere of technology - which is,
after all, where the West's major comparative advantage lies.

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omonra
One can judge if the author is honest or not for himself.

I would offer the readers the essay he penned 21 years ago in 1993:
[http://johnmearsheimer.uchicago.edu/pdfs/A0020.pdf](http://johnmearsheimer.uchicago.edu/pdfs/A0020.pdf)

There he goes at length to explain why Russia is very likely to try and re-
conquer Ukraine. Interesting how he comes up with a whole different set of
reasons for this eventuality today.

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bmmayer1
Heh, this completely contradicts this recent piece. Thanks.

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threeseed
Can we try and leave politics to other sites ? There are many great technology
stories under /new that don't make it to the front page because of flamebait
like this.

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xtrumanx
Guidelines state that we shouldn't complain about the appropriateness of
submissions. Just flag them and move on.

Don't forget to flag clutter like this to keep HN on-track.

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bmmayer1
This strikes me as blatant Putin apologism. Would Mearsheimer rather the US
and NATO turn away, let Ukraine and its people slip behind Putin's Teflon
Curtain, and encourage him to continue his empire seeking in other former
Soviet dominions, like Finland or Hungary?

Blaming the US and Europe for "provoking" Russia's aggressive foreign policy
is no better than blaming the US for "provoking" Bin Laden. It reeks of the
worst kind of moral relativism that puts Putin's unmasked and shameless
colonial ambitions on par with America's interests in protecting free trade
and human rights abroad.

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jpatokal
I don't see the article _apologizing_ for Putin, it's simply explaining where
he's coming from and _why_ he views the West's overtures to Ukraine as such a
threat to his own interests.

Like the article says, "Imagine the American outrage if China built an
impressive military alliance and tried to include Canada and Mexico." To
stretch the point, what if Canada held a referendum where its people voted to
resign from NAFTA, join a Chinese free-trade block and offered land for
Chinese bases? Do you think the US would stand by idly? Remember, we came
awfully close to World War 3 when the Soviets put a few silly missiles in
Cuba.

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techdragon
Those missiles were hardly 'silly'.

The entire thing may be a silly example of human squabble, but it was a
squabble where the power to end it all, was held in the hands of a few men,
not leaders of nations, but the military leaders in charge of the troops who's
jobs were to handle, use and guard these weapons that could have wrought
untold devastation...

Its worth remembering that 1 single man prevented the first hostile use of a
nuclear weapon since WW2. Its quite likely most of us owe our lives to
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasili_Arkhipov](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasili_Arkhipov)

~~~
jpatokal
The US had around 5000 missiles pointed at the Soviet Union; having 40
missiles pointing back in and of itself did _not_ pose an existential threat
to the US. But Kennedy & co _chose_ to play a very public game of chicken over
them, and fortunately for the world, Khrushchev blinked.

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blutgens
blah blah blah the US Is evil blah blah. Same old trope.

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adamnemecek
I like the part where he's ignoring the wishes of the countries joining/trying
to join NATO/EU. The fact that Russia does not want them to join is not an
excuse for Russia getting buttmad when they do.

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afafsd
People love writing articles about how everything that happens in other
countries is inevitably the west's fault. Just go up the causal chain far
enough 'til you find a westerner doing something and _bam_ , it's the west's
fault. Non-western people in this worldview have no agency, they simply react
to the things the west does, so it's no surprise that everything is always the
west's fault.

Inevitably "the West's fault" in these sorts of articles should always be read
as "the fault of Westerners with whom the author disagrees politically". When
people blame "the west" it's always those _other_ westerners buggering the
west up for everybody, not those westerners of whom the author is one, who
have the _correct, enlightened_ political opinions.

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shalnoff
dear colleagues, just keep in mind that there are hundreds of PR agencies in
Russia (and hired agencies around the word) hardly working on formation of
public opinion today. This is a good example of it. The subject is a common
"mem" that seeded by the campaign and used in official western oriented
Russian public rhetoric.

IMHO the right approach for that -- ignoring and downvoting as non relevant.

Yes I'm Russian and I'm watching the situation [or situation watching me :)
not sure]. And I'd like to keep this site political free as well.

