Thanks for the critique and i agree with you that that specific point of mine was weak.
The problem is that what you said can very well start being a justification for Russia to conquer essentially any land and say ‘well its for our security’ sure that might be so but unlie Napoleonic wars WW1 WW2 there are nukes and Russia has plenty of them along with a system inhereted from soviets(im talking about the one where missials could be launched automatically if administration is down).
I don’t see how it could be used that way. As I detailed, the stretch of land that is currently the present day border between Russia and Ukraine has consistently been the most advantageous point of invasion for any adversary and has been for centuries. This is why Russia said that moving NATO operations into Ukraine was a security red line. What that means is that Russia was saying that if the West wants to be in a trusting mutually secure relationship, don’t station a nuclear military in the most vulnerable point of Russian security.
What it justifies is taking military action to secure that border in the face of an operational nuclear military threat.
What it doesn’t justify is Russia invading Germany, or France, or Romania, or Italy, or Greece or whatever. There’s no reasonable way to interpret the military history I detailed as “this justifies Russia invading anyone and everyone”. It’s specifically about a single vulnerable border.
The bigger problem with the Western narrative about Russian beligerence is that it denies the most important concept in military security - security is bounded. Either you are inside the security regime or you are outside. If you are inside, then security is mutual. If you are on the outside, then security is zero sum.
When the USSR was dissolved, it was a moment within a process of detante with the US started by Russia. Russia wanted to be allies with the USA and stop being adversarial. They wanted to trade, they wanted to ensure mutual security, and they were willing to make concessions to make this happen. Putin, as leader of Russia, was actively pursuing membership on NATO for years with the entire Russian government supporting it, because security is either mutual or it is preparation for war.
In discussions of mutual security, everyone knows that the stretch of land that is the present day Russia-Ukraine border is highly vulnerable. Since the early 1990s Russian leaders and diplomats have been making it clear to the West that they know this and that they know the West knows it, and that in the interest of mutual security Russia will not be able to tolerate a foreign military presence at that border.
What happened? The West denied Russia membership in NATO and continued to develop their own security while denying that Russia was allowed to have any legitimate national security concerns.
Like your statement, born of the Western narrative, any Russian complaint about their national security was illegitimate and could be a slippery slop to Russia invading anyone and everyone. The line “Russia doesn’t get to decide who is in NATO” is literally saying “Russia has no legitimate security concerns and we will do whatever we want wherever we want and they can’t stop us”.
That’s explicitly putting Russia outside of the security context. That’s creating the conditions for war. And all Western leaders, civilian and military, understand this. It is a fundamental tenet of international security frameworks. There is no interpretation other than the West is more interested in dominating Russia than it is in partnering with Russia.
And so, Russia did the only thing it could do, and the same thing that it did back in Napoleon’s time - it garrisoned Ukraine. It invaded Ukraine and built a deeply layered defensive formation on the border. It secured the border and then held it. It hasn’t advanced, it hasn’t tried to take all of Ukraine or even substantially more of it. It has spent its entire campaign strengthening its defenses and degrading the capabilities of the West that have been deployed to Ukraine as a proxy.
Russia is essentially responding perfectly rationally to the military behaviors of the West in the context of the last 200+ years of military behaviors of the West, and the West is talking like they too are behaving rationally but if you analyze the behaviors of the West they look exactly like a block that has every intention of dominating Russia and in fact has never stopped having that intention for over 2 centuries.
Thanks for the critique and i agree with you that that specific point of mine was weak. The problem is that what you said can very well start being a justification for Russia to conquer essentially any land and say ‘well its for our security’ sure that might be so but unlie Napoleonic wars WW1 WW2 there are nukes and Russia has plenty of them along with a system inhereted from soviets(im talking about the one where missials could be launched automatically if administration is down).
I don’t see how it could be used that way. As I detailed, the stretch of land that is currently the present day border between Russia and Ukraine has consistently been the most advantageous point of invasion for any adversary and has been for centuries. This is why Russia said that moving NATO operations into Ukraine was a security red line. What that means is that Russia was saying that if the West wants to be in a trusting mutually secure relationship, don’t station a nuclear military in the most vulnerable point of Russian security.
What it justifies is taking military action to secure that border in the face of an operational nuclear military threat.
What it doesn’t justify is Russia invading Germany, or France, or Romania, or Italy, or Greece or whatever. There’s no reasonable way to interpret the military history I detailed as “this justifies Russia invading anyone and everyone”. It’s specifically about a single vulnerable border.
The bigger problem with the Western narrative about Russian beligerence is that it denies the most important concept in military security - security is bounded. Either you are inside the security regime or you are outside. If you are inside, then security is mutual. If you are on the outside, then security is zero sum.
When the USSR was dissolved, it was a moment within a process of detante with the US started by Russia. Russia wanted to be allies with the USA and stop being adversarial. They wanted to trade, they wanted to ensure mutual security, and they were willing to make concessions to make this happen. Putin, as leader of Russia, was actively pursuing membership on NATO for years with the entire Russian government supporting it, because security is either mutual or it is preparation for war.
In discussions of mutual security, everyone knows that the stretch of land that is the present day Russia-Ukraine border is highly vulnerable. Since the early 1990s Russian leaders and diplomats have been making it clear to the West that they know this and that they know the West knows it, and that in the interest of mutual security Russia will not be able to tolerate a foreign military presence at that border.
What happened? The West denied Russia membership in NATO and continued to develop their own security while denying that Russia was allowed to have any legitimate national security concerns.
Like your statement, born of the Western narrative, any Russian complaint about their national security was illegitimate and could be a slippery slop to Russia invading anyone and everyone. The line “Russia doesn’t get to decide who is in NATO” is literally saying “Russia has no legitimate security concerns and we will do whatever we want wherever we want and they can’t stop us”.
That’s explicitly putting Russia outside of the security context. That’s creating the conditions for war. And all Western leaders, civilian and military, understand this. It is a fundamental tenet of international security frameworks. There is no interpretation other than the West is more interested in dominating Russia than it is in partnering with Russia.
And so, Russia did the only thing it could do, and the same thing that it did back in Napoleon’s time - it garrisoned Ukraine. It invaded Ukraine and built a deeply layered defensive formation on the border. It secured the border and then held it. It hasn’t advanced, it hasn’t tried to take all of Ukraine or even substantially more of it. It has spent its entire campaign strengthening its defenses and degrading the capabilities of the West that have been deployed to Ukraine as a proxy.
Russia is essentially responding perfectly rationally to the military behaviors of the West in the context of the last 200+ years of military behaviors of the West, and the West is talking like they too are behaving rationally but if you analyze the behaviors of the West they look exactly like a block that has every intention of dominating Russia and in fact has never stopped having that intention for over 2 centuries.