I'm not going to answer to you quote by quote. I laid down my thoughts in the previous post anybody can read and have their conclusions
Well, this is too bad, because this way you can easily avoid addressing a lot of arguments I made. And indeed, you just ignored (in the sense of not responding to) what I consider the key arguments in this whole thing. You didn't answer to my arguments about appeasement policy and only very fleetingly to my core and main argument that Ukraine is an independent nation whose fate should not be decided on by other countries. You have not answered to my question why Mexico allying with China would result in the situation you described. It is impossible for me to follow your conclusions, I seriously don't know why you think half the things you think and say half the things you say, and when I ask, you refuse to answer.
I'm sorry that I feel the urge to address
every argument, but this is a topic where so much misinformation is floating around that I don't see any other way than to pinpoint and address individal points. If not for the sake of convincing you, then at least for the sake of providing the full story to any potential reader of this exchange.
I never applied Ukraine is not responsible for its future, on the contrary through my post I criticised how reckless this decision was, i.e. committing in a constitutional way.
But you argued that the decision of war and peace depended on who is currently president of the US. You've been told by others that this is not the case, and the reasons why we think so. You didn't address these, and instead suggested the culprits are in Kiev and Washington. And this is not true. At every single step along the way, Russia had the option not to invade Ukraine. Even now, it is their choice to withdraw troops and cease the fighting.
Ukraine is simply responding to the Russian threat. The Russian threat exists because Ukraine exists, because Putin can't stand the fact that Ukraine exists and wants to change this. What is Ukraine supposed to do? Just sit there and hope it will turn out alright? The constitutional amendment you find so objectionable was signed in 2019, when Russian troops had already occupied and annexed parts of Ukraine and the country had every reason to believe that without integrating itself into international alliances, the whole country is threatened by Russia.
The Russian invasion proved Ukraine's fears right. If the constitutional amendment was the trigger for Russia's aggression (it wasn't, Russia's aggression goes back to 2014), Ukraine was right because that means any act of independent foreign policy would have triggered Russia. If the amendment wasn't the trigger, that means Ukraine was always under threat of Russian invasion. Either way, Ukraine had to act to preserve its independence as a nation and the safety of its people. That is not reckless, it's the exact opposite of recklessness.
If your neighbour will attack you for your attempt to guarantee your own security, your neighbour is the problem.
Calling other names i.e. straw man, it's not a respectful way to conduct a conversation.
I didn't call you a straw man, I pointed out that you used a
straw man argument, which you did.
Regarding Turkey there were north of 7,000 killed /mia so it was not like Crimea.
I'm not playing the numbers game. It makes no difference for the dead people how many they were or not. Every dead person is one too many, in Cyprus, in Crimea, anywhere and everywhere.
Nothing to say about Leopards in occupying territory against international law.
This has nothing to do with Ukraine or Russia. We can open a Cyprus thread if you want to discuss this, and I will probably agree with you on a lot of points. The Turkish occupation of North Cyprus was criminal and is a wrong that has never been righted in many ways, but it has nothing to do with Russia and Ukraine.
Presicely because they had no nukes you'd expect the World to be more vocal. And precisely because Russians have, I'd expect West to be more careful all the way.
It was wrong back then to let Turkey blackmail its allies into accepting its aggression, and it is wrong now for Russia to blackmail the world into accepting its aggression. Just because the response was wrong in 1974 doesn't mean it should be wrong now.
Also the excuse you gave for Zelensky addressing Cypriot parliament is not convincing. As mentioned the line was "broken" when the speaker of the house was addressing the invasion. And he did have the time to make parallelisms with his nazis when he addressed to the Greek house. You shouldn't try to defend him, there are no excuses for either incident.
I'll tell you something, since you first mentioned this only in a stream-of-consciousness style, I didn't really know what you were referring to with "And when the president of the Cypriot parliament started to talk about it, the line suddenly "broke". Come on." - I had to read up on this. So I admit that when first replying to this, I had misunderstood you and should have asked what exactly you meant.
Having read up on this now, I don't know if the interruption of the live stream was deliberate or not, and frankly, I don't care. There will be missteps by the defending side. I don't know why Zelensky would want to avoid talking about the Turkish invasion of Cyprus when talking to people of Cyprus. Maybe indeed to avoid angering Erdogan, because it seems like he's deciding anew every day which side he's on. I don't know.
But this is not and cannot be an argument against supporting Ukraine. The people holding out in bomb shelters in Ukrainian cities should not be held hostage to the diplomatic mistakes of their president. If this is what our support depends on, shame on us.
Finally, regarding backyards, I don't agree. Mexico is the backyard of US and part of US is the backyard of Mexico, same with any neighbouring countries and I don't see anything wrong with that. I didn't use it with the way that you pointed out. And you should know it as I mentioned "backyard" other times and with obvious geographical meaning.
No, I'm sorry, when talking about "backyards" in a geopolitical sense, we're talking about what major powers consider their sphere of influence. That's not my guess or approximation, but
established terminology. This is the way any political analyst understands and uses the term; if you want to use it differently, don't expect me or anyone else to know that you are deviating from the common use of the term.
And I maintain my point: Russia has no right to decide how Ukraine shapes its international relations, just as the US have no right to decide how Mexico shapes its international relations.
If they claim this right, they are behaving as imperialists. Which is my point.
www.politico.com
