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[N_Molson]

Well it seems Macron got Putin to say he "was ready to some compromise"...

Which would be, almost certainly, the guarantee Ukraine won't join NATO, which sounds rather reasonable to me.

 

[jedidia]

Which would be, almost certainly, the guarantee Ukraine won't join NATO, which sounds rather reasonable to me.

It might sound less reasonable to the Ukranians, who have a Russian army at their border... It's not like the Ukraine ever had the primary goal of joining Nato. The whole "maybe it would be smart to join Nato" only really came up when Krimea happened, before that it was just thoughts of joining the EU.
So... Putins compromise would essentially look like "we won't annex you right now, but will as soon as you ally yourself with anybody except us, whether militarily or economically". Clearly, that's not a reasonable compromise for the Ukraine.
At the same time, for Putin no reasonable compromise can involve a strong opponent with its borders in spitting distance of Moskow.

That's the bloody problem here... If there is a compromise that actually is acceptable for both parties, I don't see it yet (not satisfactory. No compromise is ever satisfactory. But right now I can't even see one that both Putin and the Ukraine could even accept).

 

[Urwumpe]

So... Putins compromise would essentially look like "we won't annex you right now, but will as soon as you ally yourself with anybody except us, whether militarily or economically". Clearly, that's not a reasonable compromise for the Ukraine.

Note that this is again, already a full violation of the OSCE memorandum of Budapest.

We are staring down the abyss. And it stares back.

 

[N_Molson]

We are staring down the abyss. And it stares back.

Nietzsche. Don't make it worse than it is. The situation is serious, but compromises are the only reasonable way to deal with this. It will take time, I feel like Ukraine got loud and clear that even "maybe joining NATO" wasn't a great idea. The OSCE Memorandum cleary does not imply any "legal obligation of military assistance"... So it was pretty much another empty thing that let the door open for this kind of situation to happen.

 

[Urwumpe]

Nietzsche. Don't make it worse than it is. The situation is serious, but compromises are the only reasonable way to deal with this. It will take time, I feel like Ukraine got loud and clear that even "maybe joining NATO" wasn't a great idea. The OSCE Memorandum cleary does not imply any "legal obligation of military assistance"... So it was pretty much another empty thing that let the door open for this kind of situation to happen.

No military assistance simply means de facto no obligation to the contract. We can do that - we simply allow the receiving side of the security promise to be annexed and turned into a puppet state, thus in the best case cancelling the contract and in the worst case upholding the security promise to part of Russia, after Russia tooks its indepedence away.

Result: Nobody sane would trust any treaty with us. And Russia will work on splitting Europe into its kind of satellite state.

 

[jedidia]

It will take time, I feel like Ukraine got loud and clear that even "maybe joining NATO" wasn't a great idea.

I do have to question your perception a bit... The message that was sent loud and clear is "we're here, right at your border, and we can take you any time we want to. The only thing maybe capable of stopping us from doing it is NATO".
If anything, that message makes joining NATO seem a better idea than ever from a Ukranian perspective. The situation as it stands now, Putin's basically saying "you can go to NATO and we'll have a war, or you can't and I'll just assimilate you bit by bit until your state is no more in a decade or two". If I was a Ukranian that's not keen on becoming Russian, NATO would sure start to look like the only option to get that by now...

 

[TheShuttleExperience]

I strongly contest that point. We have barely scratched the surface of this world (quite literally as well as figuratively), and that not even in most places. calling it "almost entirely artificial" is probably more wrong than an alien landing in the Sahara declaring it a "desert planet"...

Also, as a software developer, I resent the notion of virtual things "not existing". If it takes time and energy to build, it obviosuly exists.

Well, things can take years and decades to build. And they can collapse to meaningless and useless dust within just seconds ?

Software is just like books or money: manmade concepts that don't really exist and don't have a meaning to other beings. Just like moral or ethics or humans rights, if we go one step further. I would even go as far as Jim Carrey and say that even I don't really exist. Personality is just a virtual and subjective experience by other humans, and it ends once my fragile body decays after orbiting the center of our galaxy by just about 0.00003% I think.

Right now I am sitting in a room, artificially made of materials that can disintegrate to completely useless matter within moments. If I would go naked into the next forest for 72 hours, so leaving the artificial world Homo sapiens created for himself, I would for sure not survive for too long...

 

[TheShuttleExperience]

PS : I think that table is still a bit small... Doesn't even look serious...

I can't help it, but somehow I like that table. Should also comply with anti-covid measures

 

[N_Molson]

I do have to question your perception a bit...

And you keep seeing things from a purely western perspective, for Russia having their neighbor joining NATO is simply not an option. Russia won't accept that like the 1962 USA didn't accept Cuba to deploy Soviet ICBMs. And that's something we can all understand.

Macron just said he got something from Putin, there is a meeting planned the 10th in Berlin between "France, Germany, Russia & Ukraine" to "discuss a ceasefire". On a sidenote he's probably playing his possible re-election as a French President.

Less tables in Ukraine, for sure

https://www.ouest-france.fr/politique/emmanuel-macron/crise-en-ukraine-ce-qu-il-faut-retenir-de-la-conference-de-presse-d-emmanuel-macron-00228904-88d4-11ec-aea6-4ffbfd19eda9

 

[Urwumpe]

And you keep seeing things from a purely western perspective, for Russia having their neighbor joining NATO is simply not an option. Russia won't accept that like the 1962 USA didn't accept Cuba to deploy Soviet ICBMs. And that's something we can all understand.

Understanding the Putin perspective there doesn't mean, that we also WANT this perspective. There has to be a difference and it should be OK to be partial. We Europeans should better feel terribly upset, should Putin do something stupid with the Ukraine, especially because it would kill some too comfortable lies in Western Europe and cause major discomfort in eastern Europe. In the worst case, this could strain the ties within the EU and NATO.

Of course, it would be temporarily fine for Russia. BUT: There isn't enough land on this planet to compensate poor economic politics. And no wagging the dog will prevent people from wondering whose fault it might be. Right now everything looks like the Donbas basin is approaching the economic performance of Crimea BEFORE it was annexed...and that was really really bad, even for a touristic hotspot.

 

[steph]

No military assistance simply means de facto no obligation to the contract. We can do that - we simply allow the receiving side of the security promise to be annexed and turned into a puppet state, thus in the best case cancelling the contract and in the worst case upholding the security promise to part of Russia, after Russia tooks its indepedence away.

Result: Nobody sane would trust any treaty with us. And Russia will work on splitting Europe into its kind of satellite state.

I do have to question your perception a bit... The message that was sent loud and clear is "we're here, right at your border, and we can take you any time we want to. The only thing maybe capable of stopping us from doing it is NATO".
If anything, that message makes joining NATO seem a better idea than ever from a Ukranian perspective. The situation as it stands now, Putin's basically saying "you can go to NATO and we'll have a war, or you can't and I'll just assimilate you bit by bit until your state is no more in a decade or two". If I was a Ukranian that's not keen on becoming Russian, NATO would sure start to look like the only option to get that by now...

Yep, after 2014, support for the EU and NATO went through the roof in Ukraine. Especially helped by the fact that the eastern areas basically 'removed' themselves from the voting process. Ideally, this should've been dealt with back then. Either by an international intervention back when russia was swearing it wasn't them, or by a separation along ethnic lines afterwards , with a very strong 'or else' clause after the borders have been redrawn.

Then again, the main spark wasn't really NATO, but joining the EU. Which highlights the fact that Russia seems to like its former republics in a sort of gray area, where they aren't 'allowed' to prosper, lest they become good examples and 'destabilise' Putin. Not to mention the danger of letting one state or another 'call the shots' regarding other states. EU may have its differences, and that makes them seem/be disorganised at times, but that's also due to the degree of freedom each member state has. There's no guarantee Russia would just back down from harassing neighboring states, especially if Nato leaves, the justification being that whatever they decide is ' in their sphere' can be coerced even by military action. Say, for example, that after agreeing to not adhere to NATO, Ukraine decides to join the EU. There's no guarantee they won't get Euromaidan 2.0 or simply invaded.

On the other hand, it sort of looks like the west is trying to 'give Russia a bloody nose' by using Ukraine as cannon fodder.. Depending on how that works out, it might backfire. There's really no guarantee Ukraine would hold out heroically, especially knowing full well they won't get any kind of reinforcements. We might end up with an occupied and the russian army happily gathering away in the baltics or elsewhere, with Putin spewing new threats. I mean, the train of thinking seems to be 'let him have Ukraine and maybe he'll calm down'. Which was the same with Georgia and Crimea and look where we are

 

[jedidia]

And you keep seeing things from a purely western perspective,

You will notice that so far I have not once mentioned who I consider to be in the right or wrong here. I have merely pointed out of what is acceptable to various parties, from their perspective.

And for any Ukranian that doesn't want to become Russian, any momentary appeacment that denies the Ukraine political agency in building its defense or choosing its allies is not an option. From that perspective, a war with western backing now is preferable.

I know that from Putins standpoint, backing down and granting the Ukraine that agency is not an option either, because it will seriously compromise RUssias security going forward if the Ukraine does join Nato.
That's just the trouble here. both have an interest that they consider vital to their very survival, i.e. that cannot be compromised on. The only one whose stakes in the thing are not of immediate vital interest is NATO, actually. I'm not enough of a strategist to discern whether they can be considered vital in the mid-future. If NATO strategists consider them vital, and the political will is there, there will be war between Russia and NATO. If NATO backs down, there will be war between Russia and Ukraine. If the Ukraine backs down there won't be war, but it will seize to exist as sovereign state and become a vassal of Putin within 10 or 20 years. That's the options I currently see on the table, without any argument about who has the moral high ground.

 

[N_Molson]

Understanding the Putin perspective there doesn't mean, that we also WANT this perspective. There has to be a difference and it should be OK to be partial. We Europeans should better feel terribly upset, should Putin do something stupid with the Ukraine, especially because it would kill some too comfortable lies in Western Europe and cause major discomfort in eastern Europe. In the worst case, this could strain the ties within the EU and NATO.

I think this is very sad, and that OF lost a lot of its soul because of that attitude those 10 last years. We used to have muslim, russian people, that had different opinions, but everytime someone gives a different point of view than the "north-western (conservative) mainstream", he gets flamed in a more or less subtle way. Most people accept this treatement two times, maybe three, and then go look somewhere else. Some others with maybe more "fighting spirit" resort to trolling, and in any case there's no real debate. Which should be the whole point of an International Forum. And it doesn't help people to cooperate and get motivation for addon making, I'm 100% sure of that.

At least there you admit you are partial, this wasn't always the case.

 

[Urwumpe]

At least there you admit you are partial, this wasn't always the case.

Of course I am. I live on this tiny continent called Europe.

You better should be, too. Not partial to my side, not partial to anybody elses side. Partial to your side and perspective. Don't pretend that you don't care about your life, because it would either belittle your opinion (Why should we care about yours, if you don't care about it?) or make it feel less authentic.

I have to accept that a Russian user will disagree with me. And thats fine.
I can't tell an Ukrainian user, what I don't commit to.
I can't promise an Baltic user, what even I couldn't see.

You want to make people cooporate? Then first of all let them have the chance to be themselves. In safety. In respect. Peacefully, but not always in harmony. Cooporation comes from understanding, that you can't achieve your goals alone or against the will of others. You want Putin to cooperate? Then show him his limits. You want NATO to leave Russia some space to breathe - then make sure NATO can't achieve its goals against the will of Russia (What Putin effectively does right now).

 

[Linguofreak]

Well it seems Macron got Putin to say he "was ready to some compromise"...

Which would be, almost certainly, the guarantee Ukraine won't join NATO, which sounds rather reasonable to me.

For my part, I would be willing to guarantee that no further states join NATO, including Ukraine.

But, Russia has to back out of Crimea and Donbass, and if Russia invades any of its European neighbors, any European state that applies for NATO membership is to be admitted automatically.

 

[Linguofreak]

That's just the trouble here. both have an interest that they consider vital to their very survival, i.e. that cannot be compromised on. The only one whose stakes in the thing are not of immediate vital interest is NATO, actually. I'm not enough of a strategist to discern whether they can be considered vital in the mid-future. If NATO strategists consider them vital, and the political will is there, there will be war between Russia and NATO. If NATO backs down, there will be war between Russia and Ukraine. If the Ukraine backs down there won't be war, but it will seize to exist as sovereign state and become a vassal of Putin within 10 or 20 years. That's the options I currently see on the table, without any argument about who has the moral high ground.

So within NATO, there are three groups:

1) The Eastern European Nato members like Poland, who have centuries of memory of living under the Russian yoke, and for whom a Russia willing to invade its neighbors, and able to do so without consequences, is a direct existential threat.

2) Western Europe, for whom a Russia with the ability to project power into Eastern Europe is at least somewhat of an existential threat.

3) The US, which, as far as I'm concerned, has no direct strategic interests, but for which there are some powerful secondary interests. First of all (and I imagine this probably applies to Western Europe as well), much of the US electorate feels threatened whenever any democratic regime anywhere is overthrown, from the inside or from the outside. Secondly, probably primarily for American conservatives (and possibly for those of like mind in Western Europe), there is a matter of honor: We fed Eastern Europe to Stalin at Yalta, the British and French fed Czechoslovakia to Hitler in the leadup to WWII, and there have been various other betrayals. Just on account of that, feeding Eastern Europe to Putin is a completely unacceptable outcome.

 

[N_Molson]

You better should be, too. Not partial to my side, not partial to anybody elses side. Partial to your side and perspective. Don't pretend that you don't care about your life, because it would either belittle your opinion (Why should we care about yours, if you don't care about it?) or make it feel less authentic.

My perspective is that there should be more "goodwill" on OF. People don't get paid for what they do here. So I think it would be suitable to keep that in mind, and not write things that put people away from each other. I believe in "collective motivation", in the idea that people should respect and inspire each other, and share their skills. Orbiter is a great idea and it is by essence something "universal", what could be more universal than spaceflight and science, and as the years go by (and we make revolutions around the Sun) I think that we should not get that much into politics, because it ruins the cause and as a community we could do better than we currently do. I don't say it is bad to have an "ego", but here we have to consider that other people that might contribute to the cause have egos too, and respect that.

 

[jedidia]

My perspective is that there should be more "goodwill" on OF

I haven't really noticed any lack of good will in this thread so far. If my wording came over as strong, I apologise. My purpose was to point out different perspectives, since your opinion seemed to mostly be rooted in a well-intentioned western-european perspective that wants to keep the peace most of all, which Isn't a bad thing, but didn't see the potential cost involved in that to some parties of the conflict.
My issue, specifically, was that you seemed to mostly interpret the NATO power projection as silly comparison of certain anatomical properties with Putin, which I fully agree, would be an unacceptable reason to have a war.
My main intention was to point out that in this particular situation, and certainly from a Ukrainian perspective, that's really not what this is about, and that the situation can therefore not be acceptably solved by simply stopping.

This whole line of discussion has probably gotten political enough by now to be basement material, though. Maybe we should move.

 

[Notebook]

Hooray, free energy. Soon.

Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

A lab in Oxfordshire takes a big step towards harnessing the energy source of the stars.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[N_Molson]

This whole line of discussion has probably gotten political enough by now to be basement material, though. Maybe we should move.

I think so.