this post was submitted on 11 Mar 2022
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Russia has been pretty clear regarding what their demands were, and those demands haven't changed now. They want Ukraine to be a neutral country. The fact of the matter is that NATO could've negotiated with Russia in good faith, but instead it chose not to. Now you're dismissing the whole idea of diplomacy claiming that it's not even worth considering.
Maybe, just maybe, diplomacy would have worked around 2017 when it would have been followed up with blocking weapon sales to Ukraine, but two weeks ago? You are delusional if you think that would have worked.
Russian demands haven't changed from two weeks ago.
Do you even read what I write before you reply? I never claimed they changed.
Two weeks ago there were all the Russian troops in place and all the western weapons (and western trained Ukrainian troops) already inside Ukraine. No amount of pledging to block Ukraine from joining NATO on behalf of the current German government would have stopped this.
If you accept that the demands haven't changed, then you understand that if these demands were met prior to the invasion then there wouldn't be an invasion?
The demands include demilitarization of Ukraine. How would the German government be able to take away weapons from Ukraine that they already have?
Once again, my point was that the west did not engage in diplomacy with Russia and did not make any attempts to address their concerns. If you don't understand why it's desirable to try and resolve problems before they escalate into an open conflict, I really don't know what else to tell you. Painting Russia as being implacable and claiming that any negotiations would be pointless is a self fulfilling prophecy.
The German government did engage in diplomacy (a lot and several times), and also refused to export weapons to Ukraine until after the war broke out. So blaming this on the German government as the original article does is just plain wrong.
The German government did not engage in any meaningful diplomacy. At no point did any western nations take Russia's concerns seriously or made any attempt to address them. Blaming German government for failing to do what it could to try and avert the war is absolutely correct position to take. In fact, any of the NATO member governments could've done this, but Germany was certainly in the best position to do so.
You have seriously no idea what you are talking about... there were years of diplomacy under the Normandy Format between Germany and Russia (including France and Ukraine). Just because they didn't result in all of Russia's demands being met doesn't mean they didn't try hard to find a diplomatic solution.
All the experts on the subject, including Chomsky, happen to agree with my position. Obviously, though it's me that has no idea what I'm talking about.
They agree on the position that the US made matters worse, not that Germany was at fault like the original article does... stop shifting the discussion to something else just because you are clearly wrong.
The way NATO works is that countries have to be invited by a unanimous agreement of its existing members. Russia's core concern has always been the expansion of NATO towards its border. This is what all the experts on the subject agreed would eventually lead to conflict. Germany, as well as any other NATO member, could have vetoed acceptance of Ukraine at any time. I don't know why it's so hard for you to acknowledge this.
See my original argument at the very beginning of this long thread. Germany vetoing the NATO expansion would have likely meant NATO becoming irrelevant and the US starting a different defensive alliance with the eastern European states (and the UK) in the early 2000. This would have been a worse outcome from the Russian perspective any way you can look at it.
We don't know what would've happened with NATO, but we do know that a war may have been avoided. Your concerns for the fate of NATO feel somewhat hollow in face of real human suffering that unfolded.
In fact, it's very likely that had NATO become irrelevant then Europe could develop much better relations with Russia going forward creating far better stability and security in the region.
This is exactly what both Germany and France tried hard all these years. Why do you even post on the /c/europe community when you have clearly not followed European politics at all? The problem is that the east European states with support from the US and the UK ran a hard-line anti-Russian defensive policy.
That is literally not what both Germany and France tried all these years. In fact, there is no trying involved here. Both Germany and France could have vetoed Ukraine's membership in NATO at any time. There is literally no trying involved here.
Again, vetoing their membership would have by all likelihood meant that a new NATO without Germany and France, but with Ukraine would have been started. Better to be on the boat and silently block it than leaving it all to the hardliners... you clearly don't understand German Realpolitik at all.
NATO wouldn't really be an organization worth of note without France and Germany. This is precisely why Germany was in the position to act. You're engaging in speculation about something that may eventually happen as a justification for not taking action to avert a real war in which people are currently dying.
You are deeply mistaken. Germany has no functional army at all and is a dead weight on NATO, and France has always had a "we would rather not be in NATO at all" stance. Why do you think Trump pushed so hard for Germany to increase military spending instead of relying on US troops stationed there?
I'm not mistaken at all. You're arguing against a scenario you literally made up to justify doing nothing to avoid a very real war. There's clearly no point continuing this.