Russia/Ukraine tensions - Any concern?

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 Mirakaze wrote:

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First of all, as has been stated before, NATO moving its boundaries eastward has been because of the explicit invitation by the sovereign nations that have joined since 1991, all of which (except maybe Montenegro) had democratically elected governments at the time of their accession. Why should Russia have a say in this? Anyone who thinks a Russian intervention is justified here (which I'm not accusing anyone here of, for the record) should at least be consistent and say the Bay of Pigs invasion was also justified. 

Secondly, the supposed threat of direct NATO aggression against the Russian Federation is a complete fantasy; there is absolutely no one in their right mind who believes that a direct military conflict between the two powers could possibly be beneficial to anyone, least of all leaders of Western governments who despite their refusal to rule out Ukraine's NATO membership have also refused to guarantee it (in spite of the Ukrainian government's wishes) and have been mostly ambiguous in how far their support for Ukraine will extend in the scenario of a Russian attack. If the US government were looking for some military adventure to prop up the arms industry and distract from the needs of its population it wouldn't have fled Afghanistan in such a rush. Modern Russia is part of the global capitalist system; big businesses generally have far more to gain from normalized relations and free trade than from sanctions and conflict. Nobody in the west wants a war, and reliable polls may be hard to come by but I'm fairly certain that virtually no one in Russia wants it either.

It is a very complex, issue. It is very hard to tell what exactly makes a country the superpower. Modern day Russia thinks of itself as a superpower. Financially, certainly, Russia is in the second half of the top ten economies in the world (if not farther), financially Russia can't compete with the USA or China. But is it only prosperity that makes something super?.. I am a devoted, dedicated, whatever-else fan of Gentle Giant, the prominent band that once sang, "Isn't it strange or it's funny - working for years, have no money"... 

Russia is the largest country on Earth, slightly smaller than Pluto, the former planet. Russia is sort of linked to Byzantine Empire by means of preserving the Eastern Orthodox Christianity in full bloom. Russia has comparable to the USA's amount of nuclear warheads. Russia thinks of itself as The Third Rome or at least The Final Byzantium. 

Given that, Russia pretends to have something a la The Monroe Doctrine. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monroe_Doctrine

Again, certainly, one may say that the USA are exceptional because they have Disney(land), Hollywood, fast foods of various kinds, so many nice songs, movies, cartoons. Because they are so prosperous. Because, in general, tens of millions of people in the world want to become Americans, want to live there. Because it is a giant and generally successful melting pot. Because the American prosperity and might was built without Stalin's methods, without forced collectivisation, without millions of imprisoned and hundreds of thousands of innocently killed, without the Gulag system. 

Then, which criteria really make the nation superpower, again? How can the different nations with different mentalities and different speed of progression be compared in this case? Stalin died in spring 1953 - when did the racism die in the USA? When did Martin Luther King die? No leader of the Soviet state was shot in the whole Soviet history... Is it very democratic that the President of, as they say, greatest country in the world is shot in public on air, the leader of the prosperous superpower? Did the anti-Vietnam demonstrations really had any effect on ending the war? How many Americans died or were harmed during Great Depression? Were all Hawaiians really happy to lose their independence? If we count exact numbers, per cents - yes, it looks like the USA and the UK killed and harmed less of their own and foreign citizens than the USSR or pre-USSR Russia. I agree. How much should that difference be to consider supremacy, then? How much should the financial difference be to consider the USA a superpower and Russia not? 

Now, if we agree that both the USA and Russia are superpowers - then since the USA has Monroe Doctrine and its derivatives, Russia has the equal right to have own variation of the same document. Notice that the USA as we know it now, has never been invaded by foreign invaders en masse. Russia has been a lot. No doubt, it is highly unlikely that NATO somehow would attack Russia - but when your country has been invaded once-twice a century (by Poland in the 17th century, by Sweden in the 18th century, by France in the 19th century, by Germans twice in the 20th), you tend to be overreactive and slightly paranoid, you know. 

Think of the same good old Caribbean missile crisis... Cuba was an independent country. Previously, the USA located its missiles in Turkey, next to the USSR. In return, the Soviets (in full accordance with every possible international law) located their missiles in Cuba - as it was the wish of Cubans. Both Cuba and Turkey and the USA and the USSR had all the possible rights to do what they did. However, the USA FOUND that to be dangerous (though the post-Stalin USSR has never claimed any violent expansion, Khrushchev with all his emotional instability allowed the USSR-USA communication on various levels, there were cultural exchanges, famous American exhibition in Moscow). The USA were ready to start a nuclear war if necessary. In international judicial terms, it was nonsense - every independent country has the right to deploy anything on its territory. If the country FEELS like critically threatened - no international laws can help... 

Similarly, Moscow does not feel comfortable, knowing the modern missiles (much faster and efficient than those in Khrushchev time) would be able to reach the heart of Russia, the Kremlin in a few minutes. Who knows who would become the president of the USA in the future?.. Who can guarantee he or she would be adequate enough?.. 

When the superpower feels like threatened, law and laws do not matter, at all. A cytokine storm, macro version, you know... Cytokine storm does not take your nationality into account - Americans, Russians or Chinese may suffer from it equally. 