Under what theory of international relations is it legitimate for one country to invade another because they’re upset that other countries bordering it made treaty agreements with another power?
If you were dictator for a day, and the only thing standing between you and your enemies was one "neutral" country, and your two choices are to either invade and consolidate, or let them ally with your enemies.. then one outcome is obviously more of an existential threat than the other.
"legitimate" is a loaded word, but the game theory strongly supports one of these options.
> Under what theory of international relations is it legitimate for one country to invade another because they’re upset that other countries bordering it made treaty agreements with another power?
“Might makes right”.
Though, to be fair, it's not the most popular theory of legitimacy in international relations.
Yeah I mean if you assume all countries are maximally aggressive it makes a lot of sense, but there’s a fundamental problem in that the empirical evidence does not sustain this suggestion.
That's an oversimplification. I wouldn't dismiss Mearsheimer so easily. He has applied his theory with great predictive power, particularly in regard to China, for example. You might be interested to read his debate with Zbigniew Brzezinski in 2009 on this matter [1].
Precisely, there is no international coalition of countries threatening war against us, is there?
Why is the US or NATO justified in doing the same to Russia then ?
[Edit] Since the algo won't let me post too many comments too fast.
Sanctions/War/whatever . . . the point is that the actions of the United States in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria are many orders of magnitude worse than anything Russia has done to Crimea or is planning on doing to Ukraine, so any retort saying "We are not going to war, we are applying sanctions" is about as paradoxical as it gets.
If those actions justify sanctions or war, surely the US should be first in line to sanction itself?
We’re not threatening war against Russia, we’re threatening sanctions. They’re the ones that annexed Crimea. They’re the ones surrounding a sovereign nation with military forces.
[edit] I mean look, call it what you will. The United States having invaded other countries on no pretext is an explanation for why Russia thinks it can get away with this, but it’s not a justification in the moral sense. They are still agents.
And sanctions are not war. Threatening war would be saying we’re going to tell our soldiers to kill Russian soldiers if they invade, and we’re not doing that.
In the early 2000s they were entirely focused on counter-insurgency in the Caucasus. They had restructured their military to be brigade-based, so they could deploy small formations easily. What convinced Russia to re-focus on larger, nation-state threats in their near abroad? There was a really good article on the subject which I can't find now, written when Russia reformed the 1st Guards Tank Army in 2014. That reformation meant they assessed a serious risk of a peer conflict from their Western border, and needed a powerful combat formation optimized for such a fight. Russia has eaten 3 nation-shattering invasions along the Western axis of approach to Moscow (1812, 1915, 1941), where there are few natural geographic/terrain barriers. Do you see how sticking weapon systems in their near abroad that undermine their nuclear MAD deterrence, while expanding your military alliance ever-closer to their territory, might make them paranoid?
> Russia has eaten 3 nation-shattering invasions along the Western axis of approach to Moscow (1812, 1915, 1941)
1611 definitely on that list - it's no fun when your capital gets captured and destroyed, and possibly 1242 (the Northern Crusades, although that particular time it wasn't nation-shattering)
I think the primary reason Putin wants Ukraine is that he sees a difficult future for the Russian economy over the next 10-20 years in the declining importance of fossil fuels (lest we forget the oil price war in 2020) and thinks that expansionist nationalism is an easier way to secure his government's stability against its own people than trying to reduce his country's dependence on energy exports.
The actual security of Russia re: NATO is not really in question here, though you're right that he may not believe this, and we can't be sure that he does. However given the lukewarm international response to his annexation of Crimea, I'm inclined to believe the economic explanation more. He has just decided (probably correctly) that Ukraine is not a country that NATO will go to war to save.
How is no one trusting the US defined as punishment?
Punishment is what Germany, Japan received. Stripped of their military power and made to pay hefty fines. Has the US ever paid any country reparations for their invasions of soveriegn states?
Iraq is on 100% us, but Libya and Syria are mostly EU/ME member shenanigans. We just had to clean up because they got over their heads and we’re obligated.
