Comment by insane_dreamer
3 months ago
> any sovereign country, can join whatever alliances it wants too
unless you're Cuba, or Vietnam, or Nicaragua, or Chile, and the list goes on
but yes, in theory you're right; in practice history shows that if they are small and powerless then they cannot, not without consequences
Cuba I have addressed.
The US was invited into South Vietnam to help defend them against an invasion from North Vietnam. We can debate the morality of the resulting war, which was questionable, but it was not a US invasion.
The US invasion of Nicaragua was in 1912, long before the modern post-WWII era of stronger international law.
Chile was not invaded by the US.
If these are the examples you have, you don’t have a strong argument.
Pardon me, you have gotten yourself dragged into a tu quoque defense of Russia.
It is best not to engage in these arguments, because they are almost never conducted in good faith.
The goal is partially to make the claim that "the US is just as bad/worse, therefore, Russia is acting morally/logically/blamelessly", but primarily to simply turn the conversation into one where you are defending everything the US has ever done wrong, instead of discussing whatever Russia is currently doing, which is where the bad faith comes in.
If you do feel compelled to engage, I recommend at most acknowledging whatever the US did previously, before pivoting back to discussing the actual current situation. Otherwise, you're playing into the strategy.
My argument is that Russia was compelled to attack both Georgia and Ukraine because of NATO expansion, or rather preventing NATO expansion, not because of "Putin is crazy, wants to be a Tsar".
Your argument is that Russia wants to occupy territory just for the sake of expanding Russia, which is really not logical or reasonable.
My argument is that if Mexico or Canada joined a military pact with Russia, the US would invade those countries immediately.
Your argument is that any country can join a mutually defence pact without any consequences, as should be the case for Ukraine.
Is this correct?
11 replies →
The argument is that these rules that you describe that any country can join any mutual defence pact without any repercussions is just plain wrong, mainly because the US would be immediately working against that even with military interventions. Its the same thing with how the US's stance for foreign policy is to push democracy where it suits them if they have big influence with one of the parties, and to push favourable dictatorships if not. There's double standards and twofacedness by the US foreign policy which really everyone else sees besides US citizens themselves, mostly because the average american barely even knows anything about domestic politics let alone foreign ones (except the few propaganda topics we get from the three letter tv channels).
Just answer this question, would the US object to, possibly with military intervention, if Mexico or Canada would join a military defence pact with China or Russia, or India, or say really any other country besides the US, even Brazil. We both know the answer to this.
Now lets do even easier. Would the US object to any South American countries joining a mutual defence pact with Russia / China? We already have the answer to this.
So you're saying another country would only find mutual defense pact threatening if they wanted to invade them?