this post was submitted on 16 Nov 2024
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This meme seems to undercut its own argument. No one can honestly argue that post-Euromaidan Ukraine was intent on remaining a buffer between Russia and NATO. In 2014 Ukraine made it clear that it was resolved to go to the Western camp and was sick of Russian influence. So what exactly is the argument here?
I'm not going to entertain the thought of what "neutrality" would mean, because the entire "neutral buffer" argument is just Russian propaganda. Ukraine wasn't neutral before 2014, it was squarely within the Russian sphere of influence since the collapse of the union. Let's reverse the situation. Let's say Russia wins, dismantles the current Ukrainian government and sets up the "legitimate" Ukrainian government, would Ukraine become a "neutral buffer"? No. It would become a vassal state of Russia because Russia can't give Ukraine the autonomy to make their own decisions, otherwise they might decide to turn westward again.
Maybe that's the hypocrisy the meme is pointing to, that the neutrality argument in its entirety is bullshit because Ukraine was never neutral to begin with.
The argument you make ignores a few - well, many - ENORMOUS caveats. The key question is security neutrality. Ukraine may have been considered in Russia's "sphere of influence" economically, culturally and to some degree politically, but on the matter of security that is absolutely not the case.
Since independence it has straddled the line, with several attempts to push closer to the West due to structural security disputes with Russia left over from independence. Just for one example, a nation that was in the Russia sphere of influence would not have sent troops to aid the US occupation of Iraq, an invasion Russia opposed, in order to win favor with the Bush administration.
I really dislike the attempt to frame very commonly use concept of neutrality, which is a term that even NATO scholarship on the issue uses to refer to Ukrainian non-alignment, as "prooaganda".
I dislike even more when discussions about the history of th issue are met with counterfactuals and hypotheticals. Then it becomes a counterproductive polemical debate where one can claim that Putin and Ukraine would be lovey-dovey besties forever if not for NATO expansion or that Putin would absorb Ukraine in a neo-Soviet Anschluss and march on Riga and Warsaw if not for NATO. It's not useful framing at all.
If the key question is security neutrality how exactly was the EU-Ukraine association agreement a security issue for Russia? Because Euromaidan wasn't about joining NATO, it was about wanting the possibility of joining the EU.
The EU-Ukraine agreement wasn't the single issue in 2014, though it the catalyst. Economic integration with the EU was seen by both the West and Russia as a vital step in reforming Ukraine so that it could become part of the Western alliance - this was said explicitly over and over in Western capitals and NATO papers. Inside Ukraine it wasn't seen that way, as most Ukrainians wanted to enjoy good relations with both sides but to elevate themselves to Western standards - until 2014. For Russia however, it meant the end of economic influence which was its chief way of exerting political influence to keep Ukraine neutral or friendly, and for an important subset of Ukrainian security and political actors who would win out during 2014, it was in fact a path to NATO.
You're forgetting that Euromaidan was first and foremost a nationalist and anti-Russian movement, and that the ethnic issue is really what led to the civil war and Russian hostility to Kiev. People for some reason tend to overlook this when talking about EU, NATO etc. The real litmus test for Russia as to whether Ukraine would become a "hostile" (ime pro-West) state was Kiev's relationship with ethnically Russian regions of Ukraine.
Exactly. Ukraine didn't want to join NATO. It doesn't matter what NATO or westerns think or Russia thinks, it was up to Ukraine. They had no intentions of joining NATO, until Russia annexed Crimea.
Except Russia annexed Crimea before the election. If Russia was worried about a pro-NATO government why would they do something that guarantees a pro-NATO government? I think it's pretty obvious neutral Ukraine was not the goal for Russia.
If you make a claim this outrageous, you need to back it up. Ukraine officially entered into negotiations to join NATO and entered a membership action program to do so. It does in fact matter what the two forces with most impact on Ukraine's economy, politics and security environment believe and aim for.
Let's say that it was up to Ukraine whether or not to join NATO (which it was.) Russia had absolutely no guarantee that Ukrainian leadership would remain anti-NATO. Time wasn't on Russia's side - the lure of the EU and greater association with the West would be a death knell for the style of politics Russia relied upon to forestall pro-NATO reforms in Ukraine. Euromaidan changed the rules of the game. It was a Ukrainian sovereignty movement, with explicitly anti-Putin and some ultranationalist anti-Russian characteristics. The second Yanukovych fled, the game was over for Russia, and the second that he left, Western diplomats became heavily involved in helping craft a new government for Ukraine.
Polling data good enough?
So why didn't Russia do anything about it back in 2010 when the plan of action was approved? Seems kinda odd to wait 4 years and then suddenly make an issue out of it.
I don't even know what you mean by this sentence.
Euromaidan was a nationalist movement because the catalyst for the movement was, surprise surprise, Russian meddling. Or did you forget that Putin specifically made a deal with Yanukovych to throw the EU deal under the bus and choose closer ties with Russia. You can't expect to have a non-nationalistic and not anti-russian protest when the reason for the protest is the desires of the population getting undermined by Russia wanting to maintain their sphere of influence.
I thought it was about being neutral and not about being pro-russia? Pro-russia isn't the same as being neutral. Ukraine could've gone down the path of not wanting to be a part of NATO but wanting to be a part of the EU. Those two things are not the same as evident from Finland and Sweden who for decades were members of the EU and had no desire to be a part of NATO (until Russia threatened them). But we never got to see a potentially neutral outcome because Russia made sure the newly elected government will be pro-NATO.
This Wiki graph is a bit of an abomination. There is no point to jumping between different pollsters between months. But it's also a very incomplete picture of A) Ukraine's intentions B) the role that ethnic breakdown of these polling outcomes and C) whose views actually matter for security policy in Ukraine. And once again I return to the ethnic schism in Ukraine. The most significant bloc of opposition to NATO membership were the same Russian-speaking regions that felt disenfranchised when Yanukovych was removed from power.
You claimed that when it comes to NATO membership for Ukraine, it's not about NATO's wishes or Russia's wishes, but Ukraine's wishes. I am arguing that it's not the case at all since both NATO and Russia had deep influence over Ukraine economically, politically and militarily.
What point of mine are you responding to here? I never said anything to contradict that. I'm not making a moralistic argument, I'm making a causal one. Russian meddling was a huge part in depressing support for NATO membership in Ukraine, and Euromaidan was an enormous blow to Russian meddling. QED That's why Russia switched from meddling to compellence.
If what you're arguing is that Russia's actions made Ukraine more interested in joining NATO, I think the counterargument is quite easy to make. Russia, inatead of playing a losing political game inside Ukraine, decided to use its might to make it impossible for Ukraine to join NATO, first by supporting disaffected Russian-speakers secede, and then by partitioning Ukraine directly when it feared the secessionists would lose.
Actually it is. Neutrality involves both pro-Russia and pro-West parties coexisting, alternating and sharing power. That's almost always been the case with neutral/buffer states. Finland had a pro-USSR and pro-NATO leaders alternating for the entire Cold War almost. The issue is that in the post-Soviet space, that "neutrality" has actually manifested in two groups of differently-aligned corrupt oligarchs alternating. The economic gravity, superior governance and stronger military/intelligence influence of the West leads to popular support for the pro-Western oligarchs. They're voted in, corruption continues, the electorate becomes disillusioned and votes for the more Russia-friendly oligarchs. That's basically been the story for several decades in Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine, Montenegro etc.
Ukraine war has affected that significantly, but Ukraine is more important to Russia than any other neighbor for historical, geographic, economic, cultural and demographic reasons.
That's absolutely not true. Finland in particular came quite close to joining NATO several times and a long-term trend towards public and political support for joining NATO. In fact, if you read NATO think tank studies on the matter from 2000-2012, you'll find that the matter went from uncertain to being treated as inevitable. The main issue was always concern over Russian economic ties. But that went out the window when Russia was subject to nuclear sanctions after invading Ukraine.
Sweden is actually a similar case. It has basically acted as an auxiliary partner in basically all of NATO's major operations in the past. There is also a good study on how it used the threat of NATO-ization as part of its economic diplomacy with Russia (I think by Henrik Larsen). But it joining after the nuclear sanctions on Russia also makes sense. There have never been any downsides to the prospect of joining NATO except for 1. being dragged into others' conflicts 2. damaging economic and political relations with Russia. Following nuclear sanctions, there really were no more incentives not to join. I think with Sweden it's more complex as there are ideological factors which are more prominent than in Finland.
Not at all surprised to see you dismiss actual data with your own made up hypotheticals. That's exactly why I didn't bother to piece together data from the same pollster, I knew beforehand it wasn't worth the effort.
Now I have no idea what you're even arguing about. You're literally telling me the basis of my original argument, that Ukraine was never neutral to begin with.
You can ignore this part because I tried to make sense of your original nonsense. Not that your edit was any better considering you're literally defending Russia attacking Ukraine with "Ukraine didn't give Russia any guarantees". That is such a horrible take I'm just going to straight up ignore what you said because that is something I'd expect to see in Lemmygrad.
What? I don't know what kind of make-believe neutrality you've conjured up, but I'm going to call it bullshit on the account that I know your Finland statement is complete bullshit. For the entire duration of the cold war Finland had a total of 3 different presidents and all of them followed a foreign policy that has been coined as "Finlandization". At no point during the cold war was there even a whiff of NATO in Finland because Finland didn't want to give the Soviet Union any reasons to turn their military gaze at Finland.
More bullshit. Joining NATO was a discussion point in politics around 2006-2007, but the general public has had very little desire to join NATO. I have no idea what NATO think tank studies you read, but that had to be NATO fanfic because it's so far from reality it's hilarious.
I'm not that familiar with the specifics of Sweden, but considering how wrong you've been about Finland and how closely Swedes cooperate with Finns I'm going to assume it's also bullshit. But feel free to find some actual sources backing up your claims instead of hand-waving sources.
Not only did I not dismiss the data at all, nothing I said was hypothetical. It's not surprising that you use scattershot public opinion polling from wikipedia as an argument. You now have to explain why one poll shows a 50/50 split years before 2014. You also have to explain how it is that the national polling service retained integrity during a civil war. Hint: two of those pollsters stopped polling people in Donbas.
The factors I listed are things that can actually be assessed and that you can make coherent, non-hypothetical arguments about. You're snide and refuse to argue your case besides arguing hypotheticals. You also seem not to know the basic history of any of these nations, what you said about Finland is manifestly ignorant. As for handwaving informations, that's exactly what you've done as it regards NATO papers concerning Finland's prospects for joining and reasons for not doing so post-2012. Have a good one.
I have given you actual sources to my arguments or have based my arguments on information that is easy to verify, meanwhile the only sources you've given are vague "NATO think tanks" and an author to a study you wouldn't even name. Great sources. Maybe I should also cite my argument with "Ukrainian think tank said so" and you can go scour the web for this nebulous source.
And nothing I've said about Finland is manifestly ignorant, the only one manifestly ignorant is you because what you said literally contradicts history. If you do confidently double down on Finland go ahead, show me proof how Finland alternated between pro-USSR and pro-NATO government during the cold war. I know for a fact there is no proof because it did not happen.