[spectre] a terrible day

[Andreas Broeckmann]

Dear Mathias,

I hesitate because this argument will change nothing, and more 
knowledgeable people are making it more elegantly elsewhere, I hope. But 
I want to shortly respond to your claim that "NATO is not completely 
innocent of what is going on". From my point of view, this is only true 
if you regard the Russian claims for its "security" as legitimate and (I 
find it hard to imagine that you would condone this) if you think that 
the specific current Russian "response" to the "threat" posed by NATO is 
therefore in some way justifiable. (What else, from an ethical point of 
view, could the phrase "not innocent" mean?)

Do you believe that, in order not to become co-responsible for the 
current situation (what you call "not innocent"), when the Baltic 
countries requested membership in NATO around 2000, the Western alliance 
should have said, "no, sorry folks, we cannot do this out of respect for 
the security concerns of the Russian Federation"?

To the contrary, I would claim that, whatever the circumstances, the 
Russian military attack on Ukraine, the threats and brutality towards 
deposing the elected Ukrainian government, the quasi-annexation of the 
eastern Ukrainian region (and of the Crimean peninsula, we should not 
forget) are illegitimate, and the misery, death and destruction that 
this war is bringing to people is unjustifiable and awful.

However, what concerns me more than such weird "shares of guilt" 
discussions is the question what a feminist and pacifist response or 
attitude can be in the current situation.

Best regards,

-a


Am 24.02.22 um 19:11 schrieb Mathias Fuchs:
> Dear friends and neighbours,
> 
> with all shared emotions about the horrible things that happen in the 
> Ukraine and with particular sympathies for the victims of Russia's 
> invasion, might I still put up a thought for discussion?
> 
> I saw elderly ladies in the streets of Berlin today carrying signs 
> saying "Fuck Putin". This is maybe understandable at a private level of 
> anger, but it underanalysis what is going on there.
> 
> Putin is not an individual devil who wants to destroy a nation. The 
> actions taking are in my view a reaction to international politics that 
> are a well coordinated maneuvres of Russian Intelligence, Russian 
> Business and Russian Military. Not Putin as a person.
> 
> The Capitalist West has expanded zones of monetary interest and of 
> military influence towards the East since 1991. NATO countries are at 
> the border of Russia. This is as if Russia would have installed missiles 
> in Canada, Cuba, and Mexico. Do you remember the histeria when the 
> Soviet Union set up missiles in Cuba?
> 
> 
> I hope that this conflict will be solved without costs of life and the 
> Ukrainian friends have my full sympathies, but we should not fool 
> ourselves into "Putin did it". This is a much more complex issue and the 
> NATO is not completely innocent of what is going on there.
> 
> Do you remember that NATO is short for "North Atlantic Treaty 
> Organization"? Is the Ukraine on the North Atlantic? Why does NATO want 
> to expand to control the entire continent? Could you consider to be a 
> Russian citizen and be frightened by a military organisation trying to 
> take over the whole of Europe?
> 
> 
> Thanks for your thoughts
> 
> Mathias