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Russia Declares War on Ukraine

72 points| temp | 4 years ago |usatoday.com

10 comments

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mmastrac|4 years ago

This is such a tragedy. Beware of manipulation in threads like this. Russian bots are a trope but disinformation is a weapon they've honed over the last decade.

2Gkashmiri|4 years ago

as a non-american, non-russian, non-ukranian, why does USA always want to be in the middle of a conflict? i mean when USA invaded vietnam or afghanistan or iraq or libya, it was all "justified" because of some twisted reason but god forbid anyone else attack its "allies". why is it that USA is always justified in their actions but no one else is? why do you think russia isn't justified in their actions?

Trasmatta|4 years ago

The US wasn't justified in those wars, and Russia isn't justified in this one. It's pretty simple.

upwardbound|4 years ago

American citizen here but I'll try to write from a neutral perspective.

> Iraq

Not justified. See e.g. https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna22794451

> Vietnam

The justification used was the Containment doctrine, meaning the containment of Communism. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Containment Basically, the US military feared the possibility that Communism would spread across the globe, which matched the rhetoric used by Communist politicians and writers, who promised a global workers' revolution. The US feared this outcome and sought to contain it via war. You can say they were unjustified or they were justified; that depends on your point of view about what constitutes a just war. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_war_theory

> Afghanistan, Libya

I'm not familiar with the details of these conflicts so I won't try to address them.

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From a perspective of a neutral party, if you're trying to decide whether to side with the US or Russia, I would point you to the Democracy Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index , which is the closest thing to a consensus view of the moral rightness of countries. The USA is not at the top of the index by any means (heck, our neighbor Canada has us beat) but the USA scores far better than the other military superpowers (China and Russia).

From a standpoint of realpolitik https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realpolitik , no country is purely good or evil but it's smart to side with the country that would result in a better long-term outcome for the world, hence why I refer you to the Democracy Index.

pinephoneguy|4 years ago

The government of the USA does, the USA itself does not.

f3ljk|4 years ago

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