[left-struck]

Your enemy is not the people of the country you hate, it’s the government. If you believe it’s the people then you are a victim to propaganda, or some other source of highly biased information.

Think about what war really is, it’s almost always a bunch of powerful people who have a disagreement with a bunch of other powerful people, who then have to trick a bunch of less powerful people to fight on their behalf. If you feel like fighting you’ve been tricked. When the rich wage war it’s the poor who die.

[btilly]

No, it can be both the government, and the people.

The government for all of the reasons you say.

The people because they have fallen for and accepted propaganda. Thereby leading them to support the government and its toxic narratives.

I base this opinion mostly on seeing how Russian propaganda has poisoned my mother-in-law's mind. Many media reports and various other sources have verified that she is not an isolated example, most Russians accept the same propaganda narratives.

[TFYS]

There's plenty of propaganda on our side as well. Let's, for the sake of argument, say that the west was orchestrating regime change in Ukraine with the end goal of regime change in Russia, knowing it would lead to war. We would never know about it. The organizations in the west that handle geopolitical issues are not that different from those of Russia. They're not transparent or democratic, yet we rely on them for our information. They can probably steer us the way they want as easily as they do in Russia. The free media does not have access to the information it would need to truly inform the public.

[BatteryMountain]

To add to this, culture can be changed significantly in a short period. See how the USA has changed in the past 20 years, the culture has changed 2 or 3 times now with vastly different values & attitudes between each. What does each period have in common? Thick gobs of propaganda being push in every nook & cranny. And lack of critical thinking on the individual level. If country X wants to change, it is very possible, its just a matter of time, persistence & brain washing. Brain washing the youth is the easiest path, especially if in the opposite direction than what their parents/elderly want.

[lostlogin]

> See how the USA has changed in the past 20 years

I’m not sure we will ever know the complete answer, but some of this change seems to involve Russia too.

[TiredOfLife]

Russia has behaved the same way under 4 radically different forms of government.

[bilbo0s]

I have to admit, I've never been persuaded by this western idea that if you get rid of Putin, everything will be better.

I'm not sure what part of Russian history, or contemporary Russian society, gives people confidence in this idea?

I'm not being anti-Russian here either. I feel the same way about our nation here in the US. Even if we were to rid ourselves of Trump for instance, we would still have serious issues with a large body of people who support Trump-like policies. A wise Europe would still be obliged to be on guard against us.

Every nation has belligerent elements. Russia is no different. While, say, Putin, may be an expression of that belligerent element, I'm unconvinced that he is the belligerent element itself. I think it's foolish, potentially fatal, to make that assumption.

[koonsolo]

Ask any Russian if Crimea belongs to Ukraine. None of them will give you the internationally accepted answer.

So yea, it's not just the government.

[ithkuil]

Things can be more complicated than that.

Crimea is a special situation. I won't reiterate its complex history here since there is plenty of written here, but I'd like to point out that one could have a view where Crimea is Russian and yet decry the invasion of Ukraine as illegitimate.

If anything for practical reasons: only 7% of its population is Ukrainian. It would be very a source of continuous ethnic tensions.

Hard Russian nationalism is much more than that

Such people claim that the entirety of Ukraine is just Russia and they mock them for otherwise being Polish. This narrative is an explicit outcome of an Imperial mindset

[anticodon]

Crimea is a Russian territory that was given to Ukraine by totalitarian non-elected leader Nikita Khrushev. It was a crime done by totalitarian government and Russia restored historical justice.

[nkmnz]

As a German, I must insist that your statement is absolutely wrong. The people of a country can be your enemy. A Government like Nazi-Germany or current day Russia cannot exist without plenty of support by its people in the first place.

[vintermann]

I don't for a moment believe that German people as a group, or Russian people as a group, or British people as a group etc. are morally superior to any of the others. If one can, through specific circumstances, end up supporting bad things, then so would the others in that circumstance.

So it doesn't matter if the Russian people is the enemy in the sense of supporting their mafia government. They're not doing anything you wouldn't have done. Condemning them is condemning yourself and does no one any good.

[fkdk]

Interesting thought. In the end, this is an ethical question: How much pressure is justified to put on the general population for supporting their leaders?

My feeling is that your perspective, likely shared by people like Bomber Harris or Netanyahu, does not match most peoples intuition nowadays.

[phyzome]

It's a combination. Here in the US, a large chunk of the population supported Trump, knowing full well what kind of things he would do. And another large chunk of the population are trying to stop him.

You can't blame the population as a whole. But I suspect it's uncommon for the government to be completely disconnected from (some portion of) the population's sentiments.

[magicalhippo]

> But I suspect it's uncommon for the government to be completely disconnected from (some portion of) the population's sentiments.

However, that sentiment is shaped by the media available to the citizens, and in places like Russia, that means primarily by the government itself. So it's not so clear cut what the sentiment would have been had it not been for the governments propaganda.

[thyristan]

In a democracy, "We The People" is the sovereign. It is in the hands of the voters, and it is their responsibility to choose leaders wisely and shape their overall legal system. In democracies, the population doesn't get to use the "but its just our evil leaders" excuse. Only in other less democratic forms of government.

And yes, this means that in a democracy, the opposition's voters are screwed because they share in the responsibility, even if they were right. Why? Because they were unable to convince the majority of the wrongness of the majority vote.

[tremon]

Whether people become my enemy through choice or through effective propaganda makes no difference to me, they're still my enemy.

[finebalance]

It can be both, I think? Politicians/powerful people take advantage of divisions in society, but often those divisions do exist in a fully-fledged or nascent form for them to exploit.