Public sentiment is deeply polarized regarding the Ukraine War and NATO’s role, with a significant segment blaming NATO and the West for escalating the conflict and expressing frustration towards Western leaders. Many comments support Russia's position and criticize NATO's involvement as provocative, while others call for stronger actions against Russia. There is a shared desire for peace amid feelings of hopelessness and skepticism about the ongoing military interventions.

NATO

US Government

European Union

The US will not war with Russia over Ukraine, more so if Trump is President.

Putin could take all of Ukraine and attack border NATO states, and Trump would do little more than talk.

Netanyahu could murder everyone in Gaza and Trump's America would still send Israel aid.

Ukraine was foolish to believe America in Budapest and give up its nukes. The war will continue, perhaps for years. Ukraine will bleed: eastern Slav will kill eastern Slav.

DMBFFF

True_Maize_3735

go to war with what?

russia is lucky if it doesn't lose to Ukraine never mind fighting NATO, it doesn't mean russia not gonna try poke around but not to start a war but to force NATO to stop the current one with nuke threats.

kinda if u "don't tell ur pal to stop am remove the bomb pin in all of us u included"

Few-Camera-391

MMW: Putin regime will colapse before this date

RickyMAustralia

Ukraine is not a part of NATO, and the vast majority of sane political leaders avoid sending their people to wars they're not a part of.

beckdawg19

&gt;Appeasement has never worked.


No...



Have you never heard of the Cold war?  Remember how we didn't go to war with the Soviet Union?  


Remember how we didn't got to war with Fascist Spain?


Remember how we didn't go to war with Communist China?

WorldTallestEngineer

&gt;Is everyone that scared of the big red button?

yes, obviously

hellshot8

&gt;Appeasement has never worked. Why do world leaders think it’ll work this time?

Because they're not trying appeasement. They are giving Ukraine all the support they can give it without further escalating the conflict, because doing so would only result in a hell of a lot more people getting killed. It's not a video game, war is fought by human beings.

[deleted]

&gt;Why didn’t NATO join the war in Ukraine?

NATO is a defensive alliance. No NATO member has been attacked.

&gt;Appeasement has never worked.

Wikipedia describes [appeasement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeasement) as "a diplomatic negotiation policy of making political, material, or territorial concessions to an aggressive power with intention to avoid conflict."

What country is doing that? The US and Europe have shipped billions of dollars worth of weapons to Ukraine, plus other forms of support such as intelligence sharing. That's not a concession to Russia. That's helping Ukraine to fight Russia. Very nearly the polar opposite of appeasement.

They could enter the conflict directly, but that would also risk escalating the conflict quite a bit. Not everyone wants to do that.

Delehal

I don't get why there has to be a "good guy" in the Ukraine. Both parties are just failed Soviet states. Fuck 'em. I suggest giving all involved a supply of horse-drawn tactical nukes and sealing the borders.

Plenty_Ample

Because NATO is a defensive alliance, NATO cant Join wars or attack other countries, it can only defend its own members

hexalot2

Ukraine isn’t a NATO nation, yet…but it should be

ThatVoodooThatIDo

This is pretty much the quintessential example of the "The World is a Video Game and America is the Only Player" school of history.

In this view, every country and person in the world is an NPC, and the only active agent is the United States of America - I know you said NATO, but that's what this effectively means.  No entity apart from America has agency.  They're all little nodules of code that cannot act on their own, only in response to what America does.  They have no meaningful interests or cognition, they don't make mistakes or have cultural or individual pathologies.  They merely reflect America.  That's their purpose.

So Vladimir Putin doesn't make decisions.  He's just a character that dispenses output based on America's input.  The things he does aren't really his responsibility because he's not actually making decisions.  He's just running his code against America's dialogue choices.

It can only be in that sense that NATO and America caused the Russian invasion of Ukraine.  It's one of the branching dialogue paths.

Now of course, this view of the world carries implications.  It means Americans are superior.  The other people in the world are only human in the biological sense; they have no choice, thus no responsibility, and they are thus less than Americans who do make choices and thus bear responsibility.  And as the only active agents, it is our right and duty to control the world and its people - we simply don't have a choice.

...or, the Russian invasion of Ukraine was caused by Vladimir Putin and Russia.  NATO might have been able to deter them, or it might've started an even worse war.  We don't know, and historians will debate it forever.

But the *cause* of the invasion was the human agents that made the decision, and that was Vladimir Putin and his allies.

Grunt08

"Look what you made me do" is never a credible deflection of responsibility.  The party who caused any war, ever, is always the aggressor.  How could it not be?

Think of it this way:  There's a giant boulder uphill of a village.  Some asshole goes up there and pushes it over and it bowls through the village wrecking homes and killing people.

Now, at sometime before the asshole did that, the people of the village could've built a wall around the rock, they could've removed the rock, or any number of preventative measures that would have stopped the asshole pushing the rock, but you wouldn't say the villagers caused the rock to roll through their village, would you?

Same thing here.  There are things NATO could've perhaps done that would result in the war not happening, but there is only one party responsible for causing the war, and it's not NATO.

XenoRyet

Just look at what she was wearing! She was asking for it.

dwntwn_dine_ent_dist

Russia "caused the war."  Russia was under no obligation to be expansionist power crazed invaders.  Simply saying that someone failed to stop an aggressor does not mean they were the cause of the aggression.

Roadshell

Out of curiosity, do you hold this same view for WWII?

Are the UK/France just as responsible for WWII as Adolf Hitler? Is the US as responsible for Pearl Harbor as the Japanese?

Edit:

Just to be clearer. Both the Germans and the Japanese in the build up to WWII made multiple hostile aggressive actions towards their neighbors. They were met by the future Allied Powers with strong condemnation and in the American case economic sanctions. These did little to deter continued aggression by the Axis powers until ultimately Germany crossed a red line by invading Poland in Sept. of 1939 and Japan attacked numerous locations (Pearl Harbor only being one of them) in December of 1941. So do you blame Allied inaction or the people that planned and wanted a war and fired the first shots.

Vicariocity3880

NATO isn't just as guilty as Russia no. NATO did set up for Russian aggression, but that's because Russia invaded Poland twice. So NATO has a vested interest in stopping the cycles of Russian conscripts slaughtering civilians in mainland Europe. 

But Russia building it's forces in response to NATO force build ups is actually ok. Starting this war not so much.

Eden_Company

Turkey is a member of NATO, Ukraine is not. Therefore, Article 5 couldn’t be invoked by Ukraine. The consequences of attacking Turkey after they shot down a jet would be far greater and Putin is well aware. NATO had no responsibility to defend Ukraine on a legal level. Now, on a moral level, should the west have done more to punish Russia in 2014? Absolutely! Maybe if they had we wouldn’t be here. So you’re halfway there.

Fr33-People

That’s like telling a woman she got raped because she dressed wrong. Fuck that bs. Putin is a warmonger. He saw an opportunity, or maybe orchestrated one, and went to war.

Wind-and-Sea-Rider

I disagree with your assessment of Russia. I say this because between the two dates you’ve cited falls the assault on Deir al-Zour in 2018.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/24/world/middleeast/american-commandos-russian-mercenaries-syria.html

Russia resoundingly got its hat handed to it. Yet, undeterred it decided to further push the envelope in Ukraine in 2021.

It’s no secret where the majority of NATO funding was coming from at that time or doctrinally how it is arranged. So if, as you say, Russia backs off when met with force it should not have pushed again in 2021. 

Now you can say that Russia was probing and looking for weaknesses to exploit and by not showing Ukraine was defended as well as Deir al-Zour they left the door open for Russian aggression. However, that is a tactical error, not a cause. If NATO had stepped in right away that would not have stopped Russia from probing, it would have just stopped Russia right there.

Like they say, defense has to be successful 100% of the time. Attackers only have to succeed once.

viaJormungandr

Russia invaded Ukraine. Russia is responsible for things it does to other countries. 


NATO exists because Russia has a long and well-documented history of violent subjugation of sovereign countries, and has been responsible for, quite literally, millions of deaths within it's own borders as a direct result of decades of decaying government and corruption.


Russia invaded Ukraine because it needs money and international clout. Ukraine was not a threat to Russia. The EU was not a threat to Russa. 


So to clarify, you're trying to make the argument that an international organization that neither Ukraine, nor Russia belong to, was responsible for Russia invading Ukraine. 


You arrived at this conclusion because you're looking for information that already agrees with your opinion, which allows you to avoid change, instead of seeking information that would disprove your opinion, and therefore teach you something new. 

ThwompSprocket

The party responsible for causing the war is the party who started the war. That’s Russia. End of story. Now, you could say that NATO could have and should have taken actions that would have stopped Russia from starting the war. Ok. But none of that changes that Russia started the war when they shouldn’t have and therefore they were the party that caused the war. 

It’s pro-Russia to blame NATO just as much Russia for Russia starting the war.

the_1st_inductionist

But Ukraine wasn’t a member of NATO. 

Russia cause the situation…if they never invaded Crimea then Ukraine would have no cause to consider joining NATO. Russias continuous aggression is the cause of the situation nothing else. 

We can definitely criticize NATOs response…maybe they could have done more to deter Russia. But that is not the same as causing the war. To say that would make the definition of cause and effect meaningless.

sawdeanz

Given that Russia's invasions of Ukraine involved no NATO country, there was nothing for NATO itself to do on the ground.  They could NOT have put troops along Ukraine's border with Russia, or done anything else to help Ukraine directly.  A member country(s) would have to do that, and then conduct operations under a NATO command.

And NATO has no ability to impose sanctions. 

On the other hand, Western countries could have done a lot more, starting with Obama.    But in the end, Germany and Merkel were the greatest appeasers, with others happy to follow along.  

As for NATO member Turnkey shooting down a Russian plane, they did that more in the capacity of their own country's defense, and did not have to involve other NATO countries in that.

Capital_Historian685

I'm going to argue against your CMV on 3 points.

1. "Nato is just as at fault as Russia"
2. "The immediate response to russias 2014 invasion of Crimea and Donbass should have been to sanction Russia into oblivion"
3. "In 2021 when Russia started building up troops along the border with Ukraine, NATO should have put troops along that same border"

Counter Arguments

1. Russia is the aggressor in this case. NATO cannot be equally at fault as Russia had to exert effort in order to initiate conflict.  In addition, Ukraine is not a member of NATO so your argument basically amounts to the idea that because NATO didn't take action for an unaffiliated party, it bears as much responsibility as Russia for Russia's invasion.
2. The US did sanction Russia very heavily in 2014 which saw Russia's economy decline heavily during that period.  See the [GDP graph](https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/rus/russia/gdp-gross-domestic-product) in this link and you'll notice that from 2014 to 2015 Russia's economy sharply declines.  This is a direct result to massive sanctions imposed.
3. Ukraine is not a NATO country so most NATO states were not in favor of deploying troops.  In fact, in 2021 when the US government was sounding the alarm about Russian invasion plans, Ukraine, discounted the idea that Russia was invading and was not happy with the US rhetoric as they were concerned that the US was creating a problem when there wasn't one.  Ukraine ended up being incorrect here but it's hard to argue that NATO should have deployed troops when Ukraine and most of NATO didn't think that invasion was imminent.
   1. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky even said, that other world leaders have been overstating the likelihood of[ war between his country and Russia](https://edition.cnn.com/europe/live-news/ukraine-russia-news-1-28-22/index.html), causing “panic” and destabilizing Kyiv’s economy.

Given this, I cannot agree that NATO was as much at fault with Russia's invasion of Ukraine as Russia was.

Amoral_Abe

The group that started the war is the group that caused it.

Not responding as effectively as you would have liked (with the advantage of hindsight) or having deterrence fail doesn’t mean that side *caused* the war.

You’re doing backflips here to avoid blaming the entity that is actually responsible.

mallardramp

&gt;NATO is just as at fault as Russia

Can two things ever be bad without being equally bad? Nobody thinks NATO handled these situations well, but if NATO really handled this just as badly as Russia, they would have joined in the war against ukraine and massacred a load of civillians on the way.

westfleet

Putin thinks Ukraine and Belarus are errant children that naturally form part of Russia and the only reason they developed as independent states in the 1990s was through internal mismanagement by the USSR. He also believes he will be a great Russian leader if he can reintegrate them during his presidency. The fact that he believes these things is down to him, NATO can’t change that. 

He was on track with Belarus and Ukraine wasn’t too much of a problem while it was under Yanukovych. I suspect Putin’s plan was to subsume Belarus first because Ukraine was the harder one to swallow, and he wanted a precedent.

Maidan changed his calculus and made everything more urgent in his mind. Everything has flowed from there, and his sugar rush of success in Crimea. 

So, yes, if NATO had announced Ukraine’s membership with immediate effect in 2014, then he wouldn’t have invaded. If Maidan protestors hadn’t demanded a future for their country that represented the majority view, then he wouldn’t have invaded. 

But that doesn’t mean they are to blame, because there is a thing called human agency. We don’t blame the US for starting the Korean War because its gradual withdrawal of troops ‘forced’ the communists to invade, or France for the German invasion of Denmark in 1940 because its deterrence wasn’t effective enough. 

In every case it is the invader who starts a war of choice.

Strong_Remove_2976

Nato is the only reason.


Don't cross lines of other great powers.


Why u want to encircle russia ?

Interesting_Waltz103

Your premise is that it is NATO's job to protect any nation against Russian aggression, but the same criteria exists for every country, anyone could have intervened, it could be China's role or Brazil's role, they didn't stop Russian aggression either, but you are not blaming them for the war.  Ukraine was not in NATO, so the members were under no obligation to defend Ukraine from Russian aggression. A group's failure to take action against an aggression does not make future aggression the responsibility of that group.   
  
It's the UN's failure more than NATO, as the UN was founded on the principal that nations would work out their differences in debates rather than seek to militarily invade and seize territory. The UN must be the group to intervene, but the flaws in the design of the UN - with Russia having veto power over Security Council actions - makes it useless for intervention in any conflict that involves the 5 permanent members and their client states like Israel or Belarus.

Klytus_Ra_Djaaran

Russia has a nuclear deterrent. There is a reason that Ukraine wasnt in NATO already

RGS_1994

Ukraine isn’t a part of NATO.

Therefore, not their responsibility.

IceTheFoundr

I would agree that inaction and lack of proper deterrence created the conditions where invasion seemed like an ok idea for Russia. But I think saying that they CAUSED the war is incorrect. 

Cause would mean that without Russias involvement or desire to invade, Ukraine may have still been invaded. Without Russias action, there is no was in Ukraine.

Sg1chuck

Cause and condition are two different things. You claim NATO as causing *some* conditions that the war began under, but that is not causing the war as such. 

Russia is the clear cause of the war given they started it when they certainly did not have to and likely would've been better off not doing, and this shouldn't even be something anyone still tries to dispute.

Not sufficiently deterring Russia doesn't simply cause the war on its own. The war could have happened with or without more deterrence depending on Russia's willingness to risk it. The war could not happen if Russia simply didn't start it, unless of course Ukraine attacked but clearly that is an unlikely scenario and would've been a war of a very different nature.

Havenkeld

I'm curious what your definition is for "causing a war".

Forsaken-House8685

If you have this point of view then everything is responsible.

China not acting on Russia caused the war, western companies not exiting the market caused the war.

Ukrainians deciding not to invest massively in weapons caused the war.

I don't think lack of action can ever be mentioned as a "cause" for something, a cause needs to be something positive, a decision or an action taken. At best it set up the conditions for it to happen, but the cause is still located somewhere else.

SomewhereHot4527

I agree that the U.S. and NATO’s response in 2014/2015 was absolutely horrible and set the stage for this war. It’s one of the few truly huge misses of the Obama Admin, along with the Libya bombing campaign.

But I still believe Putin ultimately set the conditions for this war. 

He initiated the conflict, and he decided to double down on it. Without NATO, the war happens anyway. Without Putin, there’s no war in the first place.

Cornwallis400

If i punch you in the face, is it your math teacher's fault, because they didnt intervene?

ProDavid_

So, in other words, Russia caused the war in Ukraine and NATO didn't stop it.

Hellioning

phewho

Mack_Daddy_1

Due_Panda5064

We know it is false because only who is either drunk on Russian propaganda or completely ignorant would say such a thing. I don't understand why Sachs is so obsessed with this nonsensical narrative.

Bright-Blacksmith-67

[A reminder for everyone](https://www.reddit.com/r/PoliticalDiscussion/comments/4479er/rules_explanations_and_reminders/). This is a subreddit for genuine discussion:

* Please keep it civil. Report rulebreaking comments for moderator review.
* Don't post low effort comments like joke threads, memes, slogans, or links without context.
* Help prevent this subreddit from becoming an echo chamber. Please don't downvote comments with which you disagree.

Violators will be fed to the bear.

---

*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalDiscussion) if you have any questions or concerns.*

AutoModerator

Intervention in the Balkans was necessary to stop a genocide. There are basically two big rules on the world stage which are "don't try to change borders by military force" and "no genocide." When a country violates either of these rules it's a REALLY big deal. Serbia was committing genocide and Russia today is trying to change borders by force which is particularly egregious as it's coming against a functional democracy and is clearly against the will of the Ukrainian people.

The big difference between the two is that Russia has nukes and Serbia doesn't so a NATO intervention in Serbia was always possible but a direct intervention against Russia was not. Instead we see weapons shipments, a protracted war and Russia trying to get sympathetic leaders elected in NATO countries to cut off arms to Ukraine. NATO's resolve is certainly weaker today but Russia is also just a tougher opponent than Serbia due to their nukes and their massive stockpiles of conventional weapons.

socialistrob

NATO was more decisive, Russia was less decisive and weaker in general, the theater of war was much closer to NATO's borders, and Serbia was a relatively small country with no nuclear weapons.   
  
I must remind you that even back then, NATO didn't interfere in the Russia-orchestrated wars in Moldova and Georgia.

Eminence_grizzly

Yes, and not at all, except that rampant war crimes are/were committed by the aggressors.

Flip-flopping Donald is flip-flopping , like flip-floppers do. I can see Mike Johnson and JD Vance taking back their excited claps for the flip-flopper's statement just last night.

They must be so disappointed and upset.

anti-torque

Could the question be framed a bit more objective?
It is a very relevant one, but it is not about dominant neighbour. Kosovo was a part of Yugoslavia. It is a huge distinction.

whereistheplayground

It’s a really interest point with a lot of dynamics. It really comes down to how you feel on arguments of interventionism. Is an intervention justifiable if it does a good job? Is a military force in another countries borders (the former SFRY) without blowback? Is Russia bad in its invasion of Ukraine? Yes absolutely, but it’s hypocritical to state that violation of a countries sovereignty and its borders is the crime and not Russias intentions within. Western Countries violate borders all the time. 

My opinion is that yes the intervention was good in what it achieved but it still wasn’t without repercussions. NATO involvement in B&amp;H, Libya and Afghanistan means that despite its claims, NATO is in fact a Military Alliance and NOT a purely defensive one. Of course Russia is going to be provoked with an Anti-Russian, military alliance from Finland to Turkey. It doesn’t make them right or good. It’s like wondering why Iran is so belligerent to the US but realise that within 18 months the US has invaded, deposed and occupied both its Eastern and Western neighbours. It’s a very “Israeli” attitude from NATO. It seeks to  assert its own security with expansion with Poland and now there’s war on its Eastern border with Ukraine and it seeks to bring Ukraine into itself.

It’s also understated that Ukraine was in a civil war before the Russian invasion. As unlikely as even a Russian repulsion is, it’s unaknowledged what the problem of a reconsolidation of Eastern Ukraine might be. 

TheActOfPortugese

There is an analogy but you left out a key part. Is this not the equivalence. Russia=NATO, Ukraine=Serbia, Dontesk=Kosovo.

An internal part of a country, tries to secede, it gets suppressed by the country's military and an outside power interferes.

This part is always glossed over, Yanukoych's power base was in the Dontesk, when he was overthrown, they didn't like it. Imagine the reaction of somewhere like Texas if Trump was deposed somehow.

CasedUfa

NATO determined that Serbia was committing genocide and bombed Serbia on the grounds that "human rights are above sovereignty." Russia determined that the current Ukrainian regime was committing genocide in eastern Ukraine and intervened in the Ukrainian civil war on the grounds of "eliminating Nazis." These two situations clearly have significant similarities. 

You can oppose both NATO and Russia, or support both, but one of the worst perspectives is to oppose Russia while supporting NATO, believing that NATO's claims are true—that Serbians were committing genocide—while dismissing Russia's claims as lies and fabricated excuses for invasion. 

Why not frankly admit that these war actions are decisions based on the geopolitical strategies of major powers, and that those narratives are just excuses crafted by political elites to rationalize their actions and gain public support? Is it really meaningful for us to argue on the internet about which of these excuses is more justified?

Mr_Elie

Was there a justification? Yes. 

Was NATO the right body to intervene? Absolutely not. It’s a defensive alliance, and one all too prone to conflating valid defense issues with offense actions.

Something else that bothers me about this is that the same people who defend the NATO intervention scoff at calling Israeli actions in Gaza “genocide,” despite dozens of times as many civilian casualties there and conditions for civilians designed to kill more.

Kronzypantz

Of course, NATO was not right to intervene back in 1999. Before intervention, there were around 2000 casualties on both sides, where Serbs were killing Albanians, Albanians killing Serbs, and Albanians killing other Albanians they deemed traitors (most of the Albanian war leaders are now in the Hague for killing other Albanians). The "reason" for intervention was a false flag operation in Racac conducted by Americans. As far as Ukraine is concerned, from 2014-2022, there were around 14000 Russian casualties in the Donbass area, (some were even burned alive in Odesa). So, in comparison with Yugoslavia, the Russian invasion was provoked and far more justified. Obviously, if you are objective...To answer your question, if NATO was right back in 1999, they should have behaved the same and bombed Ukraine in 2014.

pageunresponsive

President Trump has expressed his belief in Ukraine's ability to reclaim all territory occupied by Russia, while also confirming NATO’s role in defending Ukraine against military threats.

Ukraine War and NATO Involvement

Why This Matters

Public Sentiment Summary

Highlighted Comments

Parties Involved

What the people want