You're aware that other nations also have narratives where their mistakes had good intentions, yet their opponents are dastardly?
Russia has a story of the west systematically stripping their influence from Eastern Europe, overtly and covertly. Despite being warned we were pushing it too far.
Clausewitz is the only one who's objectively right in the end.
While realpolitik and unfortunate compromises always have to be made in the arena of current geopolitics towards greater prosperity and lesser violence, you'd be mistaken to assume everyone has equally cynical goals.
Despite everyone wanting to boast about their good deeds and demonize enemies for PR points, some actors genuinely do a better job towards prosperity than others, and you fall prey to the worse evil by equating everyone just being selfishly bad. No one is even close to 100% good, but that means we need to highlight what amounts each actor does good and what they do bad; all of them.
> Russia has a story of the west systematically stripping their influence from Eastern Europe, overtly and covertly.
Poland broke off the old soviet chains and successfully integrated economic reforms to prosperity and trade with other successful western economies. Ukrainians are Polish neighbors and looked over there wondering "why tf are we so poor when the Poles are flourishing? Oh ya we still have these old soviet apparatchiks gouging our economy, let's instead make the western economic reforms a la Poland." Russia, being an 85% vote dictatorship and also a soviet apparatchik economy, realizes that just like Polish neighbors, having economically successful Ukrainian neighbors will cause average Russians to resent the exact same thing about their old stodgy economic oligarchs and ruin their golden tickets..."
There's a special place in hell for people who espouse "don't help Ukrainians, their government and economy is corrupt" when all they need is some support to take off the corrupt shackles, which they're trying to do, instead of abandoning them to remain strangled by the corruption.
For the record, I think the fair realpolitik compromise with Russia would have been to let them have Crimea, and they already had it before the invasion. Total mistake/disaster on their/his part.
I’m pretty sure Crimea will be ceded to Russia in the eventual treaty in exchange for NATO-like security guarantees for the rest of Ukraine, as unfair as it is. With how many Russians there are now, the enmity that will exist for a generation, and Sevastopol being a Russian base for a lot longer, I don’t think US diplomats see any realistic way they can materially support a retake Crimea that will lead to a stable situation. However that’s up to the Ukrainian people, which currently majority don’t want to cede it.
Russia has a story of the west systematically stripping their influence from Eastern Europe, overtly and covertly. Despite being warned we were pushing it too far.
Clausewitz is the only one who's objectively right in the end.