I know this will get flagged and I'll get called a Russian despite being an American from flyover country: Yes, one definitely can tenably make that argument.
The Monroe Doctrine, ironically, was precipitated by negotiations with Russia[1] and is almost identical in its aims for the Western Hemisphere as Putin's nominal arguments against NATO expansion eastward, namely the assertion that the Western Hemisphere was closed to European colonization and settlement.
Is this Putin talking about NATO expansion? 'Finally, you have broader considerations that might follow what you would call the "falling domino" principle. You have a row of dominoes set up, you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly. So you could have a beginning of a disintegration that would have the most profound influences.' No, it's Dwight Eisenhower talking about communism in Indochina in 1954. The maxims "Principiis obsta" and "Finem respice" apply universally.
The Monroe Doctrine and Domino Theory were both framed as defensive policies that were then used for protectionist and geopolitical justifications for foreign wars of aggression against neighbors and neutral independent countries. Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya didn't even have the protection of these broader geopolitical aims, just naked warmongering and profiteering (Osama Bin Laden was Saudi).
The necessity for narratives of moral exceptionalism to maintain a permanently jingoist state is to be expected, but it'd be healthier for the intelligentsia to privately admit that fact rather than hiding behind moral exceptionalism even in their personal lives. The West wants to permanently de-fang and colonize Russia for obvious reasons--geopoltical hegemony and market intrusion. These reasons create a perennial playbook everyone else has played by for thousands of years. And I'm sure when NATO does inevitably fail to a novel power, the remnants will play by the same rules Monroe and Putin played by, sed Carthago delenda est.[3]
Russia's nuclear arsenal made and makes the idea of conquering Russia by force absolutely impossible to contemplate. The US and others pursued the objectives of military strength, normalized relations with Russia, and decreasing its influence with its neighbors and proxies.
The goals are obvious, open, and benign. Everyone wants a Russia that is stable, economically entwined with limited influence on their neighbors beyond economic ties. No tendrils of malevolent influence or proxies.
The only way this devolves into actual force is Russia making war on its neighbors which gives others permission and reason to wage proxy war with Russia and reason to cut its economic ties.
Only Russia could possibly have destabilized this situation. Only Russia could have been stupid enough to believe this would be a profitable adventure and only Russia can solve this by fucking off to their own country after which they can negotiate a return to stability.
Once this misadventure is over once again nobody will invade Russia because nobody wants to initiate nuclear Armageddon. The only real risk to this return to stability is again Russia. It's possible that should it continue long enough its impoverishment, diminishment of internal perception of strength and military power, and anger at at the regime responsible for sending so many Russians to die should cause internal splintering.
If you want to talk about "Domino theory" let us imagine a three foot tall domino surrounded by normal size dominos with Putin standing next to it kicking the giant domino for no reason. Russia was always safe from everyone but Russia.
Your argument that Russia is solely responsible for destabilizing the region mirrors a familiar rhetorical pattern seen throughout history, where weaker powers are trapped in a Kafka trap[1]. Any resistance or reaction by the weaker side justifies further aggression from the stronger power, leading to their gradual erosion and disappearance through salami slicing tactics[2]. Whether through territorial encroachment or strategic isolation, the larger power frames its actions as purely defensive while the weaker party’s responses are cast as irrational or self-destructive.
For historical examples, you can look at Carthage under the Romans prior to the Third Punic War, the Saxons under the Normans after Hastings, or the Native Americans under the United States. There are others.
For contemporary examples, you can look at the Palestinians under the Israelis (or the Israelis not-quite-under the Arab world) or even the Ukrainians themselves under the Russians!
In each of these struggles, the dominant hegemon and its allies want a dominated rival that is "stable, economically entwined with limited influence on their neighbors beyond economic ties. No tendrils of malevolent influence or proxies." Which is to say, totally compliant with their controller and inert as a geopolitical force as they are salami sliced at will.
Russia's response to NATO's expansion is a contemporary example of this. Much like other weaker states in history facing incremental encroachment, Russia is blamed for destabilizing the region, while the more powerful actors continue policies that provoke and escalate the situation. The expectation that the weaker side alone should de-escalate or withdraw ignores the external pressures that limit their autonomy and drive their actions.
These narratives are almost always self-serving
and oversimplify the situation by placing full responsibility on the weaker party, masking the larger power dynamics at play. Throughout history, dominant states have used this framing to justify the gradual weakening and containment of their adversaries, presenting their own expansionist or aggressive strategies as benign or defensive while shifting the blame onto those they are dismantling.
All I'm saying is these narratives of "I'm purely defensively containing you so I can eliminate you" are ubiquitous throughout history, but the best of those in the dominant position still understood that it was an ignoble lie even as they struggled against and were dragged along by them. The world would likely be healthier if we emulated them rather than those that always claim that their enemies are historically unlrecedented and uniquely Very Bad Persons[3].
This is a very US centric take. NATO isn't expanding to increase US power over Russia. Independent, self-determined countries seek to join NATO to bolster their defense against the local aggressive neighbour. This should be very clear when you consider how NATO has expanded: not by US invitation to join them, but rather by Russian neighbours seeking an alliance to finally rid themselves of the threat.
> Russia's response to NATO's expansion is a contemporary example of this
So this is what you got backwards. Just consider latest members, Finland and Sweden. Neither had any immediate plans to join before the war, but the bitter truth is that no neighbour of Russia is safe without an alliance providing a decisive military superiority.
>not by US invitation to join them, but rather by Russian neighbours seeking an alliance to finally rid themselves of the threat.
How would one differentiate between "Russian neighbours seeking an alliance" and "Russian neighbours seeking an alliance because they were promised something in return"?
And even in this case: why would Russia care about the reasons? From russian point of view there was a promise: NATO won't grow any further east. The promise was broken.
Had NATO refused adding new members to its ranks - there would be no problem.
I agree it is a US-centric take, but I disagree that the expansion of NATO is not principally about expanding American power.
John Bolton, in 1994, said about the UN:
“There is no such thing as the United Nations. There is an international community that occasionally can be led by the only real power left in the world and that is the United States when it suits our interest and we can get others to go along.'[1]
I think you could replace the UN with NATO and wouldn't lose much nuance. John Bolton, like Victoria Nuland and her husband Robert Kagan, have been determining foreign policy in American administrations for the last thirty years, from the collapse of the USSR to its resurgence as Putin's revanchist state. The published attitudes of Nuland, Kagan, and Bolton (not including hot mic moments like Nuland's "fuck the EU" tape) towards the EU, the UN, and NATO are almost, if not categorically hostile when it comes at the expense of American hegemony. It's also why the ICC has no real power in the West.
As far as Sweden and Finland go, yes, their flight into NATO's arms was catalyzed by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, yes, but this is also perfectly suited to the longterm geopolitical aims of the United States, whether it happened immediately, as it did, or if they were included in a future wave of NATO members. That's the nature of salami slicing tactics. You don't need to move fast, as your opponent doesn't have the capacity to ever stop you.
>Neither had any immediate plans to join before the war, but the bitter truth is that no neighbour of Russia is safe without an alliance providing a decisive military superiority.
I agree entirely! That bitter truth has been known to conservatives in the United States since 1945 and has been routinely mocked by unaligned Europeans and urbane liberals in the United States for decades, culminating in the peak irony in 2012 of Barack Obama making fun of Mitt Romney's claim that Russia was the biggest geopolitical threat to America's interest.[2]
All right, I don't dispute that a larger NATO is in US geopolitical interests. I just disagree with the framing that NATO is expanding vs. countries independently seeking to join.
It may sound like a minor difference, but that plays to the Russian narrative of US violating their sphere of influence. In this imperialistic worldview smaller countries have no agency and are just pawns of larger powers. This is at the core of the current war too -- Russia desperately trying to prevent Ukraine from following the path of westward alignment that it has independently chosen.
The fact that you need to dial back to 1823 to make some kind of moral equivalence argument between the two powers should be telling you something. And then we have this:
The West wants to permanently de-fang and colonize Russia for obvious reasons -- geopolitical hegemony and market intrusion.
Which in your view is the basic reason we have the war in Ukraine right now, is what I'm hearing.
"The US did something bad, therefore if Russia also does something bad (even if not really comparable) then it's just the fundamental realities of IR, and in fact the US basically made them do it" is how your thesis currently reads.
This is more of a you problem than a me problem. Perhaps you should try not to reduce arguments to less than 200 characters, but I suspect it's uncontrollable due to longterm Twitter usage given your particular patois.
As long as I am summarizing your thesis accurately, I see no problem at all.
As it happens, I haven't intentionally read anything on Twitter for well over a decade. But if it is helpful for you to simply assume that, should anyone care to question your deep, penetrating analysis of recent human history and its impact on current events today; and even worse, fail to appreciate your enthusiasm for run-on paragraphs full of ungrounded abstractions and broken analogies, peppered with fancy latin idioms (for style I guess); and all in the service of watering down, and therewith attempting to "explain" actual, real and incredibly blatant neocolonial aggression happening today -- why gosh, it must be because they're an analphabetic, Twitter-addled idiot, that's all -- then I suppose that this is a "valid" strategy for you.
>[...] peppered with fancy latin idioms (for style I guess) [...]
I honestly don't think you understand the thesis or have the historical understanding to do so. This accusation of using Latin for rhetorical purposes is an admission of this. You could've asked yourself "Do I understand the significance of Carthago delenda est in this context? Could I ask for clarification?" No, you just made a sophistic jibe, twice.
There's no substance to the rest of your rant, so I'll kindly request for you to read and use Paul Graham's How to Disagree[1].
You could've asked yourself "Do I understand the significance of Carthago delenda est in this context? Could I ask for clarification?"
And if you prefer to believe that if people don't buy into your hand-wavy, faux-erudite arguments, then it must be because they're simply too dumb to understand the intended import of Carthago delenda est -- then that may provide you with an additional layer of comfort.
I honestly don't think you understand the thesis or have the historical understanding to do so.
The precious irony here is that this very sentence is an overt instance of the second class on Paul's list of argument styles to avoid, in the very article you cite (and attempt to chide others for not having read) -- the venerable ad hominem attack. (The other sentence quoted above was essentially a variant of this attack, if in a slightly roundabout fashion).
>I understand that historical references can definitely add depth to a conversation, but if they aren’t framed well or contextualized, they come off as pretentious. I don't think you did a good job contextualizing your references, so it comes off to me as pseudo-intellectual and apologetic for the Russians. Comparing an active warzone to historical trivia also seems inappropriate for reasons I don't quite understand. I might be misunderstanding what you're saying, can you clarify what you meant by Carthago delenda est?
Sure, I'd be happy to clarify! In the ancient Mediterranean, Rome and Carthage were the two dominant powers. The phrase Carthago delenda est, meaning "Carthage must be destroyed," was used by Roman statesman Cato the Elder to stress the need for Carthage’s complete elimination in the leadup to the Third (and final) Punic War, even though Carthage wasn’t an active threat at that point. Rome imposed strict limits on Carthage’s military actions, and despite Carthage adhering to these treaties, Rome still found a pretext to accuse them of aggression after a conflict with a neighboring kingdom. Ultimately, Rome used this as justification to invade, destroy the city, and remove Carthage as a competitor entirely.
In invoking this reference, I’m suggesting that geopolitical dynamics often follow a similar logic—where powerful nations might frame another power as a threat, even if that threat is not imminent, in order to justify aggressive actions. I’m not apologizing for Russian actions, but pointing out that the motivations behind international conflicts often follow the same patterns throughout history: framing one power as an existential threat to justify intervention or destruction, whether or not the threat is real.
When we start framing the people of entire nations as irredeemable enemies even in our own private thoughts, it becomes easier to rationalize extreme actions that we would otherwise question (such as flippantly fracturing the global FOSS community). My point isn’t to excuse Russia’s actions but to highlight how these narratives can be manipulated, often leading to outcomes that are far more destructive than if people kept things in perspective.
Cute, except you're both deflecting and hallucinating of course, as no one ever had an issue with that catchphrase you keep dropping, or its import. The issue here was and still is this bizarre axiom - your famous 17 words:
The West wants to permanently de-fang and colonize Russia for obvious reasons -- geopolitical hegemony and market intrusion.
That you've chosen to adopt, and on the basis of sweet, pure faith it seems.
I think we have to look at the intentions of NATO. Has it ever been to take over and enslave another nation like Putin’s? I’m not talking about colonial Europe or America, I’m talking about the last 70-80 years, roughly the average lifetime of a human. Now look at the history of Russia in that time frame, aggression after aggression, belligerence the whole time with its neighbors.
The Monroe Doctrine, ironically, was precipitated by negotiations with Russia[1] and is almost identical in its aims for the Western Hemisphere as Putin's nominal arguments against NATO expansion eastward, namely the assertion that the Western Hemisphere was closed to European colonization and settlement.
Is this Putin talking about NATO expansion? 'Finally, you have broader considerations that might follow what you would call the "falling domino" principle. You have a row of dominoes set up, you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly. So you could have a beginning of a disintegration that would have the most profound influences.' No, it's Dwight Eisenhower talking about communism in Indochina in 1954. The maxims "Principiis obsta" and "Finem respice" apply universally.
The Monroe Doctrine and Domino Theory were both framed as defensive policies that were then used for protectionist and geopolitical justifications for foreign wars of aggression against neighbors and neutral independent countries. Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya didn't even have the protection of these broader geopolitical aims, just naked warmongering and profiteering (Osama Bin Laden was Saudi).
The necessity for narratives of moral exceptionalism to maintain a permanently jingoist state is to be expected, but it'd be healthier for the intelligentsia to privately admit that fact rather than hiding behind moral exceptionalism even in their personal lives. The West wants to permanently de-fang and colonize Russia for obvious reasons--geopoltical hegemony and market intrusion. These reasons create a perennial playbook everyone else has played by for thousands of years. And I'm sure when NATO does inevitably fail to a novel power, the remnants will play by the same rules Monroe and Putin played by, sed Carthago delenda est.[3]
[1] https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/monroe-doctrine
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domino_theory
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carthago_delenda_est