Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris
Actually I think a lot of the myths are being generated by Ukraine itself. Zelensky recognised quite early on that Western nations wouldn’t pour their weapons into the country just for them to be captured by Russia. Ukraine has fought an epic propaganda war to show itself worth betting on. Western media laps it up because that’s just what it does.
We live in a society conditioned by blockbuster sci fi and superhero films where it’s difficult for the masses to think in terms more complex than ‘hero’ and ‘villain’. That means we tend to extend the black-and-white judgment far further than we ought to. Ukrainians aren’t angels just because they’ve been invaded. The simple matter is that the rules-based international order that has held more-or-less steady since 1945 relies on countries not doing what Russia is doing right now. Coffee house debates over the relative moral standing of the two nations involved in this war shouldn’t be allowed to obfuscate that.
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The origin of the myths are irrelevant if the Western media is complicit in spreading them. You pass this off as “just what it does” as if it’s an innocent bypasser when throughout history Western media is often complicit with Western governments in pushing comfortable narratives and wartime agendas as the basis for intervention.
This case is no different.
The rules based international order doesn’t count for much if the rules only apply to those who aren’t allied to the United States position, and it’s absolute hypocrisy to pretend it should. Tab it up on the agenda for the coffee houses because it’s entirely hypothetical.
In the real world the United States and it’s allies have acted with impunity throughout the world, intervening in civil wars, toppling democratically elected governments and manufacturing evidence along the way so long as it suits it’s own economic ends. The failures of the last couple of decades have emboldened Russia, and likely China. But to fall back on a self-righteous narrative of being the good guys and asking everyone to play nicely under a pretence of meaningful international law isn’t going to work.