Thread by @andrewmichta

🧵I don't get rattled often, but today I've had enough when I watched online two credentialled American apologists for #Russia's imperialism repeating yet again that we caused the war in Ukraine because we declared in 2008 that we would consider bringing Ukraine into @NATO. 1/10

I ask this: What planet do these people live on to argue with a straight face that a nation brutally attacked by its neighbor, and fighting for its very survival must explain itself to them and convince them that it has the right to live free? Are they simply this callous? 2/10

Would they be just as self-righteous if the discussion was about our country? Would they then claim that as Americans we have no right to make sovereign choices because a great power "out there" disagrees? By this logic the 13 American colonies should have never rebelled. 3/10

I'm even more bewildered when I hear those credentialled experts pontificate on how much territory Ukraine must transfer to Russia in exchange for a nebulous "peace deal." Indeed, it's easy to give away somebody else's land. Would they be as glib if it was our territory? 4/10

I'm a member of academia, but I would never presume that the Darwinian ecosystem we call "international relations" has much in common with a graduate school seminar or a lecture, or that international politics fits neatly into an IR theoretical framework I once developed. 5/10

For twenty years the West appeased Putin's aggression, whether because countries preferred to do lucrative business with Russia rather than standing up for principle (Nord Stream 1 and 2 are just two examples of this pattern), or we simply could not face up to aggression. 6/10

Then when President Biden finally said no, there was no strategy, no vision of victory, no resolve to punish aggression-only "escalation management" while Ukraine bled year after year. Remember Chancellor Scholz's "Ukraine can't lose, Russia can't win" dictum? What was that? 7/10

Today as Putin yanks our chain and calls it "negotiations," while he demands that Ukraine surrender, we continue to deceive ourselves that Russian imperialism can be bargained with, deflected or (yes, once again) appeased at an acceptable cost, including abandoning Ukraine. 8/10

I can't speak for our political class but I lose my patience when our credentialled experts repeat Russian talking points and blame the West instead of the tyrant who started this war that killed a million people, but whom we treat like a man one can bargain with in good faith.9/10

Time to look in the mirror and remember what democracies used to stand for. It's indecent to blame the victim for the brutality of the aggressor. We talk incessantly about "universal rights," but maybe we should stop being so self-absorbed and see what we are becoming. 10/End