Comment on Danish Forces Are Mandated to Fire Back if U.S. Attacks Greenland
arrow74@lemmy.zip 2 days agoThis would be a much better argument if Russia only occupied eastern areas that expressed wanting to join Russia. Although even then there is some strong evidence that Russia planted that movement, but I’m willing to ignore that for now.
That as an argument falls apart pretty quickly when you remember they made a blitz attack for Kiev on the first day into areas not expressing a desire to separate.
Your analogy of the American revolution fits well with this. 13 British colonies had decided to succeed from Britain. France did not attack London nor did it send troops to the other British colonies in the Americas. It sent support to the ones that asked for it and nothing more.
But let’s not pretend the French did it for the American colonies. They did it to weaken Britain. Not for the people of those areas, but specifically for their own geopolitical goals.
But also let’s get back on topic. This argument agrees with me anyway. I said the USA did not start this war, and you are saying it was started by local separatists. Which back to the Revolutionary war comparison that’s spot on again
Objection@lemmy.ml 2 days ago
That logic relies on a big assumption that I don’t agree with, that fighting has to be contained to the specific territory in dispute. If the United States invaded Greenland and Greenland attacked NYC, despite Greenland not having any claim on NYC, that wouldn’t really be a mark against Greenland. It’s a matter of military strategy that if you can destroy enemy capabilities or force them to defend multiple fronts or knock them out entirely, you’ll probably try.
I didn’t exactly say it was started by local separatists. I said that who started it depends on which political entities you consider legitimate. If the separatists are more legitimate than the central government, you could say that the central government started it. In the same way, if you consider the American revolutionaries more legitimate than the British, then you could argue that the British started that war by infringing the American right to self-governance and popular sovereignty.
To use another comparison: the Vietnam War is generally seen as an act of US aggression, but at the time, it was claimed to be a defensive war, protecting the Republic of Vietnam from foreign supplied rebels. The reason that interpretation fell out of favor is because the Republic of Vietnam is generally regarded as having been a Western puppet.
Now, I personally don’t know to what degree each side represents popular will or to what extent they are just proxies of foreign governments. But my point is that if you allow the other user’s claim that the Ukrainian government was set up through US meddling, that significantly muddles the question of who started what.