Nations have risen and fallen throughout history. If nationalism is true, would Russia be vindicated today? Whether or not they have a good reason, as far as they truly believe they do, they are not wrong to wage this war?

@Spongebob my answer was about your Original Question.
but About Putin's Russia, Hitler's Germany... :
That's a different issue, All the human groups tried/try to dominate others due to resources limitations, ideology, and ...etc. True or False with humans, like other animals we have competition, and there's a term called "Social Darwinism", which you can Scale it Up to nations scale. it's kinda inevitable! and this's why we need/have UnitedNations, Human Rights and ...etc. like Morality, all of these are to help to deal with and fix this issue.
Nations rise/fall is about Darwinism! good or bad, it's there.
perhaps Putin's action wasn't Strange if it happened like 100 years ago! but for Today's humans and today's Order, it's quite unacceptable!
before any, I think that's better to define Values and make it clear what we talk about. Putin's Nationalism is Quite different than Ukrainian's.

@Spongebob Your response conflates the protection of one's own society with the conquering of others.

@JeffMurray I think Russia has its own story of how Ukraine was/is hurting it. In general, any conflict for that matter will have two sides. Just look at all the wars usa has waged

@Spongebob
While it's true there are 3 sides to every story, once you are conquering another sovereign nation, you've lost the ability to claim you're just protecting your own society.

@Spongebob your statement is one sided. Was the US, EU, and NATO wrong in breaking the agreement of a buffer zone for Russia's national security from the 90's? Was the US wrong for manufacturing the coup in 2014 overthrowing a elected government that lead to a 8 year war on people few knew about until last week? Those numbers are growing which the truth will become vastly exposed in time. Purposely funding and weaponizing them to conduct it, and recently again to exacerbate it to provoke a response. Ukraine is being used and illegally propped up to provoke Russia in the same nature they did with Germany before WWll.

I'd like to know what Russian nationalism you're talking about? It's like you don't realize Putin and Russia don't have their own nationalist entities to deal with. Did you miss the issue he was faced with during the last recent election cycle where our media falsely prop up a fascist character who was attempting to stage a false narrative while inciting social disorder?

Putin can potentially be accused of participating in another version of corporate- state run, maybe state-corporate capitalism, either which I refer to communism, but I highly consider the US as being closer to a nationalist run nation than Russia. Putin should have left the emphasis on the east and invaded only those regions to get his point across. Stayed there until he got his buffer zone back. I'll give you that much.

Putin isn't running around the globe overthrowing governments every year like the western nations are. Europe is the mother birthing nationalism we help to enforce now. The US is being used as a sperm donator to the whore. Has been since our so called independence.

@Spongebob, @JeffMurray do you include the history of the US in that thought? Your past comments didn't seem to reflect that recognition. Especially when we were talking about the last election cycle where it seemed you were fine with your chosen party's involvement in such endeavors within its history.

@William_Mary
Yes, we've invaded countries. Do I think they were all "fair"? No, of course not. But I can't recall the last time we conquered a sovereign nation and it became part of our land. If you know off hand you can tell me though. Either way, I hope we never do again, and I'll be just as against it if we do as I am Putin's conquering of Ukraine.

@JeffMurray outside of the box, Mexico. A vast part of the southwest was inhabited by Mexican citizens and part of Mexico. Particularly Texas. Inside the box, the US itself. We're all squatters in which our ancestors murdered millions for what seemingly became a geopolitical strategy conquest for European countries. In which we eventually had to buy back parts of them at some points of time.

@William_Mary So 177 years ago? Do you really think it's right not to condemn the conquering of a sovereign nation because we most recently did it a quarter century before light bulbs were even invented?

@JeffMurray I'm sorry you fail to see the correlation of that event to the many that came after it leading right up to Ukraine. It wholly explains you and those like you. As a number of us attempted to relate this nature to you during the 2020 general election, it's people like you who play a role in its continuance by failing to see that by supporting it's creators, which we warned would come from Biden and his chosen administration, how its history works. One by one we, I especially, gave examples to Biden and each of his cabinet picks as to how his administration would be conducted. I also used the history of Biden's actions in Ukraine, and others, from 2014 and his crimes then which he has now been allowed to expand on.

If you refuse to change your mind, nothing can be changed.

But go ahead and make excuses for yourself. Go on with your false narratives changing the context to what you need to believe in. It's what they taught you to be good at.

@William_Mary My only other option was Trump, and that would have been far worse than anything that's happening now.

@JeffMurray Thank you for making my point. First---there were other options. You've simply been geared to respond that way. Second---Biden has done virtually nothing to change the nature or structure of the country Trump left behind him. Just because the MSCM isn't covering all the issues we had as Trump became president, doesn't mean they aren't still there. I assure you they are, and no better, in some cases worse. You've simply been deceived by no longer being informed on them, or geared to forget about them, or think I'm to ignorant to have informed myself on them and intentionally misrepresenting yourself to attempt to deceive me. It's simply the nature of how it works which is constantly highlighted here. It gets worse with each passing president.

What's next, book banning or burning. O wait----that has already joined the information war. Telling parents they have no rights to be concerned about what their children are learning in school. O wait--that's also beginning to take place. After decades of complaints parents aren't engaged enough. Citizens from Jan 6th on the Capital baring the full brunt of that injustice while all the primary inciters are walking away free. I could go on and on how Biden, who you chose for the better is worse than Trump, but I thought I'd throw out a few of the fascist issues he continues to allow to happen within silence under his watch while most of the public is being distracted by another fascist manufactured crime of his.

As a matter of fact. Victoria Nuland is presently working on attempting to create the same scenario she did in Ukraine in Columbia today by interfering in their upcoming elections. In which she was promoted by Biden, which I brought up in 2020, for her heinous work which helped to cover up his crimes there. Now they're playing in at least 1 other country.

@William_Mary
Yeah, we're at an impasse. If you think:
-Biden is worse than Trump
-Biden's party is the one wanting to ban books
-Duverger's Law doesn't exist
-They're heroic citizens, not insurrectionists
-Blocking Trump's attempts to cover up his crimes isn't doing something to change how the country is
then we live in two different realities. You can think I'm ignorant, I can think you're crazy. Just another example of how we live in a post-truth world.

I think it's a personal and subjective opinion of an individual whether or not her country is worth dying for. It is true that many Ukrainians are fighting for their nation, but it's also true that the Ukrainian govt is stopping any male citizen between age of 18-60 from leavng the country of their own accord. These are civilians, not battle trained soldiers. Can the Russians make a similar story saying that they are fighting to defend their nation from foes, be they real or imagined? For an Ukrainian citizen held there against his will, is surrender not the best option?
I think the abstract concept of nation is just another variety of belief, placing the "good of all" above the individual.

Agreed. Supposedly many Russian soldiers are conscripts. Nations are obviously entirely artificial entities not based on anything real. All opinions are necessarily subjective.

@Spongebob You can claim nations aren't "real" but that still doesn't put them on the same level as religions. The nation society still provides benefits and a way of life that a religion does not. If religion provided those things, you'd never see nations comprised mostly of people of the same religion fighting each other.

@JeffMurray Francis Fukuyama draws nice connections between the formation of nation states and the role of church. I forget the arguments but it's a good resource

@Spongebob Religion having a role in some/most societies still doesn't put it on par with the society itself.

@Spongebob I think I can argue his views fairly correlate with my reply above. From what I'm just now viewing his profile on Wikipedia.

{Fukuyama is known for his book The End of History and the Last Man (1992), which argues that the worldwide spread of liberal democracies and free-market capitalism of the West and its lifestyle may signal the end point of humanity's sociocultural evolution and become the final form of human government}

{he modified his earlier position to acknowledge that culture cannot be cleanly separated from economics}

To me this would indicate a citizenship who would be forced into silent observation of their culture and religious beliefs. A rather profound resemblance to past fascist occupations? Preventing us from uniting within a mixed cultural existence which I personally believe would benefit the entire world society.

As our western societies are facing an economic collapse from the ruling class hoarding tax cuts and overbearing printed money with no valued substance behind it, we face the inevitable potential of falling into being victims of a system he places conjecture of above, where we can no longer control other than to rebel.

While his departure from neoconservative ideology was a short lived interest, his association with some of the think tanks provides a good deal of concern. More concerning is {Fukuyama believes the US has a right to promote its own values in the world, but more along the lines of what he calls "realistic Wilsonianism", with military intervention only as a last resort and only in addition to other measures.} Last resort is a oxymoron for the US. Quite frankly he contradicts his spoken values within this context.

As I read on it seems he's just all over the spectrum with no sense of realistic direction.

{It all depends on what you mean by socialism. Ownership of the means of production – except in areas where it's clearly called for, like public utilities – I don't think that's going to work. If you mean redistributive programmes that try to redress this big imbalance in both incomes and wealth that has emerged then, yes, I think not only can it come back, it ought to come back. This extended period, which started with Reagan and Thatcher, in which a certain set of ideas about the benefits of unregulated markets took hold, in many ways it's had a disastrous effect. At this juncture, it seems to me that certain things Karl Marx said are turning out to be true. He talked about the crisis of overproduction… that workers would be impoverished and there would be insufficient demand.}

You can't possibly reach the goals of the above in correlation to the other aspects of his associations and views of a dominant US world power he speaks on. Those think tanks play a primary role in the enforcement of agendas going on today, which the US government and their medias are controlled by. The US simply doesn't apply, and won't anytime soon, the type of conditions he verbally advocates for.

[en.wikipedia.org]