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  • I can't speak for them, but I suspect there's a few things going on.

    1) You're right Nato has been kicking the can of Ukrainian membership. And I think it's for the same reason that STW (and numerous others of various political persuasions) oppose it. It'll just piss Russia off. They (STW) probably see not-pissing-Russia-off as essential for de-escalation.

    2) Where they go further than a lot of other people may like (especially those who are still posting "gotchyas" on here for some reason) is arguing that Nato isn't a defensive alliance at all: "We refute the idea that NATO is a defensive alliance, and believe its record in Afghanistan, Yugoslavia and Libya over the last generation, not to mention the US-British attack on Iraq, clearly proves otherwise." If you don't accept Nato as a defensive alliance, it moving into Ukraine is a bit of a frightening proposition.

    3) Finally, on rhetoric rather than policy (this seems to be what most people find offensive about STW): Why is STW fixating on Western policy rather than Russian? It's a British-based anti-war group that is attempting to frame the discussion in Britain, to impact British policy, as a pressure group. To do this, they are attempting to enlarge the discussion around the potential conflict to allow more than one perspective to be seen (i.e., more than just "Russia bad"). That is, they're completely unnuanced attempt to pull the West and the West's actions into the heart of the debate around the conflict aims to do this. Importantly, I would argue, it's a position you're not getting (or I'm not seeing) in general. And to be honest, I think that's both important and healthy in a democracy. I worry what the outcome could be if the discussion is continually framed as a simplistic moral problem of "Putin evil, us good."

  • You're right Nato has been kicking the can of Ukrainian membership. And I think it's for the same reason that STW (and numerous others of various political persuasions) oppose it. It'll just piss Russia off.

    It's definitely one of the considerations that NATO member states (which must ALL approve membership) are reticent, not to mention the fact that Biden is clearly less intervention-y than his predecessors so there'd be an element of making a promise you had to keep (to defend Ukraine) which isn't naturally something you would want to do.

    But there's also the fact that Ukraine isn't yet eligible to join - members need to demonstrate that they have a functioning democratic political system based on a market economy, and Ukraine is incredibly corrupt by western standards. Plus, it's flipflopped on whether it wants to join in the past, so members of NATO aren't necessarily convinced this is a long term proposition, which once again leads to reticence. But not pissing Russia off is definitely part of the calculation.

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