Russo-Ukrainian War Thread - Page 21

1: On China: Western countries and people are a diverse group. While it is true that you will find some people who 'hate' China, I would not say that western people or countries generally hate China. There are however things that China does that we hate. Here, you will in particular see four different things that are criticized: China's treatment of their own Uighur minority, China's treatment of Tibet, China's treatment of Hong Kong, and China's treatment of Taiwan. We see these as examples of China using its power and influence to do harm. Additionally, in the west, at least most citizens are strongly supportive of freedom of speech, and the way China uses its economic power to hinder people and countries from criticizing it is something we are afraid of and respond negatively towards.

2: Why is it okay for the US to do stuff we criticize/punish Russia (or China) for?

The general answer is, it's not. However, the US has been a very important ally for many western countries, and during the cold war, many European countries felt that the US was our insurance. Basically, for many western countries, we have felt that we are dependent upon having a good relationship with the US, even when we also think they are behaving wrongly. We also have not had the ability to effectively punish the US in any meaningful way.

To look at your specific examples, they are rather different, and deserve different responses. Looking at Yugoslavia, that was a civil war where one we thought that the Albanian population (in particular) required our help and aid to avoid ethnic cleansing. While I am skeptical towards the use of bombs as a means to achieve peace or safety, the intentions here can hardly be described as malicious. (Again, I have no interest in debating this if there are posters who feel that this was mostly a geopolitical act aimed to hurt Russia and her allies, or something of that sort.) For most western Europeans, this was not particularly controversial.

For the bombing of (and invasion of) Afghanistan, that also, initially, had fairly wide-spread support, because it came as a response to 9/11. While many Europeans were skeptical of the American mission to democratize Afghanistan from the get-go, we understood the desire to eliminate Afghanistan as a safe haven and base of operations for terrorist groups like Al Qaeda.

For the bombing of and invasion of Iraq, you are mistaken. We were not silent. Many of the biggest demonstrations and protests we have ever seen were in relation to this war - for several European countries, more than 90% of the population was opposed. Myself, that was the first time I ever participated in a demonstration. The invasion of Iraq was an absolute travesty with terrible consequences, and the reasons for the invasion were as flimsy and unfounded as Putin and Russia's current invasion of Ukraine. Many, myself included, believe that the American leadership at the time are war criminals who should have been punished. Here, the reason why there was never any political response from European countries, is the power dynamic. The US was the world's only major superpower at that point, and leaders of many European countries did not think they could afford to sanction the US - and also, that sanctions would ultimately hurt ourselves more than they hurt the US. Thus, many European countries gave some support for the invasion, even though the populations of the same countries were largely negative. Anyway, this invasion has almost no support in any western country today.

For Libya, Syria and Somalia, these have been smaller operations, and Europeans in general are not that invested in them. For Libya and Syria, we largely understand it to have been cases of needing to protect the population from oppressive dictators that were slaughtering their own people. Again, many will consider bombs a poor way of achieving the goal of peace for the population, and especially Libya has been criticized rather heavily since then. However, had not Gadhafi and Bashar Al-Assad not brutalized their own populations, these interventions would not have happened. For a counter, the US, and the West in general, has also been criticized for what happened during the civil war in Rwanda, but there, it was more because the intervention was too slow, and because hundreds of thousands of people ended up being killed. Somalia is part of the war on terror - something which has both support and opposition from western countries and people.

Essentially, a big part of the answer to your question is - even when the west believes that the US is wrong, we don't think we have the power to influence anything, and many of us think that, even though the US does a lot of wrong stuff that they can and should be criticized for, even sanctioned against in the case of Iraq, we need to preserve a positive relationship with them. Also, note that what I have posted here is not necessarily matching my own opinion, and maybe not the majority opinion in all western European countries, but I have tried to summarize and generalize our justifications and attitudes. You should know that within every European country, most of these wars have been subject to some political discussion, and there have been political parties within our parliaments that have been very opposed to American / western military intervention, in all of the cited examples with the possible exception of Somalia, which quite frankly hasn't gotten much attention at all.

I also want to reiterate that this thread is not a good place for this particular discussion - but, that I also understand why you asked the questions you did. If someone is very interested in bringing it further, I would advice taking it to the USpol megathread or the European politics megathread.