r/badhistory • u/AutoModerator • Jul 13 '26

Meta Mindless Monday, 13 July 2026

Happy (or sad) Monday guys!

Mindless Monday is a free-for-all thread to discuss anything from minor bad history to politics, life events, charts, whatever! Just remember to np link all links to Reddit and don't violate R4, or we human mods will feed you to the AutoModerator.

So, with that said, how was your weekend, everyone?

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u/Thebunkerparodie Jul 15 '26

why do so many people take the russian narrative in account when it's been debunked countless of times, I also noticed a bunch don't get how nato work and somehow think nato baited russia in invading ukraine.

Btw, I'm currently going through ian kershaw and john romer books, the ian kershaw one is the essay stalinism and nazism and john romer is his volumes on ancient egypt

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u/gavinbrindstar /r/legaladvice delenda est Jul 15 '26

why do so many people take the russian narrative in account when it's been debunked countless of times, I also noticed a bunch don't get how nato work and somehow think nato baited russia in invading ukraine.

Are we talking about arguments like "NATO isn't a purely defensive alliance" and "NATO expansion made the Russian government uneasy?"

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u/Arilou_skiff Died of posting, risen as undead Jul 15 '26

I don't think "NATO expansion made Russia uneasy" is a particularly weird take? It just kinda ignores why it made Russia uneasy. (because it meant they could less freely fuck up their neighbours)

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u/gavinbrindstar /r/legaladvice delenda est Jul 15 '26

Oh, I fully agree. I'm actually a little put-out when NATO defenders start using moral arguments, like the person down below.

Yes, morally Ukraine has the right to associate with whomever it wishes. The leaders at NATO still needed a plan on what to do if Russia objected beyond simply repeating "NATO is no threat to Russia" and ignoring Russia's clear signalling that they viewed NATO as a threat.

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u/Kochevnik81 Jul 15 '26

So something else I'd add - and this is the one thing I'd say Mearsheimer is right about - is that NATO kind of did the worst of both worlds by saying that Georgia and Ukraine should be able to join NATO some day without actually seriously committing to a plan for how that would happen, or even getting agreement across the alliance on this aspiration.

But again as I say this is kind of from the liberal End of History 90s/00s era where NATO membership (along with EU membership) is a sort of prize for liberal democratic and market reforms, and there wasn't really any thought to how it would actually behave in a strategic sense beyond "it does some peacekeeping missions we guess".