They’re still doing apologia by playing with definitions to argue that not only is Russia not imperialist, but they’re anti-imperialist. Stating that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is irredentist and not imperialist carries the assumption that Russia’s officially stated reasons for invading Ukraine are truthful when they are clearly not. Russia wants Ukrainian territory not because it’s populated by ethnic Russians, but because they want to exploit the natural resources contained therein. Irredentism is the justification for imperialism, they are not mutually exclusive.
It’s inherently difficult and subjective to speculate about motivations, and doubly so when talking about a country with multiple groups with their own motivations. Of course, in any conflict, enemy countries will be assigned the worst motivations possible, which is why virtually every conflict draws comparisons to Nazis, and the idea that the enemy will just keep attacking forever if they are not defeated. This was said about Vietnam (Domino Theory) and Afghanistan (“if we don’t fight them there, we’ll be fighting them here”). Those examples show that motivations assigned to enemy countries are often inaccurate.
I don’t think it should be considered “apologia” to express reasonable skepticism that the motivations of a rival country aren’t what some people speculate. Especially when they’re still assigning a negative motivation to said country, just a different negative motivation than the one you assign. That’s kind of a ridiculous degree of purity testing, “It’s not enough to condemn Russia, you have to agree with my exact assessment of their motivations, otherwise you’re doing apologia by condemning them in the wrong way.”
As they said, they condemn both Russia’s invasion and irredentism in general, so my main point was to correct your misunderstanding, when you asked if “tankies” don’t realize that irredentism leads to negative results.
They’re still doing apologia by playing with definitions to argue that not only is Russia not imperialist, but they’re anti-imperialist. Stating that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is irredentist and not imperialist carries the assumption that Russia’s officially stated reasons for invading Ukraine are truthful when they are clearly not. Russia wants Ukrainian territory not because it’s populated by ethnic Russians, but because they want to exploit the natural resources contained therein. Irredentism is the justification for imperialism, they are not mutually exclusive.
It’s inherently difficult and subjective to speculate about motivations, and doubly so when talking about a country with multiple groups with their own motivations. Of course, in any conflict, enemy countries will be assigned the worst motivations possible, which is why virtually every conflict draws comparisons to Nazis, and the idea that the enemy will just keep attacking forever if they are not defeated. This was said about Vietnam (Domino Theory) and Afghanistan (“if we don’t fight them there, we’ll be fighting them here”). Those examples show that motivations assigned to enemy countries are often inaccurate.
I don’t think it should be considered “apologia” to express reasonable skepticism that the motivations of a rival country aren’t what some people speculate. Especially when they’re still assigning a negative motivation to said country, just a different negative motivation than the one you assign. That’s kind of a ridiculous degree of purity testing, “It’s not enough to condemn Russia, you have to agree with my exact assessment of their motivations, otherwise you’re doing apologia by condemning them in the wrong way.”
As they said, they condemn both Russia’s invasion and irredentism in general, so my main point was to correct your misunderstanding, when you asked if “tankies” don’t realize that irredentism leads to negative results.