It’s not really about the borders per se, but it is about territory. Russians feel they need land (specifically railroad) access to the Sevastopol naval base in Crimea. Russia itself doesn’t have any warm water ports—they all freeze in the winter. So, during the Soviet Union, the Crimean peninsula was developed as an international port and naval base. The infrastructure was built with taxes from all the Soviet citizens, including a lot of Russians, under the assumption that Russia, as part of the Soviet Union, would have access to that port in perpetuity. As a result, some Russians feel ownership over this naval base, even though it’s deep in Ukrainian territory.
I don’t think Putin really cares about the Donbas much, except that it can be territory to protect access to the port.
Russian strategic anxiety about not having a warm water port is quite literally older than America. This is some Peter the Great-era (early 1700’s) shit. I’m not excusing any of it, but I rarely hear anyone talk about this stuff in the English language media even though it’s like. The primary reason for the war.
hansolo@lemmy.today 1 month ago
Not really about “moving” the lines. It’s about Putin wants other people’s stuff, and the biggest picture way to define “not Putin’s stuff” is “everything within the internationally agreed upon lines over here.” It’s not an obsession with borders, it’s that they’re a definition of the historical land of specific peoples and cultures. You don’t want the whole globe named World of America, right? Lines that keep anyone willing to use force out of an area because the people within those lines said “nope, this is us, not you.”
cabbage@piefed.social 1 month ago
The no borders crowd doesn’t want America to be anything more than a geographical term. There wouldn’t be borders and there wouldn’t be states. Possibly some sort of global federation would be acceptable depending on who you ask.
They’re right in principle. Borders are man made and lead to a bunch of conflict. The nation state is an arbitrary unit that has gained an absurd amount of power.
In practice of course few people would say we can just abolish borders over night and hope for the best. But criticizing it by saying that Putin would do this or that doesn’t work because Russia wouldn’t exist in this scenario and Putin would just be some powerless random guy with rapidly declining mental abilities.
hansolo@lemmy.today 1 month ago
This pretty much ignores all of human history, though. We create leaders and territory needed to farm food since before we could write about it.
So those human tendencies you’ll just… What? Say are illegal with no government to enforce it? It just makes no sense in practical terms.
cabbage@piefed.social 1 month ago
Yes, it intentionally breaks with human history, which has been largely built around and fought over borders for a really long time. What people argue is that it’s not human nature but learned. We organize ourselves locally and in communities, there’s nothing natural about patriotism and nation states.
I personally think they are correct in fundamental parts of their criciticism, but that doesn’t make it a realistic goal work towards any time soon. What we can do is to question the premises we are trained to accept and to think critically about how we should structure our societies going forwards.
Arguing we can’t abolish borders because of Russia and America is a bit like arguing nukes can’t be abolished because of the need for nuclear deterrence. It might make some degree of sense as a practical argument, but not as a normative stance.