Personally I am convinced the miltary support for Ukraine is the right thing to do. I wish my country would send more weapons. I think Ukraine defends Western values. They also fight for us. Otherwise Poland or the Baltic States could be next. However on the last statement I am not 100 % sure. I think Ukraine fights for Western values however I don't have insight in Putin's mind so there is no certainty whether he wants more than Ukraine. He seems to be greedy though. Otherwise he would not have chosen this fatal and megalomaniac decision to invade the whole Ukraine. On a strategical level this was extremely stupid. If he just invaded the east of Ukraine the West would not have intervened this much. It completely backfired.
So with this introduction you can see where I stand on Ukraine. There are things I am not fully sure about. How much has the West provoked the Russian response? Was there a red line the EU crossed when they built strategic alliances with partners in East Europe? I read different perspectives on that. But even the experts who argument that the West deeply provoked Russia say that this cruel war against an innocent country is a war crime and that Ukrainian civilians get slaughtered.
Now to the core about being hypocritical:
There are some instances where I say yes Europe is hypocritical. They prioritize this injust war compared to many other conflicts in the world. One could argument this is simply geopolitcs and natural (due to the geographical close distance). However Europe demands from the whole world to be morally outraged because of this conflict. At the same time we ally with people who shit on human rights to lower our energy prices. Personally I support that. Maybe I should explain why? It becomes pretty intricate. I am in favor of pragmatism in politics. Germany was highly dependend on Russian gas. We were in desperate need for substitution. So we went to Qatar and the killer MBS from Saudi Arabia to beg for resources. If we did not do that our economy would have plumetted in a deep recession, leftwing or rightwing populist parties would have risen in the polls. And exactly these people are against support for Ukraine. In case Germany went into a recession the public would not have supported military aid for Ukraine anymore. It is all about finding a balance. It would have triggered a lot of collateral damage.
However one can still call it hypocritical. The West often portrays itself as fighter for justice and human rights. But politics is a pretty dirty business and just stopping to trade with everyone who violates human rights is not posssible. One cannot be purely good when one is involved in politics. Also the West itself.
We could also try to build an alliance against Saudi-Arabia because of the horrible war in Yemen which gets fueled by them. However the media and the elites don't give a fuck about this conflict because we are allied with partners who fuel these crimes. On this level yes were are pretty hypocritcal.
One could also talk about Julian Assange or the Iraq war where the West shits on freedom, liberty, equality, peace, human rights etc. There is truth in it that we are no saints either.
On the other hand (this is my perspective) just because we ourselves violate human rights we should not look away from other war crimes. When one is involved in politics there will always be ethically difficult decisions. On these two examples it is even pretty evident there is deep injustice. But if we just isolated us from the rest of the world till we reached the state of being perfectly moral and without any inner contradictions we could not influence the world for the better. On a state level it is even naive to believe that such a state of being perfectly moral could ever exist. This is why I evaluate such an argument (look at your own flaws instead) as pretty useless.
Probably a take many people would disagree with.
So with this introduction you can see where I stand on Ukraine. There are things I am not fully sure about. How much has the West provoked the Russian response? Was there a red line the EU crossed when they built strategic alliances with partners in East Europe? I read different perspectives on that. But even the experts who argument that the West deeply provoked Russia say that this cruel war against an innocent country is a war crime and that Ukrainian civilians get slaughtered.
Now to the core about being hypocritical:
There are some instances where I say yes Europe is hypocritical. They prioritize this injust war compared to many other conflicts in the world. One could argument this is simply geopolitcs and natural (due to the geographical close distance). However Europe demands from the whole world to be morally outraged because of this conflict. At the same time we ally with people who shit on human rights to lower our energy prices. Personally I support that. Maybe I should explain why? It becomes pretty intricate. I am in favor of pragmatism in politics. Germany was highly dependend on Russian gas. We were in desperate need for substitution. So we went to Qatar and the killer MBS from Saudi Arabia to beg for resources. If we did not do that our economy would have plumetted in a deep recession, leftwing or rightwing populist parties would have risen in the polls. And exactly these people are against support for Ukraine. In case Germany went into a recession the public would not have supported military aid for Ukraine anymore. It is all about finding a balance. It would have triggered a lot of collateral damage.
However one can still call it hypocritical. The West often portrays itself as fighter for justice and human rights. But politics is a pretty dirty business and just stopping to trade with everyone who violates human rights is not posssible. One cannot be purely good when one is involved in politics. Also the West itself.
We could also try to build an alliance against Saudi-Arabia because of the horrible war in Yemen which gets fueled by them. However the media and the elites don't give a fuck about this conflict because we are allied with partners who fuel these crimes. On this level yes were are pretty hypocritcal.
One could also talk about Julian Assange or the Iraq war where the West shits on freedom, liberty, equality, peace, human rights etc. There is truth in it that we are no saints either.
On the other hand (this is my perspective) just because we ourselves violate human rights we should not look away from other war crimes. When one is involved in politics there will always be ethically difficult decisions. On these two examples it is even pretty evident there is deep injustice. But if we just isolated us from the rest of the world till we reached the state of being perfectly moral and without any inner contradictions we could not influence the world for the better. On a state level it is even naive to believe that such a state of being perfectly moral could ever exist. This is why I evaluate such an argument (look at your own flaws instead) as pretty useless.
Probably a take many people would disagree with.
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