Having talked to Ukrainian refugees I strongly believe there's is some civilizational gap between certain countries in how they perceive systematic violence, especially killing people for resources. In Western civilization, there is no universal support for it. That's why when Bush prepared for the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, he couldn't really count for a wide coalition (his infamous "you forgot Poland!") and there were the biggest anti-war protests in the history of modern Europe, with millions of people going out on the streets.
We, Westerners, hate killing people - whether they are Arabs, Afghans, Vietnamese. As for Russians, I'm not so sure - it was enough to convince people that Ukrainians are Nazi and the killing started.
Western distaste for killing is a recent-ish phenomenon and is by no means universal. I don't think it would be that hard for us to go back to those days. Civilization can be a thin veneer.
I disagree. After the two wars there is nobody who couldn't see that war is pure evil. That's why the initial project than later became the EU appeared - so that a war never appears in Europe again. If anything, today we hate it more than ever.
Facts simply disagree with you. The USA took part in (too) many bloody wars and invasions since WWII.
After Iraq, one would have hoped Americans finally learnt the lesson, yet Biden was voted president, after backing the invasions of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Lybia. Even Obama championed drone strikes around the world and supported Saudi Arabia's invasion of Yemen.
If there's a lesson to be learned, it seems to constantly evade Americans' attempts to grasp it.
I agree that the USA is different from Europe in this respect. The invasion on Afghanistan and Iraq was completely wrong, and in the case of Iraq based on falsified information, and the final result was worse than before. And although I'm happy Obama withdrew the troops from Iraq and Biden from Afghanistan, it looks like there simply wasn't an exit plan and responsibility for the people left behind. They had to deal with the consequences of wars waged by Bush under the impulse of 9/11 with no good outcome.
Still, when you look at the perception of war by Americans, starting with Vietnam, you see that people don't like killing. "In the course of the war, there developed in the United States the greatest anti-war movement the nation had ever experienced, a movement that played a critical role in bringing the war to an end." [0] This is a phenomenon that you don't see in Russia where people learned very well that if they want to stay away from big trouble for them and their families, they must not speak out in any way.
It seems the West has found the perfect solution. Allow protests as long as they don't become dangerous, but keep waging wars without any compromise. People (some of them at least) will vote either way, and you can now claim to be better than everyone else, while detaining the record for most killed civilians!
Europe didn't start any war after WWII. leadership reflect the people so if Europeans were blood-hungry, they would kill - for territory, for money, for resources. Instead, people slowly started to understand that we're all interconnected and war is just suffering. You can't really find any of XIX-century mentality like "Our nation is the best and we must fight with our neighbors" anymore - and it is thanks to the EU that Putin hates so much.
This is false. We bombed Sarajevo, Libya, participated in the invasion of Iraq and so on.
> thanks to the EU that Putin hates so much
If we look again at facts, the only ones who seem to hate Europe are the USA, Ukraine, and the EU commission.
Who destroyed North Stream and is now trying to destroy the other routes for gas from Russia to Europe?
Who's pushing for Europe to buy USA gas at 4x the Russian gas cost?
Who's trying at all costs to escalate this war, spreading allarmism and calling for wild increases in military spending?
Before the Ukraine war started, Russia actually helped us, as most of our industry was backed by the availability of cheap Russian gas. If nothing, we were increasingly independent of the USA. That mutual benefit relationship has now been severed, but to whose advantage? As a EU citizen I only see our quality of life decrease the more we "help" Ukraine.
The destruction of North Stream was an excellent move by whoever did. Europe drastically cut support for the current war and any future ones that Putin can wage by enormous cut on gas purchase from the regime. Yes, it was cheap, but the price is blood. We understood this too late.
Can Putin attack other countries? Not now, because Ukraine is still fighting, so for now he can just do smaller acts like cutting cables, messing up public transport during the Olympics or putting inflammable stuff on transport airplanes. But can we be sure he won't do it in a couple of years? The means to ensure so is to make Europe strong enough to make Putin hesitate.
Now let's move on to military actions you mentioned. As for Sarajevo, I remember it very clearly. The UN mission failed completely, in the same way that they failed in Rwanda. And I believe it was the only NATO initiative in history that actually made sense. The idea itself, not the execution though - NATO pilots were too afraid to fly low and they bombed civilians. But they never considered it a "good thing to do", rather a grave mistake, then a humanitarian fund was established to rebuild and make amends to the families. Other than that, the intervention actually stopped genocide.
As for Iraq and Afghanistan - as I mentioned, nobody in Europe wanted, Bush had big problems forming the coalition for his stupid aggression, millions of people went on the streets. I don't know any single person who would say "What a great idea, let's attack Iraq/Afghanistan". On the contrary, everybody thought it was very stupid. This is a huge difference between the two worlds: many Russians actually believe that killing Ukrainians is good and it should be continued.
Oh sweet child. If you live in a "first world" country you should know the price of your lifestyle is always blood. All the convenience you get is based on the exploitation of poorer countries to extract their resources (energy, minerals, workforce, etc) at a very low cost for us.
How could you think that getting gas from Russia is the only unethical option? Just inform yourself.
> millions of people went on the streets
Yes, and yet the invasion happened anyway, millions died in the middle east and the war went on until it was clear to the ruling elites that there wasn't any other benefit to extract from it. They couldn't care less about the protests, which by the way our democratic governments didn't hesitate to repress with violence whenever they became too loud. The Palestine debacle is another great example of this. If the kind of repression US university students were subjected to happened in China, the whole West would be screaming dictatorship. Heck, we still talk about how the HK protests were "brutally" repressed yet we did much worse with our own protests.
It's exactly like it happened for Vietnam. The USA finally pulled out when they realized it was going to be a very long blood bath for them, not because of the protests.
> If you live in a "first world" country you should know the price of your lifestyle is always blood.
This is not only false but also implies the "X is bad so you can also do other bad things" mentality that I don't buy.
> yet the invasion happened anyway
With extremely limited support from Europe. Basically, from EU countries only the UK agreed and Blair was heavily criticized for that. From [0]: "...when we went in, there were three countries: Great Britain, Australia and the United States. That's not a grand coalition. " Then Bush answered "You forgot Poland" which became a short-lived meme.
So yes, I think Blair and Bush jr should join Putin and Netanyahu as war criminals. But at the same time there is a great cibilizational divide between Europe and Russia, sadly for everyone involved.
We, Westerners, hate killing people - whether they are Arabs, Afghans, Vietnamese. As for Russians, I'm not so sure - it was enough to convince people that Ukrainians are Nazi and the killing started.