Ukraine Crisis
The situation in Ukraine is becoming more dire by the minute. NATO is implying Russia is planning to invade Ukraine, whereas Russia denies this. Russia claims it will not allow Ukraine to enter NATO, as this would effectively put a hostile military alliance - NATO - right at the borders of Russia.
There's also political maneuvering going around, with the US never wanting a lack of enemies - soon after the disaster in Afghanistan. And Putin is wanting to shift attention away from pretty bad conditions in Russia do to the COVID pandemic and rising prices.
The situation is quite dire and could escalate into something very, very dangerous.
Here are a few links for those interested:
NATO sends reinforcements to Eastern Europe amid Russia tensions
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/1/24/nato-sends-reinforcements-to-eastern-europe-amid-russian-anger
Russian naval exercises off Ireland's coast 'not welcome,' says Foreign Minister
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/01/24/europe/russia-naval-exercise-ireland-intl/index.html
Pentagon reveals number of US troops on higher alert over Ukraine
https://www.rt.com/russia/547231-pentagon-troops-europe-ukraine/
Rising costs of Ukraine gamble could force Russia’s hand
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/24/rising-costs-of-ukraine-gamble-could-force-russias-hand
Let's hope things don't escalate too much more. Welcome 2022...
There's also political maneuvering going around, with the US never wanting a lack of enemies - soon after the disaster in Afghanistan. And Putin is wanting to shift attention away from pretty bad conditions in Russia do to the COVID pandemic and rising prices.
The situation is quite dire and could escalate into something very, very dangerous.
Here are a few links for those interested:
NATO sends reinforcements to Eastern Europe amid Russia tensions
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/1/24/nato-sends-reinforcements-to-eastern-europe-amid-russian-anger
Russian naval exercises off Ireland's coast 'not welcome,' says Foreign Minister
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/01/24/europe/russia-naval-exercise-ireland-intl/index.html
Pentagon reveals number of US troops on higher alert over Ukraine
https://www.rt.com/russia/547231-pentagon-troops-europe-ukraine/
Rising costs of Ukraine gamble could force Russia’s hand
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/24/rising-costs-of-ukraine-gamble-could-force-russias-hand
Let's hope things don't escalate too much more. Welcome 2022...
Comments (18084)
Had the US succeeded in creating a fait accompli in Ukraine, it would have pushed for NATO membership and any politician foolish enough to get between the neocons and their project would be disposed of, with lethal force if need be. I'm convinced of that.
The strategic situation currently seems almost a repeat of last year, Ukraine is on the strategic defensive and Russia seems set for another grinding assault on a fortress city. As last time they seem to be focusing first on encircling/ turning moves on the flanks.
Ukraine's presence on the eastern side of the Dniepr seems more solid, but it's hard to see what can come of that.
Ukrainian air defense is apparently still working fine, despite the various predictions to the contrary. It seems that sources of ammunition were found so far. The F16 project is still on the way, though we'll have to see what happens now with the Dutch political situation. Will a deal still go through with the deal if the Netherlands pull their support?
Germany seems to want to position itself as a major supporter of Ukraine, which seems kinda at odds with the Bild report. The strategy reported in the Bild is of course the kind of thing you can fit all kind of actual events into in retrospect.
I don't expect negotiated settlement quickly in any case.
It is obviously about NATO membership.
But if you want to rewrite history your way, how does striving for NATO membership help?
Your position, and that of and all the previous war and Zelensky proponents here (as in the Western main stream media) is essentially the cry baby approach to geopolitics and international relations. You essentially whine about the fact that Ukraine can't get what it wants (can't be in NATO, can't get Crimea back, can't have Nazi's without criticism, can't get the weapons it wants, can't compete with Russia militarily, can't have nuclear weapons now, can't just disappear Russia somehow) and then whining about Ukraine's situation somehow directly connects to justifying repudiating peace negotiations, repudiating neutrality and committing to a long war of attrition that is incredibly destructive for Ukraine and Ukraine has little hope of winning.
There is no logical connection between whining about Ukraine's unfulfilled desires or whining about Russia's available scope of action that the West can't cancel like some podcaster that angered the LGBTQ+ community in a way that requires no case to be proven, and justification for fighting a losing war.
You're basically explaining how Ukraine could have avoided this destructive war by committing to neutrality ... but!! that won't remove Russian influence from Ukraine!!!
So what? Ahah, it's better to fight to the last Ukrainian?
Russian influence in Ukraine is far less destructive and far easier to deal with than a giant war if you're any normal Ukrainian citizen.
Things haven't gone quite as smoothly as the Kremlin might have liked, though. Why else the rattling posturing, pseudo rationalizations, misdirection diversion blame-gaming, spiraling domestic suppression, tight control, heavy-duty manipulation in occupied areas, Kim Jong Un coziness (the two have been mutually consistent in their rattling posturing), ongoing generous scattered bombing of Ukraine, ... ? (at peak so far, Russia fired 50,000 artillery shells a day)
It's not 2014 Crimea. Putin's decision has become costly. What might be next on his (public) agenda?
You and others complain all the time about the supposed US hegemony and how everything in Ukraine happens due to foreign influence. But then it is not whining and cry baby approach to geopolitics and international relations?
Quoting boethius
No, I have been explaning how Ukraine could NOT have avoided this destructive war by committing to neutrality.
It seems that Ukrainians have decided that it is better to fight than to turn into Belarus (in the best case scenario). The support for the fight remains high So you are obviously wrong about 'normal Ukrainians'.
Response starting like this is quite irrelevant.
Besides, there are already NATO countries that oppose Ukrainian membership in the organization. So that's that. The only way forward is for the US to make bilateral treaties with Ukraine.
Hardly any stomach for that in the US.
Quoting Tzeentch
That's simply nonsense. Hence we disagree. If Sweden hasn't got in, surely Ukraine would have been a problem. It had the "limbo answer" just like Turkey had for EU membership. Membership would always be possible in the future, because there was no reason to bar a sovereign state like Ukraine entering the alliance. However, it wasn't something that would happen, even if some US presidents would have liked that.
Again, Sweden is irrelevant. If it wants to join of its own accordance, fine - another useful idiot to wave the flag - or such is the sentiment in Washington.
Ukraine on the other hand is extremely relevant, which is why the US is and has been investing billions of dollars in it.
Quoting ssu
Post-invasion in the short-term, yes. In the long-term clearly not since the irreversibility of Ukraine's route to NATO membership is written in its constitution.
Pre-invasion, I'd say Ukraine was on the verge of developing a military that would have been able to withstand the Russian invasion, at which point bilateral agreements would definitely be in the cards.
Quoting jorndoe
That's your view, I guess.
Their 'ultimatum' was surprisingly generous, considering what the western propaganda machines have claimed the Russians' goals in Ukraine were.
The peace deal was all but finished when Boris Johnson flew in to announce Ukraine would not be signing any deals with the Russians.
Funny, that. Imagine having Boris Johnson of all people tell you to continue fighting a war - a political walking corpse and who was obviously sent as an errand boy to take the fall in case things went sour, since his political career was already a train wreck.
What a bad joke this Ukraine debacle is.
I think you should put some more Russian propaganda lines in your post. Someone might not have gotten the message. Perhaps some carricature of Zelensky as the greedy Jew? Or is that not up your alley?
Anyways it's quite hilarious that the people who decided to actually fight for their country are the "crybabies" while the guy waffling on the internet about how their favourite country is the best and most righteous thinks himself a geopolitical genius.
Quoting Tzeentch
It must be very nice living in your head, having all the answers for everything without even needing to bother with evidence or logic. The superior mind simply knows instantly everything that happens.
This might come as a surprise to you, but hand-waving arguments doesn't actually make them disappear, so I guess you'll have to try harder than that. :lol:
What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
I'll deal with an argument when I actually see one.
Showing your ignorance again, Tzeentch.
Well, if Sweden was firmly non-aligned would mean that the situation in the Baltic Sea would be very different and the Baltic states would be in a very precarious situation. And without Sweden joining NATO (or applying to join) likely Finland would not have joined. In that case Putin could have smiled confidently, he would have a breach in EU/NATO and his most crucial waterway to international trade wouldn't be cut if a conflict arises with NATO.
If Sweden would then be similar as Belarus, then the whole situation in Europe would be extremely changed. Likely all other Nordic countries would be non-aligned and not try to have bad relations with Sweden. And Sweden likely with it's advanced military industry would be something that Russia desperately needs. Losing Sweden might turn to losing basically all the Nordic countries in some fashion.
(Swedish modern fighters are flown around the world. Not many countries have the ability to manufacture such aircraft.)
So,
Quoting Nov 26, 2023
Quoting Nov 26, 2023
Sweden isn't and has never been a firmly non-aligned country. It's completely aligned to the West.
The Baltic Sea is NATO-dominated, with or without Sweden.
Sweden is irrelevant, apart from being another useful idiot to wave the NATO flag (aka the flag of American Europe policy).
They, like Finland, don't think with level heads. By joining NATO, the chance of being dragged into a war with Russia doesn't decrease, but increase.
Who here has decided to fight for their country?
You?
As far as I know there are no Ukrainians who have joined this discussion and, if so, none currently fighting for their country.
The crybaby position references non-Ukrainians cheerleading Zelensky from a far without skin in the game and approving of or creating apologetics for NATO's policies that led to the war.
I imagine actual Ukrainians were and are still very well aware that trying to join NATO would be baiting Russia into a war and was a dangerous gambit to play, whether they approved of the policy or not.
The cry baby position expressed in your posts and other "war party" (at least as implied by @ssu) Zelensky proponents that simply ignore the obvious danger of trying to join NATO, based on just complaining about Ukraine being ought to join NATO and likewise ought to be free from Russian influence, and now that the war is happening Ukraine ought to get back all their territory.
Welcome to the real world! What ought to happen is not what necessarily happens and it is a fallacy to tie what ought to be the situation in your ideal world to justifying actions that nominally try to achieve that situation.
It is a cry baby position because it does not take into account that there may simply not be a path that gets you what you want, just a like a baby crying over a broken cookie wanting it to be whole again (because the baby does not understand yet how the world works and what they want is impossible).
In the real world there was almost no way to join NATO without causing the very war joining NATO is meant to avoid (so completely idiotic and a dangerous policy that was motivated not by any credible plan to join NATO but to placate nationalists who are either completely delusional thinking NATO would come and save them or then less delusional but actually wanted to escalate the war with Russia; a wish they recieved). If there was a way (in the real world) to join NATO it wasn't declaring the intention to do it "oh someday, it will be so nice" and then let the tensions build for [I]a quarter of a century[/I] until the war that essentially every Russian or cold-war-policy expert predicted would occur as a result.
In the real world you may simply not have the military capabilities (and NATO unwilling to even attempt to provide them) to reconquer all the lost territories ... in which case trying to do that is just wasting lives, which is exactly what I said would happen months ago about the "great Ukrainian counter offensive".
Others here predicted it would be easy for Ukraine to cut the land bridge.
I predicted not only would it not be easy but Ukraine would not make any progress at all.
At some point, you should lend some credit to the person who makes correct predictions: I predicted offensive actions would not be possible without supplying the heavy weapons NATO kept saying was basically "common sense" they wouldn't and couldn't supply; I predicted Ukraine [i]might[/I] have the offensive capacity to conquer some buffer zones last year (such as the push the Russians back across the river) but that would not indicate they have the offensive capacity to cut the land bridge to Crimea (two very different tasks); I predicted Russian society wouldn't collapse due to sanctions (as history would teach us); Russian partners wouldn't join sanctions (as "the rest of the world" is far closer ideologically to Russia than LGBTQ+ activists, such as Justin "black face" Trudeau, and they need Russian resources and, in particular China, it is an opportunity to attrit NATO): that Ukrainian offensives would have all the same problems as the Russian Northern offensive and burn out (just, you know, a lot more problems as Ukraine does not have much air power, electronic warfare, and a bunch of other capabilities and lacks quantity in capabilities it does have) but that Russia did have a man power problem and had not yet dug in too deep last year so it was at least somewhat possible (but that Russia would simply tactically retreat, inflicting losses that Ukraine could not sustain, so Ukraine would not get very far and they didn't get very far for exactly this reason), whereas this year it is not remotely possible due to both solving the man power issues and building multiple layers of sophisticated defences and minefields and also learning better combined arms integration (of categories of arms that Russia has and Ukraine basically doesn't have).
Why am I able to make these predictions that come true?
Because I concern myself with the real world. And Ukraine's inability to reconquer the lost territories means that a diplomatic resolution to the conflict is the only option they have.
In February-March-April 2022 they had far more leverage (and would have far more armed forced intact to deter future Russian aggression) to get the best deal possible, and ending the conflict then would have avoided mass depopulation (most Ukrainians that left would have returned) and significant economic destruction not to mention the deaths and mutilation of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers that fought for an unattainable military goal of reconquering all the lost territory.
So yeah, just ignoring the actual facts and the actual situation Ukraine is in and simply justifying the choice to repudiate negotiations because "waaaahhhh Ukraine shouldn't have to!!! Ukraine should just be able to join NATO!!! Russia should just leave!!! Putin can't be trusted!!! waaaaahhh", is both exactly the level of logic of a crying baby simply wanting something that the baby can't have and in many cases doesn't even make any sense (such as fighting a war for "the right to join NATO").
It's only circular because at some point you understand that Ukraine is not going to reconquer all the territory (not that that would end the war anyways, as I explained at length at the start of the conflict) and that therefore the only resolution to the conflict is a diplomatic one.
We then discuss the diplomatic and political problem Ukraine has (that it turned down a far better offer at the start of the conflict) which puts sharply into question Zelensky's competence, and, in any case, has the political problem of Ukraine fighting to a far worse negotiating position.
You even have no problem agreeing that Ukraine had more leverage at the start of the conflict than it does now, just quibbling over exactly which day was the maximum leverage attained, but in the context of agreeing that it was higher in the past and is lower now.
This puts into question Zelensky's competence even more, and also the good faith of NATO in encouraging and convincing Ukraine to take this path rather than negotiations.
To make matters even worse, as you note yourself, making negotiation positions public can be a significantly frustrate further negotiations. Although you're wrong about making a negotiation position public never being a good idea (it can be a good idea if your position is reasonable), it definitely can be a bad idea such as Zelensky making promises that can't be kept (reconquering even Crimea) and ridiculous ultimatums to restart negotiations such as he'll negotiate only after Russia leaves all the territory concerned, that he won't talk to Putin and he'll negotiate after Putin is replaced and so on.
Which, again, puts into absolute clarify the incompetence of Zelensky.
Not willing to accept the implications of what you yourself agree to, you retreat into your habitual way of resolving cognitive dissonance in just inventing whatever would be convenient if it was true and stating that as a fact.
So, after debating at length Ukraine's terrible negotiating position and terrible political position for (certainly the existing leaders) to sell a deal to the Ukrainian public ... you simply invent that Ukraine is actually doing well in the war (which would indeed make all Zelensky's choices far better if he can "win on the battlefield") rather than look at the reality:
Ukraine cannot retake the lost territory and that is clear now even to Zelensky and the whole west.
Ukraine cannot win a war of attrition against Russia.
Continuing to fight therefore brings Ukraine further away from any sort of "victory", destroys remaining leverage, and brings Ukrainian military closer to collapse.
Quoting Echarmion
It is not a repeat of last year.
Last year Russia needed to survive sanctions, needed to keep domestic population behind the war, and needed time to mobilize and train hundreds of thousands of additional soldiers, ramp up military production, and so their strategy was to attrit Ukrainian ground forces in the symbol of Bakhmut using mercenaries (which are far less problematic casualties for the home audience) and attritted the Ukrainian air defence system with sustained missile attacks. While attention was on Bakhmut and Zelensky was going around repeating "Bakhmut holds" the Russians also built hundreds of kilometres of sophisticated defences so that Ukraine's strategy of "Bakhmut holds" while NATO trained and equipped brigades for an offensive this year would not succeed and that offensive capacity (that would be useful to have now in a defensive strategy) is mostly destroyed.
This year is very different from last year.
Quoting Echarmion
It is not solid and it is completely delusional to believe that Ukraine could more easily make meaningful gains with the additional logistical problem of crossing the Dnieper than it could where it attacked without needing to cross a river.
This was purely for political purposes and is impossible to sustain in place, much less push towards Crimea. Russia built the same multilayerd defensive lines on this front as elsewhere and it is not some sort of "soft underbelly" of the Russian position.
Makes zero military sense, but if you can only tiny gains then having a tiny bridgehead across the river sounds more impressive than taking a village along the main line of contact, that is more obviously insignificant a change.
Quoting Echarmion
Air defence is not working fine, as Russia can now approach the line of contact close enough to drop glide bombs regularly.
The F16 project could have been a good idea at the very start of the war (if NATO actually wanted Ukraine to have a chance to do something major, such as cut the land bridge) ... but is too little too late now.
Quoting Echarmion
Or the writing is on the wall now, Ukraine clearly can't "win" and "defeat Russia", and that's clear to everyone, so "forcing Ukraine to negotiate" will repaint NATO as the peacemakers, which the Western public will easily swallow. The new narrative will be that Ukraine makes its own choices, and if Ukraine wants to fight then NATO supported that (giving Zuluzney everything he said he needed for his strategy to work), placing massive sanctions on Russia and since fighting didn't work out then peace is just the unfortunate reality.
Quoting Echarmion
Well we agree here.
The opportunity for this is long past.
Unfortunately, the dynamic in place is that Russia has lost too much to give back any territory (they had not lost many troops in taking the territory initially, so could have more easily given it back in March-April 2022), and Ukraine has lost too much to psychologically accept it made the wrong choice in fighting for that failed objective.
Furthermore, the pipelines are blown up and there's no way for the West to normalize economic relations with Russia anyways (Putin is Hitler and a "wanted man" etc.), which was the other major piece of leverage in play in 2022, so there is not really any incentive for Russia to concede anything at all.
The only root to a negotiated settlement is the collapse of the current Ukrainian government and essentially just accepting whatever the Russians want.
Quoting boethius
Another non-shared assumption. You keep reasoning in non-comparative and historically decontextualised ways. “Bad faith” may be a compelling reason for grievance if there is “good faith” and cooperative attitude on one side, but not in the other. If there is bad faith and unwillingness to cooperate on both sides, “bad faith” is no longer a compelling grievance for either side.
One can try to make such grievances more compelling by reasoning in terms of “who started it?”, proportionality and stakes. Minsk agreements weren’t about Russian sovereignty, but about Ukrainian sovereignty. And if a weaker state is aggressed or threatened in its sovereignty by an unprovoked (=unaggressed) hostile stronger state with a history of “bad faith” in agreements [1] and despite the reciprocal acknowledgement of sovereignty, the weaker state has a compelling reason to play deceptively, especially if the alternative is either escalation or surrender.
Hopefully that will help you remember how your “bad faith” accusation looks rather pointless to me.
Quoting boethius
I didn’t state nor suggested nor believe you are “claiming there was never any negotiations”. I claim that you are not interpreting Zelensky’s attitude toward negotiation as a function of past and present circumstances that mould the Ukrainians’ national interest as they understand it. But you have no problem to do it when it’s matter to explain (or justify?) Russian aggression and then blame it completely/mostly/primarily on the US.
Bennett in his often cited interview talks about Zelensky reaching him to mediate with Putin a ceasefire. After the Bucha massacre (while Russian state TV was broadcasting genocidal propaganda against Ukraine), Zelensky was expected to turn down that negotiation as Bennett acknowledged (not surprisingly so from a Israeli representative who knows the political impact of terrorist massacres). Another attempt happened a while later, with the Istanbul Communique (again, out of the Ukrainian initiative), the problem is that, a part of the difficulties to treat the territorial dispute, both Russia and Ukraine seek American security guarantees (which you consider “ornamental” and with “zero meaning”, right prof?) under incompatible conditions. As far as I’ve understood the problem is that Russia wants to be part of the guarantors and this might enable Russia to comfortably sabotage whatever pro-Ukrainian agenda at convenience (as it already happens within the UN), while at this point in history the US intends to turn Russia into a rogue state after its aggression of Ukraine, which includes economic and diplomatic sanctions as long as needed. So whatever negotiation scenario alternative to plain surrender, seems to require foreign security guarantees that do not depend on Zelensky. That’s how diplomatic stalemate becomes likely. And let’s pretend that , in diplomatic parlance, attempts of killing Zelensky are not really the most obvious sign of diplomatic “good faith” or “good will“ from Putin, right?
Announcing ceasefire demands (as the Russia often did) doesn’t prevent any party to keep exploring margins for negotiation through secured diplomatic channels and intermediaries, of course. The point is that after Bucha, repeated failed negotiation attempts, and Zelensky’s refusal to negotiate with Putin by decree still Zelensky’s support among Ukrainians was wide and high up until recently as far as I can tell (https://www.jpost.com/omg/article-751972). So I do not see strong evidence that Zelensky’s attitude toward negotiation goes against Ukrainians’ perceived national interest. Maybe things have changed now.
Quoting boethius
Yes also barter is by definition about exchanging goods without using money. But what if people need money? That’s the point I’m making about the failed negotiation attempts. And I’m questioning the claim that “there was a deal on the table” for the following reason: Russia and Ukraine can agree on whatever ceasefire proposal, but if this proposal requires security guarantees from foreign guarantors, and foreign guarantors are not willing to provide them, then there won’t be a deal.
Quoting boethius
Not all depends on the battlefield situation, the historical circumstances include past experiences and current geopolitical conditions, how all these factors reinforce cultural trends and shape national interest perception over generations. And no politicians can really abstract from them. Their political history depends on the selective pressure of those factors. So, rationality requirements in the domain of politics can’t reasonably ignore the weight of such factors. And to the extent war is politics by other means, one has to take into account the political aims of all prominent involved parties when assessing battlefield outcomes. For example, the strategy of containment adopted by the US against Soviet Union, and still adopted against Russia in some form, doesn’t require the complete defeat of the enemy, because it may not be necessary, desirable, or even possible.
Concerning your other assumptions, I’d counter that politics is primarily about LEADING people, not about pleasing people. Otherwise people could self-govern themselves as they please, right? Another assumption of mine is that politicians can AT BEST pursue national strategic interests (which will concern also future political administrations and generations). And nobody can reasonably expect political leaders to be capable of infallible, risk free or uncontroversial choices, especially in critical times like during war.
Besides many Ukrainians have all-too personal stakes in this war, also thanks to Russian broad and arbitrary massacres (which add up to the past ones). For every Ukrainian soldier or civilian that has been killed or injured in this war of aggression by Russia, there is potentially an entire social network (starting with relatives and friends) which will personally resent the Russians for that and may crave for revenge until they die. And this emotional trauma will likely nurture also future generations.
So I’ll repeat once more my previous argument: [I]Palestinians, Afghans, Kurds fight for their independence and national identity, for generations, no matter if they are the weaker party to a conflict, no matter if they are instrumental to geopolitical moves of other bigger players. BTW how many Russians, soldiers and civilians, were killed during the great patriotic war, prof?
I find COMPLETELY IRRATIONAL to assess human behaviour based on social standards not grounded on realistic assumptions about human behaviour. Humans value social identity and freedom to the point of fighting for them to death, take revenge for it, mistrust enemies for it, and sacrifice their own individual and collective well-being/safety for it, over decades, over generations. Afghans, Kurds, Palestinians, Israeli, Ukrainians, and Russians keep reminding us that however tragic in itself and disturbing to armchair self-entitled nobodies on the internet, this is a very common hardcore driving factor of human behaviour. To what extent that holds for Ukrainians is up to the Ukrainians to tell.[/I] And when Ukrainians will grow tired enough of Zelensky, they may find their ways to get rid of him.
Quoting boethius
Ukraine has its security concerns about Russia and if Europeans can’t offer security guarantees to deter Russia’s aggression and political interference, joining the EU (assuming Russia won’t be able to sabotage it) would NOT compensate the Ukrainian security concerns and at the same time will create additional security hazards for the Europeans. Besides as long as the Europeans need the US for their own security (as much as Ukraine) and prioritise security concerns over economic concerns, the Europeans might still be reluctant to question the American leadership at this point in history. Actually this war may buy Europeans time to re-arm and/or press them to re-shape their security strategy.
Quoting boethius
Your counter-argument fails on two grounds: first, my “appeasing argument” was targeting the strategic choices of the West (the US and its allies) wrt Russia aggression of Ukraine, not Ukraine. Indeed, I don’t even see strong evidence that Western propaganda is about “chastising” Ukraine for not fighting to the last Ukrainian. The appeasement argument is about “chastising” the West for not supporting the Ukrainian patriotic fight enough (I myself would lean that way). Something like:[I] “I believe that we have no other choice than giving Ukraine all they need to be successful in their mission to restore their sovereignty and control on their borders: whatever less will be our failure”[/I] (https://www.corriere.it/esteri/23_novembre_27/petr-pavel-our-uncertainties-hurt-kiev-s-counteroffensive-396fdc30-8c6e-11ee-8ccd-c15b03fea28c.shtml). The problem for the Ukrainians is however that as long as Ukraine badly needs Western assistance to secure its sovereignty against Russian aggression and oppression, then Ukraine can’t discount Western conditions for such assistance (not surprisingly, Zelensky often appealed to the Western audience not with “help us Ukrainians out of humanitarian concerns“ but “help us because we are fighting for your freedom”). Second, I have no idea why you believe the “appeasement argument” can’t hold also for Ukrainians by the same logic that historical precedents exemplify. Satisfying predatory demands is not only a cost but also a big risk for the victims for two obvious reasons: if it works, predatory demands can be escalated (e.g. if a hacker gains control over your private computer and mobile, and manages to block them to ask you a ransom, you may decide to pay the ransom, but the hacker may later decide to ask you some more). Besides, the benefits coming from their predatory activity can be reinvested to perpetuate/widen predatory activities. So even victims can be compelled to not appease their predators and look for alternative coping strategies, depending on the circumstances. From a historical point of view, I’d also contend that the desire for peace within a community depends on how circumstances wear out or boost collective morale to support rebellion and fight against foreign oppression: humans may value peace at the price of enslavement (as it happened to many Africans) or marginalization (as it happened to many native Indians or Australian aboriginals) by foreign nations, but other communities may live in such conditions that polarized indigenous minorities may emerge and lead more or less complacent/passive majorities to support fight at the price of individual and collective well-being/safety for generations (like Palestinians, Afghans, Kurds), no matter if they are the weaker party to a conflict, no matter if they are instrumental to geopolitical moves of other bigger players. And also the Ukrainian fight against the Russians is generational: Ukrainians allied in the past with the Nazis to fight back Soviet Russia, now they are allying with the West to fight Putin’s Russia. So the “appeasement argument” can apply also to weaker states and be motivated by their own perceived strategic interest.
In any case, even if [I]“weaker countries can only strive to suffer as little as possible in navigating the rivalry and clashes of the great powers”[/I] and I don’t know to what extent the Ukrainian morale will hold under external pressure (from Russia and from the West) in the current circumstances, my understanding is still that it’s on the Ukrainians to establish what it means to “strive to suffer as little as possible” and that weaker states are compelled to ally with great powers which they feel enough less oppressive at the price they find tolerable. Not to mention that you just suggested one compelling argument for old-school imperialism: the best chance for weaker states to suffer the least from wars against stronger countries that violate their territorial sovereignty would be to give up on their territorial sovereignty.
Quoting boethius.
I never argued that “Ukraine should do whatever the West wants it to do and is in the interest of the West, with no consideration for Ukraine”. Indeed, you can not quote me claiming this nor saying anything that logically implies this. On the contrary, my understanding is that the political imperative for sovereign states is the pursuit of their national interest, independently from ideology, typology of regime and capabilities (but conditionally on sovereignty claims and acknowledgments). The US should pursue its national interest, Russia should pursue its national interest, Ukraine should pursue its national interest, Israel should pursue its national interest, Iran should pursue its national interest, China should pursue its national interest, Nazi Germany should pursue its national interest, Soviet Union should pursue its national interest, etc. It’s an empirical matter if the national interest of one sovereign state converges or is in conflict with the national interest of another sovereign state. So if “make peace with Russia” is convenient to the Ukrainian national interest, Zelensky has a political imperative to pursue it no matter if the West is against it, obviously. It remains however problematic to establish what goes or should go into Zelensky’s political calculus under given power relations and past experiences, though.
Besides I’m not “assuming ANY peace between Ukraine and Russia would be good for Russia and bad for the West” unless “ANY peace between Ukraine and Russia” equates to surrender to Russian demands (like acknowledgement of annexed territories and no security compensation, which is tantamount to a loss of sovereignty to the Russians). My assumption is that surrender goes against the Ukrainian national interest as it has been understood until now by the Ukrainians themselves. If they changed their mind, that’s their decision to make. Another assumption of mine however is that the West under the American leadership will support Ukraine to avoid surrender for several reasons: reputational costs within the general public (the West abandoned Ukraine, yet another American foreign policy failure, the West lost to Russia, etc.), loss of hegemonic deterrence toward competing world leaders (emboldening competitors like China and anti-American populism, also in the West), so a significantly destabilising blow to the Western world order. And if this is not bad for the West I don’t know what is. But there are other strategic reasons why the US may be compelled to support Ukraine to avoid both surrender and peace (unless that means: Russian complete surrender or, a least, ceasefire agreements compliant with Western world order) and to support freezing the conflict, especially at the prospect of a possible military conflict with China in the next decades. Indeed, weakening Russia through economic and diplomatic sanctions, fixating Russia’s strategic concerns on its Western front instead of engaging in other arenas (like in support of China), cutting economic ties between Europeans and Russia/China (obliging Europeans to look for compensation in the rest of the Rest), and buying time to build up European and Ukrainian military capabilities/readiness may be functional conditions to support American hegemony. It’s also possible that even Trump, if in power, won’t change this trend, not immediately at least. Indeed, the frozen conflict may be exploited as a leverage both against China (e.g. Trump may promise to push for a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine in exchange for Russia breaking its alliance with China or in exchange for Europe feeding more US economy at the expense of China) and/or against Trump’s political enemies (e.g. Trump may threaten to push for a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine if his political enemies in the congress obstruct his policies in other more urgent areas).
[1]
To those who have missed the previous 30 years, here is a short list of the results of negotiations with Russia that it never respected: 1. The Budapest Memorandum of 1994. Russia agreed to “respect independence, sovereignty, and the existing borders of Ukraine” as well as “refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine”. Breached by Russia invading Crimea in 2014. 2. The Russian-Ukrainian Friendship Treaty of 1997. Russia agreed to respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity and “reaffirmed the inviolability of the borders” between the two countries. Russia breached it in 2014. 3. The OSCE Istanbul Summit in 1999. Russia committed to withdrawing its troops from Moldova’s Transdniestrian region and Georgia until the end of 2002. That never happened. 4. The 2008 Georgia ceasefire agreement following Russian aggression against the country. Russia agreed that “Russian military forces must withdraw to the lines prior to the start of hostilities”. That never happened. 5. The Ilovaysk “Green Corridor” in August 2014 and other “humanitarian” death corridors. Russia pledged to let Ukrainian forces leave the encircled town of Ilovaysk in the east of Ukraine, but instead opened fire and killed 366 Ukrainian troops. In the following years, Russia attacked numerous humanitarian corridors in Syria. 6. The “Minsk” agreements of 2014 and 2015. Russia agreed to cease the fire in the east of Ukraine. There had been 200 rounds of talks and 20 attempts to enforce a ceasefire, all of which the Russian side promptly violated. On February 24th, 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. 7. The 2022 Black Sea Grain Initiative. Russia pledged to “provide maximum assurances regarding a safe and secure environment for all vessels engaged in this initiative." It then hindered the initiative's operation for months before withdrawing unilaterally a year later. NB: I am only focused on deals made with Russia to address specific issues and conflicts. I am not mentioning almost 400 international treaties that Russia has breached since 2014. There are no conclusions to be drawn here, except that no one can seriously use the words "Russia" and "negotiations" in the same phrase. Putin is a habitual liar who promised international leaders that he would not attack Ukraine days before his invasion in February 2022. Russia's tactic has remained consistent in its many wars over the last three decades: kill, grab, lie, and deny. Why would anyone genuinely believe that Russia in 2023 is any different from Russia in 1994, 1997, 1999, 2008, 2014, 2015, and 2022?
https://twitter.com/DmytroKuleba/status/1724427557016043668
Quoting boethius
I doubt that Zelensky would politically survive this plot twist in the face of the Ukrainians, his entourage, and his Western allies. Or be fully shielded from sabotage attempts. Besides you seem to give for granted that Zelensky can deflect his political responsibility by supporting the idea that Ukraine has been slow played into a disastrous war. But, unless Zelensky was really a puppet of the US and would now heroically denounce himself as such, maybe Zelensky bears a good deal of responsibility. Indeed, that is what is legitimate to expect from rulers of sovereign countries. Maybe he was abundantly warned behind doors by Western politicians (when politicians can put aside their rhetoric posturing and be more pragmatic) and his entourage (as the evidences of the internal struggle within Zelensky’s administration may suggest) of what risks he would have faced since the beginning of the war and of the potential constraints of the Western support. After all, the Westerners too suggested him to surrender (in the sense of giving up fighting) and flee at the beginning of the war, and after the Russians withdrew from Kherson Zelensky was again suggested by the Westerners to re-consider negotiation from a position of strength. As I suggested earlier maybe the US was just fine with freezing the conflict right there at that moment and Zelensky could have been satisfied just with his resistance against regime change and against demilitarisation, even assuming there was no peace deal and the territorial dispute was still open. This might have been enough to turn Russia into a rogue state and give Ukraine some breath while keeping the Western pressure on Russia. However Zelensky may have been compelled also by being in a unique political and historical position to take a greater risk for a greater reward with a last big push before the next American and Russian elections.
Quoting boethius
And, why did Russia want a deal with the West and not with Zelensky, if for Zelensky “it's a big expense and a big risk to even start the war” (apparently, you really can’t help but sound like pro-Russian propaganda)?
If Russia didn’t have enough leverage to get what it wanted from the West, why are you so convinced that Zelensky had it?
If neoconservatives were bent to make Ukraine fight to the last person, even if irrational, and Zelensky is an idiot put there by the neoconservatives to play their script, why are you conjecturing that things could have gone otherwise?
Why would the leverage for Zelensky against the Europeans be bigger at the beginning of the war when Europeans didn’t experience economic fatigue than after the Europeans experienced economic fatigue for almost 2 years?
Why would Zelensky have more leverage with Europeans than with Russians at the beginning of the war? He could have exchanged Crimea and Donbas for economic compensations to Russia (or just for survival given Russian attempts to kill him) and turn into a Russian puppet right away, while sparing Putin all the fuss.
Why would any involved party trust other involved parties in this ornamental agreement with zero meaning given the historical penchant for “bad faith” on all sides?
If neoconservatives are such an evil specimen that loves to violently subjugate and exploit the rest of the world, how come that the neocoservatives’ support for post-Cold War globalization in the last decades boosted Russia (and China)’s economic-military-political growth and power projection outside their borders far more than the American “provocations” weakened their offensive power?
If neoconservatives are such an evil specimen that loves to violently subjugate and exploit the rest of the world, why do you think that the US would let the Europeans normalise their relations with Russia over a peace deal with Ukraine?
BTW can you teach me what about Zelensky’s ten points for peace negotiations in November ’22 was rational to give up (https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/what-is-zelenskiys-10-point-peace-plan-2022-12-28/)? They also mention Russian war crimes among the negotiable points, as you suggested.
Again, your entire reasoning is grounded on a load of non-shared and historically decontextualised assumptions, which I even hardly find consistent as such. Apparently, history and geopolitics and national strategic interest is good to explain (justify?) Putin’s aggression of Ukraine and blame the US meddling in Russia’s backyard, but it is not good to explain (justify?) Zelensky’s, Biden’s, Europeans’ approach toward Putin.
What is so self-defeating in your all-knowing man-of-honour pedagogic stunt is that you can not use one single bit of your own impeccable definitions or military, economic, and moral omniscience to fix YOURSELF any of the rational failures, idiocy, evilness you are complaining about. You can at best whine over the internet along with your sidekicks wishing that this would do the fixing by others some day, as any random anonymous self-proclaimed man-of-honour from the internet would do, of course.
Quoting boethius
I’ve been reasoning in geopolitical terms, so I meant a strategic alliance with the West, obviously.
I never argued in support of “fight a long and costly war to join the alliance of which the purpose would be ... deter said long and costly war”. Indeed, you can not quote me saying it nor saying anything that logically implies this.
The political objectives, as I understand them, could have been more maximalist (e.g. resist regime change and demilitarisation, regaining territorial integrity, join EU/NATO, overthrow Putin) or more minimalist (e.g. resist regime change and demilitarisation, and then weaken Russia through other means as a rogue state). If Zelensky might likely have felt compelled to be maximalist, the US might likely have felt more compelled to be minimalist. For the US even having Zelensky escape from Ukraine, might have been enough to try to turn Russia into a rogue state: SO FAR, the US has definitely got more than it prospected at the beginning of the war. Zelensky got less than what he hoped. But not a total defeat either so he can’t now just surrender without compromising what has been able to achieve so far. From a strategic point of view, things shouldn’t look as bad as you wish to depict them even from the Ukrainian point of view. BTW even if there was no major land breakthrough in the last push, yet the successful attacks against the Black Sea Fleet may be of particular significance also for a future ceasefire negotiation. What contributed to magnify this sense of failure is arguably the Ukrainian propaganda itself which (MAYBE unnecessarily) created a hazardous hype over something that was very difficult, if not most certainly unlikely to succeed, given the inadequate/slow military support from the West.
Quoting boethius
I doubt it would be reasonable even for the Great Satan: if all Ukrainians got killed, there would be no resistance left against the Russians, if there are any left. So the Great Satan may want Ukrainians to spare human and material forces to continue fighting, as needed.
Quoting boethius
Again, a non-shared assumption. “Whatever it takes" and "as long as it takes" is propaganda but what you wish to infer from that depends very much on how you understand propaganda. As far as I’m concerned propaganda is a political tool as much as diplomacy, war and economic sanctions. Political propaganda’s purpose is not primarily to inform but to politically mobilise people. So the information may be presented not to maximise understanding but to maximise a politically desired reaction. However propaganda has: 1. its costs, like any other political tool, including reputational costs; 2. its targets, political propaganda for the general audience is not for politicians (they have all sorts of informal and formal secured channels to communicate more PRAGMATICALLY, they are expected to be the experts of political propaganda not be fooled by it) but they send a signal to the politicians on what narrative they intend to push to gain support, typically from their fan base (but non exclusively) 3. its constraints and side-effects, fore example I find most certainly reasonable to assess propaganda within the context of other actual/potential rival propaganda (that BTW can come from internal and external political rivals). It’s in the interest of any politician to have or pretend to have rivals overstretching with their propaganda beyond sustainability to then spin the counter-propaganda against failed promises by calling them “propaganda” and “manipulative lies”.
From this perspective, propaganda is simply part of the game. For any propaganda from one political administration there is a counter-propaganda from national competitors and foreign administrations. Any propaganda is expected to stress the flaws of one policy or highlight the benefits of alternative policies, to even claim merits for others’ deeds and blame others for one’s own faults, to present one’s own representatives and choices as rational and noble while opponents as evil or stupid. So having people denouncing propaganda and others’’ “manipulative lies” as you do is not rationally compelling in an environment where everybody is and is expected to spin their own propaganda. Indeed, it proves just how committed you are in spinning pro-Russian propaganda in this forum. The only point I can agree with is that the US will likely pay reputational costs by giving up on supporting Ukraine now and/or in the future (I guess significantly bigger than the ones paid for the war in Iraq and Afghanistan). That’s why I find it unlikely that the US will give up on supporting Ukraine, just they will support Ukraine on their own terms. We will see how things will change if Trump wins.
Quoting boethius
To me that’s not enough to assess if this lack of transparency goes against the American or the Ukrainian national interest. Since we are talking about lack of transparency one can conjecture cases were lack of transparency may still serve national interest: e.g. if part of the Ukrainian elite was running on Russian bribing, maybe bribing them back is convenient, if the money and weaponry supply is not traced maybe it’s to protect the network of local informants and dormant Ukrainian insurgents, offering both plausible deniability against Russian complaints or even curbing Ukrainian demands, and protect politicians of the current administration from future counter-investigation by internal political enemies who may compromise national interest. The lack of transparency can also backfire, of course: Russia could steal and indirectly pass to Hamas American weaponry supplied to Ukraine, to let the Western “useful idiots” exploit this to conveniently spin pro-Russian counter-propaganda. Not to mention that all wars have their nasty collateral (not only killing civilians).
Quoting boethius
If we are talking about national strategic interest, my understanding is that its identitarian nature makes it inherently NOT universal. Yet that doesn’t exclude possible similarities or margins for convergence with the national interest of other countries. Then we can try to assess national interest as what is desirable wrt what can be done in a similar way as computer scientists assess algorithms, namely efficacy and efficiency. The problem is that algorithms are comparable on objectives that are defined to be computable from the same sets of conditions in a finite number of steps, but from a historical perspective objectives may evolve endlessly, generation after generation, and there are no same sets of conditions. One can try to reason by historical analogy: e.g. how long did it take, how much did it cost, how successfully was it for the jews to strive and fight for their own sovereign state generation after generation? Or, how long did it take, how much did it cost, how successfully was it for the Palestinians to strive and fight for their own sovereign state generation after generation? Ukrainians may be in an analogous situation. Is it worth it? Hard to tell and it’s ultimately not on us to tell because costs and risks are primarily on their skin, future prospects remain uncertain in the long term and national interest is inherently national matter.
One might however argue that, IN THE SHORTEST TERM, a containment approach instead of a maximalist approach may be less rewarding but also less costly and more likely to succeed.
Quoting boethius
To begin with, let’s clarify once again what I’m questioning. Here your quote [1]. You are inferring from Sen. Graham’s quoted statements the belief that “the US does not view Ukraine's choice as a rational one”. That is twice a manipulative interpretation of Sen. Graham’s quoted statements. Why? Since your inference is not a valid logic deduction from Sen. Graham’s quoted statements (“rational” doesn’t even figure in Sen. Graham’s quoted statements), you need some additional implicit assumptions concerning Sen. Graham’s understanding and application of the “rationality” claim to the Ukrainian case the way you do to make the inference logically valid: something like “fight to the last person” is irrational OR “fight to the last person” is irrational if a military victory is most certainly unattainable OR “fight to the last person” is irrational if a military victory is most certainly unattainable and military victory equates to regaining complete territorial integrity. But all such assumptions look pretty spurious to me. Indeed, Sen. Graham’s words make sense even without a specific “theory of victory” or chances of success you wish to question (which terms are not mentioned in the quoted statements). Sen. Graham (who also has a military background) is plausibly reasoning over necessary requirements to enable Ukrainians to military fight Russians: morale (“fighting to the last person” as upper limit of morale) and means (out of the military aid the West is capable to provide). And the former may be critically conditional on the latter.
Besides, the spirit of Graham’s rhetoric is that the Ukrainian willingness to fight to the last person (which is taken as a given not as something that needs foreign moral encouragement or chastising) is expression of admirable patriotism and freedom against the Russian oppression (denounced as a terrorist state) perfectly in line with American Republican values. Indeed, Ukrainians resisting the invasion reminded him of [I]"our better selves in America. There was a time in America that we were this way, fighting to the last person, we were going to be free or die."[/i] https://www.reuters.com/world/russia-condemns-us-senator-grahams-comments-death-russians-2023-05-28/
Graham’s propaganda is obviously meant to boost military support for Ukraine by using Republican style rhetoric, with the likely understatement to his wider audience that Americans won’t do nor need to get directly involved in the Ukrainian war to beat Russians’ ass. Sure, it’s still a hawkish approach. But from a national interest perspective there is nothing intrinsically bad in being hawkish.
Your manipulation has two rhetoric intents: discrediting the Ukrainians (as irrational and fanatics) and the Americans (as exploitative). This is how Sen. Graham’s political slogans turn into an evident confession of exploitation by the Americans at the expense of the irrational Ukrainians in your pro-Russian counter-propaganda.
[1]
Quoting boethius
Perhaps too clearly stating your "pro-Russia party" credentials there, tovarich!
Yeah, why didn't my country and my grandparents generation accept the wisdom of not fighting back in WW2 and essentially just accept whatever the Russians want?
Oh yes, they were cry-babies. :grin:
A fairly transparent fig-leaf, since you ascribe the same argumentation to Zelensky and the rest of the Ukrainian leadership.
Quoting boethius
You seem to be vastly overvaluing the novelty of your predictions. "You need heavy weapons to prevail in a high intensity conflict" and "breaking through a prepared, tiered defense will be difficult" is not exactly ground breaking stuff. Such analysis was widely available for anyone who cares to look.
I would give you credit for looking if it wasn't painfully obvious you're simply repeating whatever the current Kremlin propaganda is, and your correct predictions are an incidental result of russian success.
Quoting boethius
In which case you would be wrong, but again incidental to you simply repeating the Kremlin line.
Quoting boethius
Yes, Ukraine won't be able to conquer Moscow and force a peace. In case you think this is somehow some big revelation.
Quoting boethius
I reject this claim as fundamentally unlikely and not supported by available evidence.
Quoting boethius
This is irreconcilable with facts on the ground, namely that Ukraine controls far more territory and has a much smaller disadvantage in Artillery and Armor as well as the West collectively having far greater economic reserves.
Quoting boethius
This is a distortion, you're substituting "at the start" for "at some point during the last year".
Quoting boethius
That's not a claim I have made.
Quoting boethius
I'm not willing to accept your version of what I say. That's not cognitive dissonance, that's just a result of you lying about and distorting what is said.
Quoting boethius
In relative terms. They have managed a number of surprising feats.
Quoting boethius
It is my estimation that, in strategic terms, the war is already a net loss to Russia, so if we look at the status quo we're looking at an operational defeat for Ukraine insofar as the objective of reconquering all territory is concerned, but a strategic victory insofar as Ukraine has retained an independent government in Kiev and continues to posses the ability to contest the battlefield against the best troops Russia has to offer.
Quoting boethius
Russia cannot currently replace it's losses in heavy weaponry which, as you so astutely pointed out, is necessary to pierce heavy defenses unless you're willing to take massive casualties.
Therefore Russia is also loosing leverage with every tank or artillery piece destroyed. Taking Avdivka will no more end the war than taking Tokmak would have.
Quoting boethius
It still needs to do all these things.
Quoting boethius
That's just baseless russian propaganda again.
Quoting boethius
You still apparently do not realise how glide bombs work.
Quoting boethius
That was always the way to peace from the russian perspective. The idea that Russia would have easily given up the gains it made, or that it clearly assumed it could make, out of the goodness of their hearts is simply not credible.
The amount of resources and political capital Russia had already funneled into this project before the invasion even began would make such a solution a death sentence for Putin, both politically and likely in the most direct sense, too.
Well, point out the other roots to a negotiated settlement then.
I've also explained several times that the war can also simply go on.
As @Tzeentch and I have explained numerous times, Russia likely does not want to conquer all of Ukraine and would not have the resources to occupy it anyways.
So, even if Ukrainian front lines collapsed (which there are many signs of that about to happen), that would not be a military end to the war, the Russians would move forward but the war would still be on.
If Zelensky can stay in power, post-pone elections further (also called dictatorship), squash any dissent, then it's unlikely the Russians would conquer all of Ukraine anyways, and just holding on to power at the costs of sending even children and women to the front and even if Russia just takes more and more territory (that could be avoided by negotiation) is the best career move for Zelensky and other Ukrainian elites—as long as the West keeps paying for the show to go on then there's literally a money laundering bonanza and it's possible to make a lot of money (called being rational in modern economics) if the war can be transitioned to not even really pretending to compete with the Russians but the country called Ukraine is still there anyways.
If Zelensky can't hold on to power and the Ukrainian government collapses, I guess it's possible the new leadership would want to "fight the war harder" but my guess is that they'd want to just go and accept whatever is necessary to end the war and then try to pick up the pieces.
However, so much money rides on the war continuing and the nationalists seem to have tight control and they know Zelensky is needed to get the money.
The West could stop sending the required money; unclear to me how Zelensky would stay in power, but that doesn't mean the government collapses; the nationalists could take control and continue the war by whatever means they find and would be unlikely to negotiate.
So lot's can happen that isn't a negotiated settlement.
But please, if it's pro-Russian to point out that neither side is willing to compromise (enough needed to get the other side to agree to a peace deal), then explain some realistic compromise that could end the war tomorrow.
Do you have a different pathway to a negotiated settlement that doesn't involve the collapse of the Ukrainian government? And for clarity we're talking about around now, not in a decade.
Quoting ssu
Again, a pointless straw man. My position is that fighting back is useful in this sort of situation, to arrest the initial invasion and then use the leverage of potential further fighting (even potential further irrational fighting) to negotiate a peace.
Finland continuously negotiates with the Soviets to find a compromise and the end result is agreeing to cede over 20% of Finnish territory to the Soviets and pay the Soviets for the cost to the Soviets of invading Finland: the exact opposite logic compared to what is proposed here, the Western media and Western social media generally speaking.
The Finnish leaders do not walk away from the negotiation table (negotiation is near continuous through the whole conflict), do not publicly vow to reclaim all the lost territory and make that the only acceptable standard, do not publicly call Stalin evil and demand the world get rid of him, and do not make laughably stupid conditions for negotiation such as the Soviets much remove all their forces from Finnish territory first, then a negotiation can happen.
The analogy to Finland simply illustrates all the terrible decisions Zelensky makes and why they aren't realistic and a tough situation requires tough choices, which the Finns make in order to end the war, save lives, and preserve as much territory as they practically can given unfavourable circumstances.
The Finns follow common sense pragmatic realism of what is attainable.
Furthermore, the Finnish geography lends itself to one particular point that is easier for a smaller force to defend itself against a larger force, the Mannerheim Line, and so they fall back to where the defender has the advantage rather than vow to fight for every inch.
Quoting ssu
Again, no one here as far as I know is Ukrainian and currently fighting.
The cost of the war is immense in terms of lives lost or mutilated or traumatized or upended, having no justification for the fighting more sophisticated than "waaaah, Putin!" is just cry baby logic.
We discussed at length at the start of the war and both agreed that based on the information available that Ukraine had essentially no prospects of retaking the territory and winning in military terms.
From this agreed position, I concluded that Ukraine should use the leverage (that includes even the small chance it had in 2022 of routing the Russian forces, before Russia mobilized significantly more troops) to negotiate a peace, that would require compromise, which the Russian proposal seemed to adequate and preferable to more war with extremely poor prospects.
You conclude that maybe Ukrainian generals know something we don't and will bring out some total surprise. Presumably then, if Ukrainian generals did not in fact know something we don't, which seems to be the case, then it would follow from your position back then that deciding to fight was not a good decision. You did agree once upon a time that military objectives should be feasible to accomplish and lives not wasted for essentially fantastical wishful thinking.
Deputy Minister of Justice Irina Mudra: If Russia thinks that it will sign a settlement agreement without reparations - will not sign. Ukraine will never go for it
[sup]— Tatiana Bodnia · Censor.NET · Nov 24, 2023[/sup]
Go for it. (I don't think the Kremlin has insurance coverage, it'll be out of pocket. :D)
The recent move of sending scores of asylum seekers (on bicycles) to border posts (in the snow), Russia ? Finland, isn't new. Maybe the Kremlin is testing humanitarian responses, maybe attempting to plant agents, maybe exporting "undesirables", ... In case of anything that can be perceived as a negative reaction, it's "anti-humanitarian", "look, bad evil government", "Nazistas", ... Old story, cumulative trust-erosion, mala fide. Another Kremlin character problem, ?
Something analogous has happened further south, Russia ? Ukraine, for some time, except on a larger scale, and with given military-political objectives. Maybe Girkin admitting so was another reason for him falling out of favor with the Kremlin (resembling how the Cosa Nostra works).
Russian propagandists have created a nice picture. This is what the current routes from St. Petersburg to Helsinki look like. (Anton Gerashchenko · Nov 26, 2023)
[tweet]https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1728746037680988662[/tweet]
Lol. Funny video, made it quite clear what they want.
It's the typical mischief Russia will do. We are used to it, they do it all the time. A Great Power has to flex it's muscles and put in line, right? :smile:
You see, we "crybabies" start our relations with other countries with following international treaties and so on. But for Russia anything there is in foreign is up to be something that one can pressure with. So it can be asylum seekers, trucks even custody battles between parents.
The best thing is that now in NATO people can talk about Russia openly. Basically the Cold War Finlandization ended when Russia attack Ukraine last year. It was a real political and cultural transformation.
So you go from countering the cry-baby argument with the fact tough guys with tattoos are on the front lines, to countering my pointing out that the average Ukrainian soldier I very much doubt use the same logic ... to bringing up the fact Zelensky uses the cry baby logic.
Extremely poor rebuttal.
First, is Zelensky fighting on the front line with real skin in the game?
No, Zelensky doesn't even fit the mythological tough guy Ukrainian Azov-type soldier valiantly fighting to defend the motherland
More importantly, Zelensky's primary role is selling the West on the war, so it's no surprise what he sells the West is what the West is buying.
To the extent ordinary Ukrainians also use cry-baby logic of directly connecting complaints about the world to actions that do not realistically have a chance to resolve those complaints, I have not problem calling cry-babies as well.
Even more important, Zelensky is in a position to lie to the Ukrainian people, and, indeed, when he does it's immediately justified here and elsewhere as necessary propaganda for both Ukrainian and Western moral purposes.
So if Ukrainians did think the effort was realistic, well they may think that because they were lied to and all critical media was banned and they risk also being extra-judicially executed if they don't seem loyal enough to the cause (such as the Ukrainian negotiator that was summarily executed without trial and without any evidence ever being presented).
We outside Ukraine do not have such an excuse.
Now, insofar as any Ukrainian does make the same cry-baby arguments, which perhaps some do, I have zero problem calling them likewise cry-babies, no matter how many tats, wounds, cigars and eye-patches they maybe sporting.
Most importantly, however, Zelensky is being paid handsomely for his services of shepherding Ukrainians youth, and old, to the front lines. His best friends just bought 75 million worth of yachts for example, to add to his collection of European and African property.
So, you can't call someone a cry-baby if they are making bank with their disingenuous rhetoric. That's called being an economically rational agent; even tougher than the toughest Azov storm trooper, to launder money during a war while sending hundreds of thousands of your fellow citizens to their trauma, mutilation and death. You honestly need to be as hard as what neutron stars are made of, which is the exact opposite of being a cry baby.
The label is only appropriate to people, whether Ukrainian or not, who genuinely believe you can jump straight from a complaint about the world directly to whatever action seems to emotionally satisfy that complain.
For example, jumping straight from "waaahhhh, Russia invaded Ukraine" to the conclusion that directly emotionally satisfies that complaint, which is someone (else) should go kill Russians then!!
I get it, the invasion rouses anger and promoting Ukrainian fighting back without thinking things through satiates that anger. Indeed, the less thought that goes into the more the anger is satiated. The guy who gets angry and immediately throws over a table and hits his girl friend in the face is far more emotionally satiated in the moment than the guy who contemplates life, the table, the girl friend, where all this is going and what everything means, moral duties and the divine light, for a few days and then throws over the table and hits his girl friend in the face ... or, you know, doesn't do that because he's thought it through and although it would satiate his anger it would not serve his soul.
The same with the war. Rebuking those that want to think things through, such as my question in March 2022 to pro-Zelenskyites on this very forum of how exactly do they think they can win which just got cry-baby responses of "they're defending their homeland!!" and "they want to fight!" etc., satiates a deep anger, and I get it, but the consequences of not thinking through decisions in a war are far higher than the tough Azov Ukrainian soldier guy taking his anger out on his table and girl friend when he gets back from the front; anger that is certainly legitimate in itself if many of his comrades are now dead.
However, what is even worse than the above, is not only jumping from a dissatisfaction about the world directly to supporting the actions that most directly address that emotion (though not actually going yourself, just satisfied others are forced to do so) is then jumping again without thought or justification from that first jump to an entirely new leap to Europe and NATO should supply weapons indefinitely (although not too much, though not too little!! ... but just the right amount that they lose anyways).
I say ... hol'up, let's think this through, ask in March 2022 if anyone even has any idea how Ukraine could "win", whatever definition is proposed for that, since if they can't win then clearly that needs to inform decisions about the war. Simply doesn't matter how much people complain, people whine, people hate on Putin and try to cancel him like some YouTuber that says things the establishment doesn't like, if Ukraine can't win then supporting the attempt will get many, many, many Ukrainians killed for nothing. If they can't win then their only realistic option is to use the leverage that they could fight to the end, no matter irrationally, but they are also willing to strike a compromise to avoid that.
If they can't win, then Europe and NATO should (if they care about Ukrainian lives) support a feasible negotiation strategy, which can certainly involve sending arms to support the negotiation process, but would also entail things like talking to Russia (like the West talks to Hamas, because they care about Israel and a deal may at some point be what Israel needs, once they too have satiated their anger they can appreciate cooler heads did the diplomatic work for them), but more importantly using their economic leverage to apply additional pressure on Russia to make more concessions in a peace settlement.
Now, you seem to have turned not-thinking-things-through into what you seem to believe is some clever art form.
It's neither clever nor moral. Sit down and think of everyone who has suffered and died in this war and really contemplate the very real possibility that Ukraine cannot win in the war it was insisting it could, and then review again in your mind Zelensky's choice to repudiate negotiations, make them more difficult to restart according to your own explanation of "making positions in serious negotiations public is a bad idea".
People here could have proposed a way Ukraine could "win" on the battlefield; no one could, yet Zelensky proponents would insist supporting the war was the right thing to do and Ukrainians being prevented from leaving Ukraine is simply "common sense", that of course critical media must be banned, opposition political parties banned, and so on etc.
I simply ask the question of how Ukraine can even potentially win, and the only response I get is this cry-baby logic that reality doesn't matter, thinking things through doesn't matter, how many people will die in these military campaigns don't matter, consequences to Ukraine's population and economy doesn't matter, nor consequences on the world food supply, potentially escalating to WWIII, feeling nuclear proliferation etc. all doesn't matter.
All these questions didn't matter before 2022 when only "ethnic Russians" were dying in the Donbas and Russia would inevitably invade, and none of the questions matter while people see this disaster unfold, as long as they can compress and contain all their emotions into "waaahhhh Putin".
And as for regular Ukrainians, this simplistic model that they are all just valiantly rushing to the front to defend Ukraine! and happy to lay down their lives on principle, is completely stupid. Most Ukrainians fighting are forced into service, so they are not volunteers and if criticizing the war was not a crime that can additionally get you killed in Ukraine, we may hear more diverse views from Ukraine on whether it was a good idea to refuse the Russian's offer and whether it always made perfect sense to them to fight for "the right to join NATO" and other simplistic thought terminating clichés.
Which to remind everyone are:
Quoting Thought-terminating cliché
"Fighting for the right to join NATO" manages to an even stupider thought-terminating cliché as "support the troops".
A false claim invented by russian propaganda. You're staying current on that front I see.
Quoting boethius
You not listening isn't the same as there not being an argument. You don't care to entertain any notion that goes against your fixed assumptions, but that is your problem.
Your incessant repetition of how it's impossible for Ukraine to win is not getting any more convincing, especially since you're still unable to even conceive of Ukrainian geopolitical interests.
Quoting boethius
Which only proves that you're unable to have an intellectually honest discussion.
Quoting The Guardian
Zelensky getting caught laundering money is nothing new, are you calling this Guardian article, the Pandora Papers and ICIJ Russian propaganda?
For me, if you get caught having offshore accounts while accusing your political opponents of the practice, as explained by The Guardian:
Quoting The Guardian
As with the Nazi's in Ukraine, there is plenty of reporting by Wester media outlets on Zelensky's corrupt practices ... which at that time no one had gotten the memo that he was a war hero and untouchable.
But if you are claiming The Guardian article is also Russian propaganda then I'll at least concede your position is coherent. Otherwise why would we assume new allegations of the same is Russian propaganda? Simply because Zelensky created that incredible weakness before the war ... but is totally clean now, you swear it?
Quoting Echarmion
If everything hinges on Ukraine winning, then I agree that we'll just get back to this point.
But then at least concede that if Ukraine doesn't win, and turns out that was obvious, and turns out the West didn't even make an attempt to provide the weapons that would be needed to have a chance, that my arguments do follow from such a state of affairs.
We can wait and see if you prefer.
Quoting Echarmion
Honesty would be taking into account more Ukrainians fighting do not do so voluntarily than volunteer, as well as essentially the entire male population being unable to leave Ukraine, and therefore the "Ukrainian soldiers' will to fight" is not an argument as it is not willing for most cases.
I guess I can re-repeat. Nah, Ukraine still isn't ruled by a Nazi regime; those claims are straight from the Kremlin's propaganda machine (don't echo them). (Also Apr 25, 2022 - Dec 20, 2022 - Aug 2, 2023.) There have been quality elections in Ukraine since 2014. Ukraine has made some progress towards fulfilling the EU's requirements. That's progress, where we've seen Russian regress instead, it's been set out in some detail throughout the thread (you may blame the Kremlin). Progress good, regress bad. Kyiv said "No" as did the UN.
That being said, you might argue that Ukraine should stop, make concessions, hope for the best.
Quoting Nov 26, 2023
Quoting Nov 26, 2023
Oh he will echo them.
How else would we be on page 535 here?
Money laundering? Perhaps you should look at a dictionary first. You're parroting propaganda to the point of embarrassment.
Quoting boethius
Another strawman.
Quoting boethius
Claims need to be supported by evidence.
Quoting boethius
And do you have evidence for this or are you once again simply making up stuff as you go along?
Quoting boethius
Again, no evidence and also bad logic.
Quoting Vaskane
A fair assessment, but some effort to expose the dishonesty and propaganda seems warranted.
It's plain false (which has been pointed out already), so it's a bit puzzling. Oh well. Alternate world type stuff.
The Kremlin circle has tried who-knows-what, including attempting to sow hostility between Poland and Ukraine - Aug 2, 2023 - Sep 22, 2023.
Going over the records renders a fascinating picture ("cumulative trust-erosion, mala fide").
What dishonesty and propaganda are you talking about?
People like Mearsheimer and Sachs are dishonest or Kremlin propagandists to you?
As should be clear from the context, I'm talking about @boethius filling their posts with lines from russian propaganda and making factual claims that are - at best - dead reckoning.
I think Mearsheimer's views have been discussed. His 2014 analysis seemed fine to me, if narrowly concerned only with the US' geopolitical interests as he sees it. His more recent statements seem much less reasonable.
If we're talking about Jeffrey Sachs then yes, he seems to have turned himself into a propagandist, though perhaps this is incidental to some other conviction he holds.
Seymour Hersh - a propagandist too I assume?
Noam Chomsky - a propagandist, obviously.
Ray McGovern - propagandist.
etc. etc.
Nevermind the track record of these folks. Winning Pulitzer prices, being invited at the UN to speak, etc. That's just the typical stuff propagandists do. :nerd:
Of the people you mentioned, only Hersh and Sachs can be considered "sources". The rest are analysts. As such we can consider their arguments, but these should stand on their own.
As for Sachs credibility as a source, all he offers is his own hearsay, which cannot be corroborated any further. As such all that can be done is look at his record, which isn't great. His activity in recent years was notably focused on defending China and Russia.
Hersh I'm willing to give a lot more credit. But Hersh also offers relatively little of substance. He claims that the US destroyed the Nord Stream Pipelines. His evidence there doesn't seem very good, but I don't discount the possibility.
He claims Ukraine's counteroffensive was a disastrous failure that thoroughly demoralised the army. Again plausible, given the evidence we have, though perhaps hyperbolic. He concludes from this that the war is over and Putin has won. These conclusions, as far as I can tell, are his personal opinion that seems rather fanciful.
That the war should be over after just a single failed Ukrainian campaign seems very unlikely given historical evidence and the size of Ukraine and it's military. And that the status quo, even if we imagine it becoming permanent, resembles anything like a russian victory, is begging the question of just what victory is supposed to mean. Is taking territory the sole defining factor here?
Anyways Hersh has lately been in the habit of doubling down when questioned. A common enough trait of old men with some claim to fame. They're not always wrong in this, but also not always right.
Exactly. Especially the nazi stuff.
They're already under some impressive censorship/filtering/control/suppression; perhaps they can rile them up or scare them. They've tossed the "Nazi" word around some, not just regarding Ukraine.
Quoting ssu
Quoting jorndoe
This is called "echoing" each other without making any argument of any kind, nor contending with the evidence that supports the claim you complain about ... all of which comes from the Western media:
As I posted when this subject first came up, posted March 21st, 2022.
Please, watch the videos and then explain how "there are no Nazi's in Ukraine" ... or "if they are they aren't a problem" or "well, maybe they are a problem, but not a big problem" or "they were Nazi!! but since rebranded" or my favourite (aired by the BBC no less) "yes, they are 'extreme nationalists' but they are good fighters".
Quoting boethius
But ... the president is Jewish and is allied with these forces, who don't even hate Jews all that much! So obviously you can have Nazi's if their friendly Nazi's (to your side).
This one's just adorable.
[/quote]
If I remember correctly, the main counter argument was that "there are Nazi's everywhere" ... I ask from where else is there similar evidence of so many Nazi's causing such big problems ... nada.
Then it was "ok, there are Nazi's, maybe more than elsewhere, but there aren't 'enough' Nazi's to justify an invasion".
To which my simply question "well, how many Nazi's would be too many Nazi's with too much power and influence that would justify an invasion to denazify said Nazis?"
Is never answered, but I'm simply labeled a pro-Putinist for simply asking the question. It should be simple to follow up an argument that contains the word "not enough" to explain what "not-enough" means. It's not my argument.
Now, for people who want to live in the real world, rather than the entirely fake world created by the mainstream media to comfort the mendacious, why are the Nazi's in Ukraine an obvious problem:
First, that there are Nazi's in Ukraine and they were the primary force fighting the separatists is a problem because they are out of control and want more war and more fighting. So if you do have some negotiation process to try to end the war anytime between 2014 and 2022, the Nazi's aren't going to like that, and if they have plenty of weapons (courtesy of the West) they can use violence to get their way. Paramilitary groups with a fanatical ideology are simply a problem to legitimate political process.
Second, even assuming one of the cry-babies present takes the courage to explain how we'd evaluate "not enough Nazis" to make the distinction with "enough Nazis", the Nazis are clearly visible enough, and documented well by our own Western media (no one got the memo back then that the sun shined out of these Nazis asses) that these Nazis and these clear reports about the Nazis are not going to go down well with Russians. Russians aren't going to split hairs over whether an obvious Nazi symbol is actually "a Nordic rune!" and the association with Naziism in a group that also has Swastikas tats as well, is just coincidence! Russians will obviously be pissed, and so tolerating these Nazi groups and arming them (as the reporting above demonstrates without ambiguity) provides an amazing casus belli for a Russian invasion and strong motivations to fight. Why this matters is not only did Western policy contribute to reasons for the war and contribute to forces that frustrate any peace process, but the motivation is an easy one for any Russian.
Rewriting history after the war begins to conveniently memory hole or rebrand the Nazis leads directly to underestimating, to use NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg word, the Russian motivation to fight.
It's only in the made-up world of Western media that it made any sense at all to go around saying that the "Russian soldiers don't know why they are fighting" and are unmotivated and have low morale and they'll just completely collapse.
Anyone who knows anything about Russian history and then considers this situation where literal Nazis, both proud and openly advocating the destruction of Russia, are shelling ethnic-Russian civilians in the Donbas for 8 years, would not conclude that the Russians would be unmotivated to teach these Nazis a lesson in proper estimation of an opponents strength.
The Nazis were a significant problem and a major contribution to the war, major obstacle to any peace process, and essential to understanding many aspects of the war, such as focus on Mariupol for the Russians at the start of the war.
And the Nazis are causing similar problems to this day.
They may very well be a small percentage of Ukrainian society (who voted twice overwhelmingly for the candidate who promised to bring peace; Zelensky even promised to go on his knees to Moscow to get peace), but when a small group of fanatics get a bunch of arms, NATO training, and key positions in government, the skies the limit (except if your airforce was blown up).
Now, feel free or or or to actually go through the above videos and explain why the Nazis in those videos aren't a problem.
If the straight up denialism is immediately dropped (as the other times we've gotten to the exact same deniliasm and I repost the exact same evidence) and the argument is once again "ok, there are some Nazis, concerning stuff, but not enough Nazis!!"
Well, again, what would be enough?
It's a simple question, and it's not my theory that there aren't "enough Nazis" to justify an invasion. I'm just asking the question and pointing out that letting the Nazis in Ukraine grow in power to the point they are a problem has a word for it ... a word we keep hearing from Western media ... what was it ... ah yes, "appeasement".
But go ahead, explain this political theory that establishes the bar of "enough Nazis" and explain why we aren't there yet.
When you transfer an asset into someone else's name to act as a front man in order to avoid legal scrutiny (for example because you're about to be the President of a country), that's already fraud. Transferring an asset in a fraudulent way to avoid accountability is already in itself money laundering.
We don't need more details about what these offshore accounts were used for and the context of the asset transfer, 1 week before assuming office, makes any argument that moving these shares was just a "gift to a friend" impossible to make. But go ahead and make it.
I don't personally need more evidence that Zelensky is corrupt and knows that the proposal of sending hundreds of billions of dollars Ukraine's way he can take a little off the top.
But even if you want to just believe Zelensky is the diamond in the rough and straight as an arrow, my argument applies not simply to Zelensky but all the Ukrainian elites and decision makers, they will all stand to benefit from billions of dollars structured in the form of a slush fund being sent to Ukraine, and Zelensky himself complains about corruption, even in high places.
My point is the money is a de facto bribe to everyone with any sort of power in Ukraine. Zelensky is obviously well positioned to take advantage with his offshore dealings and proven front men for laundering money, and has since chastised any inquiry into the matter, but if you want to believe Zelensky setup secret offshore accounts and holding companies just to "tempt himself" to prove is moral and assetic solidity, it doesn't really change my argument much consider Zelensky himself complains about corruption in Ukrainian politics and governance. Plenty of people in Ukraine are making bank off the war and have a motivation to see it continue, and that is a what corporate people call a "moral hazard".
Quoting Echarmion
What straw man? My argument is that if you're caught laundering money once (especially if you've been criticizing your political opponents of that exact thing, calling it corrupt, without disclosing you also are doing that thing) you shouldn't get much.
The story about the yachts has actual evidence provided, I have not seen anyone actually explain what's fabricated about the evidence or contradicting claims from the other parties involved.
Quoting 2019, Reuters
Again, before the war and before the memo went out that Zelensky is basically a saint now, the most reputable news agencies in the world had zero problem Reporting on and calling out Zelensky corruption.
So again, when the West offers Zelensky billions of dollars structured as a slush fund without any traceability to do their policy rather than accept a negotiated settlement (or even continue to negotiate "just in case" but rather repudiate entirely negotiations), it is not only a de facto bribe but the West knows Zelensky is "a player" who "does business" that way.
Quoting Echarmion
In any discussion there are facts that people who follow the issue should know.
Before the war Ukraine had 250 000 soldiers about and then once the war starts mobilizes over 800 000 total soldiers. The majority of these are not volunteers.
Quoting Armed Forces of Ukraine - Wikipedia
Additional fact for you (which should be common knowledge to anyone following the war but I'm happy to spoon feed you basic facts as it makes you ignorant, out of your depth and even more bad faith):
Quoting Echarmion
You do not need supporting evidence for this. If you've been caught money laundering by making a best friend a front man for offshore assets and taking bribes through your wife, you don't get the benefit of the doubt anymore. If papers show up purporting to show 75 Million yacht purchases that's credible until proven otherwise as far as I'm concerned.
But only because I don't like corrupt politicians and money launderers.
If you do like them and want to go out to bat for organized crime, by all means explain this philosophy and why this particular evidence (in the context that Zelensky has done this kind of crime) is not credible.
Evidence shows up that supports a claim, making an accusation that someone has done again crime he's already done: it's credible until proven otherwise. No one (that isn't corrupt) has the mental effort resources to operate otherwise.
Quoting Mobilization in Ukraine
If you want to live in a world where taking away nearly half the population's freedom of movement and then calling up conscripts and reservists, was simply to "top things off" and not really needed because Ukraine had and still has hundreds of thousands of volunteers, I guess go ahead. Obviously exact mobilization numbers will be "state secrets" so we'll only have a clear idea of exact numbers after the war.
Quoting Echarmion
The bad argument without evidence is the idea that there needs be no justification for the war, no justification for Europe and NATO's financing and arming of the war, because "Ukrainians want to fight", an argument that has appeared numerous times in this forum.
You're incarnation is to rebut the fact that simply supporting a war without any theory of victory is cry-baby logic ... Ukrainians on the front aren't cry-babies and want to fight!
This is the position that has zero evidence. You provide zero evidence that most Ukrainians fighting want to fight and the law [i]banning Ukrainians from leaving the country[/I] was totally unnecessary and superfluous because Ukrainians want to fight! at least for the most part, so there wouldn't a problem with recruitment.
You make claims and provide zero evidence and is also bad logic. That Ukrainians want to fight without a theory of victory does not actually rebut that being cry-baby logic.
The only reason I rebutted your claim that Ukrainians want to fight for Zelensky's various cry-baby statements, is because I honestly don't think it's true. A large majority of Ukrainians voted for the peace candidate twice, so I think it stands to reason most Ukrainians knew the dangers of continuing the war in the Donbas (which obviously assumes giving up claim to Crimea as well), and simply because Zelensky starts promising he'll take back all the Donbas and all Crimea in the cry-baby framework of reasoning, I honestly don't think most Ukrainians were convinced that was feasible.
No it's not.
Quoting boethius
Obviously you don't.
Quoting boethius
And this "moral hazard" is here supposed to stand in for evidence and an argument, but I don't accept such a transparent shifting of goalposts.
Quoting boethius
You did not provide any. I'm not about to go trawl the web to find some reference that might prove your point.
Quoting boethius
Just piling on spurius logic onto bullshit claims. The aid is not "set up as a slush fund", since most of it is material in nature. "Zelensky is corrupt therefore money flowing to Ukraine is a bribe for Zelensky" is entirely non sequitur and a laughably bad attempt to make on a philosophy forum of all places.
Quoting boethius
You don't know that, and in any event your claim was that they "are not fighting voluntarily" which is different from being formally a volunteer. You can fight voluntarily as a draftee.
Quoting boethius
Oh I do.
Quoting boethius
What papers? Where?
Quoting boethius
Unless they're russian no doubt.
Quoting boethius
I don't particularly care what you think happened numerous times on the forum. You could quote a specific instance of this that you want to adress but I suspect you cannot.
Quoting boethius
This is of course utter nonsense, but I realize you feel unable to deal with the actual argument and so make up your own.
Quoting boethius
I don't need to provide evidence for claims you make up.
Quoting boethius
If you want to rebut a claim, just thinking it's not true isn't enough.
This is really not the case, I am happy to entertain @Echarmion's arguments.
And we're not talking past each other but have agreed on the essential point that Zelensky was a moron to repudiate negotiations:
Quoting Echarmion
And @Echarmion also agreed that Ukraine's leverage was higher before compared to now, just wants to equivocate on exactly which point was the maximum.
For me it doesn't really matter, as Zelensky repudiates negotiations making his position at the time that Russia withdrawing from all of Ukraine was a precondition to even negotiate again, and in @Echarmion's own words that "such move could jeopardize further negotiations".
This is the main issue of contention, which @Echarmion clearly understand perfectly fine.
He simply doesn't want to admit it, so now has retreated into the wishful thinking that Ukraine will pull off some incredible turn around on the battlefield.
Obviously, that implies that my main points are correct if that doesn't happen, main points being:
1. Ukraine should have pledged neutrality in a negotiation, of course trying to get the best deal for doing so possible (losing a war is not a preferable option in anycase)
2. Zelensky should have repudiated negotiations and make public promises and commitments that would "jeopardize further negotiations".
3. Ukraine had and has little chance of winning the war in any military sense.
4. NATO has not even made a credible effort to even have a good crack at it (fearing nuclear escalation and getting Finland and Sweden into NATO, selling gas to Europe, lot's of funds to arms suppliers, maybe even damaging the Russians a bit, who knows, all make the war worth it without victory).
And these last two points @Echarmion also seems to agree with in claiming that:
Quoting Echarmion
Which also gives me a chance to respond to this point in pointing out my whole argument was those things are obvious and so NATO's policy of not sending Ukraine heavy weapons was obviously designed so they can't actually go do what Zelensky promised, not even a chance; maybe hold the line, maybe take back a bit of territory, but not actually rout the Russians (which may have actually been possible in 2022 as Russia did not mobilize any forces for the operation and then delayed doing so a considerable amount of time ... of course they don't need to if we all agree with @Echarmion that it's completely obvious Ukraine could not possibly prevail with the commitment level from NATO in 2022).
As for the Nazi's, they are obviously there (go through the videos if you want to explain how there's no Nazi's in those videos) and they are an important player in the war co-creating many of the events.
@Echarmion claims Ukraine's just cause is obvious, requiring no evidence nor argumentation, and I simply point out (on a philosophy forum) that it's not so obvious: Ukraine is attacking separatists (shelling civilians, which does not seem to be in dispute, @Echarmion just says it's not enough to justify defending said civilians) and Ukraine has this Nazi problem, so arguing Ukraine has just cause is clearly not obvious, you'd need to contend with these two issues, of which the first issue @Echarmion already agreed was "thorny":
Quoting Echarmion
Not only making a claim with zero evidence (while chastising others for not citing things that should be common knowledge to anyone interested in the subject, such as Ukraine's various rounds of mobilzation), but contradicting his claim that Ukraine's just cause is some epistemological status of "obvious" and requires no argumentation at all.
But clearly according to @Echarmion at minimum a just cause argument for Ukraine requires dealing with this "thorny issue at the best of times" ... which seems completely incompatible with the criteria of "obvious".
Now, my own position is that I don't really care who has just cause in the war, as my own country and the political block I'm apart of (the EU) rules out anyways sending soldiers to Ukraine and there's this whole drip feed of arms to simply prop up Ukraine, but I view as immoral if indeed Ukraine does have just cause. If Ukraine has some sort of categorical imperative just cause (that justifies fighting even without any theory of victory) we should send our own soldiers to help defend Ukraine, which we don't so it doesn't matter.
Therefore, if Ukraine has no hope of defeating the Russians, just cause or not, the best pathway is a negotiated settlement.
Not only have we made plenty of progress already in our discussion, but further dialogue with @Echarmion is interesting as it is revelatory of how easily and quickly people rewrite and edit history and just ignore anything inconvenient to them.
For example, we spent no small amount of comments discussing if Russia did make an offer to Ukraine of withdrawing in exchange for neutrality, recognizing Crimea, some protective status for Donbas. This was common knowledge discussed at length here and elsewhere that this offer was made. The main defence of Zelensky for rejecting the offer was that "couldn't be trusted", entire pages of discussion were dedicated to the meaning of "guarantee" in international agreements (that it is not "ontological" but rather ornamental, there is no way to be sure any international party will do what they guarantee and no body to force them, but that not a reason to reject international agreements, what matters is an estimation of the various forces at play going forward and if a party will be likely compelled to stick to the agreement for many reasons, one being the diplomatic cost of breaking a guarantee). Point is, plenty of discussion on Russia's offer and Zelensky rejecting it.
@Echarmion, having already agreed Ukraine's leverage was greater at the start of the war (though maybe not the maximum but greater than now), then simply refuses to believe even Reuters has a proper understanding of the offer, equivocating on the meaning of "ceasing military operations" and making the additional claim that position are secret anyways.
While we're discussing this, the lead negotiator of Ukraine does an interview where he confirms exactly what everyone understood at the time and more! Saying the only point of relevance was neutrality, everything else (such as Donbas status) just purely cosmetic and provided exactly the justification that I debated with Olivier5 for like a hundred comments, that "Russia couldn't be trusted" (no "guarantee" from Russia is an actual "guarantee").
Now, does @Echarmion apologize for the bad faith tactic of demanding proof of common knowledge?
No, and to that extent he refused dialogue as you say, but for me it is very enlightening into the psychology of adherents to the mainstream narrative when the cognitive dissonance starts.
Which is my new purpose here now that the opportune moments for a peace agreements are passed, and any deal is unlikely to be the result of sober moral deliberation considering the costs of war but because Ukrainian government collapses, so for me the main value of the discussion now is to delve into the psychology of war enthusiasm.
Anyways, if you are better at arguing than myself or @Echarmion feel free to argue any of the main points or then feel free to provide better points of debate of your own.
In 2016 emigrants coming to Finland got the country into a severe political crisis. It looked ugly, like an American culture war. Now similar action as an hybrid attack had a totally different response. Actually the anti-immigration party, the "True Finns"-party, now (again) in the administration is totally OK with Ukrainian refugees, while it still has the anti-immigration position towards others (like migrant workers or economic refugees). As I stated earlier, the opposition social democrats came out with a proposal to give military aid Ukraine for every refugee that Russia sends here.
In fact, when Ukrainian families were started to be moved to another place (with days notice time) from the city of Oulu (where many had stayed as long as two years) to other places to take in the new "hybrid" refugees, the True Finns minister of interior intervened. She order for the Ukrainian families to get rental flats in Oulu.
This totally different kind of attitude towards especially Ukraine comes from a spectacular coincidence that the True Finns party leader actually had worked in Ukraine, knew the country and could speak totally fluent Ukrainian. He towed the populist party to a firm anti-Putin stance and made a separation to the pro-Putin populists in Europe (and the European Parliament). Hence Finland is quite committed to Ukraine and will never see it as an "forever war" that simply ought to be stopped even in favour of Putin.
Here the party leader Halla-aho speaking to the Ukrainian parliament in Ukrainian and getting a standing ovation from the Ukrainian members of Parliament. (Unfortunately the translation only in Finnish, which won't help others)
Basically now these hybrid attacks just strengthen Finnish resolve to aid Ukraine.
I did supply an argument.
Quoting boethius
I did provide evidence, I even provided you with the specific evidence you asked for. After which you just dropped the topic completely.
Quoting boethius
It's not equivocating that the plain meaning of the words "halt military operations" are just that: halt. Not withdraw. If you want to argue something that wasn't written was meant, you're the one who has to supply the argument for that.
Quoting boethius
The lead negotiator of course also said that their impression was that the Russian delegation was trying to get them to agree to neutrality simply as a play for time. If you're going to invoke the witness, you're going to have to deal with all of his statements, not just some.
Also note that Arakhamia has made other statements about the peace negotiations, e.g. here, where he said that the initial position of the Russian side was to merel "formalise Ukraine's surrender".
Another quote from the article:
Which makes clear that Ukraine did agree in principle to neutrality (as it had before), just not neutrality without any kind of security.
And even had Ukraine agreed to neutrality without any qualification, the issues of Donbas and Crimea were unresolved. So, russain troops would likely not have vacated the Donbas or the land bridge to Crimea before agreement could have been reached. If they did, what negotiating position would Russia have?
For someone who is willing to demand evidence for common knowledge (such as Ukrainian mobilization being not remotely close to a majority volunteer basis), you should, and everyone else following, really pause to appreciate you're own argument method of just dropping contradictions without any evidence or argument at all.
Yes it is. Money laundering is the transfer of property in the commissioning of or then to move the proceeds of a crime. Having someone act as a front is fraud and a crime.
In transferring the asset's nominal owner, Zelensky is trying to obfuscate the real ownership and control of the asset, a crime in itself, and obviously for the purposes of further money laundering.
Obfuscating the real owner of an asset is a crime.
Now, if you want to argue it was "just a gift!" feel free just say that.
Quoting Echarmion
Are you going to even bother to respond to Reuters reporting what is clearly a bribe:
Quoting Reuters
The above, along with the offshore assets and accounts, are absolutely cut and dry, perfectly clear, smoking gun, caught red handed, indisputable proof of corruption.
But feel free to provide at least some bullshit whitewashing of the issue.
When money laundering is exposed it clearly requires additional cleaning.
Quoting Echarmion
I said it's a de facto bribe, which is a kind of moral hazard (there are other kinds, but this is the name of the general phenomenon when).
Quoting Moral hazard
In this case, the war represents significant economic risks to Ukrainian citizens: jobs, homes, infrastructure, savings, everything.
If you are able to profit from the war (due to NATO pumping in billions of dollars of money structured as an untraceable slush fund) and in a position of power to make or influence decisions, then you have an incentive to increase your exposure to war because you stand to benefit.
This adds to intrinsic moral hazard that elites can usually insulate themselves from the risk of fighting on the front line that essentially all wars have.
Now, if NATO didn't offer the funds structured as a slush fund and tried to remove the moral hazard, saying something along the lines of they're going to make sure the money is traceable if they're going to pump billions into Ukraine (something that as the funder you can easily demand) then it would not be a de facto bribe. But NATO has explicitly said they don't track what happens to funds or arms once they enter Ukraine, and they obviously knew that offering the funds in this way would be a significant moral hazard to Ukrainian decision makers forming a conflict of interest with their constituents (i.e. a bribe).
Quoting Echarmion
So if I post the evidence, you'll agree the claim should be presumed true?
Quoting Echarmion
Again just saying things that would be convenient for your position if they were true ... without even bothering to educate yourself a minimum on the issue.
If you go to the following page by the Council of Foreign Relations, you will be able to see for yourself how the aid breaks down.
They don't provide convenient totals, but the main support is the EU (82.7 billion financial aid and 2.4 billion humanitarian aid) and the US (46.6 billion in military aid, 26.4 billion in financial aid and 3.9 billion in humanitarian aid) and Germany (18.9 billion in military aid, 1.4 billion in financial aid and 2.7 billion in humanitarian aid).
The sub-totals of the top 3 donors are thus:
- 110.5 billion USD in financial aid
- 65.5 in military aid
The next top donor is the UK with evenly split aid and the others are so small the change will be negligible to the conclusion that most aid is financial.
Now, certainly some financial aid doesn't reach Ukraine, but the West has been clear that what enters Ukraine is not tracked. Obviously the arms can also be sold on the blackmarket so I don't see how that's anyways an argument against people standing to benefit from the war, creating a moral hazard (aka. bribe if things are structured intentionally this way, which they are).
Quoting Echarmion
A draftee is by definition not a voluntary occupation, moreso if you are banned from even leaving the country. If you're argument is that "they volunteered in their hearts" ... I guess we'll have to wait until after the war.
Quoting Echarmion
Well apparently you need evidence that someone caught with offshore accounts and accepting a bribe through his wife deserves every possible suspension of belief when new allegations of corruption turn up. To myself and non-corrupt people you only get one chance to not-be-corrupt, and it doesn't really matter how much additional corruption you do. Maybe the yacht story will prove true, maybe not, maybe just forgotten in the annals of the internet, but we already have the offshore accounts from The Guardian and the bribe from Reuters; that's plenty of corruption for my taste, but if you want to eat more help yourself.
Quoting Echarmion
What's the actual argument?
My argument is that tying dissatisfaction about the world directly to action that immediately satisfied the emotion that dissatisfaction causes, does not constitute a justification for said action.
"Ukrainians want to fight" is not a justification to reject Russia's offer and continue fighting, nor a justification to provide arms to Ukraine, and "Putin can't be trusted!" is even less of a justification to reject a peace offer. Likewise, "illegal invasion", "right to self defence!", "Putin is Imperialist", "fight them there rather than here!!" and so on are not justifications.
A justification would not only need to start with establishing Ukrainian just cause (actually demonstrate Ukraine's attack on the separatists is justified) but then need to further demonstrate that the course of action is worthwhile: aka. that Ukraine can make military gains that are worth the blood paid and that course of action is better than the alternatives.
Since the start of the war, we just get these sound bites as justification for things (for example "Putin can't be trusted! No guarantee can be trusted!" but winning the war isn't guaranteed either nor even continued NATO support: no option is guaranteed and so observing that fact does not justify one course of action over another), and this is what I call cry baby logic. If Ukraine cannot win (as in has an exceedingly low chance of winning), then it is not ethical to send men (and women now too apparently) to their deaths for a cause that has essentially no chance of succeeding.
There are other strategies available; saying one strategy is better than the other requires some actual analysis of the options available. If you simply skip the analysis from a complaint about the world to actions that satiate the emotions but nothing is thought through, this is literally baby logic.
And you say yourself that making negotiation positions public is dangerous, so obviously understand Zelensky's public repudiation of negotiations and public ultimatums and vowing to win back even Crimea is foolish and dangerous; what is the justification of such actions? It simply "felt good at the time". That's the only justification, literally a baby's justification for crying over a broken cookie if a baby could articulate their thought process.
Quoting Echarmion
You bring up the Ukrainian soldier wanting to fight as a rebuttal to my explaining how the cry-baby logic works: zero consideration to the costs to Ukraine of "fighting to win", 100% emotional convenience.
Your rebuttal doesn't work anyways, the "tough Azov guy" can be equally stuck in cry-baby fallacy if their understanding and motivations for the war are really as simplistic as the cry-baby logic. I only contradicted your point in itself (that Ukrainians on the front believe Zelensky's cry-baby justifications for the war) because I honestly give Ukrainians on the front more credit than you do. I'm pretty confident most Ukrainians understand most things Zelensky says is propaganda meant mostly for a Western audience.
But it remains your point, so if it's important you should therefore provide evidence that most Ukrainians on the front choose to be there voluntarily. You're the one assuming "Ukrainians on the front" in some general sense want to fight voluntarily. I don't think it's a fact and even if it was I don't see how that would justify anything.
Your rebuttal is basically not a rebuttal, you don't show how the argument for fighting (and sending more men and woman to their deaths) is a more sophisticated argument that "Russia can't be trusted!" or "self-defence!", so you just conjure up the tough soldier on the front as some sort of philosophical human shield and dare me to call a big brawny soldier a cry-baby.
Ok, you don't feel the need to provide any evidence that most soldiers fighting want to be there, but let's put that aside, assuming Ukraine cannot win is it justifiable to continue fighting? If Ukraine can win ... how?
Quoting Echarmion
I provided you the evidence that implies most Ukrainians on the front are not volunteers: the laws barring men from leaving Ukraine, and going from 250 000 soldiers to over 800 000 through mobilization.
Again, it's your claim that there's some "generalized Ukrainian" that fights on the front with the same simplistic cry-baby logic as you and your fellows here as well as Zelensky. I provide evidence that points to that not being the case compared to you providing literally zero evidence, then my evidence to rebut your unsubstantiated claim isn't good enough for you?
Wildly bad faith, but that's why I'm here (to interrogate how this bad faith and delusions work in practice) now that all the reasonable points of time for a negotiated settlement have passed.
It's not fraud. Maybe it's a crime in some jurisdictions but I'm not aware of any.
Quoting boethius
The crime and the laundering cannot be the same act. The whole talk about money laundering is just a very silly propaganda line that never made any sense.
Quoting boethius
Pretty sure shell companies etc. are legal in and of themselves.
Quoting boethius
Ok. But this doesn't just allow one to make any arbitrary claim about Zekensky's finances. "He's corrupt" isn't some fully general explanation for everything.
Quoting boethius
This is true for all leaders. But unlike Zelensky, not all of them faced a very real threat of death.
Quoting boethius
Again you're simply equating moral hazard with a bribe and that just doesn't work. It's like saying not wearing a helmet is essentially a head injury.
Quoting boethius
Then you'll have posted evidence and we'd have something to talk about.
Quoting boethius
The 80 billion from the EU apparently also include money made available for refugees. The EU itself only reports about 30 Billion in direct economic aid.
But I'm probably still wrong about "most" the aid being directly material. Which of course doesn't mean none of it is earmarked and just disappears into some slush fund.
Quoting boethius
All the studies I have seen suggest that support for the war effort remains high.
Quoting boethius
Then why bring it up? Ah yes because it's the hot new propaganda item.
Quoting boethius
This is essentially admitting you dishonestly made a claim knowing you won't be able to defend it.
Quoting boethius
Russia attacked in 2022, not Ukraine.
Quoting boethius
It already has.
Quoting boethius
In the real world, winning and loosing isn't a binary. But again you're not even considering what Ukraine's interests may be so it's pointless to discuss this.
Quoting boethius
Again I don't feel any need to play along with your bizarre versions of what I supposedly said. Just quote me or leave off.
Quoting boethius
Ukraine has already achieved a number of their objectives by fighting. Whether they currently have something up their sleeve for gaining some significant territory or other advantage I don't know.
Quoting boethius
No it's not.
But if you're interested in how Ukrainians view the war here is an interesting study from April specifically about people living close to the front. And here is a Gallup poll from October.
Unsurprisingly, people do actually care about the "cry baby logic" of who has the righteous cause and about defending their country.
However, since I will be focusing on this particular justification next, the "Ukrainians want fight" as both a justification for Ukrainians fighting as well as justification for our arming and financing Ukrainians entire war effort as well as a large part of the their civilian economy, and how this argument further cry-baby logic and cannot possibly stand to scrutiny (for example if you're Ukrainian is your justification to fight that Ukrainians want to fight?), but I wish for today to just foreshadow this next chapter in our little saga together with consideration of the actual poll.
Quoting Echarmion
First you and anyone reading this notice the goal posts moving from " some 'generalized Ukrainian' that fights on the front" to just Ukrainians in general.
But as for the poll itself, there is a whole science on how polls can be manipulated.
Even assuming everyone in Ukraine feels completely free to express themselves and let's also ignore the fact alternative views to the government have been criminalized and critical media and opposition parties banned.
Just consider the poll itself, the choice is:
Quoting Gallop poll
and
Quoting Gallop poll
The first question is manipulative as it [i]presumes Ukraine can win[/I] not only does it add positive connotation but you can legitimately interpret the question as "assuming Ukraine will win the war, should Ukraine continue fighting until it wins?"
The second question is likewise manipulative as it adds "as soon as possible", even if you are in favour of a negotiated settlement to terminate the war you may not be in favour of "as soon as possible" which sounds like simply capitulating.
Not that Ukrainians (even with completely free and critical press and elections unbanned and legitimate non-manipulative polling questions) believing they should continue fighting would form a valid justification, but anyone interested in how the Western media deploys the cry-baby logic of "waaaah, stop asking for justifications and 'reasons' for things, Ukrainians want to fight!" it starts with a transparently manipulative poll to skew the results, in an environment where critical media is banned and skepticism about the war can get you killed, and also the government lying to their population regularly with constant fabricated propaganda (from ghost of Kiev to assuring people the Ukrainian military can and will win and casualties are low and so on).
Quoting Nov 28, 2023
... in fact, they've made progress (re-repeating), while their northern neighbor has regressed (re-rep...). The so-called deNazification of Ukraine is but another political tool borne of ulterior motives. A Nazi regime to join the EU? Nay, Kyiv just isn't that Nazi stronghold narrated by the Kremlin to be cleansed, get over it.
† I'll just stick to links ...
The US · WISN · Nov 18, 2023
Germany · Bloomberg · Nov 5, 2023
The US (military) · VICE · Oct 20, 2022
Russia (military) · VICE · Aug 22, 2022
The US / Online · NBC · Jan 8, 2021
France · France 24 · Oct 29, 2020
Sweden · euronews · Sep 30, 2017
The Ukrainians have proven willing to change for the better, but not to be overrun by Russia just like that (again); the Kremlin has proven unwilling to change for the better, and continue to landgrab and bomb others in the name of their authoritarianism. (By the way, shouldn't someone have freed Ukraine from military-political covert invaders like Girkin? Shouldn't someone de-genocide the Uyghurs? Shouldn't someone clean up the Kremlin?)
You're making stuff up again.
Quoting boethius
Baseless speculation.
Quoting boethius
And some more lies.
Quoting boethius
What laughable nonsense. That's not how language works.
Quoting boethius
Asking a narrow question instead of a broad one is not manipulation....
Quoting boethius
This post of yours is transparently desperate bullshit and lies. Trying to somehow explain away the facts that are inconvenient to you by using a whole barrage of falsehood and fantasy.
You would have to back every single one of those claims up with evidence, but obviously you cannot.
So we're back to the extremists (literal Nazi's) in Ukraine exist everywhere in the same amount?
Please, explain how analogous extremists are of similar problem in Norway, Portugal, Costa Rica, and "all over"?
Quoting Nov 28, 2023
No where do I claim Ukraine is ruled by a Nazi regime.
I explain they are obviously a problem. The position of "the problem of Nazi's in Ukraine" uses the word "problem". They cause problems.
For example, (again before the Western media got the memo that Nazi's in Ukraine are alright):
Quoting Commentary: Ukraine’s neo-Nazi problem
Saying things like "oh there's extremists everywhere" is called trying to cover for these Nazis sympathizing with these Nazis.
These Nazi's are obviously a problem. Claiming that extremism is some comparable problem everywhere (to therefore try to minimize its problem in Ukraine) is both a bold faced lie (you will not find similar extremism "everywhere", and where you do, such as the Middle East, it is also obviously a problem that likewise frustrates political process), obviously pro-Nazi, and also obviously the whataboutism fallacy (what about the extremists in New Zealand!!) but even worse simply skipping over the fact that where violent extremism is a problem (using violence and terror to affect the political process; aka. terrorism) you either have government doing its best to stop said extremists or then far bigger political problems if the extremists are in government.
It's obviously a problem. "Far-right vigilantes who are willing to use intimidation and even violence to advance their agendas, and who often do so with the tacit approval of law enforcement agencies," is a problem. Murdering a negotiator during a negotiation is called using "intimidation and violence to advance their agenda" and obviously has tacit approval from law-enforcement as it is literally law enforcement.
Now, even if you want to minimize the problem as you do, there's clearly plenty of visible evidence documented by Western media such as I posted, so, again, it is simply a bold faced lie to say the problem is Kremlin propaganda. Explain how all the reports I posted are Kremlin propaganda.
Understanding that the underlying problem is obviously a problem and not propaganda, is perilous to ignore as it will lead to underestimating Russia's motivations.
You can argue there wasn't "enough Nazis" in Ukraine to justify invasion in some absolute moral framework or whatever framework you like, be the first to actually provide a definition of "enough Nazis", but the strong presence of Nazis is still required to understand political process in Ukraine (that some respondents to a poll may feel intimidated into giving one answer over another, for example).
But regardless if you actually present a just war argument for Ukraine after 536 pages of the discussion, it is an important fact in understanding the war that the Nazis in Ukraine will provide strong motivations for Russians (regardless if they really "rule" Ukraine or not, regardless of their total numbers and strength). That a completely factual based motivation can be further amplified by propaganda should simply increase our estimation of Russian will to fight. Assuming Russians had low morale and would just collapse any day, in the words of our precious NATO leader, turned out to be "underestimating" the Russians, which we should never do!
Ignoring or minimizing the Nazis leads to false understanding the war and poor decision making.
Quoting jorndoe
First of all, the videos don't seem to support your point but rather support the point that violent extremism is a problem (except of course when it's "for democracy") whenever it frustrates legitimate political process.
Second, as the videos I post demonstrate, there are clearly Nazis in Ukraine. The Nazis in Ukraine is borne from the Nazis in Ukraine. If Putin intended to invade Ukraine all along, then the West and Ukraine tolerating and arming and incorporating into government the Nazis in Ukraine simply provides Putin an amazingly good pretext for the invasion. If Putin did not plan to invade Ukraine all along but is reacting to security threats, Nazis in Ukraine growing in strength all the time is an obvious security threat.
Quoting jorndoe
What is the point you are trying to make? How did Ukrainians change for the better for example?
Dude, I don’t even think you watch the videos you link (I checked 4 out of 5, since one wasn’t reachable). They too mention Neo-nazi and far right movements in Europe and the US committing brutal terrorist attacks. Neo-nazi are a Western issue, not specifically a Ukrainian issue.
The question is not if the Ukrainian Neo-nazi are a problem (most certainly not in the way Putin presented it to justify his war, because “electorally they are very weak, all the far-right parties together couldn’t clear the very low bar to enter the Ukrainian parliament. In terms of mass support in Ukraine, they don’t have it”, as in one of your videos the reporter states it clearly and repeatedly). But that RUSSIA IS NO SOLUTION TO THE NAZI PROBLEM NOWHERE (INCLUDING RUSSIA). Russia is the BIGGEST EXPORTER OF FAR-RIGHT EXTREMISM:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-Nazism_in_Russia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Managed_nationalism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far-right_politics_in_Russia#Groups
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitry_Utkin
https://www.latrobe.edu.au/news/articles/2022/opinion/russias-long-history-of-neo-nazis
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/02/pro-kremlin-neo-nazi-militia-inciting-torture-murder-ukrainian-prisoners
Besides, RUSSIA IS NO SOLUTION TO THE NAZI PROBLEM PARTICULARLY INSIDE UKRAINE because it’s Russia meddling in Ukraine and invasion that is nurturing particularly the Ukrainian neo-nazism (for historical reasons too).
Considering military campus for children, let’s have a look at what Russia is doing: https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/children-as-a-tool-how-russia-militarizes-kids-in-the-donbas-and-crimea/
This nationalist polarisation is very common phenomenon in countries struggling for their sovereignty (see also Israel vs Palestine).
As I said, many times, such accusations can be easily retorted. The sources we bring up which you disagree with are propaganda to you. However the deep issue behind this easy accusations probably concern our understanding on how propaganda works in general, how my arguments work in this thread, and our respective positions toward the US vs Russia. That's why I have no problem to qualify myself as pro-US while you seem to have problems to qualify yourself as pro-Russian.
Yes, I do have a problem with that. I am trying to understand the conflict, not cheerleading for a side.
To add to reply, positions that get hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians killed [i]and do not accomplish the war aims[/I], is not pro-Ukrainian.
It may simply be true that Ukraine has almost no chance of some sort of military victory, especially given NATO's policy at the start of the war of no heavy weapons ... which we're now told by pro-Ukrainians that:
Quoting Echarmion
Apparently now it's "not ground breaking stuff" and such "analysis was widely available" (even to NATO?), now that it's been proven to be obviously true.
Yet I was accused of being a Putinist, repeating Russian propaganda etc. when I pointed out Ukrainians maybe able to arrest Russian advances and harass salients but have essentially zero chance of pushing the Russians out of Southern Ukraine without heavy weapons.
It's just a true fact it turns out, even according to pro-Ukrainians ... so how was I anti-Ukrainian for posting it out and expounding the reasons for it in March 2022?
Anyone who knows anything about Russian history (that one made me laugh out loud!) knows perfectly well that there are quite a few people branding Nazi symbols in Russia as well, in nationalistic circles quite close to Kremlin in particular. Dmitry Utkin, i.e. 'Wagner', the guy who has organized the Wagner Group, the essential part of the Russian forces in Ukraine, had Nazi tattoos, was photographed with Nazi symbols and Nazi paraphernalia, just like many of his collaborators, had German nicknames etc. The Rusich Group, another quite important nationalistic group, also openly displays Nazi or neo-Nazi symbols. There was a bit of commotion when video was released with Pushilin giving medals to LNR fighters and it turned out one of them had sewn-on Nazi symbols on his uniforms... How about the Base, the neo-Nazi group, that is run from Russia most likely with the state financing? Or Russkii Obraz, another neo-Nazi group with likely support from Kremlin...
Also, one should not overlook the fact that the Jewish Council in Ukraine fully supports Ukrainian defenders, including Azov. On the other hand, the chief rabbi of Moscow had to emigrate from Russia, because he refused to support the war... Or one can mention that anti-Semitic rhetoric is regularly presented in Russian propaganda media, even though many of the propagandists (like Solovyov) are Jews themselves and oppose this. Or point out to the near-pogrom in Makhachkala...
So, if you go for the simplistic interpretation, you have to conclude that in Ukraine Nazis are fighting Nazis. Or you need to actually get deeper into this and see it is a bit more complicated than that.
Again easy to retort. You are cheerleading Ukrainian surrender to Russian demands.
Quoting boethius
Well that presupposes that you know what is pro-Ukrainian, but who the fuck are you to tell what is pro-Ukrainian?! BTW positions that get tens of thousands of Palestianis killed and do not accomplish the war aims, is not pro-Palestianian, right?
Complete false symmetry.
What you describe is called actual cherry picking (what the people complaining about Ukrainian Nazi's were accused of, that of course among "tough guys" you're going find the odd Totenkopf or two and maybe even a Swastika).
Wagner is recruiting hardened criminals from prison.
What the reporters reveal in the videos I posted (did you watch them?) are organizations with a sophisticated Nazi ideology, not just a few "tough guys" with some tough symbols.
So on the substance, unless you can provide more than some cherry picked tough guys with tough tattoos to signal their toughness, it is simply false to say Naziism is as popular and influential in Russia as it is in Ukraine, as tolerated in Russia as it is in Ukraine.
Are there parades of torch holders with pictures of Nazi collaborators in Moscow, or are there?
On the substance, you are simply wrong, but feel free to provide comparable evidence as the series of videos I posted (all by reputable Western news organizations).
Now, on the point you are responding to, my point is exactly that Putin can make a simplistic argument!
Doesn't matter how complicated you think it is, a lot of Russians will be sympathetic to Putins justification they are fighting Nazi's in Ukraine. You're saying regular Russians hold your view that it's more complicated, that of course Russia has just as many Nazi's?
Think about it, obviously not.
I focus on the symbolism these groups use in that statement just because that's what will be used by Putin to communicate this to the public. I specifically explain that this factual based motivation is going to be even stronger with propaganda.
You just said you wanted to understand the war:
Quoting Tzeentch
Well evaluating Russian motivation is part of understanding the war.
We were sold on the idea that Russian soldiers and society were poorly motivated and so would collapse and that was an essential advantage of the Ukrainians.
"Nazis in Ukraine is baseless Kremlin propaganda!" is the common refrain to the subject of the nominal purposes of the war "denazification".
Quoting Jabberwock
My argument is that Nazis in Ukraine is an easy motivator for Russians.
As for just-war clearly Russia has arguments there war is just, my position on the matter is that it is not obvious and I don't accept "pro-Ukrainians" here simply stating the just-warness for Ukrainian fighting is "obvious".
The issue doesn't matter to me as I'm already a war skeptic and my compatriots are difficult to imagine more pro war, and my position is that it's immoral to send arms and not soldiers.
I am for the path that minimizes suffering.
If NATO sent soldiers and ended the war that way (ideally before the war happened) and avoided nuclear escalation and so on and "stood up" to Putin and talked his "language of strength" I'd be all for it.
My position would be that NATO may have done bad things in the Middle East, but at least they avoided this particular war from happening.
Obviously at no point was NATO even contemplating sending troops to Ukraine to stop anything but using Ukrainians for their own purposes, a policy I'm against.
"Is Ukraine's war against the Donbas justified?" and "is Russia's invasion of Ukraine justified?" and "is Ukraine attempting to regain the lost territory justified given the risks and the costs" are all questions that would be relevant to me personally if NATO was sending troops, which is obviously not going to happen.
The position of "Ukraine is righteous!!!!! .... but ... we don't want to escalate" is obviously a recipe to have Ukraine destroyed and attempt to maximize suffering. As "escalation" is code for "Russia losing on the battlefield".
Go on, explain how hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians dying for war aims that are not accomplished and seems clear to everyone now was completely obvious to everyone all along that the war aims wouldn't be accomplished with the means supplied ... is "pro-Ukrainian"?
Quoting neomac
I have no problem saying that if the war aims are not accomplished at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives, knowing the disastrous result ahead of time was guaranteed, positions that supported such a military disaster are not "pro-Palestinian".
However, if you want to talk about Hamas here, I am not in favour of terrorism: Palestinian terrorism nor Israeli terrorism, as terrorism frustrates legitimate political process and the mutual cycle of terrorism in Israel and the occupied territories demonstrates exactly why terrorism is so toxic to solving things through dialogue.
Fortunately, Hamas is competent and savvy enough to avoid a path that gets hundreds of thousands of Palestinians killed, only mere tens of thousands.
More importantly, likely Hamas has achieved its war aims of demonstrating to the Arab world that Israel can be humiliated on the battlefield, this will motivate additional fanaticism for decades to come.
With enough irregular forces with enough asymmetric assets borne from modern technology, irregular forces that can't practically be deterred with nuclear weapons, there very well may come the day when the IDF loses to a ragtag collection of groups originally created, trained, financed and incubated in the wars of the US.
It seems that the exchange of violence in this war disfavours the Palestinians, but that isn't their calculus. Hamas killed a meaningful percentage of the total Israeli population, whereas Israel has killed a meaningless percentage of the total Muslim population, of which, along with Israeli merciless reprisal and the anger that fuels, the other aim of the operation is to rekindle the dream of a Muslim-Isreali war (or then at least enough Muslims to raise enough funds to attract enough jihadists to the holy land to give the IDF a run for its money).
As a racist and genocidal group, I do not support Hamas, but their strategy does make sense.
Anyone knowing even a bit of Russian history (and from this post it is very clear that it is not you) knows that before Wagner Group started recruiting prisoners, it was an elite PMC who was very strict about its recruiting. I was talking about WAGNER, you know, like in WAGNER Group, i.e. its founder. He is not a random guy from prison, he is a guy who (along with Prigozhin), used his elite troops to medle in various conflicts around the world, with the blessing and financing from Kremlin. And it just happens so that most of the closest command circle of that group comes from ultra-right nationalist groups, like Russian Imperial Movement. The same goes for the mentioned Rusich Group - these are not some random guys with svastikas, but members of well-trained paramilitary group comprising of far-right nationalists, also most likely funded by Kremlin, or for Russkii Obraz. I have given all those names for you on a plate, all you needed to do was to look them up instead of embarass yourself with cries of false symmetry, which just shows how out of depth you are when you are discussing such topics.
Putin since his second term have been coveting support from Russian nationalists (I have given tons of links with my exchange with Mikie). It happens so that many of the 'mainstream' (if you can call them that) nationalists have close relations with definitely-not-mainstream far-right nationaiists many of whom are neo-Nazi. They have been pampered, supported and financed by Putin for his political gain.
Here, some more reading for you:
https://www.latrobe.edu.au/news/articles/2022/opinion/russias-long-history-of-neo-nazis
Quoting boethius
Lol. You clearly have no clue how propaganda in Russia works. I recommend watching some excerpts prepared by Julia Davis.
Yeah I get it, a real tough guy as tough as they come.
One of the first arguments used to apologize for the Nazi's in Ukraine is that they are just tough guys and having some spooky SS symbolism is just boys will be boys kind of things, doesn't mean anything.
The videos I posted clearly demonstrate the groups adoption of "Nazi stuff" is far deeper than just tattoos.
However, if there wasn't evidence of organized groups who are happy to explain their "Aryans will rise again" ideology, then it's a fair complaint that you're going to find these sorts of tough guy tattoos on tough guys the world over, may not mean more than that.
If your point is that Wagner is also a Nazi organization similar to Azov, you need that evidence you keep talking about.
Now, if your point is that Wagner is a tool of the Kremlin to advance its state policies where violence is needed, seems legitimate political process to me. How is Wagner different from American PMC's?
Quoting Jabberwock
Nationalists there definitely are in Ukraine. But please demonstrate there are groups that honour Nazi collaborators and are clearly organized around an explicitly Nazi ideology, not just have a few "bad apples". Now, if you want to say the nationalism is a different flavour, not explicitly Nazi, but just as bad, sure, I don't have a problem with that.
Quoting Jabberwock
You're telling me that Putin calls the military campaign major objective "denazification" and that didn't play well in Russia.
Normal Russians were just like "pfff, plenty of that over here, denazify Russia already".
It's simply obvious fact that the Nazi groups that rose to positions of power and prominence (though not through legitimate electoral means) and openly talked about their desire to destroy Russia (I believe one slogan was "first Moscow, then Berlin!") does not help motivate the Russian population to get behind the war (which a large majority of Russians support).
It's also an obvious fact that when you have fanatical groups willing to use "street politics" (what terrorism is called when white people do it) to kill opponents and intimidate everyone, murder a negotiator in a peace process, it both clouds political legitimacy and frustrates peace processes.
Both points are essential to understanding the war: there are very motivated forces in Ukraine that do not want any peace and are willing to use violence to prevent peace, and those forces also provide some reasonable basis for regular Russians to support the war.
Since we're on a philosophy forum and no one has actually detailed a just war argument for Ukraine, explaining how the separatists deserved to be shelled, etc. the Nazi's in Ukraine must also be touched on in a just-war theory for Ukraine. I keep on being told that the answer to this issue is there "is not enough Nazis in Ukraine", I ask "what would enough be?" and this question is never answered, but apparently just asking for a little expansion of the just war theory, to clarify a key term, is "pro Putin".
However, this whole business of trying to prove there's "just as much Nazis in Russia" is completely absurd as it clearly accepts what the posted reporting shows, there's a Nazi problem in Ukraine.
How is there being a Nazi problem in Russia, assuming that's true, justification to ignore the same problem in Ukraine? And if this is the case, why would we care about either?
Is the logic here that we can support, train, arm and finance Nazis in Ukraine, that's justifiable and honours all the forebears who fought or resisted the Nazis, as long as Russia too has some Nazis?
My position honestly doesn't seem to warrant any controversy at all, as a Canadian I don't want to see Canadian money and arms and training in the hands of Nazis. Indeed, there were laws passed to make sure the government wasn't inadvertently arming Nazis in Ukraine in support of the "legitimate government there" ... and a reporter goes and demonstrate exactly that is happening and ... nada.
The West could have made a real tangible distinction between the Nazis and the Ukrainian government (which would have limited significantly the growth of the Nazi organization and the "street politics"; aka. terrorism) but the West doesn't, that's my main issue. And why does the West (as in Governments) not even try to distinguish between Nazis and not-Nazis in Ukraine? Because it's only the Nazis willing to shell civilians and keep the conflict going in the Donbas come what may!
What Nazi groups rose to positions of power and prominence?
Quoting boethius
Huh? So were the LNR and DNR troops shelling civilians on the Ukrainian side also Nazis?
I already answered this question. Assessing military results depend on political aims. And political aims of national sovereign states are grounded on “national interest” which is identitarian matter. So it’s on the Ukrainians to establish to what extent it is worth fighting against the Russians. Besides until the Ukrainians want to fight and have the Western military support the war is not over. And if it will be over at some point without restoration of territorial integrity, there might be political ways to restore it (completely or in part) that wouldn’t have been possible without the Ukrainian war effort. For the US it took 20 years to leave Afghanistan.
Quoting boethius
Tens of thousands over a population of roughly 2 millions is not that small either.
Fortunately, Israel is competent and savvy that didn’t kill more Palestinians, even if it had the means to do it.
Quoting boethius
Hamas war ultimate aim is to liberation of Palestine, not to humiliate Israel on the battlefield. The latter is just one intermediary step.
Ukraine liberated Kiev from Russian assault and humiliated Russia too, but still is far from liberating all its territories which is the ultimate aim of Ukraine. And also the Russian atrocities may motivate Ukrainians to fight Russia for decades to come.
Quoting boethius
Maybe the Ukrainians could try to do the same then against the Russians.
Quoting boethius
The problem is that Hamas is not only an islamist but also a nationalist movement, so it doesn’t fight for all the muslisms but for the liberation of Palestine.
While the other muslim regimes do not seem particularly compelled to retaliate against Israel (not even Iran) in a more direct or aggressive way. So Hamas calculation doesn’t seem to make more sense than what the Ukrainians are doing: both are far from reaching their ultimate goal, both have sacrificed a good deal of people wrt their population, both see this tragedy as a motivational factor to continue the battle.
And Israel and jews do not seem as concerned as the Russians.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/ukrainian-jews-push-back-against-putins-neo-nazi-claim-as-they-gear-up-for-battle/
https://www.timesofisrael.com/after-4-months-in-russian-solitary-ukrainian-officer-visits-israel-tells-his-story/
On the other side in Russia:
https://theconversation.com/jews-are-leaving-russia-again-is-history-repeating-itself-189090
https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/11/09/russia-inadequate-response-antisemitism-north-caucasus
The latest reiteration of plain lying (that I know of) from the Kremlin circle:
Russia’s foreign minister faces Western critics at security meeting and walks out after speech
[sup]— Konstantin Testorides, Derek Gatopoulos · AP · Nov 30, 2023[/sup]
Quoting Sergey Lavrov
Quoting Sergey Lavrov
Shouldn't that be "Please leave the Ukrainians be"? When called out, they walk out. Their alternate world crap isn't working.
Quoting boethius
Goodie then, you don't defend/uphold the Kremlin's fabrication, glad to hear it. :up:
Quoting Nov 28, 2023
A fabrication they uphold as a rationale for their invasion (attempted landgrab). "DeNazification and demilitarization of Ukraine" — except not concerned with, say, Pavel Gubarev. (Or the late Utkin, or Rusich, ....) Quick to "throw bombs while living in a glass house" as it were. Introspection not their strong suit? Because it's a ruse with ulterior motives, propaganda for the gullible.
I guess you're looking to justify their invasion by different means then — those creepy Ukrainian Nazis? (Doing Pesky's job, eh? :D) If given the chance, it might be interesting to see what'll happen, under the watchful eye of (peace-time) democracy.
Quoting boethius
There was a link, also posted prior on Oct 16, 2023; I guess I can post a more recent summary...
Incremental steps for democracy transparency freedom contra authoritarianism regress oppression (shedding the shackles of their dominant neighbor to the north, much to Putin's dismay). At least they're trying while getting shit all over.
By the way,
Quoting Nov 9, 2023
No, I'm not. Quote me if you believe I'm saying that.
Perhaps you take my cynical views of Washington's stake in this war as 'pro-Russian', but that's simply a mischaracterization.
Your claim was:
Quoting jorndoe
I point out that's a straw man, I do not claim Ukraine is ruled by a Nazi regime.
No where do I claim Zelensky is a Nazi, and I wouldn't have a problem with the criteria that your leader needs to be a Nazi for the regime as a whole to be a Nazi; rather have pointed several times to Zelensky's inability to control the Nazis in Ukraine.
I have zero problem believing Zelensky's promises to make peace with Russia in his election campaign was a genuine desire and intention on Zelensky's part. As much as I think Zelensky is a fool, I do not think he's foolish enough to actually want war with Ukraine.
However, there is a powerful actor in Ukraine that did and does want war with Russia, which are the organized Nazi's and their mere "extremist white supremacist" affiliates.
These Nazis represent a problem. In the recent discussion, the main point is that they are a problem that contribute to Russian motivation to prosecute the war. If you simply ignore the Nazi problem (as the Western media did immediately before and then during the war) then arguments like "Russia doesn't know how it's fighting and has low moral" seem plausible.
The main reason for this total denialism of the Nazi problem, is that Nazis in Ukraine fighting Russian speakers, shelling Russian speaking civilians, overtly declaring their life style is one of warfare and their goal is a Great War with Russia, burning people in buildings and all sorts of other "street politics" (aka. terrorism), is an obvious provocation to Russia.
For example, if I go around with a swastika arm band, someone punching me in the face is still assault, but it's obviously not unprovoked. You can't say it's a random act of violence. And even if you want to argue that the assault is illegal and so on, almost no one in Western society will have sympathy for me as a explicit Nazi intentionally provoking aggression towards me by people who don't like Nazis (we're assuming here I'm of sound mind and not going to a halloween party or act in a play or whatever).
So if you want to keep the West behind the war then you need the Western media on board with the propaganda that there's no Nazis in Ukraine, oh ok there is but they're "everywhere" (as you put it), oh ok you got me they are a particular bad problem in Ukraine but they've reformed, all right all right they haven't reformed still Nazi as ever, but Russia has Nazis too!!"
Now what is the Nazi problem in Ukraine?
Since the question of Ukrainian perspectives was brought up, here's a Ukrainian perspective on the Nazi problem:
Quoting Vyacheslav Likhachev, Freedomhouse.org
A key passage:
Quoting Vyacheslav Likhachev, Freedomhouse.org
Now, what would killing a national guardsmen with a grenade outside parliament or congress be called if it happened in the EU or United States?
Terrorism.
What would "activists" shooting and wounding police officers be called in the EU or United States of political messaging motives?
Terrorism.
Well, at least if brown people of whatever shade did it.
Quoting Vyacheslav Likhachev, Freedomhouse.org
Let's move onto NBC, a rare example in the Western Media that explains the Nazis in Ukraine are obviously a problem:
Quoting NBC
Obviously, the best propaganda is based on truth.
Imagine if the US actually found some WMD's in Iraq, no matter if they were in terrible condition and basically forgotten or lost by the Iraqi forces (and in no way some imminent threat to the US as was claimed to justify preemptive warfare), the US would be parading those photos around to this day. The problem with the WMD propaganda was that it had no truth to it at all; it was not an exaggeration of some smaller but still concerning fact, but completely fabricated and so didn't stand the test of time.
Likewise, imagine if Trump was not literally a Russian agent, but a pee tape did actually exist completely consensually and in save hands, just that Russia didn't have it and it remained zero evidence Trump colluded with the Russians. People would be going nuts. Indeed, the fact that members of Trumps administration did meet with Russian diplomats, there was at least some communication, was what fuelled Russia gate for years.
Point is, that there is an actual Nazi problem in Ukraine makes the propaganda work of motivating Russians to support the war far easier, even if you personally believe, and is critical to understanding the war and critical to take into account in understanding Western policy.
For example, if you're the US and actually want a war between Russia and Ukraine you would do nothing to stop the arming, funding and training of Nazis in Ukraine, and if your own country passes a law to make that illegal you just ignore that.
Quoting Ukraine's Nazi problem is real, NBC
Not only will the Nazis in Ukraine themselves take the initiative to provoke Russia as much as possible, but those provocations and the fact they are Nazis gives strong reasons and motivations for Russia to escalate and a factual basis to amplify with propaganda to sustain a larger conflict.
If one is interested in actual peace, obviously literal Nazi actors that have partial control over as well as free rein to terrorize to affect political decisions and processes, is worrisome.
For example, one reason for Zelensky to reject the Russian's offer was certainly Boris Johnson pressuring him to do so, but another reason is certainly fear of reprisal from the Nazis who (as all these articles point out) have very little electoral success (so do not legitimate represent the majority of Ukrainians) but who can affect political process by direct violence, as this Atlantic Council article points out what the actual problem is:
Quoting Ukraine’s Got a Real Problem with Far-Right Violence, Atlantic Council
Or as Washington Post describes the problem:
Quoting Neo-Nazis are exploiting Russia’s war in Ukraine for their own purposes, Washington Post
Have the above sort of ideology by powerful factions Ukraine is not a good thing for any peace process.
And not just a problem for Ukraine, but has wider implications for decades to come:
Quoting Neo-Nazis are exploiting Russia’s war in Ukraine for their own purposes, Washington Post
So what can we conclude from actual facts.
First, Ukraine has a Nazi problem.
Second, Nazis are able to influence the political process with violence instead of electoral success.
Third, the Nazis are powerful enough in Ukraine that they can commit clear acts of terrorism and face no consequences. They may not totally control the state, but they act with "impunity", so one step away of taking control of the state.
Why all this matters, is not only in understanding events, but also is another "thorny", I believe is the word, issue in terms of Western policy.
The first issue is when terrorist organizations can act with impunity and are fanatically devoted to further warfare, even if it reduces the country to "ashes" as some sort of purifying exercise, this factor in Ukrainian politics must be discounted in any justification for support for Ukraine; especially pressure to keep fighting rather than seek a peace deal. Since we know Ukrainian politics is affected by various Nazi projects through the threat of violence, we have to consider the possibility different more legitimate political actors are influenced by violent extortion.
"That Ukrainians want to fight," for example to retake all the land including Crimea, is not in itself justification for supplying arms to support that cause but certainly a necessary requirement for (at least public) Western political discourse. If that objective is more a Nazi objective than anyone else's, and polls are not only manipulative as we've seen but people can be intimidated to give one answer over another, then the West shouldn't support it. Which doesn't exclude any support at all, but could lead to supporting a defensive posture and negotiations instead of trying to reconquer territory at a massive cost to Ukrainian lives and economy (and may also have no chance of working).
Second policy problem is that even if one completed the complicated exercise of discounting Nazi influence on Ukrainian politics, certainly it would be important to any country that doesn't explicitly support fascism to make sure there are safeguards to prevent the grown (not just in Ukraine but internationally as seen above) of Naziism.
For example, you might want to have mechanisms to track arms and money and a veto on which foreign fighters can openly travel to Ukraine who "see Ukraine as a chance to further 'accelerationist' agendas, which seek to speed up a civilization-wide collapse and then build fascist ethno-states from the ashes," rather than structure support to Ukraine as an untraceable slush fund, both in terms of finance and arms (except of course the money that never enters Ukraine but is transferred directly to arms manufacturers).
Also, what's you're implication here, that all the Nazis in the videos I posted and the articles above are just another "social problem" like alcoholism, homelessness or child obesity?
Is it a "social problem" or "alternate world type stuff". So hard to keep track.
For anyone following:
Step one is straight up denialism, any mention of the Nazis in Ukraine is derided as purely Kremlin invented propaganda.
Faced with the evidence from Western sources that this is obviously not the case:
Step two is to claim that there's no more Nazis in Ukraine than anywhere else, it's just totally normal background Naziism levels, or something like that.
Again, faced with the evidence that is also not the case:
Step three is to claim there there's also Nazis in Russia!!
When this false symmetry is pointed out and also the obvious fact that even if true, that's not a justification to support Nazis in Ukraine; they'd just both have Nazis. What's even the argument, "we can have our Nazis if Russia has theirs?" Makes no sense and obviously presupposes there's a pretty bad Nazi problem in Ukraine if co-founders of Wagner also having Nazis tattoos and German nicknames (which is not enough evidence to constitute a Nazi ideology) is needed to desperately try to make the case that Russia is basically a Nazi regime too!!
Step four is to admit there is Nazis (not "alternative world stuff" after all) and admit they represent a pretty dangerous extremist problem, just that saying the whole regime in Kiev is Nazi is a ever so slight exaggeration Russian propaganda has made.
If the war goes badly (for Western policy and geopolitical strategy; obviously Ukrainians don't matter much to us) and also serves as the predicted breeding ground for far-right extremism mentioned above, the West may come to regret doing absolutely nothing about things like:
Quoting NBC
If there's a literal Nazi coup, which is not out of the cards, and an overt Nazi regime comes to power, it will suddenly be "OMG, what is happening, how did we ignore the Nazi problem".
Which is something, @Tzeentch, you should easily understand the relevance of, having already pointed out that proxies have a tendency to go out of control.
The West assumes Ukrainian democracy is going to survive the war. That is not certain.
The West has a lot of leverage in that Western money is needed to avoid terrible suffering in Ukraine, but fanatical extremists may not care about that. Russia has no intention of conquering the West of Ukraine, as you've likewise pointed out, so one potential end result is that if the war is lost for East Ukraine, the fanatical Nazi elements seize control of power in the West, Russians take what they want in Eastern Ukraine and then there is an actual frozen conflict, and some sort of dystopian nightmare unfolds in West Ukraine.
From what I understand, the CIA-neocons genuinely thought letting the Nazi problem grow wouldn't be "their problem" but Russias problem, be that insurgency they loved talking about. But if Russia doesn't conquer all of Ukraine then it will remain a Western problem.
And what can the West do about it if the worst elements in Ukraine come to power? Intervene militarily to avoid appeasement?
You're making an unwarranted leap here from arguing that Ukraine's Nazi problem is beneficial to Russian propaganda efforts to concluding that it was actually a reason for the russian government to invade.
Quoting boethius
What does it mean that it is "worrisome"? What exactly is the worry?
Quoting boethius
Certainly? No. You have no grounds to conclude that.
Quoting boethius
As far as I can see, you have not provided a single example of them actually influencing a political process with violence.
Quoting boethius
No, it is not one step away from controlling the state. This is ridiculous nonsense.
Quoting boethius
And we're in the realm of just baselessly spinning your narrative where you want it.
Quoting boethius
And some more fantasy piled on top. You just can't help but venture forth into the ridiculous, apparently.
Quoting boethius
An interesting slip, given you just claimed that you're not arguing that Ukraine is a nazi regime.
Quoting boethius
This consistent effort to lie, manipulate and distort is really tiresome. You claim one thing, then a few paragraphs later you're already backtracking, as if you're somehow unable to go through even one post without dialing up your claims again.
Case in point:
Quoting boethius
So we went from "there's a Nazi problem in Ukraine that strengthens russian propaganda" to "Ukraine is only one step away from a Nazi regime and a Nazi regime might actually pop up at any time".
Needless to say that the latter claim barely even qualifies as a slippery slope fallacy.
It is actually "a reason", if the the Nazis help the invasion of Ukraine by providing both legitimate motivation (we don't like Nazis) as well as plenty of propaganda opportunity to amplify the threat of Nazis, that is "a reason" to invade, that he Ukrainians, at minimum, make the task easier of motivating your own society.
I have no problem with NATO enlargement being the main reason, but why Putin leads with "denazification" is because the NATO threat is very abstract. Now that NATO has sent NATO tanks into Ukraine and Russia is fighting NATO heavy weapons, it's more easy to sell that the conflict is actually with NATO so you see Russian rhetoric shifting in that direction the more NATO weapons arrive in Ukraine.
Now, the Nazis in Ukraine are also a legitimate security threat to Russia and are shelling the separatists (a situation that is not sustainable anyways). These are facts. A just war theory would need to navigate these facts and demonstrate that the separatists deserved to be attacked and shell (Ukraine's war on the separatists had just cause) as well as the Nazis are a threat but not "enough" of a threat for Russia to justify preemptive war.
No one's done, in the hundreds of pages that @ssu bemoaning (which the primary reason is the war continues, so too the discussion), the work of actually producing a just war theory for Ukraine, even less for the aims of reconquering all the territory and Crimea at heavy cost and little chance of success.
People, such as yourself, simply claim it's obvious ... while also claiming separatists are a thorny issue and that it was obvious to anyone who can read that Ukraine cannot possible prevail with NATO's level of support, that plenty of analysis was available that would make that clear.
Since I don't support NATO's policy even assuming Ukraine has just cause, the issue isn't so important to me and I don't have time to get into all the historical details to be "be sure" who has just cause, if anyone, in this conflict. I just don't see how it's obvious. In particular, I don't see how Russias war on Ukraine isn't justified if the US and NATO's various wars are, so I have particular issue with "it's ok when US does it because US hegemony is the bomb"; I don't have much issue with condemning both the US and Russia's imperial wars (although that doesn't resolve the issue of the Donbas).
Quoting Echarmion
You honestly don't find the statement, assuming it's true, that Nazis with "partial control over as well as free rein to terrorize to affect political decisions and processes" worrisome?
If Ukrainian Nazis are murdering and intimidating for political purposes in Ukraine, that wouldn't worry you?
Quoting Echarmion
You'd have to be a moron to not have any fear of reprisal if you make peace and radical Nazi groups and affiliates disapprove of that, going so far as to murder a negotiator (negotiating on your behalf, you trust enough to send to talk to the Russians) to make the point. You'd have to be a moron to take at face value the reason for the murder was the negotiator was a traitor without evidence.
Now, if you really think Zelensky is that much of a clueless moron, feel free to state it clearly. Even I give Zelensky more credit.
Quoting Echarmion
Watch the videos and read the articles.
If people can murder their political opponents as well as agents of the state without consequence that will influence things.
Quoting Echarmion
It's not at all ridiculous. There can be severe consequences from the security state for anyone who disapproves of the war, so if some stranger phones you up asking what you think about, you may answer more out of intimidation than freely (and this is ignoring the fact the questions are clearly manipulative).
Quoting Echarmion
Once you achieve enough military power that the state no longer applies to law to you (law enforcement are either on your side or too afraid to do anything), you are one step away from taking power. You maybe a minority of the electorate but you may have a majority of the weapons and people willing to use them.
In fact, one reason that you would want to the war to continue even if you know it is lost is so that the Russians destroy the Ukrainian regulars that could protect the state from a violent coup.
Quoting Echarmion
Again, read the articles. If you just ignore the evidence presented that Ukraine Nazis are unaccountable and act with impunity, or then believe people with that kind of power can't affect people's decisions, you're just a willfully ignorant fool at this point.
Feel free to engage with the evidence posted. But if it's all just "Russian propaganda" produced by Western journalists, I guess feel free to believe that.
Quoting Echarmion
This is a paraphrase of the Nazi apologist position, here and elsewhere. If it's not quite exact, then feel free to interpret as Russia has the same Nazi problem as Ukraine. The main point in pushing the symmetry even to the extreme, is how would it matter? How does Russian Naziism, assuming it's as rampant as Ukrainian, justify supporting Ukrainian Nazis?
Quoting Echarmion
My position is Zelensky is not a Nazi but that Nazis at this point basically control everything that matters in Ukraine, such as the police state. So it's a slight distance away from a Nazi coup.
Quoting Echarmion
Because we're not talking in some timeless vacuum of eternal abstract concepts.
In 2022, before the war, there were strong Nazi battalions that could act with impunity and unaccountability already, but they were small compared to the electorate and the regular Ukrainian army, so they did not have the power to stage a coup.
From 2014 to 2022 the Nazis main affect on history is keeping the war in the Donbas going, shelling civilians and being generally provocative, and frustrating any peace process. I would categorize them as a danger to Ukrainian democracy and clearly an obstacle to peace.
But they did not have the power before the war to just stage a violent coup.
Now, since the war, they grow exceptionally more powerful within the Ukrainian state but, more importantly, Ukrainian regulars are being destroyed.
If the process continues, at some point (which could exist even now) there would be no way for the Ukrainian state to resist a violent coup.
Quoting Echarmion
A slippery slope fallacy requires an end-point that is either absurd or the proposer of the alleged fallacy anyways rejects. For example, that homosexual rights (broadening the scope of legal sexuality) will lead to legalizing beastiality and pedophilia, is a classic slippery slope fallacy.
A violent coup by an extremist group is in no way an absurd end point to the slippery slope that "can't happen". Has happened plenty of times in History.
I also don't anyways reject that it can happen.
It definitely can. I'm not predicting it (we don't have enough information of the various factions in Ukraine and their relative strength to make accurate predictions for this sort of thing), but it is definitely "in the cards", as I say.
It wouldn't be good for Ukraine obviously, and ruin further the economy, and would make further Western support reduce or stop entirely, but the groups in question would not care about that.
Right now the Nazis and other extremists who want the war to continue as long as possible (for example to "purify" society and amass as many weapons and funds as possible) need Zelensky to keep the money and arms flowing.
What I will predict is that as soon as the money and arms stop flowing, these groups would turn on Zelensky. I also predict that they'd also turn on him if he about faced and wanted to make peace with the Russians.
They may not, however, stage a violent coup even if they were capable. They may see the reason to not kill the goose the lays the golden egg.
What seems clear is that factionalism is rising between the major power blocks in Ukraine, Azov and the Nazis being one power block.
Understanding the war, its origins and causes, requires understanding this Nazi power block and its influence in Ukraine as well as provocative affect on Russia (that is both legitimate as well as ripe for cynical exploitation).
The war has greatly amplified all the "street politics" (aka. terrorism) trends that existed before the war.
It is an important factor to consider.
For example, if Nazis now have enough military and police power to simply take over the state, then they could leverage that to keep the war going to essentially extort the West. Obviously an actual Nazi coup in Ukraine would be a PR disaster for all the politicians and officials who have championed the war, so hardliners in Ukraine can hold that over NATO and to keep the money and the arms flowing.
Which would be my guess that they'd use their power for (and even if it's not clear they could take over, the threat needs to be considered) at this stage in the war.
As I say, it's a problem. Nazis aren't the only actor in Ukraine and in the conflict, but they are a significant force with their own agenda and have means to try to bring it about.
Great, so we agree that nationalists inciting genocide are equally bad, no matter whether they explicitly invoke Nazi symbols or not. So we can include Krasovsky, Norkin, Gubarev (and here), Medvedev and dozens of others, too many to list them, because they are doing that every week if not every day. We can list such groups like the mentioned Rusich, Club of Angry Patriots, Russian Imperial Movement and quite a few of others. So if we consider extreme nationalisms in general, then yes, it is a false symmetry, because in Russia they are much closer to the government and their rhetoric is practically mainstream there.
Yes, nationalism plays an enormous role in the causes for the war. The Russian one.
This is what pretty much all the realist analysts, such as Mearsheimer, have been predicting, that Russia would not at this stage negotiate peace even if the West wanted to.
Ukraine is on the back foot having burned up a large part of its reserve "NATO trained" battalions in the counter offensive, is behind on mobilization (so they've passed a law allowing foreign bounty hunters to operate in Ukraine and catch draft dodgers) and even if they catch up draftees need to be trained and the quality of draftees is also starting to be a serious problem.
To make matters worse for Ukraine, the US supplied Ukraine with cluster munitions because they "ran out" of normal shells, and this has unlocked the Russians use of cluster munitions on a large scale; especially cluster bombs which are way bigger than cluster shells. Maybe Russia would have started using cluster munitions at scale anyways, but the fact US supplied them has meant little PR consequence to Russia for their use.
Ukraine's air power is severely attritted and the F16 program, if it ever happens, could be literally years away from being fully effective (a lot needs to be done to make that a thing).
New chaos in the Middle East puts pressure on further ammunition support as well.
So for all these reason, Russia is extremely likely to press their advantages.
I don't have a problem with that. I have no problem with characterizing Russia as an imperial state with a very strong nationalist block.
I have a problem of using nationalism in Russia to excuse nationalism in Ukraine.
I have a problem with supporting a war strategy that has essentially no chance of succeeding at an extremely high cost to trying.
I have a problem of turning Russian critique into some moral imperative to arm the Ukrainians while pressuring them to reject peace, even if the war is a terrible disaster.
I have a problem of rejecting a reasonable peace proposal when Ukraine had the most leverage to get as many concessions as possible, on the basis of "no guarantee". Is winning the war guaranteed? Is NATO delivering "everything Ukraine needs" guaranteed?
Now that Ukraine has very little leverage, surprise, surprise, Imperialist Russia isn't interested in a truce anymore.
Russia has now already paid the major costs of the war and passed the major risk points, so continuing the war is now far wore for NATO than it is for Russia. NATO's diplomatic and sanctions quiver empty, there's not much incentive for Russia to not take more land and also try to push Ukraine into a failed state status that becomes the EU's problem to deal with (obviously the US will gracefully take their leave of the situation if and when that happens).
Again, watch the videos, read the articles if the topic interests you.
Ukrainian nationalism is a major factor in 2014 and what has happened since. The West largely ignores this factor because "meh, they're fighting Russians".
It is not an excuse, but an explanation. Ukrainian nationalism is a direct response to growing Russian nationalism. A big neighbor with the president openly denying your nationality and statehood and courting extreme nationalistic/imperial movements might have an effect like that. Sure, Ukraine could do more to curtail that, but it does not change the fact that it is Russia that wants to subjugate Ukraine, not the other way round. Girkin himself stated that the separatist movements in Donbas were rather anemic. If Russia did not stir up the trouble, Ukrainian nationalism would not be a factor at all.
I don’t believe you said that. I believe you mean that. Indeed, if these are your assumptions:
1. You believe that state do not have the right to fight in self-defence [1]
2. You believe that Russia succeeded in its military goals (faint around Kiev and securing land bridge in the south) and Ukraine failed (it didn’t free the annexed territories)
3. That the US support (followed by weak European leaders) is cynically exploitative. And that “If anything I believe the Europeans should stop backing the war in Ukraine and encourage the Americans to leave as fast as possible.”
4. You keep repeating that in March Ukraine had the best chance to end the war and that Ukraine should negotiate regardless of the broken trust.
The argument you are pushing is something like Ukrainians have no points:
- in fighting in self-defence of their country,
- in pursuing a military victory over Russia because Russia has won on the battlefield and Ukrainian objectives are unattainable
- in relying to the US military support (either because the US is exploitative or because if it wasn’t it should stop supporting Ukraine anyways)
But Ukraine should try to negotiate anyways despite the lack of trust from the Russians, at least at the conditions of March / April 2022 (which equates to a negotiation for surrender if there are no security guarantees from other countries, which ones? The exploitative US won’t give them and it can not be trusted anyways), if Russia accepts it (what if Russia wants more?) [2][3]. So practically without leverage (which was the American military support and willingness to keep fighting), with the priority to spare “many thousands of lives and billions in damages”, and with no territorial concessions nor security guarantees.
If that is not “surrender”, I don’t know what is.
But let’s have a look at how you argue when Russia is not the aggressor [4]. No argument to support the idea that Palestinians have no right to fight to defend their idea of state, that freeing Palestine with a war is unattainable and Israel is winning by grabbing and securing more land, that Iran is exploiting Palestinians (and other hegemonically ambitious players too in the Arab world and outside), and that Palestinians should negotiate with Israel with the peace deal on terms that Israel is willing to accept. It’s all about what Israel should do.
[1]
Quoting Tzeentch
[2]
Quoting Tzeentch
[3]
Quoting Tzeentch
Quoting Tzeentch
[4]
Quoting Tzeentch
Quoting Tzeentch
No they are not, unless you mean in the sense that any armed Ukrainian is a threat to russian interests in Ukraine.
Quoting boethius
Not really, since that is merely a civil war and thus an internal affair.
Quoting boethius
There is no justifiable "preemptive war" under international law. But, if there was some moral case for it, we would need to identify either an existential threat to Russia as a state or some grave threat to russian citizen. Like weapons of mass destruction being held in preparation for their use on russian cities.
This is not the case, and so there is not remotely any justification for a "preemptive war".
Quoting boethius
What worries me personally is immaterial.
Quoting boethius
This is just baseless speculation on Zekensky's motives.
Quoting boethius
So you cannot actually provide any specific example.
Quoting boethius
But that is not the case.
Quoting boethius
Speculative generalities are not a replacement for an argument.
Quoting boethius
It would matter if someone were to argue that Russia is worried about Nazi ideology in Ukraine and felt compelled to start a preemptive war to stop them. Because that would be a rather absurd thing to do if russian Nazis then simply replaced the Ukrainian ones.
Quoting boethius
Strawman.
Quoting boethius
Yeah and that is utter bullshit. So obviously untrue that it can only be called a bold faced lie.
Quoting boethius
This just goes from hyperbole in the first paragraph into absolute fantasy immediately.
Quoting boethius
That is false. It's a slippery slope fallacy if it doesn't explain the intervening steps.
Quoting boethius
But not in a manner that merely uses the facts of the matter as a stepping stone into a wild flurry of fantasy and speculation.
Quoting boethius
Yeah no. Obvious propaganda.
Quoting neomac
You're conflating two different discussions. From a moral standpoint I view states as being fundamentally flawed from the outset.
But my engagement in the discussion about the Ukraine war has never been moral in nature. Morality isn't even a useful lens through which to view the conduct of states, since they are not moral actors.
Ukraine has a right to defend itself from a standpoint of international law, which is something I would never deny.
You have to pay attention to what is said, not fill in the blanks with what you would like to believe "I meant".
As for the rest, I believe Ukraine will achieve nothing by continuing to fight, except for a worse bargaining position and further destruction of Ukraine.
There's nothing 'pro-Russian' about that, even if it's not what cheerleaders want to hear.
Yes, I believe Russia most-likely achieved its primary objectives. Yes, I believe the Ukrainiain bargaining position has only deteriorated since the negotiations of March/April 2022.
And on the topic of trust; it's Ukraine who stands to lose most in this war, so trust or no trust, refusing negotiations will only deteriorate its position further.
Exactly. Hence, the Kremlin circle = serial liars (+ hypocrites). Dis/agree?
Quoting boethius
Whether you do or not, the Kremlin circle does, and employs that as a rationale for their wretched warring, which hence falls flat. Yes? No?
‘There are no homosexuals in this country’ How Putin’s embrace of homophobia echoes dictators of the past
[sup]— Vasily Legeido, Sam Breazeale · Meduza · Oct 21, 2022[/sup]
Top Russian court bans LGBT movement as 'extremist'
[sup]— Mark Trevelyan, Kevin Liffey · Reuters · Nov 30, 2023[/sup]
Ukraine has made some progress, where Russia has regressed. Agree or not?
(As an aside, check how many steps from this old post (Banno, 180 Proof) Pukin has accomplished.)
Quoting boethius
Especially with long weaving comments, eh? ;)
By the way,
Quoting Nov 9, 2023
FYI, reportedly, Ukraine has become the most littered area on the planet — littered with Russian mines, bombs, trip wires and traps, grenades, explosives in kitchen gear and toys, ...
You can't just throw in a "hence" to construct an argument.
What's your actual argument here, then I'll answer your question.
Quoting jorndoe
I've explained several times now that the best propaganda with the longest shelf life is based on truth.
So no, it doesn't fall flat. Whether it was the "main thing" or something else that have motivated the Russians to see the war through this far, certainly the denazification rationale was a contributing factor.
Quoting jorndoe
I do not think Ukraine has made more progress than Russia on the freedom and equality scale. Before the war there were arguments for and against "who's more free" that has already been addressed (in the context of how many lives are worth sacrificing to "free" occupied Ukraine).
However, now Ukraine seems to be essentially a police state, political parties banned, critical media banned, lot's of disappearing and murdering by the police state. I wouldn't say Russia is doing much better, but my guess is that Russia is still "more free" than wartime Ukraine. For example, Russians were not barred from leaving the country, so that is a significant freedom. You, to contrast, are free to argue or just randomly say that the "true freedom" will arrive when the war is over, all those forced into the draft and sacrificed will be vindicated in some strange sense.
Quoting jorndoe
You mainly micro-blog, call everything you don't like propaganda, provide no commentary or analysis of what you're micro-blogging about, and don't engage in any debate for the most part.
The little argument you do is simply a series of moving the goal-posts. You go from claiming the Nazi problem in Ukraine is "alternative world type stuff" in response to my analysis of the Nazi problem the tis backed up by evidence, to Nazi's are literally "everywhere" and no more a problem in Ukraine, to admitting it's a problem in Ukraine but then just provide links of extremists elsewhere ... where they too are a problem such as jihadi terrorism (the difference being it's tolerated in Ukraine but the French, to take one of your examples, are not tolerating it and trying to keep it in check if not reduce it), and now it's "Russia is just as bad", maybe so, maybe Russia is just as bad ... why would I pick Ukraine in a context of equally bad states?
Quoting jorndoe
I've explained several times that nuclear blackmail obviously works.
What's your solution to nuclear blackmail?
What is your alternative analysis to mine that the principle factor determining the outcome in the war in Ukraine is NATO's desire to avoid nuclear escalation, what could potentially cause nuclear escalation? Ukraine winning obviously. So, how is nuclear escalation avoided? Propping Ukraine up just enough to be able to fight but not enough to be able to win.
NATO associated analysts, mainly the neocons, discussed at length what the US could do in response to Russian nuclear use in Ukraine and didn't come up with any good options.
So yes, the Kremlin will get its way in Ukraine because people genuinely believe the alternative is the nuclear way, which no one wants to risk for Ukraine.
Why? Because Ukraine isn't important to the US, NATO, and the EU, not important to risk nuclear escalation.
I explained over several comments how exactly boots on the ground could have worked to prevent the war, of course at the risk of nuclear escalation, a bold move I'd be completely content with if it worked at preventing a giant war.
Of course, it was never even an option under consideration, because Ukraine or Ukrainian lives is not some sort of priority and the games the US and NATO have been playing in Ukraine are for evil ends that do not benefit Ukraine nor Europe more generally (the EU goes along with it because European leaders have decided to just accept being subordinate tools to the US after all, and the EU institutions used to keep rascal nations in check rather than coordinate any sort of independent European foreign policy; the EU has essentially been transformed into the underwriter of the Ukrainian government and a whip that can be cracked at any politician that dares criticize US foreign policy).
So, if you want to live in the real world, the problem of Nazis in Ukraine was never "an actual problem" for the US and NATO because they served the purpose of provoking the war, and likewise, in the real world, no one's so foolish enough as to provoke nuclear war on behalf of Ukraine.
Which leaves us where? Ukraine is stuck in a war its backers want Ukraine to fight but not win.
That's what choosing to "win", which I believe is your position, means.
You're genuinely surprised by the result?
Has the cost been worth a small sliver of a chance to retake the Donbas without needing to negotiate any sort of increased autonomy of any kind ... or the even smaller change of retaking Crimea?
If one wants to live in the real world, the last thing they should do is believe anything you write.
Quoting boethius
More lies piled on.
Really, you expect anyone to believe that you care one whit about peace, or lives?
Really? You go from stating my predictions, such as Ukraine could not possibly retake significant territory without heavy weapons (that Javelins, NLAWS and Stingers aren't going to cut) are the most obvious thing ever that everyone who had a clue knew basically ... to now claiming literally nothing I say is true.
Now I get it, Ukraine isn't in a good position, before nor during the war, and NATO could do more (such as just let Ukraine in and then send in ground troops to teach Putin who's the real tough guys with the real toughest tats) but NATO doesn't.
I also get it, if you aren't a Nazi sympathizer it's difficult to process the level of Naziism in Ukraine, but it's there and it's an important part of any credible analysis.
As NBC puts it:
Quoting Ukraine's Nazi problem is real, NBC
Now, I'd also be worried about hundreds of thousands dead in a war and everyone else that would be purged in a Nazi takeover as well.
However, the evidence behind the above warning is strong enough for NBC to publish the story even in an environment of general denialism and white washing of the issue.
Quoting Echarmion
Where were you at the start of the conflict in spring 2022 when peace was most easily achieved?
I was here.
Arguing for peace.
I even wrote to my country's leadership 3 years before the war started explaining that a lack of international leadership (for example rich countries narcissistically only focusing on themselves, and not creating a mobile medical battalion to bring relief to areas experiencing overcapacity) would lead directly to chaos and conflict, most notably in Eastern Europe.
Now imagine if the West also put resources into mobile hospitals during the pandemic to at least be sure to bring basic medical supplies to areas experience a peak.
Even if it wouldn't be all that successful, it's the kind of thing that would bring people together, symbolize our caring for each other. Of course, the danger of this concept is that it may have worked too well and there'd be no need to wait for vaccines.
My proposal was rejected and I was informed the pandemic was in the hands of the experts, not to worry my pretty little head basically.
Exactly the process I described took place.
Now you may argue my mobile hospital concept would not have prevented the war in Ukraine, but I also explained in my letter that the insular attitude, essentially ignoring international diplomacy, would also contribute to the same.
Again, experts are handling it.
But are they? Are they really?
Meaning?
Quoting Tzeentch.
Do you mean that “those were blocked by the US simply to save Washington's ego” and “how many thousands of lives and billions in damages is Washington's ego worth?” do not express moral evaluations? Neither “my perspective presupposes peaceful coexistence is (or "should be") the goal of nations. Sadly, many nations and certainly the U.S. are not driven by that goal”?
How about the conduct of Putin, Zelensky, Biden, Macron, Scholz, Boris Johnson? Can we assess their political choices morally since they are moral actors? How about “These people are unhinged. The Netanyahu regime has got to go. Can we get regime change in Israel, please?” ? Does it express a moral evaluation?
Quoting Tzeentch
If you do not want me to fill in the blanks, as you claim, you should try to be more clear next time. Here is what I got so far, about your beliefs: Ukraine has a right to defend itself from a standpoint of international law. But not right to defend itself from a standpoint of morality because… it is not a moral actor?
Now the question: Putin who is a moral actor (right?) can invade Ukraine and violate its right from a standpoint of international law because from a moral point of view Ukraine has no right to self-defence?
Quoting Tzeentch
What you have conveniently removed from this presentation of your views is all your normative claims about what Ukrainian should have done, what the US/Europeans should do, and who is to blame. Besides pro-Russian propaganda could make the same arguments, even if that’s what you do not want to hear. Indeed, you are still arguing based on factual claims that you believe compelling in their accuracy and sufficient to support surrender.
Let’s do another test, if I claimed: “Russia should stop illegally occupying Ukraine. That's an action that it can and should undertake unilaterally.
They should stop illegally occupying Ukraine, and stop committing human rights violations, war crimes and crimes against humanity. As long as Russia is the occupier and refuses to carry out the relevant UN resolutions, RUSSIA IS THE PROBLEM”.
Would you agree with that?
I love the logic of invoking denialism while posting a bunch of articles to then turn around and claim the articles are thus evidence of a much worse problem. It's the kind of backwards logic common to self-professed "free thinkers".
Also it should be noted that in context, the "chaos and insurgency" the article talks about is referring to the result of a russian takeover.
Quoting boethius
This really just seems like more evidence that you are conceited about your own abilities, and that your incessant distortion and outright lies merely serve to protect your ego.
Quoting neomac
For the sake of not derailing the thread I'm not going to go into detail. I'm a classic liberal in the practical sense, and an anarchist in an idealist sense. For me, states are a 'necessary evil' at their very best, and more often than not just 'evil'.
Quoting neomac
We've already had this discussion before.
Picking out a handful of emotionally loaded comments is not very impressive considering this discussion has been going for years.
My arguments vis-á-vis Ukraine are not moral in nature, and the idea that this war is primarily caused by neocon foreign policy is not moral either.
Sometimes the sheer disgust I feel towards some of the clowns that inhabit the spheres of international politics shines through. Sue me.
Quoting neomac
Quoting neomac
States are abstractions and not moral actors, so they have no moral rights.
As I said, morality is simply not a useful lens through which to evaluate the behavior of states.
Note that in the case of the Israel discussion, Israel has no legal right to self-defense, which is why the discussion shifted to the question of whether it had a moral right.
And no, of course my belief is not that Putin has a moral right to invade Ukraine.
For the purpose of this discussion I've always supposed Ukraine had a legal right to self-defense and that Russia's invasion is illegal, and never claimed otherwise. The basis for that is international law, and not morality.
Quoting neomac
Those aren't moral 'shoulds' though, and attributing blame isn't necessarily moral in nature either. These are questions of cause & effect, strategy, etc.
Quoting neomac
No, I don't believe Russia is responsible for the conflict in Ukraine in the same way that Israel is responsible for the war in Gaza.
Russia is part of the problem, and its invasion and occupation are illegal. I can agree to that much.
The articles are written at different times and represent a trend, going from a "danger to democracy" and acting (violently, including murder) with impunity and are totally unaccountable by law enforcement (already before the war, either because they've captured law enforcement or then can already intimidate police and prosecutors into doing nothing) to chaos and insurgency could put jews at risk of their fellow citizens (i.e. the problem is already bad enough that Nazis would have time to kill jews as a side hustle to fighting Russian occupiers).
First, you throw up some plausible deniability bullshit arguing that there's no proof these acts of terrorism actually intimidate people into making different choices, and now you move the goal posts to "it's not that bad".
If the state of things before the war was already unaccountable terrorism, only a fool would believe 2 years of war has been bad for these Nazi and other white supremacy factions. There's plenty of evidence of the Nazis taking advantage of the war to grow their power further.
Now, as I say, there is not evidence they are some significant majority in Ukraine, but if their power grows and the power of non-Nazi regular forces is weakened (for example by fighting a war), then a coup or a credible threat of a coup to extort concessions from the state, is possible.
Likewise, simply the threat of Nazis doing crazy violent things can tip decisions in their favour; even if they don't have enough power for a coup, they clearly have enough power that what they may do if displeased requires mindful consideration.
Of course, they aren't the only power block involved; obviously the West wouldn't want to see a literal Nazi coup in Ukraine, and the West has plenty of leverage (money, arms, prestige, normalizing Nazism as much as possible).
If you look at all the evidence, the videos and the article, and conclude "nothing to see here", I can only categorize that as willful blindness.
The problem of Nazis in Ukraine is and will remain a big problem (in and outside Ukraine), the only thing left to be seen is how big.
Quoting Echarmion
So your problem with correct prediction and warning people in power they should pay special attention, using what leverage I have as a corporate board member (with CEO, managing director and chair experience for oner decade; for whatever it's worth) ... is that being right is wrong because it fuels conceit?
I should try to be more wrong in the future so as to learn humbleness?
Now, personally, I would love humble stupidity ("oh! no! no one could have seen this coming!!") to be rewarded in corporate life as it is in political life, but that's just not the world I live in anyhow. First rule of business is if you don't believe in yourself, no one else will even consider it on your behalf.
The second rule of business is being wrong has terrible consequences.
So maybe we just live in different worlds. In my world there is strong incentive to be right, that is achieved by a sober analysis of all the factors while trying to purge oneself of wishful thinking and emotional immaturity. In your world as long as you have some plausible deniability bullshit you can throw around, no matter how thin a covering of shit it can smear on the truth, all is well ... you work in marketing, per chance?
[sup](rferl 2023Feb9, voanews 2023Feb13, wsj 2023Feb22, reuters 2023Mar10, wionews 2023Mar17, yahoo 2023Mar17, cnn 2023Mar18, metro 2023Apr15, metro 2023Dec1, twitter 2023Dec3 ?)[/sup]
Russia Issues Ominous Warning About 'Next Victim'
[sup]— Nick Mordowanec · Newsweek · Nov 30, 2023[/sup]
Because Moldova isn't allowed to join the EU by the Kremlin. :D Right.
What next? Outlawing homosexuality? Oh wait...
[sup](2012Jul18 ? 2023Aug18 ? 2023Nov24 ? 2023Dec2 ...)[/sup]
Anyway, what's glaringly objectionable here, is the proliferation of that system, like the authoritarianism regress oppression with free reins to gobble up and roll over others (to the cheers of mobs, and others, and objections being blackwashed). Seen before, seeing it again, oh well, tomorrow be damned (or not).
Quoting boethius
:D Ukraine still isn't ruled by a Nazi regime, those claims are straight from the Kremlin's propaganda machine (don't echo them), the Kremlin circle = serial liars (+ hypocrites), dis/agree? They're doing too much of what they're accusing others of (regress), might not be a coincidence.
Quoting boethius
If the Kremlin's propaganda is right, then Ukraine is ruled by a Nazi government.
Quoting boethius
Links and examples have been given throughout (including 2023Nov30). I guess some would call it a bit unusual that Ukraine managed to progress in the wartime situation. The Russian regress has perhaps been more predictable. The (past) Ukrainian system is hardly a surprise, they're attempting to shed the shackles of their dominant neighbor to the north, much to Putin's dismay.
Quoting boethius
It's called evidence (exemplifications, observations + occasional reasoning about it), as opposed to narrative story-telling (with interspersed mind-reading and unevidenced jumping).
Quoting boethius
Obviously. So, the Kremlin gets their way, or it's the nuclear way? Was that what you were claiming?
Quoting boethius
There was a time when I would have been. It's another (cumulative) reason for, say, India and China to part ways with the Kremlin. As an aside, I suspect (pure conjecture on my part) that Jinping has different plans anyway, that cooperation with Putin is more of a useful intermission as it were, but who knows.
As far as politics go, Yekaterina Duntsova seems a good candidate.
In Russia, war and fear trouble one presidential hopeful
[sup]— Guy Faulconbridge, Ed Osmond · Reuters · Nov 27, 2023[/sup]
In the present Russia, her chances are slim, though. For that matter, she could be "put away" for having political (or any) gatherings, be deemed a "foreign agent" or "extremist", or, in case she manages to become popular, she could find herself "falling off a balcony". Putinistan abuse (of laws) isn't hard to come by and could hit whoever.
Is "the West" dropping the ball, geopolitically? At the beginning of the war there was surprising unity and a lot of strong declarations, perhaps most exemplified by the German chancellor declaring a new era in defense posture ("Zeitenwende"). Almost two years later, there seems little sign of such an epochal change.
It is not surprising that initial unity does not hold for two years of warfare. What is surprising is the appearance that many western nations are now standing here with mostly empty hands.
Should the West be unable to deal with even one major military challenge, this will no doubt embolden other actors, and reduce sharply the ability of western, primarily the European, nations to affect international trends.
https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/12/4/7431535/
https://www.20min.ch/story/interview-vitali-klitschko-ueber-selenski-sprichwoerter-korruption-und-neid-263819931851
Venezuelans have just voted that half of their neighbor belongs to them... If others can annex their neighbors, why not them?
Also it poses serious questions. The general assumption is that with NATO members it would be different... But can all of them be really sure of that? Poles and others remember the Phoney War. If the Western countries are reluctant even to spare weapons and funds for a victim of an obvious transgression, can anyone be sure they will die for Tallin?
What is astounding to me is the apparent lack of awareness of the overall situation. This was visible early on with the failure to make a convincing case to India, apparently forgetting that India is on the verge of becoming a major power and would have to be treated as an equal partner.
Is this simply the primacy of economics having become to ingrained, so European leaders have trouble actively shaping a geopolitical policy?
Why would democratic politicians have long-term goals? They will out of office in a few years and for now they have to win the popularity contest... The irony is that dictators and authoritarians have a much bigger stake in the future – for them long-term failure means prison, exile or death.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/simpatico771/status/1730385493613764756[/tweet]
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/dec/04/white-house-ukraine-military-aid-warning
The war in Ukraine was a wake up call for Europeans:
[i]Europe is not prepared for a war with Russia and is in danger of being “washed away” in a conflict, much as the Holy Roman Empire was broken up by Napoleon, Germany’s pre-eminent military historian has warned.
At a high-level defence conference in Berlin, several German generals also suggested that Nato might be unable to win the “first battle” in a defensive war on its eastern flank, because it would struggle to ship sufficient numbers of troops and equipment to the front line quickly enough.
Sönke Neitzel, professor of military history at Potsdam University and the leading academic authority on the modern German armed forces, described the logistics as a “nightmare” and said it could take at least 15 years before Germany was ready for[/i]
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/europes-weak-armed-forces-could-be-washed-away-by-russia-bmxbc22gc
In Russia, children "learn patriotism" while shooting at Biden, Zelenskyy and Stoltenberg. (Anton Gerashchenko · Dec 5, 2023)
[tweet]https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1732004112919629855[/tweet]
Isn't "Peaceful Warrior" a bit like "War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength."?
Hadn't come across NAFO before. Apparently, they make fun of US senators, well, whoever.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/Official_NAFO[/tweet]
Quoting Klaus Wittmann
I'm guessing a few echo Wittmann.
[sup](you can translate the German via google translate or similar as needed)[/sup]
I think Putin is quite confident that he will win this war, likely thinking that in the end Americans will be feeble and will leave some Poland and Baltics to support Ukraine on their own as Americans see everything just as "forever wars" and doesn't believe in victory, then he will prevail. And that his friend Trump will get him the lands that he is now occupying.
Ukraine will hold itself, but Putin has the ability to control his nation too and keep it in the fight.
German land forces are indeed very anemic. Their ground forces are below 63,000 and their reserves are not large.
In general, if you're going to rely on a very small standing army then you need to maintain conscription and a large reserve to quickly mobilize a larger force if needed. Poland, with less than half the populace, maintains 100,000 soldiers in its ground forces and has significantly larger reserves.
Germany is sort of the paradigmatic example of the free rider problem in alliances.
The problem is Europeans' free riding can also weaken NATO deterrence power (given Russia, given China, given Trump). In the end, only wars can prove the reliability and efficacy of a military alliance.
Things are looking grim for Europeans. Despite the Western propaganda and the US hegemony, the compelling point of the "Western world order" was/is not much "the Rest of the world must be like us because we are awesome" but more "either the Rest becomes more like us or we will (need to) become more like them". The European populist and nationalist movements are already on the rise.
“Evil” in a moral sense? But if states are not moral agent, why do you call them “evil” or “necessarily evil”?
Are they evil in the same sense the covid pandemic is?
Quoting Tzeentch
Quoting Tzeentch
You mean the same disgust you would certainly feel toward the corona virus that has killed almost 7 million deaths (since Jan ’22) according to some estimates?
As far as I’m concerned, I find causal links very misleading in attributing responsibilities if we do not assume moral agency.
Indeed, how can you even determine that the war was primarily caused by neocon foreign policy instead of being primarily cause by what caused neocon foreign policy ? Or by what caused the cause of neocon foreign policy? O by what caused the cause of the cause of the neocon foreign policy?
In a pool of concurrent causes for this war haw do you determine what is primary and what is non-primary?
Wars are a very common pattern in the entire human history and most certainly well prior than the diffusion of “neocon foreign policy”, and we can find reasons for war across a wide range of incompatible regime driving ideologies, so why do you think “neocon foreign policy” deserves the title of “primary” cause of this war?
Quoting Tzeentch
So states do not enjoy moral rights but they enjoy legal rights like right to self-defence? How so?
How come that the abstractness of the notion of “state” allows a state to enjoy legal rights but not moral rights?
Besides if you acknowledge that Ukraine has a legal right to self-defence and the West is not violating international laws by military supporting Ukraine,
what should we do with the “provocation” accusation from Putin which doesn’t look neither moral nor legal, in your views? Is Putin’s aggression of Ukraine pure “evil” or just “necessary evil”?
Quoting Tzeentch
Why not in the same way? What is the difference?
Quoting Dmitry Medvedev · Dec 8, 2023
Oddly enough, (threats of) nuclear world war by and large only come out of the Kremlin circle (and North Korea) these days. Or maybe it's not that odd, just more of the planned posturing.
Ex-president clowns: Do Trump or Medvedev ramble the most? :D
The Kremlin has deployed convicted cannibal Denis Gorin, serial killer Nikolai Ogolobyak, and other suchlike to Ukraine. "Watch out, Ukrainians!" (Not "shoe found in tiger's mouth", but in cannibal's mouth.) Seems odd if those convicts were to walk the streets of Moscow once/if released from military duty.
No, 'evil' in a colloquial sense...
Quoting neomac
Because this conflict started when the United States (led by the neocon foreign policy establishment) expressed its desire to incorporate Ukraine into NATO, and they never over the course of some 15 years took Russia's objections seriously.
Quoting neomac
States are not moral actors, so they have no moral rights. Individuals have moral rights.
And states obviously have legal rights because virtually all states on the world have signed the UN charter and thus recognize the legitimacy of international law, which includes a right to national self-defense.
Quoting neomac
I'm not sure what 'provocation accusation' you're talking about, but what Europe should do is pull the plug on military support for Ukraine. Helping another nation exercise their right to self-defense is only rational if it has a chance of succeeding. There is no such chance in the case of the Ukraine war, and thus Europe should not contribute to the illusion that Ukraine can win this war. Stopping the support will hopefully will bring Ukraine to stop sacrificing its people in vain sooner rather than later.
If Ukraine wants to continue throwing its people's lives away, then that's their right. However, Europe should not make itself complicit in such a senseless waste of life.
Quoting neomac
The war in Ukraine is completely pointless and a shining example of the unnecessary evil of states - all states involved, including the state of Ukraine itself.
Quoting neomac
The difference is that Russia tried to find a diplomatic solution, but was snubbed by the Americans on every occasion.
Israel on the other hand did everything it could to prevent a diplomatic solution.
Well Germany had a key role in NATO defense until the collapse of the SU and had significant forces. The domestic political opinion of Germany's armed forces has always been conflicted, and I think after the end of the (first?) cold war this created a situation of one-sided pressure to diminish the role of the armed forces. Generally none of the western European states has the capacity to maintain more than an expeditionary force on their own, so that's not necessarily unique to Germany.
And if Russia then let's the tanks roll west across Ukraine, should Europe then restart their aid? Or are we giving the entirety of Ukraine to Russia (at least we're prepared to) because Ukraine is currently unable to retake the missing 20%?
Isn't the self defense of the remaining 80% of the territory succesful?
If Russia wants to take all of Ukraine, it can. And neither Europe nor the US would be prepared to do what it takes to stop them, so they should stop pretending towards the Ukrainians.
Ukraine and its military is a shell on life-support. Europe and the US can either wait for a total collapse, or they can pull the plug now while Ukraine still has a chance at negotiations.
How would Ukraine negotiate if it's entirely unable to resist anyways? What's there to negotiate over?
It can still continue to resist militarily, unconventionally if need be, to impose a cost on Russia. This gives them leverage in negotiations. That leverage is now far lower than in March/April 2022, but it is leverage nonetheless. Furthermore, there is plenty of indication that the Kremlin would prefer a negotiated settlement over having to fight for every inch of Ukraine that they deem important. That can once again be used as a basis for talks.
However, continuing to resist without an actual strategy of what that resistance is supposed to accomplish is remarkably foolish. Imposing a cost on Russia is a sound strategy from an American point of view, not from a Ukrainian point of view, since it would incur a much larger cost on Ukraine itself - it would destroy Ukraine.
Now, that is of course the wet dream of policymakers in Washington: Ukraine fighting itself to the death against Russia, because it would impose the largest cost on Russia. Washington doesn't care at all about what happens to Ukraine in the process.
Neither Europe nor Ukraine should make themselves complicit in such a strategy.
If that's the case, why should we "pull the plug" on Ukraine support? The support improves Ukraine's ability to impose costs and thus their position in negotiations.
Quoting Tzeentch
But you literally just wrote that imposing costs on Russia is the basis of the Ukrainian position in negotiations. So the strategic goal of imposing costs to demonstrate your ability to impose future costs seems entirely sound.
Quoting Tzeentch
What exactly is the moral argument here?
Quoting Echarmion
We are far past that point. Zelensky is not moving to negotiate. He even signed a decree to make negotiations with Russia impossible. The absolute fool.
Obviously the support is achieving the opposite of sound strategy, which is why Ukraine is slowly (rapidly?) approaching the edge of the cliff. Quite extraordinary you're unable to see that.
Quoting Echarmion
It's a strategic argument. Neither Ukraine nor Europe benefits from playing into Washington's hand.
From a moral perspective it is of course repugnant too.
How keenly you leave out the annexations, the Russification measures done in the territories under occupation and all that Putin has himself said about Ukraine being an artificial construct.
Oh, It's just a 'neutral bufferzone' between the east and west. Ludicrous :roll:
When the West clearly signals that peace is not an option, obviously the Russians are going to react accordingly. How is that in any way surprising?
A terrible strategy on the West's part, because the idea that they were winning and could thus continue to snub the Russians was based on an entirely erroneous idea of how the war was progressing. They basically started to believe their own propaganda.
Well - this is the result, which many of us have been predicting since the start of the war.
Well what is it? Can Ukraine negotiate or not?
Quoting Tzeentch
There's a difference though between claiming a strategy has failed and claiming it wasn't sound to begin with.
Your strategy seems to offer little other than the hope you are right about russian intentions.
Quoting Tzeentch
Don't they? It seems to me the relationship has plenty of benefits for Europe, and historically alignment with the US has also been a good choice for many other countries, from South Korea to Poland.
Quoting Tzeentch
Why exactly though?
Quoting Tzeentch
It was also very obviously signaled in advance. Once Russia had officially recognised the areas as independent states, what other route could it take?
'Officially' probably not, but it should revoke Zelensky's idiotic decree and negotiate if it has any sense of self-preservation.
Quoting Echarmion
Starting talks costs nothing.
Quoting Echarmion
No, obviously they don't. Does that really require explanation?
Ukraine is being utterly wrecked in every conceivable way. Europe threw its economy down the drain, now has a hostile great power on its doorstep while having completely stripped its military, and it has been turned into the world's laughing stock to boot.
Quoting Echarmion
I'm not going into the moral argument, because I don't think it's constructive for reasons I have already outlined.
Not in every [I] conceivable [/I] way. Notably they have retained their choice of alignment - with the west. You may think they're making a mistake but polls in Ukraine seem to make pretty clear that they think it's important.
Quoting Tzeentch
Europe's situation has not materially changed, it's merely now forced to face the truth. It's possible that this will break the EU, though perhaps then the adage that "what can be destroyed by the truth deserves to be" is true.
Europe's crisis goes much deeper and beyond Ukraine, which is merely a focal point for many of it's ills. This could be a chance as well, though arguably the leadership of the big players leaves a lot to be desired.
Wrong.
Putin stated quite consistently of the artificiality of Ukraine and that parts of Ukraine should be/are integral parts of Ukraine for example in July 2021. Yes, NATO-enlargement is one reason, yet to deny that the territorial annexations are also a reason that have nothing to do with NATO-enlargement is simply false. Putin has stated this clearly enough, both with his words and by his actions. Otherwise this is just the hilarious US-bashing were every problem anywhere at all times is the fault of the US and nothing else cannot matter!
Crimea in itself had been an issue between Ukraine and Russia right from the start. And that has NOTHING to do with NATO enlargement. There was both in Crimea and in Russia a strong movement that Crimea should be part of Russia starting from the 1990's. And Putin's annexations didn't stop with Crimea, as we all know.
If your argument that everything has happened because NATO and if NATO hadn't enlarged, Russia wouldn't have done anything is simply false. And it's simply illogical to assume that you would annex territories if the only issue would preventing NATO enlargement and Ukraine being a bufferzone. A show of force would already done that and countries like Germany would have prevented NATO enlargement to Ukraine, not only Hungary (as now).
“I don’t think that relations between Russia and NATO will be restored” (en)
[sup]— Semyon Boykov · Izvestia · Nov 29, 2023[/sup]
It's worthwhile keeping notice of what's omitted (I'm not intending to propagate Kremlin propaganda).
US and Sweden sign Defence Cooperation Agreement
[sup]— Simon Johnson, Dan Whitcomb, Christina Fincher, Jacqueline Wong · Reuters · Dec 6, 2023[/sup]
Quoting US Department of State
The Swedes didn't do so because they're a US puppet, they did so because Russia is a Kremlin puppet and the Kremlin ain't friendly.
That's not my argument, though.
My argument, or at least a part of it, is that NATO enlargement worried the Russians, and they expressed that worry over the course of 15 years. They were completely ignored by the West.
Ignoring other nations' security concerns is a highway to war, and NATO (with Uncle Sam at the wheel) took that path knowingly and willingly. That's why they are primarily responsible for the conflict.
Quoting ssu
I think it's completely logical for Russia to annex parts of Ukraine if peace between Russia and the West is made impossible. That's a situation the West knowingly and willingly brought about when they blocked peace negotiations in March/April 2022. Of course the Russians are going to react to that.
Quoting ssu
I disagree.
What the US tried to do was simply turn Ukraine into a de facto US ally on a bilateral basis until circumstances were such that Ukraine could be fully incorporated into NATO.
Of course, Russia invaded before the Ukrainian military was able to provide the kind of resistance that would have made a US intervention feasible, which is why the US hung them out to dry in the end.
A show of force would have done nothing to stop that underlying threat, which is the US. NATO is simply a vessel.
The Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Ruslan Stefanchuk reported on the results of the plenary session on 8 December 2023
[sup]— Government of Ukraine (Verkhovna Rada) · Dec 8, 2023[/sup]
Welcoming the UA amendments to legislation relevant to national minorities in Ukraine - a positive step forward. RO will continue to promote a transparent and constructive approach on this matter. (Luminita Odobescu · Dec 8, 2023)
[tweet]https://twitter.com/Odobes1Luminita/status/1733203398638399965[/tweet]
At some point, the Russian system inheritance could be transformed to modern democracy (shedding the shackles).
The threat of democracy and non-oppression/freedom? :D It's a constant threat to authoritarianism (if anyone is willing to stand up), as it should be.
Intervention by the US airforce alone would have absolutely crushed the Russian invasion. With Ukraine's forces on the ground and the US airforce above, given Russia's performance so far, their operations would have been unfeasable very quickly.
It was not lack of means that prevented such a scenario, it was an unwillingness to risk a nuclear war (or, more precisely, to be seen as risking one).
Don't know if the UN would have a majority vote to impose a no-fly zone, but I suppose it's conceivable.
Russia’s Latest Disinformation Tactic Exploits American Celebrities
[sup]— Steven Lee Myers · The New York Times · Dec 7, 2023[/sup]
Russian propagandists exploited celebrity Cameo videos to spread disinformation, Microsoft says
[sup]— Catherine Thorbecke · CNN · Dec 7, 2023[/sup]
Making fun using Elijah Wood, Mike Tyson, Priscilla Presley, Kate Flannery, Shavo Odadjian, John McGinley, Dean Norris, ... I'm not sure the (original) intent was comedy, though.
Russian influence and cyber operations adapt for long haul and exploit war fatigue
[sup]— Clint Watts · Microsoft Threat Analysis Center · Dec 7, 2023[/sup]
Russian FSB cyber actor Star Blizzard continues worldwide spear-phishing campaigns
[sup]— UK National Cyber Security Centre · Dec 7, 2023[/sup]
[sup]— Tara Copp · AP · Dec 10, 2023[/sup]
So, Kremlin saber-rattling has swiftly brought on a new cold war? They've already spoken of arms race and such, plus their going-and-doings point in that direction.
Quoting Nov 20, 2023
It's a choice they can make, it's not like others can make (or skip) it for them, though, once made, it impacts others. That is, you can't choose not to be affected, or not to play, only how to.
Since the Ukrainian skies have come up again (hi ), a fairly straightforward observation regarding do'ers and the rest:
Kyiv might have declared a no-fly zone in Ukrainian airspace (apart from approved flights), and that hostilities taken against them will be taken out (regardless of location, "so please keep your distance"). Within their mandate, in part at least; might have been expected or recommended by some strategists. Others, like the USAF, JASDF, RAF, whoever, might have helped implement that. (By the way, no commercial flights since Feb 2022 thanks to the Kremlin.)
Didn't happen. Instead something else, analogous happened ...
See that? The central difference being that we're talking Ukraine, not Russia or Malaysia or ... (There's something...ridiculous about this...)
There are some lessons learned here. Initiative and resolve, discussions debates bureaucracy slowness (some of which is merited, mind you), indecision becoming the decision, strategy, concessions, ... Meanwhile, the authoritarian Kremlin rolls on.
“Colloquial”? Not sure to understand. Is, for example, covid evil in a colloquial sense?
How about examples of colloquially “necessary evil”? Vaccins are necessary evil for unnecessary evil covid?
Quoting Tzeentch
That’s a very problematic claim for several reasons:
1 - the United States expressed their desire also in 2008, but grievances about the US involvement in Ukraine and the Soviet Union’s ex-sphere of influence started well before 2008 and before Putin. On the other hand, in 2008 it turned out that Western countries were reluctant to let Ukraine join NATO no matter what the American desire was. Besides the conflict with Russia didn’t turn into a “real” conflict until 2014, while the Westerners were still against Ukraine joining NATO (Russia’s could enjoy the support of France, Germany, Hungary, Turkey to veto this). Not to mention that we had Trump antagonising the West more than Russia. So there seem to be many starts here, and many conflicts involving the US’s desire to expand its sphere of influence in Ukraine which anyway weren’t sufficient to let Ukraine join NATO (and that also proves that the West took Russia’s security concerns seriously to the point of refusing Ukraine within NATO). BTW why did it take Russia so long to invade Ukraine if the provocation was so obvious and intolerable for 15 years?
2 - The idea that the conflict started with the US expressing “its desire to incorporate Ukraine into NATO” makes likely sense in Russian strategic perspective, not in the Ukrainian, American or Western perspective, because the West and Ukraine do not share Russia's strategic perspective as much as they don’t share the Russian national interest. For Ukraine, Russia may have likely started the conflict by protesting over its sovereignty and territorial integrity. For the US, the conflict may have likely started when Russia protested against the Western-led world order since the fall of Soviet Union. You can blame it on the neocon agenda as much as I can blame it on Russian imperialism which is much older than neocon agenda. And Russia couldn’t possibly expect that the US as the hegemon would refrain from “expressing DESIRES” because Russia demanded it, especially when Russia wasn’t still that scary. ESPECIALLY if the US wasn’t hostile toward Russia, because it offered globalization in return which empowered Russia (and made it scary as it is now) way more than the threat of Ukraine joining NATO weakened Russia economically and militarily. Am I right? Russia too didn't perceive NATO as significantly hostile since there NATO there were conjoint exercises with the Russians against Islamic terrorism (https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/news_103663.htm) as the greatest security threat for the West and Russia. Right?
3 - We have repeatedly been told that Russians’ grievances started with the broken promise over NATO expansion, so by the same logic should we expect Russia will invade the ex-Warsaw pact states and ex-Soviet Union republics? Or should we just roll back NATO as requested by Putin in his diplomatic negotiations with the West to respect Russia’s strategic concerns seriously (https://www.reuters.com/world/russia-unveils-security-guarantees-says-western-response-not-encouraging-2021-12-17/)?
4 - I still don’t see the reason why you keep talking about “primary cause”. A possible alternative could be “primary reason“ instead of “primary cause”, couldn’t it? It would make sense to talk about primary reason if we take incorporating Ukraine into NATO as the primary security concern to Russia under certain assumptions (among which we must include Russia’s “hegemonic ambitions”). So I do wonder why you keep talking about “primary cause” instead of “primary reason”. Also a rapist “primary cause” for rape may be the raped teenager was dressed sexy. If somebody said "the teenager started her rapist’s aggression", would make this claim sense to you? What would be the point of making such claim exactly?
Quoting Tzeentch
I’m not sure you understood my question: “How come that the abstractness of the notion of ‘state’ allows a state to enjoy legal rights but not moral rights?”
Given your input, I can reformulate it as follows: states as abstract entities (which I charitably understand as “legal institutions”, am I wrong?) can’t possibly sign UN charters nor recognise the legitimacy of international law by themselves, while individual agents as state representatives can and do. Who signs is a concrete individual human being or a bunch of concrete individual human beings, not an abstract legal entity, right? But individuals as state representatives can still be morally and legally accountable, even if that involves an “abstract” institutional entity, right? If so, state representatives (like Putin, Biden, Zelensky) are morally and legally accountable based on acknowledged state rights.
Quoting Tzeentch
I'm talking about this:
Quoting Tzeentch
Quoting Tzeentch
Quoting Tzeentch.
I still don’t get how come you keep talking about what Europe should do, so in normative terms, over legal institutions in other terms than legal. Apparently there are “strategic” normative claims besides “moral” and “legal” (and "colloquial"?), yet it’s not clear how you assess strategic normative claims. To me strategic normative claims in politics of national states should be processed by taking into account national states’ priorities in the long term: for example, Ukraine’s priority is to preserve sovereignty and territorial integrity even at the expense of Russia’s hegemonic ambitions, for Russia is to pursue hegemonic ambitions at the expense of Ukraine’s sovereignty and the US’s hegemony, for the US is to pursue hegemonic ambitions at the expense of its competitors (including Russia). Concerning Europe, AFAIU, the priority is to preserve political stability under American protection (which is why Europeans can sacrifice trade relations with Russia and China).
Besides I don’t know how you assess the chance for success in strategy (especially if military goals must be distinguished from political goals). Does Hamas have any chance of military/political success in fighting Israel’s occupation of Gaza? Is it rational for Palestinians to support Hamas? Why do many foreign states (including Western state) politically, economically and/or military support Palestinians if they have no chance of succeeding? Should Europeans stop financing Palestinians and stop acknowledging Palestine as a sovereign state?
Quoting Tzeentch
How can Europe be “complicit” if European states and EU are just legal entities and Europe is not violating international laws by supporting Ukraine? Are you talking in moral terms?
If it makes sense to them, why do you call it “senseless waste of life”?
Given your military analysis, I understand why you reached your conclusion. Yet I don’t think military analysis suffices to determine political choices. I suspect that it is the other way around. For the good and for the bad. In any case, it is hard to prove that costly choices in the present would repay well in the future. This is the Russian bet anyways and the challenge to the West.
Quoting Tzeentch
Is this still a strategic claim? Or a “colloquial” claim? Or a “moral” claim? Or a “legal” claim?
Quoting Tzeentch
Is this some colloquial/moral/strategic/legal normative claim or a factual claim? Because if it is a factual claim, it is questionable (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli%E2%80%93Palestinian_peace_process). Besides we do not know if diplomatic efforts would work with Russia, since Russia repeatedly threatened and violated Ukrainian’s sovereignty despite all past agreements. Agreements will give Russia the chance to stabilise its conquests and keep destabilising Ukraine.
Besides this shows another difference relevant for diplomatic solutions: Russia is threatening/violating Ukrainian sovereign integrity after repeatedly acknowledging it while Israel didn’t acknowledge Palestine as a sovereign state. The diplomatic solution sought by Russia is grounded on condoning a fundamental international law violation (territorial annexations) which even the Great Satan never dared to commit so far, right?
Ask me three honest and straightforward questions, and I'll answer them for you. I have no patience for whatever game you're trying to play.
Quoting Fitch Affirms Ukraine at 'CC' · Fitch Ratings · Dec 8, 2023
Anyone interested in what Russian propaganda looks like can check Ural Daily (Dec 10, 2023). Not sure of the intended audience.
Quoting Tzeentch
Really? :D The Kremlin fears a few scenarios (hence their saber-rattling), scenarios that Ukraine + allies haven't done. Taking over the Ukrainian skies is one that's come up in the thread. Unless some such move is implemented, the Kremlin likely will (and can) keep pushing it. :shrug:
Dude, as far as I’m concerned, that’s a philosophy forum, not a political forum, not a military forum, not a Tzeench-certified forum. So I have no idea what philosophy is to you, but to me it is at least to investigate very basic (mostly implicit) assumptions of somebody’s beliefs. That’s the game I’m trying to play with you and others for my own personal intellectual entertainment, as I repeatedly stated in this thread. And that’s the game I expect others to try to play here, especially if they want me to take them seriously. So I addressed many “honest and straightforward questions” about your assumptions to you in my last post according to the game I’m trying to play. I don’t expect you to try to answer all of them at once. But if you really have no patience to the game I’m trying to play here then my “honest and straightforward question” to you is: Why should I (colloquially, morally, strategically, legally, or politically) give a shit about it exactly?
If you want to have a philosophical discussion, at least be so forthright as to clearly indicate what question or topic you want to discuss, rather than throwing up semantic smokescreens. What you're doing now smells of deflection and sophistry.
Primarily.
Yet philosphy should be welcomed and encouraged on a philosophy forum.
And accusing others of sophistry isn't the correct way.
Quoting Tzeentch
-
What I take to be a philosophical exercise is “to investigate very basic (mostly implicit) assumptions of somebody’s beliefs. ” Among such assumptions there is our basic (mostly implicit) conceptual framework. So addressing such conceptual framework and how it applies to concrete situations (like the war in Ukraine) is part of the philosophical investigation I’m engaging in. The fact that you take as “semantic smokescreens”, “deflection”, “sophistry” what I find legitimate to philosophically question in this forum proves at best how self-evident you take your conceptual framework to be. So much so that you don’t feel the need to clarify better any of your claims even when expressly and repeatedly solicited. As far as I’m concerned, you expressed beliefs about:
- When this conflict “started”
- What “primarily caused” this war
- What Europe or Ukraine “should do”
- The distinction between “colloquial” evil and “moral” evil
- The distinction between “moral” claims and “strategic” claims
- The nature of States as “abstractions and not moral actors”
- The “right to self-defence” as grounded on “international law and not morality”
- Who is to blame
Your clarifications about such claims in our recent exchange were rather poor to me: labeling your normative claims as non-moral without clarifying on what grounds you discriminate between moral and non-moral is not that helpful. Nor is it helpful to clarify it by means of other ideas that I expressly find questionable (like “primary cause”, “strategy”). Besides you continue applying them in a way that I find rather confusing if not confused, like “Europe should not make itself complicit in such a senseless waste of life”, as I argued. And I wasn’t even trying to put all the burden of the clarification on your shoulder, see my comments on your idea of the “primary cause” of this war , or your idea of when the conflict started, or your idea about normative claims about strategy, or your idea about what is “senseless waste of life”, etc.
Notice also that I don’t find your accusation of “semantic smokescreens”, “deflection”, “sophistry” self-evident either, so I can legitimately challenge you to clarify such ideas as well. But I’m fine to discuss the points of my previous post, for now. This is also to say, that I wasn’t deflecting (from what exactly?), I was doing what I think it’s most certainly appropriate to do in this forum, even when talking about the war in Ukraine. But you do not need to take my word for it, because my comments and questions remain philosophically legitimate EVEN IF I was deflecting. So the point is not really about my intentions in trying to play the philosophical game (as I understand it), but if you are interested or not to play it independently from my intentions.
The derogatory "Putler" was allegedly coined in Russia and/or Ukraine. Might have been motivated by something like the above taken together. Anyway, evidence for the above can be found throughout the thread. Haven't compared with Imperial Japan or Fascist Italy.
“Why does your reality differ from ours?”
[tweet]https://twitter.com/khodorkovsky_en/status/1735255472049938620[/tweet]
“Mr President, when will real Russia stop being different from the one on TV?”
“Hello, how can I move to the Russia they talk about on Channel One?”
[tweet]https://twitter.com/khodorkovsky_en/status/1735256184590831657[/tweet]
“For how long will you keep manipulating the percentage of inflation?”
[tweet]https://twitter.com/khodorkovsky_en/status/1735256385229639944[/tweet]
Alternate world type stuff. Observed a few times in the thread prior. Apparently also observed by some Russians.
So no Putin's intentions weren't just annexing Donbas, Crimea and a land bridge.
Catherine the Great ruled for 34 years.
If Zelensky was greeted with the standing ovation last time, now Republicans didn't want to see him in public.
At least the EU is giving the thumbs up for Ukraine even without Mr Orban from Hungary:
Now as the Russian wartime economy is getting to it's feet, the projections (in my country) on how long it will take for Russia to manufacture weapons to the now experienced losses are coming down. Last year people were talking about 2030, now it's come back to 2026-2028.
Warring was what they had planned all along, or Ukraine turned out tougher than they anticipated, or ...?
Yet Putin can hope that the Americans seeing just 'forever wars' around will just cave in and his friend Donald will help to 'reason' with the Ukrainians. And that in the end he will get what he wanted, all it needs is simply similar will as during the finest hour of Russians during the Great Patriotic War.
That would be my guess as well, though there are some (ambiguous) signs...
"others are out to destroy Russia"
tightening domestic control + nationalist propaganda/indoctrination
"new world order" (the multipolar thing)
nuclear armament + posturing
foreign destabilization efforts
threats + polemics
cold war trajectory
[sup]— Samuel Petrequin · AP · Dec 15, 2023[/sup]
Quoting Putin
Quoting Macron
How to negotiate with alternate world type stuff? The Kremlin has demands masquerading as proposals.
Oryx have investigated equipment losses (ongoing) — Russian, Ukrainian — which seems rather comprehensive, Russian in particular. Personnel losses are reportedly rather comprehensive as well, in line with the amount of explosives burned.
U.S. intelligence assesses Ukraine war has cost Russia 315,000 casualties -source (yahoo)
[sup]— Jonathan Landay, Guy Faulconbridge, Daniel Wallis, Bill Berkrot, Jonathan Oatis · Reuters · Dec 12, 2023[/sup]
Russia Has Lost Almost 90% of Its Prewar Army, U.S. Intelligence Says (msn)
[sup]— Warren P Strobel, Matthew Luxmoore · WSJ · Dec 12, 2023[/sup]
The numbers are a noticeable fraction of invasion forces and available resources, unlike Crimea 2014. The Kremlin may not care much about humans (though they keep speaking of "Ukrainian sacrifices"); did they anticipate those numbers though? What do they anticipate for them to "cleanse" Ukraine? (in Kremlin-speak, "Nazi" ? non-irredentist + having chosen not-Kremlin, or whatever, which may or may not include Nazis)
Quoting Putin
Starting false here (nope, Finland chose, Sweden chose, Ukraine chose) again exemplifies the alternate world type stuff. Conclusion(s) kind of fizzle out (ex falso quodlibet). Seems doubtful that the Kremlin circle could have missed / not understood (i.e. mala fides), but maybe they do need a wake-up call? The UN (and the good baker Jones of upper Negombo, Sri Lanka) have repeatedly clarified, and, yes, their claims/side have been considered. Unless/until called out, they can continue their moves and threats and story-telling. Ought a (diplomatic) dialogue address these issues?
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/01/trump-2024-reelection-pull-out-of-nato-membership/676120/
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2023/12/15/i-haven-t-changed-my-number-macron-still-open-to-peace-dialogue-with-putin_6347805_4.html
Analysis: Ukraine has had a terrible week. Blame the US and the EU
[sup]— Nick Paton Walsh · CNN · Dec 17, 2023[/sup]
Some got caught up in traffic jam:
Third Ukrainian truck driver dies in Poland border blockades-TV
[sup]— Ron Popeski, Alistair Bell · Reuters · Dec 16, 2023[/sup]
Cold war at least, well err + some hot spots:
In Russia, All Policy Roads Lead to the War
[sup]— Alexander Gabuev · WSJ · Dec 8, 2023[/sup]
[sup]— Al Jazeera · Dec 19, 2023[/sup]
Quoting Pukin
The article summarizes some of what's come out of the Kremlin lately. Threats (still) extend to a couple or three continents altogether; Moldova and Finland have received a bit more of that lately; their Ukraine objective apparently extends to, well, Ukraine. There doesn't seem to be much to come after.
Sanctions can be a way to express (for some at least) ...
• "We're not going to help, or partake in, what you're doing"
• "You won't benefit in any way from us while doing that, expect counter-measures"
• "We won't make it any easier for you to continue doing that"
• "Our depreciation is serious, and we won't be complicit or contribute"
Something along those lines. Expressed by action, not just statements (e.g. the UN).
Did the Kremlin move Russia into a wartime economy over Ukraine...? (Due to miscalculation?) What reactions do they expect from this stuff?
And who the heck is Igor Salikov anyway? If he is who/what he claims, I'd recommend carrying a Geiger counter and staying within walking distance of a hospital. Stay off balconies, too.
After the invasion I remember prime minister Marin's first response was "We'll think of it in the Party conference in summer", which just showed how clueless she was. She was quickly put in line even by her own party leadership and in 48 hours or so the tone had totally changed as it dawned how much the World changed in late February 2022. Then it was an issue to Finland to pressure the Swedes. Unfortunately with that Erdogan and Orban halted the process with Sweden.
No more NATO options, but the real thing...
But yes, as time goes the narrative of Finland and Sweden being dragged to NATO by the US will surely pop up. After all, small states cannot decide anything themselves.
A mad time + place. The Great Purge preceded the Great Patriotic War. Incidentally, invading Nazis found mass graves from the genocidal activities of Stalin's NKVD (isn't often brought up, was after all used as propaganda by the Nazis). Not exactly the kinds of things we want to see again.
Quoting Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment: December 22, 2023 · Institute for the Study of War · Dec 22, 2023
Kyiv might have declared a no-fly zone in Ukrainian airspace [...] (Dec 10, 2023)
Quoting Yekaterina Duntsova · Dec 23, 2023
Quoting Yekaterina Duntsova · Dec 23, 2023
In the present system her chances would be slim anyway.
To my knowledge, there isn't anything against this by international law. Besides, it's Ukrainian airspace. Logistics etc demanding. Where combined air force lands is irrelevant as long as OK'd by Kyiv (it's their airspace to defend, their choice to make). None of this is proxy war or terrorism, or intended so. After some time with clearer skies, civilians can be expected to be a bit safer, though not to the extent of resuming international commercial air traffic.
Combined air force not limited by minefields. Can be monitored by international observers, e.g. to ensure integrity or whatever. After some time, civilians can be expected to be safer, maybe to the extent that Ukrainians having fled can return (assuming what they call home hasn't been razed). As of typing a fifth or so of Ukraine is occupied.
Call it a "special defense operation" if you must (or escalation or both). Doubtful that the Kremlin can withstand such a move (cf their posturing propaganda threats). A fairly straightforward strategy. Can send a message to other would-be invaders, by the way. But, while reasonable enough, it's not likely to happen (giving fuel to things like @boethius's "drip feed" hypothesis), at least not with NATO as the combined international air force:
What is a no-fly zone, and why has NATO so far rejected calls for one over Ukraine?
[sup]— Teaganne Finn · NBC · Mar 7, 2022[/sup]
Incidentally, such a combined air force could ask Kyiv for additional (political democratic transparency non-aggression) guarantees. Pro et contra?
THE BRICS FOREVER, AN END TO COLONIALISM.
Resident BRICS fanboy in the hoooouse!
'No-fly zone' effectively means 'bombing Russian SAM sites by NATO forces'. How exactly is that different from NATO starting a war with Russia?
@boagie, are you a bot...?
Quoting Jabberwock
Well, it wouldn't be a NATO operation (under the auspices of NATO), except the combined force would include NATO members. More importantly, it would be a bona fides Ukraine defense operation, operating in Ukraine, irrespective of invader, within Kyiv's mandate. Wouldn't be an invasion of Russia. But, you're right, it could (incorrectly) be perceived/cast (by some) as NATO warring against Russia, which would be propagandized, especially because such a move can push invading forces out of Ukraine. That's the "wargame" set up by Kremlin strategists. Ironically perhaps, such a move could save lives, defender/Ukrainian lives at least (while limiting propagation of Kremlin authoritarianism).
Quoting Dec 27, 2023
Analysis: Putin promises Xi to 'fight for five years' in Ukraine
[sup]— Katsuji Nakazawa · Nikkei Asia · Dec 28, 2023[/sup]
? some of this is news to me
It is not a big surprise. Now the time goes on the side of Putin and Russia, so they are ready to keep fighting and maintaining a patience which we had never seen previously. Probably I am wrong, but I see this ending as a win for Russia. They will obtain Crimea and some other territories like the Donbas, and all the effort and fund coming from the West will go to the rubbish...
I wonder what would happen to Ukraine afterward. Does anyone really think they deserve to join the EU?
What about the surprise to Xi? Maybe that shouldn't have come as a surprise; reportedly it did though.
In other news:
Takeaways from AP investigation into Russia’s cover-up of deaths caused by dam explosion in Ukraine
[sup]— Samya Kullab, Illia Novikov · AP · Dec 28, 2023[/sup]
True.
I think Xi is thinking about long-term economics. Xi (and the rest of us, absolutely) considers the end of this war as a good point to start in a new era for economic recovery and stability. But it is obvious that Putin will not tolerate being treated as a clown, and he will not surrender to NATO. It is impressive that, even when all the blocks and financial sanctions, Russia is still there, keeping up with the times. They are determined to take themselves to the limit of the cause, and this is the victory of Russia.
No, it would not be operating in Ukraine, unless I completely misunderstand what you mean by 'no-fly zone'. There is already a 'no-fly zone' in most of Ukraine for Russians: they cannot fly farther than about 30 km from the front line, otherwise they risk being shot down by Ukrainian SAMs. To push them further away would require flying over the frontline, which would require bombing Russian SAM sites located much farther. It still would be NATO member planes bombing targets in Russia.
EDIT: The 30 km range refers to typical shorter range SAM deployments. With such systems like Patriots the distance must be much farther away. I cannot find much hard data, but it is reasonable to assume based on the ranges that most Russian sorties (i.e. UMPK/KAB attacks) take place about 70-90 km from the frontline. In other words, beside Crimea, Russian planes barely enter the Ukrainian air space.
Quoting Jabberwock
Members, sure. (Might also be members of the EU / Asian air forces, heck, send Xi an official notification-invite for that matter.) But they wouldn't bomb inside Russia (for a while, depending), except due threats to be issued for Russian missiles entering Ukrainian airspace (direct violation). Would put the invading forces into a defensive position, taking initiative from the precarious situation of being "sitting ducks with some repellent". If bombs/missiles go Russia ? Ukraine, then bombs/missiles may equally go ? Russia. What's an expected range for anti-fighter-bomber SAMs (not anti-ballistic/cruise-missile SAMs)? The Kremlin's actions were repeatedly condemned by the UN, in violation of international law, which they've given a(n impunity) hand-wave. Justification isn't missing; will is missing, contrary to pledges since 2022 by various parties.
Quoting Dec 27, 2023
It can turn into a frozen conflict if Ukraine is not tossed under the bus, otherwise all bets are off. FYI, a somewhat related discussion paper:
Setting Transatlantic Defence up for Success: A Military Strategy for Ukraine’s Victory and Russia’s Defeat (also CEPA · Dec 17, 2023)
[sup]— Ministry of Defence, Estonia · AP · Dec 2023[/sup]
Anyway, at the moment, I find North Korea worrisome.
North Korea's Kim orders military to accelerate war preparations
[sup]— Soo-Hyang Choi, Chris Reese, Jamie Freed, Raju Gopalakrishnan · Reuters · Dec 28, 2023[/sup]
Putin has Kim's ear. Pyongyang is amenable to the Kremlin. Could they quietly nudge North Korea to do something drastic?
The nominal range of S400 is 400 km (hence the name), but effectively against airplanes it would be about 200 km. This means that to effectively enforce a no-fly zone in Ukraine NATO planes would either have to engage targets in Russia or allow themselves to be taken out with impunity. Again, 'no-fly zone' is simply 'starting the war with Russia', which NATO countries are unwilling to do.
Russian fighter jets are struggling in Ukraine, but Ukraine can't beat their missiles and radars, researchers say
[sup]— Michael Peck · Business Insider · Dec 20, 2022[/sup]
The air war over Ukraine
[sup]— Gerry Doyle, Mariano Zafra · Reuters · Dec 14, 2023[/sup]
Ukrainian air defense has had more success than I thought.
Quoting Jabberwock
There's a bit more to it, but, OK, so a combined international air force can simply be ruled out. (EOS)
I have no idea what kind of S-400 stocks Russia has; these are their high-end systems as far as I know.
Quoting Dec 29, 2023
... which adds a bit to Kremlin impunity.
The West will do everything it can to avoid a humiliating defeat for themselves, by throwing Ukraine under the bus militarily and politically and ultimately putting the blame for this disaster on Ukraine. Just like it has used Ukraine as a patsy for the NordStream bombings which were obviously planned (and probably carried out) by the US.
Zelensky is already under heavy pressure to start talks with the Russians, even though it was the West that told him to block the negotiations that took place in March/April 2022. (Which is why Zelensky isn't budging now)
If I were in Ukraine's shoes, I'd try to find a way to dangle said humiliating defeat over the West's head (before the 2024 US election) and thereby force them to come with solutions. The best way to do this is to start talks with the Russians behind the West's back. Even if nothing comes from the talks, this is sure to ring alarm bells in the West.
But this assumes Ukraine has any political agency left to speak of, which is something I'm skeptical about.
Then I realized it was you and tittered to myself.
Anyway, one of you two needs to change your profile picture, pronto/posthaste.
Is it lost? Has Putin got all the territories he formally annexed? Have Russian got the Western side of the Dnipro?
Or is this your Pro-Russian ramblings again?
Additionally, framing the other side as partisan is intellectual poverty. Lets keep things civil.
Seems we see eye to eye after all this time.
The no-fly zone idea was analyzed also at length at the start of the war, here and elsewhere, especially as Zelensky and social media spent a considerable amount of energy pushing for it.
I also explained at length how NATO boots on the ground could work in practice (especially before the war started). A move I'd be entirely for if it prevented further deaths; of course that wouldn't happen if it triggered nuclear war, but it's also arguable such a move is actually less risky than the current strategy of a slippery slope towards nuclear war.
Neither a no-fly zone nor boots on the ground happen because protecting Ukrainian land or Ukrainian lives is not the goal.
The goal is to drip feed arms to Ukraine enough to prop it up in order to damage Russia (which may not even be happening), super charge arms profiteering both directly to Ukraine as well as indirectly by creating a new Cold War, protect the USD from the Euro by having the Europeans destroy their competitiveness and fully prostrate themselves as meaningless vassals on the world stage.
Like every other US proxy force, Ukraine will be dropped like a shoe filled with spiders the moment it outlives its usefulness.
Ukrainian partisans will say "But, but, but, but what happened to all our promises! What happened to defending freedom and democracy and all that! How is this possible! How is this honourable! How is this acceptable!"
Cries that will travel all the way to the mountains of Afghanistan and echo there through eternity. The Taliban will smile knowingly and no one else will care. Down the memory hole the war will go.
What will be the goal (in Ukraine) if Trump wins the elections? Can you predict that too?
My prediction is that if Trump wins the elections, for sure Ukraine will have outlived its usefulness.
To what extent it outlives its usefulness before we even get to the election is a somewhat open question.
Support is already being pulled back but we can presume US / NATO still wants to avoid total embarrassment.
At the same time, that doesn't really matter all that much as even extreme embarrassment can be simply spun away and back page news by the next news cycle.
For example, I have a vague impression, a sort of whisper really, from all the way down the abyss of the memory hole that the withdrawal from Afghanistan was an extreme embarrassment, leaving billions in weapons for the Taliban and "friends and allies" literally falling off the last planes as they skedaddled away. Any political consequence for anyone? No.
Within a few weeks everyone agreed (everyone that matters, everyone white) that Afghans just didn't want freedom hard enough, were giving a magnificent opportunity but were lazy fighters and let freedom slip through their fingers.
So it shall be with Ukraine: We gave them everything and they still lost! Losers! Losers! Losers!
A no-fly zone would be costly and bring with it a high risk of escalation, while not significantly altering the balance of power.
Besides, the US is not looking to get further embroiled in Ukraine and is actually looking for an exit strategy. Ukraine is a senseless project that needlessly created tensions between Russia and the West, while in the rest of the world flashpoints are threatening to boil over which have actual strategic importance for the US.
The neocons shot themselves in the foot in Ukraine in a big way.
How is Ukraine completely lost?
Seems that you are living in your own bubble or something.... :snicker:
The balance of power being heavily in favor of the Russians is completely obvious, and nothing short of a miracle will change it because neither the US nor Europe is willing to stick their neck out.
The only question now is how much more punishment Ukraine will receive before it finds an off-ramp, and the sooner people understand the reality of this situation, the more lives can be spared.
If it appears I am "living a bubble" it is only by one's lack of insight.
Quoting Vladimir Putin · Feb 24, 2022
Quoting Valentina Matviyenko · Jun 10, 2022
Quoting Sergey Naryshkin · Jul 5, 2022
Quoting Margarita Simonyan · Dec 4, 2022
Quoting Sergey Lavrov · Dec 27, 2022
Quoting Nikolai Patrushev · Jan 10, 2023
Quoting Patriarch Kirill of Moscow · Jan 19, 2023
Quoting Vladimir Putin · Feb 21, 2023
Quoting Dmitry Medvedev · Feb 22, 2023
Quoting Sergei Shoigu · Feb 23, 2023
Quoting Vladimir Putin · Feb 26, 2023
Quoting Sergey Lavrov · Mar 31, 2023
Quoting Roman Starovoyt · Jan 22, 2024
Quoting Vladimir Putin · Feb 18, 2024
For the domestic audience it's a (hyperbolic) nationalistic call for unity (seen before), in general it's for anyone they might pick up along the way because of something negative about "the West" or NATO, which is easy enough. Many has independently commented (? you can check their credentials sources whatever yourself), including Catriona Kelly (Mar 20, 2022) · Ruth Deyermond (Mar 20, 2022) · Robert Person, Michael McFaul (Apr 2022) · Emily Ferris (Jul 27, 2022) · Andrew Katell (Feb 26, 2023) · Delhi audience (Mar 4, 2023) · Steven Pifer (Mar 6, 2023). NATO has kept tiptoeing around Russia.
The Kremlin's authoritarianism regress oppression opacity irredentism posturing polemic bombing is indeed threatening, and anyone valuing democracy transparency freedom can be expected to respond, which, granted, can also be threatening. Incidentally (perhaps), the Kremlin circle tends to conflate themselves and Russia, in their responses. It might be possible to argue that Armenia Israel Palestine Moldova whichever is endangered. But Russia? Get real. Ironically, the Kremlin's supposed grievances towards two or three continents + NATO, are Ukraine's real grievances towards the Kremlin.
Happy New Year, Ukraine. And Russia.
So...
The media insisted that a "counterattack" that it forecasted didn't achieve much without air superiority, material advantage in artillery or anything similar that.
And the US Congress is bickering about the support to Ukraine...
Hence @Tzeentch declares it all over and a glorious Victory to Vladimir Putin!!!
Well, time then to end this thread as the war has been won by Russa and it's all over. :snicker:
Quoting Tzeentch
Well, then no one was. :shrug: China, North and South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey, ...
Quoting Tzeentch
... in your opinion (again)?
And the West served it to him on a silver platter. This is a worse strategic failure than Vietnam.
You seem to have a dissenting understanding of my own, do you understand why Russia invaded Ukraine? Try to remember in your understanding that all is process. Russia and China and the BRICS are not the bad guys here. If you know the history behind what is occurring, we can then talk, the aggressors are the Yanks, and the Europe that they own. The BRICS forever, and the end of
colonialism.
I believe you are speaking of the Soviet Union which no longer exists. The West is the one with the outrageous history of subjugation and slavery maintained to this day. America began taking over the colonial powers of Great Britain just after the First World War. America saved their butts in that war, and the British realized that they can no longer call the shots in the world anymore, they needed the Americans.
America does colonialism different from the British, but it is even more brutal. The Brits would move into the subjugated country and take over its complete administration, bleeding the colony of its vitality through force of arms. The Americans do it too, but somewhat different, but much of their violence is covert and they are rather expert at making economic warfare upon weaker nations. The second world war the Yanks also found profitable, much of the world was devastated, America relatively untouched, they claimed to have defeated the Nazi war machine, when in fact it was Russia the crushed that monster war machine and chased it through Europe right back to Berlin. These wars made America a superpower, and with the folding of Soviet Russia, it made it the only superpower and has been one bitch of a master ever since.
There is a shift in global power due to America's desire for world domination usurping the sovereignty of much of Europe and in the processes installing nuclear war heads on their soils, bought and paid for. America has plans of ruling the world, and it just got a wakeup call, and its name is the BRICS. If you wish to discuss this, give me some indication you know some history, other than home grown propaganda, some world history. Example, what lead up to the invasion of Ukraine, start with the reunification of Germany and go on from there.
Why don't you give me some indication that you're capable of more nuance than the average propaganda bot?
Quoting boagie
So how did you think this would go, you just jump in here and demand I write a history book to prove my credentials?
It's been a long thread. You didn't say anything we didn't hear already a thousand times.
Being you pro-Russian, it would be more interesting if you told us where the Russian propaganda about the genesis and the purpose of this war may be wrong.
Why, I had no idea you were so open-minded. The problem began with the unification of Germany, which was an agreement between all the allied countries under the protection and guidance of America. It was agreed to by Russia as well, on the condition that NATO did not move any further east towards Russia. This was agreed to by America, stating we will not move one inch closer to the borders of Russia. They lied, and soon began their advance toward the Russian border. With each country America took into its fold moving closer, they also placed nuclear warheads on the soil of these countries. Starting to get the picture?
Each time lying to the Russians they would go no further. America's dreams is world domination, by means of its superpower and usurping the sovereignty of each country it can place nuclear weapons into. Russia did not want war, but Russia's security concerns were simply ignored, and America moved ever closer with its nuclear weapons. Ukraine is on Russia's border, this was the last straw, Russia and Ukraine were in the process of reaching a peaceful agreement for her to remain neutral, America overthrew that democratically elected and friendly Ukraine government, and replaced it with its puppet. All of those supporting America are countries subjugated economically to America, and or are previous European colonial powers that do not want to give up the economic colonies. The BRICS is the other half of the world saying, enough is enough, and drew a line in the sand, that line was Ukraine. America has been a nasty piece of work and cruel master, and a new day has dawn, it could all be resolved if America wish to be a decent world citizen, instead of a war monger. War is America's cottage industry and the world is fed up!
This is so typical, even in an Philosophy Forum.
Where does this eagerness come from to justify and hail one side from another when both sides could be criticized for disrespecting human rights or international laws? Why this desperate and naive intent to put countries to be either "the bad guys" and those opposing them "the good guys"? There's much criticize all Great Powers, but then again, they sometimes can have good policies too. Apparently this is too much to fathom for many.
Is it so controversial or illogical to be for human rights, peace and against colonial and imperial aspirations universally?
Or is it just trolling?
Because I asked you in another thread the same following questions and you never replied, but again does fit this thread too:
Obviously the no-fly zone is more wishful thinking and will not happen.
However, I don't think the role of the Russian airforce should be minimized. The planes drop glide bombs, "the small one" being 500 kg.
The typical 155mm artillery shell is 45 kg, and FPV drones are still smaller in payload.
This capacity to destroy much more hardened targets on the front shouldn't be dismissed in terms of tactical and strategic impact, especially Urban warfare where concrete buildings are good protection against artillery but are vulnerable to much larger bombs.
Without these large bombs it may not be possible for Russia to advance at more than a snails pace, such as we saw in Bakhmut before deployment of the glide bombs.
Of course, even without the planes the Russians are at a significant advantage, as you say, but not necessarily enough to take heavily fortified positions in acceptable amounts of time, resources and man power.
Really, typical? It seems to me @boagie is literally the first participant in this discussion to present things as BRICS are good and America is bad.
@Isaac and myself and others, spent dozens of pages explaining that we're criticizing Wester policy because we are Westerners and therefore responsible first and foremost for the policy in our own Western countries and the political blocks they're a part of.
But, let's say America has some good policies ... does that excuse leading Ukraine to war and then having Ukraine sacrifice so many Ukrainian lives for American (elite) perceived interests, on false pretences?
As for the war "not being lost" yet, we discussed, you and me, t some length at the start of the conflict of how Ukraine has, based on information available to us, essentially zero chance of victory against the Russians.
Your only argument against this conclusion is that maybe Ukrainian generals know something we don't and have some sort of secret tactic, weapons or plan that may surprise us.
Seeing as I couldn't even imagine what that secret thing could even potentially be, I predicted "that not happening" and things going exactly as we agreed are extremely likely based on the available information (that Ukraine will not be able to achieve any significant offensive, such as cut the land bridge much less push Russia to the pre-war border, given Russias far greater capacities, Ukraine would simply have the same problems the Russians had in their Northern offensive, but much, much harder).
So, since that time has slipped away and hundreds of thousands of lives have as well, have you seen since this secret thing that could deliver Ukraine victory?
Because if you haven't, then everything is exactly on course according to your own evaluation sans secret move of some sort: Ukrainians are outmatched in every capacity and therefore are succumbing to attrition.
:100: , that ship sailed a long time ago.
And the point has been mooted by how ineffective the Russian Air Force has been. Most of their activity is lobbing off missiles from Russian air-space, granted they've had particularly high losses in the last two weeks with more ambitious operations.
The main benefit of a no fly zone at this point would be that Ukraine's Air Force could operate much more freely, which might very well break the stalemate. But such a no fly zone is going to invariably involve striking targets in Russia. You can't tell your pilots to fly SEAD/DEAD sorties and then tell them they need to stop at the border. They need to fire on threats to be successful and radiation seeking missiles don't stop for borders.
Plus, there are lower risk options if NATO was willing to spend the money. Sufficient numbers of old 4th Gen fighters, the F-16, Strike Eagles, and Hornets, which exist in volume and are actively being replaced, would likely allow Ukraine to carry out a sufficent number of CAS sorties. But this would require training a large number of pilots and willingness to spend. If they aren't going to give Ukraine fighters in sufficient quantity, I see no reason to expect that they would use their own.
Again, you didn’t say anything that I didn’t already hear a thousand times in this thread and outside of it. That’s why I indirectly asked you: “it would be more interesting if you told us where the Russian propaganda about the genesis and the purpose of this war may be wrong”. Still waiting for an answer.
Meaning? What will happen then?
Quoting boethius
The problem is that he didn’t make any arguments that you/Tzeench/Isaac wouldn’t make yourselves. So one may wonder why the different conclusion? BTW your/Tzeench/Isaac’s conclusion doesn't seem that different either. [1]
[1]
Quoting boethius
AFAIK there are no NATO nukes east of Germany.
Quoting boagie
Not really.
Quoting boagie
America already had world domination. The US voters don't seem particularly impressed with what it did for them.
Quoting boagie
The only BRICS country that cares about Ukraine is Russia. Even China's support is only lukewarm.
Quoting boethius
I guess we'd have to ask the Ukrainians. Oh wait we already went over this and you didn't care about the evidence then either.
Such a naughty attitude, one's position on political matters is really dependent upon the information each has been exposed to, and it seems to me we have not been exposed to the same info. Russia in this matter has always been of the defensive as NATO kept moving ever closer to her borders until they were right in their backyard. You do not seem to be aware of the global power shifting away from America as a unipolar power, the goal of much of the world in a multipolar world, one more infused with a cooperative nature rather than subjugation. As to your belief that China isn't interested in the outcome of the Ukraine war. America has accused her of supplying arms to Russia, it would seem they do not share your belief.
China's response was, we have not been supplying arms to Russia and will not, but if you attempt to invade Russian, even God will not help you. America has been a brutal master, but with the BRICS she's got a wake-up call. America's ever-growing domination and economic warfare have sown the seeds of the present conflict. Do you believe America is a democracy?
LOL!! America the beautiful! You are not even remotely in touch with what is going on.
NATO is moving closer to Russia with its nuclear weapons Russia is NOT moving closer to NATO. Try to get past your bias and figure out who is the aggressor here. Supposedly China is very aggressive and has been in the past, America has umpteen military bases surrounding China, again, who is the aggressor?
Try to entertain the fact that the free press in America is not free, and being subject to it you just might be being manipulated. This is always a danger no matter what country one is focused upon. Opinion is formed with the info one is exposed to, if you do not hear the world community voice, you can only agree with what they are feeding you.
A multipolar order based on cooperation would certainly be novel. So far, the default state has usually been more or less open hostility and frequent war.
I could not agree more, but then colonialism has never ceased to exist, the Americans just took over from the British. This is really what it is all about, the former colonial countries still do not wish to give up their economic colonies, and America still wants to govern the world.
It is recorded history, it all started with the reunification of Germany and America's promise to Russia that NATO would not move one inch towards the Russian border. It is not propaganda, its recorded history. The Russians are not the bad guys here, they are just interested in protecting their sovereignty, it comes down to everyone having a right to protect themselves from outside aggression.
Protecting yourself from outside aggression by invading and annexing your neighbour. So the aggression is then inside?
Don't you have some other forum to bombard with your ridiculous propaganda?
If Ukraine really would be making the sacrifice only for American (elite) perceived interests, then I guess they would have folded even quicker than the Afghan army did to the Taleban. And Zelensky would have boarded that plane to fly to safety... just like the Afghan leader did.
But it seems what the little people, the Europeans or here the Ukrainians think, seems not to matter for some.
Quoting boethius
And many Western analysts gave essentially zero chance of Ukrainians stopping the Russian Juggernaut in a conventional fight from taking the what they want.
There's a very wise saying in Finland about Russia: Russia is never so powerful as it's depicted and also never so weak as it's portrayed.
Quoting boethius
Yes, if Europeans would take really seriously the situation and make it about countering the Russian attack, not just assisting Ukraine so that it doesn't falter totally. And then make true with those promises that they made at the start of the conflict. Basically only Poland has taken the situation seriously. (And the Baltic States, but of course their assistance is quite little, naturally.)
I think your just being an asshole, the recorded history is there to read, very very hard not to understand what is going on, but you manage don't you.
I'm not the one justifying an invasion.
Life is like a box of chocolates isn't it Echarmion ? You've got real depth of understanding, it's bloody overwhelming. You really should be ashamed, can't do that, I'll be embarrassed for you.
Quoting Sauli Niinistö · Jan 1, 2024
Quoting Oleksiy Danilov · Jan 2, 2024
The Kremlin's ongoing moves have created much animosity on the ground.
That is simply false. No nuclear weapons have been deployed in new NATO members:
https://www.cfr.org/in-brief/nuclear-weapons-europe-mapping-us-and-russian-deployments
So much for your knowledge of history.
If you're going to take this kind of attitude you should at least be aware that the Cuba Crisis erupted over Jupiter missiles being stationed in Turkey.
This is blatantly an incorrect statement.
So at least know your history if you are going to attack others on not knowing theirs.
Quoting Revolution of Dignity (Wikipedia)
As mentioned in the parallel thread (now moved here), part of these efforts were about shedding the shackles of the dominant (regressing) northern neighbor, whom you'll notice have some of those same problems the Euromaidan protests were about. Protests/assembly have more or less been stomped out by the Kremlin. The Ukrainians are trying while being bombed. The Kremlin orders the bombing and their trying is on another path. (Pick your poison?)
Observed, documented. The supposed dire threat to Russia is to the Kremlin's (authoritarian) control/influence, not to democracy transparency freedom, not to Russian farmers. Sauli Niinistö mentioned some implications in his New Year's speech, which don't really look good.
As usual, you jump into the discussion with as little understanding as possible...
In the quote I have given boagle clearly referred to new NATO members AFTER the unification of Germany and so did I.
EXCELLENT POST!
, known nuclear weaponry placements as of ? Oct 16, 2022. Belarus (bordering Latvia Lithuania Poland Ukraine Russia) has reportedly received nuclear weaponry from Russia since. :scream:
Quoting Sep 17, 2023
Keep up promoting authoritarian regimes (and reciting their propaganda). ;)
Hmm... Not wasting any time...
Quoting Mariupol City Council · Jan 2, 2024
Only the blind cannot see the evil of America and Israel at this time, can you not afford a white cane.
You truly are naive! There are at least one hundred nuclear weapons, American weapons, in about five different NATO countries, it has been said that Ukraine already has some, a least tactical nuclear weapons. What the fuck do you think this is all about? NATO is on Russia's border; Russia is not on NATO'S border. The world is changing, and you're on the wrong side of history. Watch it unfold, even if you cannot presently grasp it.
https://www.nti.org/analysis/articles/nato-nuclear-disarmament/
Your current claims are not only false, but just silly: you say that NATO is bordering Russia, but Russia is not bordering NATO. That is logically incoherent.
Russia has deployed nukes to Belarus, which is very much bordering Poland, a NATO country. Moreover, Russia has routinely deployed nuclear weapons to Kaliningrad, which also borders Poland (and allows Russia to easily reach most of Western Europe):
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-nato-missiles/russia-deploys-iskander-nuclear-capable-missiles-to-kaliningrad-ria-idUSKBN1FP21Y/
In short: you clearly have no idea what you are talking about.
You have a combination of ignorance and arrogance which if common enough is a threat to us all. Do you read, or have you read any recent history of how this situation developed? If you want to know about European countries with American nuclear weapons do some more googling. Tell me how this came to be, I am all ears. As to the faulty logic, Ukraine was not yet in NATO, and had not acquired hopefully American nuclear weapons, but that was to come. Americans have the white hats, and the evil Russians have the black hats, how can one get confused!
[sup](responding according to a known script gives the impression that your comments are somewhat prepackaged, somewhat indicative of knowingly spreading propaganda)[/sup]
I take it you believe that you live in a democracy, your American, right? You believe the president that the people elect runs the country, the president answers to no higher power? It is time for an evolutionary change, people have the right to have the government they choose, and if you believe the above, you're just a product of the powers that really do run the country. That way they get to stay in the shadows, and your entertained by the two-party system. Speaking of dictatorships, what do you think America has been doing globally, was there ever a kinder country-- lol!! Your countries cottage industry is making war, overt and covert, that's real violence. America has been making economic war on Cuba for over sixty years. The United Nations took a vote on ending the American blockade, and all almost unanimously voted on ending it, except for two votes, America and Israel.
The rest of the world does not see your country as you do, it has been a blight on humanity since World War Two. The BRICS is an alternative to the mindset of colonial thinking, and has the support basically of the entire Eastern hemisphere, they want a multipolar world not a unipolar world with America dictating, subjugating and enslaving weaker countries. Much is done overtly and covertly including merciless economic warfare. The world has had enough, and they are drawing a line in the sand. While America has been bullying with it superpower, its super military encircling China with military bases, that other part of the world has been preparing, and that my friend is the summation of their preparation, it is TODAY. If the general belief across the board here is that America is a virtuous democracy, I am probably not up to making any headway here.
THE BRICS FOREVER, THE END OF COLONIALISM!
What is my claim that is so easily proven wrong, please enlighten me.
BRICS has been around for many many years now. The fact that people have picked up on it last year is just a result of news sensationalism that fools fall for.
Wow! You are so incrediably out of touch. The BRICS is a very powerful movement, challenging the America dollar, and has set up it own currency. Seven more countries just join the BRICS on January first. America has been making economic warfare on Russia for quite some time, to no avail, they were ready for it, and their economy is doing better than that of the States. There is a global shift in power occurring and America is not a happy camper. The world is trying to move away from America as a unipolar power to that of a multipolar world. It is the colonial West against its former colonies and those it otherwise wishes to subjugate. Does nobody here no what is going on? No wonder I hit a brick wall. As I stated, there are about six or seven new members as of January 1st, and a very long list of those who wish to join. So, best catch up on the global news! Oh wait, Yanks still believe they have a free press, I am thinking there may be a very good reason American citizens are not in the loop. America the beautiful ----lol!!
Ok, maybe I am not that articulate, just curious, do you know what the BRICS is? Do you know that there is a global shift of power going on. This shifting power makes America a very unhappy camper. I was just replying to someone else here, who had no idea what was happening. Is that the common experience here? The BRICS is a very powerful movement and challenging the America dollar with a currency of their own. This movement is growing, six to seven new member countries joined on January 1, and there is a long list of countries waiting to join. Just wondering if this is common here, I mean not knowing what is going on. If so, little wonder I hit a brick wall, no pun intended. -- lol!
Cheering on BRICS as if they were Manchester United instead eh... :) I guess you could fire up a new thread.
Of course, these countries have interests tying into the US to various degrees, which is why some of them are more careful than others.
In the end, nations acting independently is already a threat to the US-led global system (or what's left of it), which is what countries like Brazil and India are doing.
It is no coincidence in my view that we see dangerous flashpoints popping up all over the world, all of which are tied to BRICS nations.
The Ukraine war was the catalyst, then came the 7th October attack and the ensuing Gaza war plausibly orchestrated by Iran. The Houthi rebels attacking shipping in the Red Sea (a major development, by the way), which are also backed by Iran.
Israel and global shipping - two major US weaknesses.
Now we have North Korea stating that they believe war between North and South Korea is inevitable (after a period of relative stability between the two nations) and China emphasizing reunification.
This is a coordinated strategy of systemic pressure. And it seems to me the current US administration has absolutely no idea how to deal with it.
Russia has taken a lead role, because escalation between Russia and Europe is very unlikely, whereas escalation in the Middle-East or the South China Sea is way more of a risk and no country wants to end up in a full-scale war with the US.
Let the fragmentation persist...
FYI, here's a video of Chinese and Indian border guards having a fight. Border skirmishes between the two aren't ancient history.
And about that being so anti-US, just from last year, US-Indian joint military exercises:
The reality is that just like the Quad, BRICS is far more a discussion group than an actual treaty organization. At least India is quite comfortable in being non-aligned, and being non-aligned means it doesn't take sides! The US would hope so, but the country simple wants to waltz with both China and the US. As do the majority of other Asian countries.
And now as BRICS has Saudi-Arabia, UAE, Egypt (and Ethiopia) as it's new members, it's obvious that these countries (except Ethiopia) are seen as allies of the US.
Hence the idea of BRICS being against the US is not simply true. The World isn't so black and white.
Ethiopia is quite closely allied to the US
Yet not as Egypt, Saudi-Arabia and UAE. Ethiopia (a) doesn't have US bases or US troops in the country and (b) doesn't have Western / US equipment as it's combat aircraft, tanks and artillery are basically of Russian/Soviet origin. The US does provide a lot of aid, but that is mainly humanitarian aid, not like in the case of Egypt military aid.
I think the US-Ethiopian relationship could be seen to be as 'friendly' and 'warm', but this country isn't such an essential player as Egypt or Saudi-Arabia to the US.
I think their becoming a part of BRICS indicaters that they're not US-aligned any longer. They were never allied to the US to begin with, but I assume 'aligned' is what you meant.
What unites all BRICS countries is their effort to shake off the yoke of the US-led financial system.
As you correctly point out, this doesn't mean that they all take an overtly hostile stance towards the US. It is not an anti-US military alliance. It's an anti-US (Dollar) economic bloc.
However, at the same time it's clear that multiple countries within BRICS (Russia, China and Iran most notably) are working together geopolitically and militarily to pressure the US.
In other words, I think you're downplaying its importance.
Efforts like that have been tried several times before though. Sure eventually something will likely replace the US dollar. For now it seems to have been simply (another) announcement at their recent summit that they're planning - in some indefinitie future - to have a dollar alternative.
The economic incentive right now is just not there. Too much trade is still bound up with the US. And the BRICS countries seem pretty far from agreeing to a mutual standard. And the unanswered question is, given the differences between the BRICS countries, who will control the new standard?
That is incorrect, @Tzeentch
Saudi-US relationship has been quite firm. The countries do have had a defense treaty since 1951. And the US has come to the aid of Saudi-Arabia (with Operation "Desert Shield" being the most obvious example). For the US, Saudi-Arabia was a crucial part of CENTO, then the "Twin Pillars" (where the other pillar was Imperial Iran). And now still is important.
US tank among Saudi tanks in exercise "Eager Lion 2022":
BRICS, just like the QUAD or the G7 aren't defense treaty organizations.
But what has happened is that the US isn't anymore in such a leadership role it was before. The Middle East is the obvious example of this: in places like US allies have been supporting different sides. And Saudi-Arabia was even close to invading another GCC member with an US base. Imagine having NATO countries in an operation where the UK & France would support one faction and Germany, Spain & Italy the faction fighting against it? Well, in the Middle East that is quite usual... nowdays!
And this would be so quite important to people that naively think that either countries are "US puppets" or are against the US: sovereign states have quite their own agendas and the US, even if powerful, is just another actor among others.
Only if a revolution happens, the change is quick and dramatic, but the way the US loses it's allies usually doesn't blow up with a bang, but with a long whimper. (Pakistan or New Zealand are examples of this.)
Well done :D
Inviolability, life support and protection: guarantees for Lukashenka after the presidency have been determined (in Belarusian)
[sup]— Radio Svaboda · Dec 23, 2023[/sup]
President of Belarus gives himself immunity from prosecution and limits potential challengers
[sup]— Yuras Karmanau · AP · Jan 4, 2024[/sup]
Give the Houthi some missiles to attack the HMS Diamond?
After Novocherkassk: A New Chapter in Naval Warfare
[sup]— BNN · Jan 2, 2024[/sup]
Putin is asked to order NATO attack - but not from Russia (en)
[sup]— Marcus Oscarsson · Jan 4, 2024[/sup]
Yet, it's been shaky of late: 'There is only so much patience one can have’: Biden appears to back off vow to punish Saudi Arabia
It's quite clear Saudi Arabia, just like countries like India and Brazil, is also shaking off the US yoke and steering a more independent course. Independence, to the US, is belligerence.
The economic incentive is certainly there.
The Ukraine war signaled to a lot of non-western countries that their money is not safe with the US dollar financial system, expediating de-dollarization.
BRICS has no common currency because it is a collective, free of the America dollar, the America dollar has been used brutally to wage economic war on weaker countries. The Chinese currency is based on gold, not sure if that is true across the board. The whole idea of the BRICS movement is to move from a unitary global power/America to a multipolar world, as is happening as we speak. Think about it, all the while the States has been subjugating if not destroying other countries' economies with their economic and military might, these people have been preparing for the day they can get the American boot off their necks. Most people in this thread don't seem to have a source of information about what is happening in the here and now. Has the States banned TICK TOCK, silencing the opposition, what about American public intellectuals are they silenced as well? I mentioned that as of January 1st, seven more countries have joined the BRICS, and there is a long list of countries waiting their turn. Most people here seem utterly unaware of this. It really seems like a simplistic dialogue, Americans wearing the white hats the Russians wearing the black hats---that is frustrating! The ignorance is so overwhelming. I am going to bow out. Do you people have a press that is entirely corporate owed? Frightening!!
Exactly the opposite is true. China and Russia economies could grow the way they did after the cold war thanks to the American-led globalization. This wealth boosted their military expenditures as much as their economic-military projection abroad.
The world is moving to a multipolar world, removing the American boot from their necks, soon it will become obvious to you as well.
I have no idea why you are so excited about it. "Multipolar world" means that the world is gonna be more peaceful, more equitable, more democratic?
https://www.bing.com/search?q=how+many+european+countries+presently+have+american+nuclear+weapons+on+the+soil%3F&cvid=52383133204c458cb59f3c182cf7ca14&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOdIBCTYzNTg3ajBqNKgCALACAA&FORM=ANAB01&PC=ACTS
Yes, because America is a pig, more powerful than the Third Reich ever dreamt of being, and the world is tired of America's abuse. America and Europe still have a colonial mentality, and America is rat shit crazy to dominate. Today is wakeup time, the world is changing.
Think! Why are not these nations of the East ever so grateful? America is so caring, they just want everyone to be free, don't they? Even your own history used to indoctrinate is a fanciful mythology. America needs to become a civil global citizen; the rest of the world knows you are not.
But hasn't the war - or rather the sanctions - also shown that the importance of that depends on your economic enmeshment with the US?
It seems to me that de-dollarization has a hen-and-egg problem. The more you export to the US, the more USD you hold and the more vulnerable you are to devaluation or straight up freezing of assets. But at the same time the less room to maneuver you have for de-dollarization.
I do think the USD will be replaced eventually, as the relative economic importance of the US declines. Maybe not in this decade though. Of course if the US political system continues to unravel, we might see a more precipitous drop.
RIGHT, and seven more countries just joined the BRICS fraud January 1, with a long list of countries waiting their turn. Wake up to your own propaganda.
Is there no free press in your country? Public intellectuals? Do you hear anything of what the rest of the world says, the global community? It is rather obvious in this thread the party line is being towed. There is America and the bad guys---- good grief!!
What was your question or objection?
What 'a f++king dreamer!
The problem isn't necessarily US imports and exports. It's the petrodollar, the dollar as world reserve currency, the various global financial institutions created by the US, etc.
It's essentially a system of special 'privileges' the US has created for itself during the unipolar moment, which provide it with a slew of instruments to economically pressure other nations.
This is the system much of the world is trying to subtract itself from, not in the least because the US tends to function on a "rules for thee, but not for me" basis.
But these systems largely don't originate from the "unipolar" phase (I.e. post 1990) but from the Cold war, mostly the 70s.
They're not simply the result of the US abusing it's "unipolar power" in some unspecified way but rather of the massive preponderance of the US economy outside the Soviet block together with political factors.
It's not like the US somehow tricked everyone into accepting their leadership role.
Quoting Tzeentch
Which country doesn't? Everyone wants to be the leader and set the rules to their advantage. But noone is there yet. I see little reason to suspect India would grant China the privilege or vice versa. Neither Brasil nor Russia are serious contenders.
The Arab oil states are rather cleverly positioning themselves as a kind of global mediator, but I think it's to early to tell how this will work long term.
During the unipolar moment the US used many of these systems to instate the so-called 'rules based international order', which in the case of the US usually meant: "Rules for thee, but not for me."
Before that, the US had to contend with the Soviet Union as a counterbalancing force. If the US misbehaved too much, countries would instead align with the Soviet Union. That counterbalance disappeared during the unipolar moment.
Quoting Echarmion
Trickery, but mostly coercion. That pretty much sums it up.
Much of the world is incredibly naive when it comes to accepting US "leadership". Especially Europe.
Quoting Echarmion
We are not moving to a new unipolar system. We're moving towards multipolarity (in fact, we are already quite a ways there) which functions completely differently.
Can you give some example for this?
Or am I just the too ignorant for you to explain further? :wink:
That the Saudi's cut oil production hardly is here something that is weakening this alliance: OPEC embargo hit the US far more back in the 1970's, yet the US came to help in the 1990's. First of all, the US itself isn't anymore dependent on Saudi oil thanks to the fracking revolution. That's the major geopolitical shift that has happened.
I think more of a recent rift happened when Iran (even the Houthis claimed it was them, yet the cruise missiles came from the north, not from Yemen) attacked Saudi oil facilities in attacked Saudi oil facilities in 2019 (and later in 2022) and the US did nothing.
Hence the warming of relations between Saudi-Arabia and Iran (lead by China) is notable. Saudi-Arabia cannot rely that the US will come to it's help, then it has to look at other options. After all, many Americans would just love to put Saudi-Arabia in the axis of evil.
For example, the US carried out its 2011 invasion of Libya under the banner of R2P, even though its goal was to despose Muammar Gaddafi - a person they themselves had helped to power in 1969 - for his ambitions to create a gold-backed alternative to the dollar.
US history is rampacked with examples like these, where the US pretends to uphold principles of international law, but is in fact itself the worst perpetrator of international crime and goes around invading sovereign nations whenever it pleases: "Rules of thee, but not for me."
One thing in your comment I would put a serious question mark under though, is the the assertion that the US is no longer dependent on Saudi (or lets say, foreign) oil.
The US doesn't possess that much oil.
This matters very little in peace time, but in war it is crucial. This is why the Persian Gulf has been the most important area to the US outside the western hemisphere after Europe.
This seems like a really bad example because that "invasion", the no-fly-zone was backed by a resolution of the security council. One of only three (?) examples where such a sanction could actually be obtained.
So it was in accordance with the "rules based order".
There's plenty of examples of unilateral US military force of course. But then these are also not examples of the US abusing a system of control build through international institutions. They were pretty blatantly unilateral actions, justified by the responsibility to protect.
This behaviour certainly had negative effects (it also deserves to be listed as an indirect contributing factor to the Ukraine war IMHO), but seems to have little to do with the dollar or international organisations.
Just a small world on the "gold backed alternative to the USD": There's not a single source on this from any official channel, not even statements by Gaddafi himself. It seem like a conspiracy theory invented entirely from an offhand mention in an email allegedly from Hillary Clinton's server.
The point is that the 'rules-based order' is not an instrument for peace and stability, but an instrument the US uses to pursue its own objectives. In this case, it used R2P as a casus belli to invade.
The fact that there was a security council resolution changes nothing about that. Sometimes the US plays according to the rules of the game, but the game was rigged from the start. What nation is going to stick their neck out for poor ol' Libya and invite Washington's ire?
We can look at Gaddafi to see what happens to people who make that mistake.
Quoting Echarmion
The fact that Gaddafi sought to establish the gold dinar as a new African currency is not a 'conspiracy' - it's common knowledge.
The problem is that R2P is not part of the rules based order, is not widely accepted as a principle and is not part of international law. Even the West is by now clearly recognising it as a failure.
Quoting Tzeentch
Literally the only clear, unequivocal justification for the use of force under international law is irrelevant according to you?
Quoting Tzeentch
US resolutions get vetoed in the SC all the time, before and after 2011. This is 100% bullshit.
Quoting Tzeentch
Plenty of examples of what happens if a major power decides it rather wants you gone. But this is supposed to be about the US abusing the international system, not just directly using it's power.
Quoting Tzeentch
No it's not. The article has this to say on it:
And this quote comes from a book, which is then cited by the article.
No source for the article is given and no information is otherwise available about the scheme, let alone any kind of statement by the countries supposedly involved.
So the best sources are an eMail allegedly by Clinton and a supposed russian article reported by hearsay twice removed. There's more evidence that Stanley Kubrick faked the moon landings than for this scheme being real.
State practice, and thus R2P, is part of international law, and thus of the rules-based order.
Quoting Echarmion
Of course. The US sought an excuse to invade Libya for reasons that had nothing to do with the humanitarian situation. Shame on the international community for going along with it, and in essence proving my point.
Quoting Echarmion
No idea what this is even a response to.
Quoting Echarmion
And clearly the US abused the UN to provide a casus belli for an unjust invasion and coup.
You can stick your head in the sand all you like. There's no shortage of information about why the US invaded Libya (and they all have to do with Gaddafi's resistance to, you guessed it, the American led "rules-based" order). I could link you articles, books, but you've already made up your mind, and such would be a waste of time on my part.
There's no point in trying to educate the willfully ignorant.
That's not how that works. You need consistend practice by the vast majority of states, which certainly was not the case with R2P. Plus there were consistend objectors, which would also prevent it from becoming custom.
Quoting Tzeentch
Yeah? How? How do we tell a "normal" UN resolution from one gained by the US by abusing the system?
Quoting Tzeentch
This is just sad now.
Clinton's email wasn't about Gaddafi's "ambitions to create a gold-backed alternative to the dollar"
This gold was accumulated prior to the current rebellion and was intended to be used to establish a pan-African currency based on the Libyan golden Dinar. This plan was designed to provide, the Francophone African Countries with an alternative to the French franc (CFA).
https://wikileaks.org/clinton-emails/emailid/12659
Here's US oil production and consumption. You can see that net imports have taken a dramatic fall after the the shell oil / fracking revolution. Now they are at the level of the 1960's, when the size of the economy was far smaller.
Saudi-Arabia's importance is in that it can influence what the price of oil is. Secondly, a lot of US allies are dependent on Saudi oil. And Saudi-Arabia is very important to China too:
Right, so the story isn't even consistent. At least the gold seems to have been actually real.
Dude, you ain't gonna impress nobody with your foul mouth.
Quoting boagie
Because BRICS countries may have their own hegemonic ambitions, particularly China and Russia.
Quoting boagie
America is caring for its own national interest, of course, and I find it rather naive and myopic to blame the US for it. Other countries' concern for freedom, civil rights, economic wealth, and democracy is instrumental to preserve the US hegemony, of course. If China and Russia invested the wealth accumulated with the globalization to support health, education, economic well being and civil rights for their own people, instead of investing in their coercive system to oppress their own people and support military projection overseas, they would have less military means and will to violently pursue hegemonic ambitions abroad. Germany and Japan after WW2 are successful examples of this strategy.
Again? https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/868183
There's no point in conversation, because evidently you are only interested in affirming your own world view. That much is clear by the way you've handled the information I've presented to you.
One more for the list of clowns.
Does "shame" express a moral, colloquial, legal, or strategic claim?
The sheer disgust you feel towards some of the clowns that inhabit the spheres of international politics is not enlightening but clouding your mind. Taking denouncing self-interest of a hegemonic country, like the US, and deconstructing propaganda hiding it as the best expression of a rational and intellectually honest task, EVEN WHEN ACCURATE, is still a myopic and populist prejudice. That is what is wasting your time on this thread in this philosophy forum.
You're neck-deep into conspiratorial thinking. That is unfortunate, but you'll hardly listen to me so I'm not in a position to help you get out of that swamp.
I can only tell you to check your confirmation bias yourself and try to think clearly about why you believe what you believe.
He said while dismissing all evidence and arguments as "conspiracy theories". :lol:
Look, you cannot really suppose that a mention in Hillary's emails about a gold dinar and a supposed (but unsourced) russian article constitute sufficient evidence to conclude that not only had the dictator of Lybia somehow set up a functioning scheme to set up a pan-African gold currency, but also that this currency was a threat to the US dollar, and that furthermore the US then in some unspecified way caused the Arab spring to get a SC resolution to bomb Lybia.
This is an insanely complex theory. It's also fundamentally unlikely given Lybia's resources and Gaddafi's personality and known propensity for grand fanciful schemes.
It is what Sagan would have called an "extraordinary claim". More generally, the more complex the supposed scheme, the more evidence you need to support it.
Ask yourself (I'm not expecting a public answer): do you [I]really[/I] have the evidence to support that conclusion?
:chin:
Again, in what part of the informed world is the US role in the Arab Spring even remotely controversial?
The fact that the US jumped at the opportunity to secure its own interests isn't even up for debate. That's established fact. Whether it knowingly or unknowingly caused the Arab Spring is contested, but not really part of my argument.
To answer your question, clearly there is evidence supporting my position. The fact that you're not even willing to look at it is your problem, not mine - your knee-jerk "CONSPIRACY!" reaction tells me all I need to know.
Are you an American?
But I did look. And came up empty. And you clearly don't have any more either or you could have simply posted it and thus exposed me as an ignorant fool.
:ok:
Also, continuously demanding more evidence while simultaneously refusing to take it seriously is exactly the type of dishonesty I'm talking about.
Well, as I said, you won't listen to me.
Quoting Vladimir Putin · Jun 19, 2019
Quoting Alex Kokcharov · Sep 10, 2022
... then their impressive destruction and killing nonetheless tell a different story. Whether miscalculation, delusion, honest false belief, or something else, land grab fits the bill. The swift opaque referendums suggest the same. Land grab, influence, control, power, "Ukrainian brothers and sisters be d?mn?d".
Ukrainians and Russians as ‘One People’: An Ideologeme and its Genesis
[sup]— Pål Kolstø · Taylor and Francis · Aug 23, 2023[/sup]
Belarus refuses to invite OSCE observers to monitor this year’s parliamentary election
[sup]— Yuras Karmanau · AP · Jan 8, 2024[/sup]
I guess they bother at all ... for appearances, to appease certain sensibilities, like a ritual, ... Have to wonder what results genuine democratic elections (with free press and such) would give.
Recently Oleksandr Chalyi went on a panel at the Geneva Center for Security Policy in which he provided more insight into what took place. Chalyi is a former diplomat and Ukrainian ambassador, and was part of the delegation that conducted the peace negotiations in question. In other words, he's giving a first-hand account from the Ukrainian point of view. He also shares some of his own views on the conflict.
Here are some quotes (paraphrased, because his English isn't fluent):
[...]
[...]
[...]
[...]
What were the Ukrainians promised and not given by the West? NATO membership probably, Art. 5 guarantees, etc. - but Chalyi does not specify so we're left to ponder.
And what possible reason could the West have for blocking negotiations when the Ukrainians themselves felt they had found a real compromise with Russia? Unbelievable.
In an extensive policy brief he wrote in July 2023 he goes into some more detail, which again paints a bleak picture of the West's role in this war, continuously leading Ukraine along by dangling security guarantees infront of them, but never actually providing them with anything.
And that's of course what we've been arguing here for months. Chalk up another one for team realism.
This seems to conflict with any other source on the negotiations I have looked at so far. They all stress that a high level meeting of the two leaders was a sticking point and that without such a meeting, Ukraine was unwilling to rely on the communiqué.
That meeting - and this Putin's possible acceptance, is what was postponed and ended up never happening.
So I wonder where this insistence that Putin "personally accepted" the Istanbul communiqué comes from.
Dude, what you actually claimed is the following:
Quoting Tzeentch"
To such rhetoric manipulation of yours and your sidekicks I commented:
Quoting neomac
Quoting neomac
So Chalyi's article confirms more what I argued than what you argued. You are dishonestly framing everything as to stress the MORAL responsibility of the West without even considering the reasons of the West. Even though you believe that states have no moral responsibility (since they are not moral agents) only legal and yet:
Quoting Tzeentch
Quoting neomac
Quoting Jan 8, 2024
Quoting Jan 8, 2024
Quoting Jan 8, 2024
Quoting Jan 9, 2024
Reacting to the Kremlin. Probably shouldn't be that surprising any longer.
Quoting Tzeentch
Well, why wouldn't he want Crimea + Donbas "for free"? :)
That's exactly what his "peaceful settlement" would have been.
Grab (steal) ? peace (official) ? done (might have avoided some sanctions and whatever else too). :up:
Must be among the simplest + cheapest ways to grab land.
There's been a number of diplomatic efforts since Feb 2022 (including some grain export negotiations) + some polls.
https://www.reuters.com/world/we-will-never-help-europe-under-attack-eu-official-cites-trump-saying-2024-01-10/
https://nltimes.nl/2023/04/08/dutch-journalist-writes-critically-china-targeted-bizarre-intimidation-scheme
https://securingdemocracy.gmfus.org/incident/chinese-embassy-in-stockholm-threatens-swedish-journalist/
https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/journalist-03252019114547.html
https://www.asiapacific.ca/fr/asia-watch/czech-prime-minister-wants-chinese-ambassador-out
At least Putin is betting firmly on this.
Europe really has to look at the possibility of the US leaving and basically being an ally of only Israel. :smirk:
It's only American politicians themselves that can ruin the position of the US it is enjoying now.
Yeah, someone will get scrambling. I recall Obama (and others) suggesting as much. Plus, European countries will have to cooperate in some ways. The Gremlin has already more or less brought Russia into a war economy + path.
If the US leaves NATO, NATO might turn into a European military alliance or just end (if there is no shared understanding and willingness of what is the common enemy/enemies).
The problem is that we would still have a war in Ukraine and the risk that Russia will see the American retreat from Europe as an opportunity to become more aggressive, starting with the Baltic States. Also the Balcan area, plenty of territorial disputes, may become hotter. Go figure what will happen if Trump will try to RECONCILE with Russia over Ukraine in order to weaken the Russian pact with China.
Besides the cost of boosting the defence industry (BTW what will happen about the European nuclear deterrence which only few European states possess? Should the other start a nuclear program? What will happen to the defence of the commercial routs around the world? Should all Europeans boost investment into the Navy too?) or maybe reintroducing the military service, the economic crisis due to the economic competition of the Americans (which may even become more hawkish after the end of their NATO partnership e.g. consider the market of microchips and technologies) and the problem of commodity supply under the control of more assertive and competitive geopolitical agents (Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, China and the US), the difficulty of coordinating this effort among Europeans may have repercussions on the stability of the EU and resurgence of populist movements (with its unresolved anti-elitism and unresolved identitarian issues with immigration and Muslim community). European tensions inside European countries and between European countries will still be fueled by hostile or competing powers (including the US), which in turn may even more polarize and paralyze European democracies in their capacity to pursue their strategic interests unless they turn into authoritarian regimes and/or search protection from foreign powers (if not the US, which one?). Also the EU is in danger. And the demographic decline won't help either for the next decades.
The — the assistance that we provided has now ground to a halt. The attacks that the Russians are conducting are only increasing. And now, as I talked about earlier this week, they’re using North Korean ballistic missiles to do their dirty work.
So, the — the need is acute right now, particularly in these winter months.[/i]
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/press-briefings/2024/01/11/press-briefing-by-press-secretary-karine-jean-pierre-nsc-coordinator-for-strategic-communications-john-kirby-and-national-economic-council-director-lael-brainard/
At least, the Baltic States will feel the pressure.
And let's have the facts:
1. Russian armed forces are superior to any European country. Hence Russia is against any kind of European integration or Atlanticism. It is the de facto Greatest power in Europe.
2. Russia is going to a wartime economy. If US and Europe throw in the towel, Russia unlikely won't change course here.
2. Finlandization can be an option for EU countries. Why not be a friend of Russia? Just like Hungary. Why rearm when there are other more important things to finance. Especially if Russia is far away, why not seek better relations and start to understand Putin. Why...he's not so bad actually!
If Europe were even to remotely get its act together, there'd be no Russian threat whatsoever.
So why doesn't it? The enemy is at the gates after all!
My sense is that the US is and has been pulling strings in the background in order to keep Europe nice and docile, instead turning into the peer competitor that it could be and potentially shaking the US yoke.
And therein lies the problem. We share an "alliance" (though vassalage would be a better term) with a belligerent hegemon that lives across the pond. It doesn't share our security concerns, in fact being an island nation it benefits from sowing discord on the Eurasian mainland - divide & conquer.
This relationship we have with the US won't keep Europe safe, rather the opposite is true. The US is a dangerous ally.
Again, if Europe tried even a little bit there would be no conceivable Russian threat and we could enjoy stable relations with our eastern neighbor backed up by healthy deterrence.
That would not be in American interests though, which, I suspect, is why it doesn't happen.
YES!
But sorry. I'm an European, I know these people.
The EU is the best we can make. Non-US NATO would be a shadow of the former organization. Or if Russia bombed with cruise missiles EVERY European Capitol, that could make us work together. But that's not going to happen.
Though, it is important to stress that even though I believe we should have a credible deterrent, we should not combine an arms build-up with antagonism towards Russia. A deterrent should have as its purpose stable relations between east and west.
The reason it won't happen until Europe shakes the US yoke is because the US does not want stable relations between Europe and Russia.
In fact, sowing discord on the European mainland is a strategy written down by Mackinder in his famous article 'The Geographical Pivot of History', and echoed by people like Brzezinski in 'The Grand Chessboard'.
Mackinder was British, by the way. It stems from a time when the British still had illusions of empire and world domination, but it appears they have not forgotten their old tricks.
It is no coincidence it was the US and UK who sought to block peace negotiations between Ukraine and Russia. Both are island nations who do not share in the cost of war on the European mainland but have historically benefitted from it.
Maybe if there's a common, increasing clear and present danger...? At least some parts of Europe (like Scandinavia / the Nordics, the Baltics) typically tend to cooperate reasonably well. Not that this by itself will do, though.
Quoting Tzeentch
In the real world, there's a bit more to it
Quoting Jan 1, 2024
There should be antagonism towards that. There was towards the Third Reich. Was and is towards apartheid. And this. ... What would you think not standing up does? (Would that be cowardice, complicity, assent, something else?)
Speaking of apartheid and genocide, this is currently taking place in Israel with either "unconditional support" or tacit approval of virtually every western government.
The West should get its own house in order before it starts lecturing and antagonizing other countries, because currently it has zero credibility.
But you know, if Americans want to go to war with Russia over democratic principles that would be a nice joke. Fight that battle without us Europeans, though. Will you be volunteering for the frontlines?
Russia is not comparable to the Third Reich.
And, as we've gone over a dozen times at least in this conversation, we are not "standing up" in Ukraine. Our soldiers are not there to do any "standing".
Rather, we are threatening Russia by trying to move arms (which are threats) closer to Russia, and we are supplying arms to Ukraine, but as you yourself seem to now agree, in a drip feed manner calibrated to ensure Ukraine is not a real threat to Russia, at an insanely high cost to Ukraine.
We are not making "a stand".
Furthermore, the sound bite of "making a stand" sounds good, but is not some sort of political or ethical theory.
There's plenty of evil in the world the West condones and profits from and there's plenty other evil any Western decision maker or policy analyst will giddily explain at some length how we don't have practical means to do anything about it and so "making a stand" would be counter productive.
The West has created a theatrical performance in Ukraine (at a severe cost to Ukraine) of pretending to be "standing up" to something, because it serves US interest.
And, to skip over your ignorant retorts, making Russia stronger servers US interests. The US needs enemies. Kremlin hardliners too, and in this both Russian and US hardliners are frenemies getting what they want out of the war.
Russia is building back its war machine.
The US has defeated the Euro as a competitor to the dollar, with plenty of money to throw at the defence industry in the process, which is also now rebranded as intrepid peace warriors almost overnight (rather than the corrupt military industrial congressional complex that ruined Afghanistan and then fled like cowards when it turned into a liability).
Everybody wins.
Everybody who matters anyways.
And look on the bright side, you win too!
You get to engage in 2 years of moral masterbation at no real risk or cost to yourself, but rather live true heroism vicariously through the blood spent in Ukraine to "defend the West".
So many people need the war.
Just imagine the horrors of peace.
How does credibility come into this?Quoting boethius
Everyone is a hypocrite, so what? Hypocrisy is an ad hominem charge.
Quoting boethius
The US military has always been both. The real rebranding is that of the European militaries, which suddenly have gone from necessary evil to integral part of the state again.
I agree with this.
Yet that credible deterrent can be viewed always by the Kremlin as a threat that is out to get them. It needs an enemy to justify it's authoritarian grip. But this has been very typical to Russia in history: it's imperialist expansionism has always been seen by the Russian rulers themselves as something defensive. The US can relax behind both the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean, but geography has given Russia this easy-to-travel steppe, from which the enemy can come, be it the Mongols, the Poles, the French or the Germans. Or the Americans.
It's a difficult issue as Russia really has a identity problem when it comes to Europe and the West: the ideological battle for the idea of Russia between the slavophiles and the westernizers is still something that can be seen even today.
Again with the marketing, never stops, but I'll unpack your commercial for the benefit of anyone following along.
An ad hominem attack is a fallacy in two cases:
1. When we're talking about timeless eternal truths, in which case the character of anyone doesn't matter.
2. In the case of contigent facts, when attacking the person proposing an argument rather than the content of the argument, when the argument is not related to their character. Character maybe relevant to contingent facts, but for the character of the speaker to be relevant they need to be making some claim to authority, either as some sort of expert or then a witness to events.
The classic example of the first case is mathematics. Obviously makes no sense to attack a mathematicians character to argue a proof they put forward is invalid.
In the second case, character is extremely relevant to all sorts of factual investigative processes (police and courts deal with this issue all the time), but, nevertheless, character needs to be relevant; aka. some sort of premise ("I am an expert so what I say is more believable than non or less-expert opinion" or then "I saw these things happen with my very eyes!") that is legitimate to attack and undermine. We may charge the expert with a conflict of interest and we may charge the witness to the crime with being an unreliable heroine addict.
Now, back to our own discussion.
First of all, pointing out the hypocrisy of US policy is not an ad hominem attack on @jorndoe, as perhaps you meant to imply a little slight of hand, but rather a ad hominem attack on US government policy and decision makers.
Evaluating the character of these actors in the conflict in question is entirely relevant to analyzing the situation and evaluating the intentions and likely future decisions of parties to the conflict.
One may even go so far as to say perspicacity requires having a clue of what you're talking about.
So yes, that US policy makers are hypocrites and aren't making any sort of "stand" in Ukraine is essential to understanding the conflict.
What we all have witnessed, regardless of our character, is weaponized enlightenment humanism.
Quoting Echarmion
Ah yes, the US military has always been both corrupt psychopathic mass murderers as well as valiantly carrying the pillars of world peace on their backs.
I believe you mean to say that the US military has always been corrupt psychopathic mass murderers when it serves elite US perceived interest ... and corrupt noble and caring or whatever when that serves elite US perceived interests.
As for Europe ... what's the evidence of that European change in sentiments. A lot of people like cheering on the war in Ukraine, that's for sure, but the current protests spreading over Europe: Netherlands, Germany, Poland, France and so on, are not to insist on a mad dash to rearm to fight the Russians but on subjects like wages and the cost of living and fuel and so on.
The Nordics do cooperate very well. However, in security policy there's always the problem that in the end, "going alone/opting out" can be beneficial. Not to fully commit your country to defend another country. Sweden in the end is the perfect example of this: It did send volunteers and many aircraft to help Finland in the Winter War. It didn't help Denmark or Norway when attacked by Germany. It survived WW2 intact, only with few stray Russians bombers accidentally bombing Stockholm thinking it's Helsinki. It's military deterrence and foreign policy kept it out from the war, not being occupied by either side, just like the Swiss managed to do. Is that a bad thing?
Let's take a hypothetical example:
Let's assume that in the 2030's when the war in Ukraine is behind us and Russia has rearmed itself, Russia simply occupies a corridor to Kaliningrad in the Suwalki gap through Lithuanian territory and declares it will defend this corridor by tactical nuclear weapons and possibly using the full force of it's nuclear arsenal against countries that attack it.
Russia can even show that they are dead serious by detonating a small tactical warhead, a 5 Kt bomb (much smaller than the A-bomb in Hiroshima), in the Lithuanian countyside destroying part of some NATO unit or it's HQ and send Lithuathians to their basements. With a 5 kt detonation, you have quite a good chance to survive unless you are closer than 1km from the center. We would all see in the television or our smartphones multiple images of a nuclear mushroom cloud in the Lithuanian countryside.
Lithuania surely will ask for defense assistance of article 5. The real issue is how treaty members will react to this. How will their populations far from Lithuania respond?
Is this a reason to go to a conflict which can lead to full scale nuclear war?
Or how many will want things to be "just stopped" before an all-out nuclear war? Let them have the fucking corridor, it's not worth for possibly tens of millions to die. So send some iodine pills to Lithuania and something else marginal. Wouldn't that be enough for the article 5 response, if Lithuania is far away and you don't want to escalate things?
The fact is that we are already engaged in this problem: the reason for not giving Ukraine the best weapons there are, has been exactly the worry of escalation to a nuclear war. This has meant, that the aid has been to Ukraine for it to survive, not to push Russia away from Ukrainian territory.
The lure of appeasement and just wanting to the war to end is understandable. Especially when you have no will to fight.
The real question is, how much Europeans have that will to fight in the first place? Because that's where your deterrence starts from.
I don’t know if that’s “the reason”, there might be other plausible reasons weihing in the American strategic calculus:
1 - Avoid to get too much involved in a war that isn’t as relevant as the incumbent conflict with China over Taiwan.
2 - Avoid the collapse of Putin’s regime in case of clamorous defeat, which might open the door to more aggressive political leaders .
3 - Avoid the collapse of Russia and worrying about the fate of its nuclear arsenal and the chance for China to expand its sphere of influence on the Russia eastern front.
4 - Keep Russia stuck in Ukraine to weaken its possible support to China in case of a conflict over Taiwan and prevent a reconciliation between Europeans and Russia as long as possible.
5 - Realising the soft and hard limits of the deterrence capacity of the West as a system of military and economic alliance against a hostile Rest.
Quoting ssu
Well put!
Noone in this thread has cared the argue that the US is not duplicitous or self-interested.
Only that a) not literally anything that happens is a US plot and b) the US interest is not necessarily opposed to local interests, and the US does actually do good things.
Their hypocrisy is immaterial in and of itself.
Quoting boethius
A lot of people want nothing more than to be left alone and go back to business as usual as it was 30 years ago. But this is not a new sentiment and it's not caused specifically by the war in Ukraine, the war is simply another sign of the crisis a significant portion of people wants to simply wish away.
I suspect that it's less the actual military staffs that are worried about nuclear escalation, and more the politicians that worry about the fears of their voters.
Putin's trump card in this conflict appears to ultimately be the right wing movements that Russia has sponsored in the West for years. Despite not being in a majority in most countries, everyone's so afraid of loosing votes to the new right that they end up compromising.
Who knows if, by the time this war is over, the Europe that Ukraine wanted to join still exists. The pull of xenophobic isolationism currently seems irresistible.
It doesn't sound implausible to me either.
Quoting Echarmion
BTW the divide & conquer strategy applied in Europe might make sense to Russia more than to the US due to the geographic proximity between Europe and Russia. Not to mention that NATO, EU and globalization supported by the US were there more to unite than to divide.
Hmm. Maybe, but what enemy would that be? In the period between 1999 - 2013 Putin tried very hard to have good relations with the West. To a large extent he succeeded, and ties between Europe and Russia were good.
In my opinion, that was a perfect template for long-term stability, and it's hard to see why the Russians would have wanted to break that status quo by arbitrarily warmongering.
Quoting ssu
The thing I would worry about most in this scenario, once again, is Uncle Sam who basically has the power to send Europe into a nuclear war while it sits thousands of miles across the pond.
I've said this before, but the Americans don't share in the cost of large-scale war on the European mainland, in fact have historically benefitted from it. It is extremely foolish of us to put our fate in their hands.
In your scenario, what happens when the Americans decide large-scale, potentially nuclear, war between Europe and Russia is in its interest because it wants to "weaken Russia"?
The Yankees can and will climb the escalation ladder as far as they want and there's nothing Europe can do about it. Well, Europeans can whinge, maybe. I'm sure there will be plenty of whinging.
If, in reaction to your scenario, the Europeans want de-escalation, but the Americans covertly fire a 10kt nuclear weapon from an SSBN in the Baltic, what do you suppose will happen?
But doesn't the fact that NATO exist in itself cause the EU not to successfully cooperate militarily? There's simply no real need. I think if EU countries could centralise command and simply have all the countries current armies merge into a single force we would easily have an adequate defensive force. France already has the nukes for deterrence.
So does the UK, which is still taking part in the defence cooperation.
But good questions, @Benkei.
The membership of one Superpower would make it more easy to coordinate any actions. It's basically that the US proposes an operation and countries either commit or not. Otherwise you would have to have the "Troika" of France, UK and Germany. They should work together, have an unified objective. Otherwise it is improbable that EU will act in coordination. Germany has huge problems in creating and operating an effective armed forces in the current situation. Not only has it difficulties creating that "bang for buck" in defense spending, it has (like Japan) huge sensitivities in using military force. Only France and the UK have capabilities to project power out of the area. They also do have the "can do" spirit of a Great Power. All other nations are basically supportive.
The worst possibility that there's no uniform objective, but the "alliance" simply dissolves. Arab states and Turkey are the best example of this. It would be beneficial for them to really have cooperation even at the level of the Arab League, but this isn't happening. Even the GCC members have been close to having war with each other. Also the Libyan civil war showed clearly that allied countries can support different sides.
And btw, when I gave the example of the Suwalki gap, seems like Germany has thought about a similar situation:
(See German Intelligence Reports: NATO Prepares for War with Russia.)
Here some points:
1 - If the formation of a military block bordering with Russia on its eastern front was perceived by Russia as an intolerable existential security threat , this would hold for NATO as much as for a European military alliance. Even more so, if one remembers that the US has NEVER EVER invaded Russia proper. France, Germany and Poland did.
2 - Imperialism is obviously not an exclusive mark of the US foreign policy. European countries like the UK, France and Germany, Russia, Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia, China have shown imperialist ambitions in the past, and for the last ones also remarkably revived in the present. Imperialism as it goes away it can also come back. So Putin is not only interested in having the US out from Europe just now but forever by preventing the US from coming back. That’s why for Putin it would be important to keep alive harmless or pro-Russian European regimes while promoting intra European and inter European political polarisation with all its available means (infowar, corruption, commodity blackmailing, poison and mysterious suicides, etc.). Russia may very well need to hegemonise Europe not only to keep the US out and Germany down (and the rise of a Western military block), but also to counterbalance its dependence on China, and its Muslim/Chinese competitors in the mediterranean-africana area.
3 - Putin is mortal and will die at some point (but pro-Russian cheerleaders shouldn’t lose hope, with the US and NATO gone Georgia, Moldova and the Baltic States are up for grabbing even if Russia has lost its pretext of NATO enlargement!). So, one can’t just look at Putin but also the Russia political elite and environment which will likely survive Putin (imperialism is not a mark of Putin but a historical trend which Putin may have unleashed), or even outside Russia. What his war is meant to prove to the World (including Westerners) is that authoritarian regimes have won over Western democracies in international competition and that the West is declining while the Rest is rising in power and demands: the West is not just the US, the West is Europe too! A resentful Rest which doesn’t forget Western wrongdoings (and, let me remind you that the West is not just the US but also the Europeans, or ex-US vassals, or ex-filthy coward cockroaches servile to the Yankees, and right after being callous exploitative colonizers of the Rest!), also thanks to the Western zealous anti-Western propagandists for which even a remote reference of something good coming from the West is an unbearably outrageous proof of hypocrisy and wanna bitch about it from their armchair as customary among men of honour. This will embolden assertiveness of the Rest in terms of security threats (like islamic terrorism and commercial routs disruption) and economic threats (due to the dependencies of the West from abroad commodities).
4 - Europe is rich of inter-European interest conflicts as far as security and economy are concerned (including territorial disputes). And along all dimensions: Western Europe vs Eastern Europe, North Europe vs South Europe, financially virtuous Europe vs financially sucker Europe, liberal Europe vs illiberal Europe, etc. Even without an American divide and conquer strategy. European countries have enough historical dispositions to be and act selfishly at the expense of fellow European countries, eroding European cohesion and coordination for any European project including a European army. And the European populist aversion for multilateral agreements (like the one required by a European army) which will require super-national constraints, and national jealousy might drive countries back to bilateral agreements as established by nation states. Besides we shouldn’t antagonise Russia, Russia is not a threat, that's all US propaganda, right? (I do wonder who would dare to antagonise Russia and say they are a security threat, after the US is gone, i.e. I’m afraid that’s not an option) so what's even the point of having a European army, exactly? So for Russia it would be more easy to destabilise Europe at convenience, once the US has left, by polarising and paralizing democracies, until they turn into a civil war or authoritarian regimes, if needed to make Europe more docile for any security and economic demands Russia has. Russia can even present itself as a mediator/peace-keeper in inter-European conflicts (like in the Balcans which may turn into the next hot spot, which will likely divert European attentions from Russia) and help European countries which risk a civil war by turning them authoritarian, if needed, maybe by sending a Wagner group around European countries as it happened in Africa. Or even support parties that would prefer to buy weapons from Russia instead of building a national military industry (even more so if that would support a European army).
So without the US, Russia would have a much easier hand at replacing Western corrupt and servile elites serving American corrupt and greedy industrial-military complex with Western corrupt and servile elites serving Russian corrupt and greedy industrial-military complex. What a win!
5 - How about the Great Satan once it is gone from Europe? Nothing to worry about, since the Great Satan has no longer reason to invest in supporting EU and NATO at their own expense, they will invest in support of their economy and security at the European expense. The other good news is that the Great Satan won’t need to pull strings in the background, now that they can pull strings in foreground with bilateral agreements also to counterbalance the Russian hegemonic penetration in Europe. (Oh and with the end of the EU and the euro, another competitor of the dollar is gone!)
But sure, after the US is gone, what could possibly go wrong? We will preserve peace, democracy, unity and prosperity, and the Rest will love us, Europeans, the self-deprecating servile minions of the Great Satan (which replaced them as the Great Satan!). The entire multipolar world is looking forward to seeing us flourish, of course. They are sitting quietly on their armchair and passionately chatting about this epiphany in philosophy forums like this one (if their authoritarian regimes allows them, of course).
So fuck the Great Satan, fuck globalization, fuck NATO and EU, and glory to the multipolar world! :D
Unless the Russians were already aggreviated at being treated as merely a second-rate "regional power" by the west, and the status quo was always unacceptable to the Putin government.
Basically your view assumes the "primacy of economics", as the western governments generally did post 1990. Under this assumption, China would have no reason to create tensions over Taiwan either.
Quoting ssu
Don't write off Poland. Poland may well be a very important player in the EU of the future.
I agree. Military people can understand escalation. The public doesn't. Indeed, the politicians are more afraid than the military.
And this is why actually the twisted logic of "Escalate to de-escalate" can work: a small tactical weapon can raise absolute panic. If an accident in a nuclear power plant in Japan that didn't kill anybody causes such a huge panic, how much panic will the mushroom cloud bring with it? What we have been taught: nuclear war is utter doom for human kind, nobody can handle it once it's started.
Quoting Echarmion
That is true, good remark!
Poland is basically a large-scale model of my little country: it can put a defense on it's territory and provide assistance close by. But if the crisis would happen let's say in the Mediterranean, there's not much that Poland can give, only something to assist a larger force. I assume if Poles are ready to defend the Suwalki gap and even the Baltics, it might be different issue in the Balkans or in South-West Europe.
And the security threats can happen outside of the primary theatre: the Houthi attacks on the Bab El Mandeb show this clearly.
https://europeanconservative.com/articles/news/germany-has-5-8-years-to-get-military-into-shape-defence-minister-warns/
Unfortunately Germany currently seems to be slipping into a deep domestic political crisis, with record high dissatisfaction with the ruling coalition, a serious far-right threat and a long-honed aversion against pursuing an active foreign policy.
For example, what is the most costly naval vessel that the German navy has? What has been the most expensive in the long run? It might surprise you, but it has been the Gorch Fock. Which is the ship below:
It has taking German navy nine years to rehaul the training ship. So this just tells how bad Germany has it when we are talking about Defense. I think that the French defense budget is smaller, yet they have a) a nuclear deterrent and b) an aircraft carrier along with a larger defense industry.
This all before the problems that remarked above.
Well, let's not be unfair, the Gorch Fock is not dependent on oil or gas and thus provides an important asset in case Germany's access to these resources is cut.
What makes this whole affair so weird is that the ship is pretty ordinary in technical terms. It's not some wooden ship of the line of ancient heritage. It's a steel-hulled sailing ship from 1958, you could have probably build a new ship to the same specifications for a fraction of the cost.
That's the biggest outcry now, that why nobody thought of that in the first place. I assume with less than 100 million or even less you could have made a training ship.
But anyway, there are other difficulties: for example when a contract is granted to one company for a weapon system, it's competitors can take it to court. This can hold up for a long time weapons procurement. The other issue is that military readiness has taken a huge fall. I think this has been the result of not taking care of adequate supplies, which leads at worst case to cannibalization. But shrinking the defense budget usually does this: first you cancel large exercises, limit flying hours, limit live firing of munitions. Then you start to save from supplies. And what do you know, in the end you have an Air Force that doesn't train much and which large part of the aircraft fleet are not air worthy.
Then there's the bureacracy: As Germany is a federal state, the bureaucracy makes public spending not something that would quickly react to new situations.
What then becomes the problem is try to make a direction change: once the professional people are gone, the mechanics, the technicians, you don't easily just snap your fingers and they would emerge from thin air to a stack of money. Sweden actually learnt this the hard way as it
[quote] The shambolic state of the Bundeswehr's affairs has long been known in military circles. Stories of dysfunctional tanks and helicopters, rifles that fail in hot weather and soldiers having to train in the cold without thermal underwear have been sidelined for years.
Many of the German military’s problems don't always stem from lack of funding, but also from unnecessary bureaucratic hurdles in procurement and poor planning. The thermal underwear shortage stems from the latter.
In 2015, a German broadcaster quoting a confidential military report said that German soldiers tried to hide the lack of arms by replacing heavy machine guns with broomsticks during a NATO exercise in 2014. After painting the wooden sticks black, the German soldiers swiftly attached them to the top of armoured vehicles.
In short, the war in Ukraine has shone a disturbing light on the German military's critical unpreparedness.[/Quote]
What has happened is a lot of talk. The problems still persist. This has been seen in the assistance to the war in Ukraine: Russia got 1 million artillery rounds from North Korea. Ukraine didn't get the similar promised rounds, but only half of it from Europe.
Russia hasn't invaded a NATO country nor an EU country.
Ukraine is neither in NATO nor the EU.
Ukraine also (in the before times) owned Crimea which was home to an important Russian military naval base.
Ukraine is also politically unstable with plenty of armed factions willing to cause trouble and explicitly dedicated to the destruction of Russia.
Furthermore, and this responds to @ssu as well who seems often mystified that Russia views NATO as a threat, NATO is not just an alliance where parties commit to mutual defence, it is also a military hardware system.
Moving weapons closer to someone or something is by definition a threat.
If I put a gun to your head, you'd view that as threatening even if I was "promising" to not harm you and if fact only putting a gun to your head to defend myself!
Now, you can argue that Russia shouldn't invade Ukraine even if NATO is indeed a legitimate threat to Russia, but arguing NATO is not a legitimate threat is just dumb.
It is such an obvious legitimate threat that the Russian invasion of Ukraine was completely predictable if the push / game of footsie to integrate Ukraine into NATO continued.
Which makes that policy either completely idiotic or then entirely for the purpose of provoking Russia into invading Ukraine.
Since obviously NATO isn't going to risk any of its precious little soldiers to "defend Ukrainian sovereignty" and Ukraine has no hope of defeating Russia, the purpose of the policy is not the preservation of Ukrainian sovereignty, preservation of Ukrainian lives nor really preserving anything "Ukrainian" whatsoever.
Now that the copium highs are wearing off, such as belief in the great counter offensive and "cutting the land bridge", I really hope cheerleaders for Ukraine fighting, repudiating any compromise whatsoever, rather than negotiating and compromising and really able to take a long honest stare at the dead so far and simply ask themselves if its fair that these people died on false premises and false promises.
What happened to the US promise of "whatever it takes"?
Oh right, it's turned into we've completely run out of funding for Ukraine ... but other people are to blame for that!
Hmm Not optimistic ...
In this thread, I will explain why we are much closer to war with RU than most people realize and why our time window for rearmament is shorter than many believe. In my opinion, we have at best 2-3 years to re-establish deterrence vis-à-vis RU. [...] (— Fabian Hoffmann · Jan 14, 2024)
[tweet]https://twitter.com/FRHoffmann1/status/1746589423251403236?s=20[/tweet]
Germany preparing for Russia to start World War 3, leaked war plans reveal (— Chris Nesi · New York Post (and Bild) · Jan 15, 2024)
, I don't think you quite caught my drift with those couple comments. (Maybe try not to zoom in on individual verbiage while oddly forgetting the rest?)
Might be hard for you to acknowledge, but there's more to justification rationale motivation (hence cumulative explanation) than Machiavellian opportunism and glory and heroics. :D I guess thinking so is kind of telling. Impoverished. Except, makes better headlines. Worry not, yo' pal Putin stands up against unchecked imperialist expansionism of democracy. :up: "It's nefarious!"
Quoting boethius
Quoting boethius
:D
Any difference in response to the invasion (e.g. China, North and South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey, Hungary, the US, the UK, France, Poland, Romania, Finland, Sweden, the Baltics, ...) might just suggest (non)antagonism, (not) standing up, (non)apathy, or whatever else.
[sup](fyi, embedded links can give refs/context, can help memory too :wink:)[/sup]
... or simply the MIC pushing propaganda to start the largest arms build-up since WW2 so it can profit exorbitantly and probably bring WW3 closer than it actually is now?
The US is probably also in on this, hoping to militarize Europe and provoke a wider war between it and Russia, to avoid either from profiting too much when the US will be inevitably crippled by conflicts with China and North Korea in the Pacific, and other conflicts elsewhere.
Is Russia a legitimate threat to NATO?
Obviously, has thousands of nukes.
The problem vis-a-vis Ukraine is that Ukraine is not a legitimate area of strategic defence for NATO.
If Ukraine was of legitimate strategic value to NATO, then NATO would have gone in the night to Ukraine at some point in the 20 years it's been playing footsie with Ukraine and just brought Ukraine into the alliance by surprise and then flooded the country with NATO troops, bases and equipment the next day.
NATO doesn't do this, before the war or even before declaring Ukraine would join ... oh some day, because Ukraine isn't important to the defence of NATO, certainly not the United States.
Therefore, it's irrational to risk nuclear escalation in order to secure territory that you don't care about.
So, why is there a war?
Well there isn't a war between Russia and NATO, that's clear.
There's a war because enough Ukrainians (though not the majority, going by any of the votes in which this was a major topic) are gullible enough to play footsie back with NATO and some of those even gullible enough to think NATO really will "stand up" for democracy and risk something real for themselves (aka. nuclear war) in order to "defend freedom or whatever".
The other reason we have the war is that the US elite saw strategic benefit in provoking tensions, as the RAND document literally entitled "Overextending and Unbalancing Russia" makes clear. Now, it's possible US elite weren't aiming for such a large scale war so destructive to Ukraine, but as RAND makes perfectly clear that is a risk (to Ukraine) of the policy.
Maybe try living in the real world for a couple of hours, the time at leas to review these events.
Sure, NATO can go play footsie with Ukraine and clearly threaten Russia with moving the NATO military system even closer to it and in a country that is unstable with all sorts of armed factions with their own agendas (risk of NATO in Ukraine is not the same as the risk of NATO in Finland, a stable and predictable country).
NATO can do that. Whether you want to argue it's a right or not, doesn't matter; they can do it, and there's real world consequences, whether you want to argue those real world consequences "shouldn't happen" or not, they happen.
Those real world consequences of footsie with Ukraine is Russia invades to, if not put a definite stop to further NATO encroachment, push the border back and severely weaken Ukraine economically and demographically thus structurally lowering the threat over the long term.
This just makes strategic sense in any longish view of history whatsoever and if I worked for the Kremlin I would have come to the same conclusion and recommended the same actions. The US has a history of starting and provoking wars to weaken its rivals, there's no reason it would stop that policy once Ukraine was actually in NATO or then further strengthened in arms and NATO training.
The question the US was putting to Russia was basically "you want to do business with Europe, you have to accept military encirclement on your Western border; you can do business, sure, but only with a gun to your head".
From the US perspective, it's also a good strategy. For, if Russia chooses to do business with Europe, then it does so under greater military threat and pressure and can be more easily controlled; the tension, in turn, would also help control European vassal provinces to the US empire. If it chooses to defend its strategic military interest then the US can completely cut Russia from Europe, weakening both rival centres of power (one economic and one military, and Europe is the greater threat to US power, so if the war turns out to actually benefit Russian military power, that's no biggy if European economic power is sucker punched in the process); Europe as essentially a stable, prosperous "peace vortex" in the land-mass centre of the world, is a far greater threat to US power than Russia and China combined; and what US strategists would fear most would be the EU breaking free of its vassla status and laying the foundation for global trade between Africa, Europe, Russia and East-Asia (stable financial, political and financial systems facilitate stable trade relationships; and Europe, until recently, had the opportunity to essentially leverage its political stability to become the arbiters of a new world trade relations; yes, that would include Russia, but a Russia trading peacefully with the rest of the world, and yes would include China but a China trading peacefully with the rest of the world, and everyone looking to European institutions to keep things relatively cordial and smooth, precisely because Europe has little strategic interest in renewed militarism).
So, a peaceful and prosperous Western Europe was good strategy against the Soviet Union, but a peaceful and prosperous whole Europe!!!! Including the former Soviet states!! Including Russia!!!! Forget about it!!!
We can easily make sense of the strategic decisions of both the US and Russia.
What does not make sense is the decision of Ukraine to be used as a proxy against Russia, completely ruining its economy and demographics and losing significant territory (including valuable industrial and resource territory), and likewise what doesn't make sense is Europes active participation of provoking the war which was easily avoided (plenty of European states in NATO that could have put the breaks on NATO enlargement to Ukraine and even expressed extreme hesitation and wariness, but the US said "hmmm, how about suck it" and that's what they did for decades) in addition to the EU being instrumental in provoking the 2014 coup, it was the EU ultimatum that was the casus belli for the CIA backed protests and then CIA backed coup. It was not in the EU's interest to purposefully create this sort of tension. The Ukrainians just voted in a compromiser with Russia and it would have been both the morally right and politically astute thing to do of letting this democratic mandate of compromise with Russia play out (that would have been respecting Ukrainian sovereignty). Now, the EU did realize its mistake and then rushed to work out a compromise deal between Russia, Ukraine and itself, which succeeded, but by the it was too late and the chaos could be transformed by CIA backed paramilitary forces into a violent coup.
So Russia takes Crimea in response to this uncertainty, an obviously wise strategic move.
Then there's this civil war in the Donbas that two rounds of diplomacy try to resolve, but we're informed later that the effort on the part of Ukraine and the EU states was entirely duplicitous and bad faith.
Then Ukraine elects another compromiser promising to make peace with Russia (as normal Ukrainians don't want a war with Russia that would be immensely destructive to Ukraine, in a best case scenario), and Zelensky is elected with a mandate to fight corruption and make peace with Russia. Zelensky literally said he would go on his knees to Moscow and beg for peace, that's how much of a self-effacing compromiser he was.
Now, I think Zelensky's words were genuine. The problem with Zelensky is he's an idiot without any political experience and easily controlled and manipulated.
Well what is your drift then?
If we agree that NATO isn't "making a stand" in Ukraine and no one, outside Ukraine, is actually "standing up for freedom or whatever" then what is NATO doing in Ukraine according to your alleged drift?
And what's your analytical methodology here, that if you say something obviously false (such as people outside Ukraine doing nothing remotely similar to "standing up" are in fact standing up to Putin) ... that I should just zoom out and see that you have some opposite meaning to your false statement?
I'm supposed to just blur my vision and get a general sense of what you're talking about by taking in all the letters as once and just "feeling you"?
How exactly am I supposed to understand your position if I don't zoom in on different aspects of what you say and challenge you on those statements or ask questions.
If your position is people should stand up to Putin, but no one's actually doing that outside Ukraine, certainly not yourself, that's very different to what you wrote initially.
That is hilarious from someone urging me to 'live in the real world'. You clearly have no idea how the real world works... Ukraine joining of NATO required consent of all it members, some of which (mostly Germany and France) blocked it in 2008 (not for fear of Russian reprisal, but due to quite lucractive business going on, not to mention subversive influence of Russian on European politics which is only now being disclosed). Moreover, it has required consent of various Ukraine political factions which played this card against each other for years. Joining of Poland took six years, with all the sides much more willing. Thus your scenario of 'going in in the night' is completely divorced from reality and just shows how naive is your view of politics.
Quoting boethius
No, that is not the reason there is a war. The reason there is war is because most Ukrainians, as the constant majority of votes shows, want to get out of the Russian sphere of influence, just like Poland and the Baltics did. And for Putin that is unacceptable, as most of his powerbase relies on the nationalistic circles which helped him maintain and consolidate his power.
The rest of your fantasies are not really worth addressing, as you clearly have no idea what you are talking about. Hint: Germany and France did block Ukraine's accession, hint 2: 'it was the EU ultimatum that was the casus belli' is so wrong it is beyond hilarious.
In other words ... what you're saying is ... in the real world Ukraine is not important enough to NATO for NATO to let Ukraine in ...
Congratulations on expounding on the reasons why Ukraine is not important strategically to NATO.
But lets say Ukraine was strategically important to the US and the UK and not Germany and France, well first note that's another way of saying Ukraine is not important enough to NATO for NATO to let it in, but even then the US and UK are big boys, they could just go and make a bilateral defence agreement, such as the UK made with Finland to cover the ascension process.
US acts unilaterally all the time, so if Ukraine was somehow strategically important to the US, the US would just march right in, make some bases: as it does everywhere else it says it has "strategic national interest" in.
Quoting Jabberwock
Is literally just straight up saying "Important members of NATO weren't afraid of Russia in the slightest, didn't even view Russia as a military rival, and just wanted to do business!!"
Not even fearing reprisal is as far as possible as you can get from some strategic military asset required for credible defence.
Quoting Jabberwock
This is probably true, sure, but most Ukrainians also wanted to avoid a war with Russia in such a process, and so why they kept on voting for compromisers, including Zelensky advertised himself as a compromiser.
Likewise, certainly a majority of Ukrainians would like to be in NATO as a way to avoid being invaded by Russia.
The problem is that NATO doesn't let Ukraine in.
If you put it to Ukrainians anytime in the decades before the war that "would you like to play footsie with NATO for decades, be in a 'will we, won't we relationship' and all cute and shit, but never actually get into NATO and likely be invaded by Russia and the country ruined, millions of Ukrainians permanently leaving, the already terrible demographics totally shot ... oh, and hundreds of thousands of heroes dead or maimed in a war they can't win?", you really saying most Ukrainians would be like "oh! sign me up! Glory to those soon to be dead heroes!".
I don't think so. Rather, people in "less sophisticated" places, such as Ukraine, often put stock in word keeping, as that's the only way society has any sort of structure at all, and they are easily manipulated by more sophisticated civilizations that can see a bigger picture where their word meaning absolutely nothing is of greater benefit to themselves, over the long term; talk to the native Americans if this level of sophistications escapes your imagination.
When NATO started playing footsie with Ukraine, Ukrainians believed it: afraid, hesitant, maybe even disillusioned at times, but believed it enough to prance down the footsie path far enough of provoking a war ... and just guess if by this point on the yellow brick road, of a full scale invasion, Ukraine got their NATO medallion or not from the NATO magician?
Again, as I've said many times, I have zero problem with Ukrainian aspirations.
The problem is the West does not grant those aspirations, but rather cynically uses Ukraine, to its near total destruction, for its own purposes ... all while telling Ukrainians, and Western citizens for that matter, that "yeah, yeah, sure, sure, freedom".
This oscillation is honestly stupendous.
One moment of course Ukraine has a right to join NATO and has a right to form closer military partnerships with NATO and NATO countries, bring in NATO arms and training and so on, all this is just exercising sovereignty and common sense moves of trying to get out of the yoke of Russian sphere of influence.
And the next moment, recognizing NATO is obviously a legitimate threat to Russia, apparently Ukraine would never join NATO so NATO isn't really a threat after all and NATO claiming Ukraine would join one day, and all the military collaboration, and Ukraine putting joining NATO in their constitution was just fliff fluff that meant nothing ... well if it means nothing, the statements and collaborations and arming on the ground, why do it? Why put joining NATO in your constitution if "everybody knows" Ukraine would never join NATO and it's nothing to worry about for Russia.
It's literally schizophrenic levels of delusional contradiction.
What are the facts, NATO declared Ukraine would join, and then Ukraine made a clumsy play to join NATO thinking that would solve its security problem and NATO certainly would need to keep its word ... oh, some day.
The play didn't work and the the thing joining NATO was supposed to avoid, being invaded by Russia, was provoked by the play: exactly the risk such a play entails.
NATO could have saved the day anytime since decades and just marched in and "stand up to Putin" on Putin's own border, but NATO didn't. Why? Because no one in NATO wants to actually pay any cost to "have Ukraine". Why? Because Ukraine isn't important strategically or economically or in any other way for the West to pay an actual cost. Hundreds of billions of dollars (much of it a direct subsidy to the war industry) you may say is a cost? Ha!! 4% of a single 7 trillion bank bailout! Those are rookie numbers.
You gotta get those numbers way up for it to be some real cost to the West ... and who just announced no more dollaridoos, not a single one left, for Ukraine?
Could be they're just working on it ... or could be further support may actually feel like a real cost, and who in the West wants to pay a real cost in Ukraine?
Congratulations, you have finally understood that the war has very little to do with NATO. Now convince the other Russian apologetics.
Quoting boethius
Congratulations, now you understand that the war has little to do with the US as well. We are definitely making progress!
Quoting boethius
Congratulations, now you understand that just having nukes and bases and forces is not that much of a threat in itself, if the probability of its use is so minimal.
Quoting boethius
They voted for Yanukovych who promised them further economic integration with the EU and then reneged on that promise (that is why you have the reasons for the Euromaidan completely backwards). Zelensky also supported stronger integration with the EU and in his campaign was focused mostly on the internal matters (it is more that his rival Poroshenko painted him as a Russian conciliator). Sure, at a time he was supporting the militarily neutral stance, but it became clear that Russia is not interested.
So you are saying that Ukrainians after their own independence war in 1917-1920, Katyn, Finland, Afghanistan, the Lithuania intervention, two Chechen wars, the Georgia war, and dozens of others were blissfully unaware what Russian imperialism means? It seems your naivety shows again.
The facts are that in 2008 Germany and France blocked MAP, which put Ukraine on hold indefinitely. Then Ukraine declared independence from military alliances and put in its constitution. Then Russia has invaded it anyway. These are the facts, which you again seem unaware of.
First a "holding pattern" is not a stop.
Ukraine declared both simultaneously that it was neutral and also intent on joining NATO, and that also their definition of neutrality didn't exclude collaboration with NATO.
In your delusional world where real world consequences don't matter, this sort of bullshit is enough to be totally convincing that NATO and the US was therefore doing absolutely nothing in Ukraine, whatever it was doing doesn't matter, and also Frand and Germany put a definitive stop to Ukraine joining NATO.
What the facts and reality actually is that exactly what I describe, a game of footsie a "will they won't they" relationship where everything is declared simultaneously. In the "let's rewrite history league" all the nonsense, such as claiming military collaboration with a military alliance is "neutral", was abundantly clearly not encroachment.
In the real world, what playing footsie indicates to any outside observer is "they might, they really might".
Ukraine's play was "keep thing ambiguous and hopefully jump into NATO one day". The play didn't work. You can argue Ukraine had a right to make such a play. Sure whatever. You can also argue that the play was the best move but unfortunately hasn't worked out so good; sometimes to the best move is foiled by bad luck. I have no problem recognizing people have a right to do stupid things, so the first point is not a problem for me, but definitely I would argue the second point is just plain wrong: if you are situated right beside a much larger power, you need to deal with that and not look to a large power thousands of kilometres away to save the day and protect you: you can play footsie with distant powers all you want, they'll certainly find that flattering and entertaining, but they're never going to be your partner unless there's some massive benefit that is worth the risk; that's just how reality works.
No, it did not. The discussion gets really tiresome when you get all the facts wrong.
How bad was it for Ukraine to hand over the nuclear deterrent to Russia? And believe that Russia would keep up it's promises made several times?
John Mearsheimer got that thing right in the 1990's. But nobody listened: the threat was "loose nukes". In fact, because of similar fears, man portable SAMs were bought from Ukraine and destroyed.
Which now would have been extremely important...
The Suwa?ki Gap has come up a few times, e.g. 2024Jan14, 2024Jan17.
By the way, NATO has been (is) tiptoeing around Russia. There aren't many that wants to go to war, it's just that it's already happening with ongoing destruction and killing.
The issue of the nukes is far more complicated than you say here.
Let us consider first just the military aspects.
Ukraine didn't have the arming codes and ability to maintain the nukes.
They would need to develop a nuclear program, where certainly having a bunch of nukes already would be a head start, but this would take a lot of resources.
So, let's assume Ukrainians do that, well to be an effective deterrent then Ukraine would need to likewise develop a nuclear triad of silo, air and sea delivery capability.
And this is where Ukraine clearly just doesn't have the resources to pull that off.
In this alternative history scenario, the more the Ukrainians would try to develop an effective triad, let's say even just 2 of the 3, the more nuclear weapons would be pointed at essentially all of Ukraine on a hair trigger.
Ok, imagine Ukrainians succeed at developing enough of the triad to be just barely effective ... what if it's compromised by Russian intelligence?
It's not as easy as just "we have some nukes lying round", you need a multiplicity of delivery systems that are not likely to be compromised all at once, otherwise you are inviting a first strike to take out your capability.
There is almost no end point we could imagine where Ukraine would develop a robust triad, or part of the triad, to be a deterrent.
To make things worse, developing these systems would take time: would Russia have allowed Ukraine to fiddle around with the triad until they got things working well enough to deter Russia?
So, it's not as "slam dunk" a case as Ukraine should have kept the weapons; had they refused the likely outcome would have been immediate war with Ukraine to retrieve the nuclear weapons before Ukraine could figure out how to hack or rebuild the nukes and setup effective delivery systems. My understanding is also that the nukes Ukraine had were guarded by Russian military personnel, so options were limited.
Quoting Ukraine and weapons of mass destruction, Wikipedia
Then there's proliferation, the US wasn't thinking: hmmm, maybe in 3 decades we want to prop up Ukraine as a proxy force to damage Russia ... while at the same time claiming it's all about Ukrainian sovereignty so what would be compatible with our proposed categorical imperative in 3 decades (Ukrainian freedom is all that matters) we should push for Ukraine to keep it's nuclear weapons and let them, if not help them, develop as much of the nuclear triad as they can ... yeah, that's what we need to do to be men of our word.
US didn't want Ukraine to have nukes either and an additional proliferation concern so trying to keep the nukes would have resulted, at best, in international pariah status even if we imagine there wasn't the above problems.
Ukraine's options were: dash for nuclear weapons and likely be invaded and nuked tomorrow ... to avoid getting nuked, or give up the nuclear weapons in exchange for some things. Ukraine was not in a good strategic position vis-a-vis the nukes.
Furthermore, as the wikipedia article notes, the Russians disabled the cruise missiles and were obviously concerned about the nukes, and certainly had a plan to recover the nuclear weapons by force if need be.
This was not a case of: you can keep the nukes if you want, we don't mind, but we're offering you this deal which maybe you'll take ... but if things go bad later you'll certainly regret it, totally you're choice though, we cool.
Russia wasn’t invaded by NATO nor an EU country either. And Ukraine is not part of the Russian Federation either. So what?
Quoting boethius
Ukraine also owns commodities precious to Europe (and the World). And the Russian military naval base is a gun pointing at Ukraine’s business with Europe (and the World). So what?
Quoting boethius
Could you provide sources from “plenty of armed factions” to support your claim that “plenty of armed factions” are “explicitly dedicated to the destruction of Russia” prior to 2014?
Quoting boethius
By definition even? Did your babushka tell you that?
Quoting boethius
That’s true for Russia as much as for Ukraine. However for Ukraine it is two times more true:
1 - By your babushka’s definition of legitimate threat plus Russia having weapons on the border with Ukraine
2 - Russia has historically bullied Ukraine, not the other way around
3 - Russia is a nuclear power and a military capacity that is overwhelming wrt Ukraine without Western support
Quoting boethius
It’s not as dumb as claiming that Ukraine is a threat to Russia just by moving weapons to Ukraine (Ukraine could build their weapon industry too, but better if they buy western of course). Compare the different threats posed by: strategic nuclear weapons vs tactic nuclear weapons , lethal vs non-lethal weapons, hot weapons vs cold weapons. Bringing to Ukraine lots of Swiss knives is definitely a threat to Russia by your babushka’s definition. But a laughable one.
Quoting boethius
Your babushka’s definition of legitimate threat (“Moving weapons closer to someone or something is by definition a threat”) doesn’t make predictable Russian aggression of Ukraine AT ALL.
Indeed, a counterexample is the Cuban crisis. The US didn’t need to invade, regime change or annex Cuba, once the Soviet Union and the US found an agreement over the deployment of nuclear weapons Cuban could keep its regime and its territorial integrity.
Russia itself offers another counterexample, here: [I]in April 1997, China and Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan signed the Agreement on Mutual Reduction of Military Forces in the Border Areas. It stipulates that the five countries shall reduce their military forces in the border areas to the minimum level compatible with their friendly and good-neighborly relations, a level that shall not go beyond their defense needs[/I]
http://lt.china-office.gov.cn/eng/zt/zfbps/200405/t20040530_2910828.htm
So it’s not evident AT ALL that if Ukraine has in border areas a level of weapons that does “not go beyond their defense needs”, this would be an unbearable existential threat to Russia.
Quoting boethius
The alleged provocation is claimed to become unbearable in 2008 and the NATO enlargement even before 2008 and before Putin for that matter.
Yet the invasion of Crimea happened in 2014 and the “special military operation“ in 2022. So, at least, 6 years later after the unbearable existential threat for Russia has manifested. How so?
“Provocation” doesn’t seem to have enough explanatory power without assuming HEGEMONIC COMPETITION over spheres of influence and all other relevant events that ENABLED AND ENCOURAGED Russia aggression of Ukraine in 2014 and then in 2022. More than PROVOCATION to aggress Ukraine we should talk about OPPORTUNITY to aggress Ukraine.
Quoting boethius
The preservation of Ukraine sovereignty has been already achieved so far. Russia failed its regime coup in Kiev. The West may not be interested in or capable of securing the Ukrainian territorial integrity by military means.
Quoting boethius
First, I must ask: who are “the cheerleaders for Ukraine fighting” “repudiating any compromise whatsoever” in this thread? I want names and quotes.
Second, your caricature is conflating propaganda with politics AS USUAL. It’s a caricature, because as far as I’m concerned, those people who believed/believe it possible for Ukraine to regain its territories back, don’t need to have a specific military plan or timeline in mind, and their expectations were/are conditional on the Western military aid which has significantly declined over time so far. But the idea that the Western military support would be actually enough to support the Ukrainian offensive, could be more a honest hope than a honest belief. It’s conflating propaganda with politics because it’s completely unreasonable to expect that politicians would easily fall for propaganda (so e.g. politics may say something to the press and then say something else behind doors). And, by my understanding, political decision makers of sovereign countries are the primary responsible of their policies because THAT’S THE POLITICAL RULE OF THE GAME THEY ARE PLAYING: the political leadership of sovereign states IS the political agent and must primarily respond for their foreign policy decisions wrt the perceived national interest TO THEIR PEOPLE. Besides the political urge for propaganda is PHYSIOLOGICAL to the political competition and pushed by media outlets (also beyond political utility or intentionality) so one should neither overstate the reliability of propaganda (e.g. propaganda slogans like "whatever it takes”), nor overblame its unreliability. The same holds for ANY COUNTER-PROPAGANDA (INCLUDING YOURS!). All I can agree with is that Russia has scored more points in the propaganda contest so far and this is a major blowback against the West. Maybe deservedly so.
Third, as far as I’m concerned, I do not regret nor retreat anything I said, and I still support it. ALL OF IT, WORD BY WORD. And I would do so even if the entire Ukraine (my country, the world) and its population was erased by fighting with Russia. Also because, differently from you, I’m not doing propaganda. As far as I’m concerned, I’m just engaging in an irrelevant philosophy forum with irrelevant anonymous nobodies (who have ABSOLUTELY NO FUCKING CLUE on what to do to fix the world) as a form of selfish intellectual entertainment like a videogame, and nothing else. You can’t emotionally blackmail me, man of honour. So suck it up and move on.
Nonsense. What Ukraine lacked is simply the political will. If a dirt-poor North Korea can create a nuclear deterrent, obviously Ukraine could have done that far more easily with already existing material and know how.
OK, let's start with the basics:
1) Ukraine does have uranium mines (Smolinskaya).
2) Ukraine did and does have the know how.
3) Ukraine had the weapons, even if it basically would have had to create and maintain new weapon systems.
In hindsight, if / when preserving that nuclear deterrence would likely had deterred Russia, then naturally any kind of nuclear weapons program would surely had been worth it compared to how costly this war has been for Ukraine. But this idea can only be seen in hindsight. The only one then making the assumption that without nukes, Russia would invade Ukraine, was John Mearsheimer.
But as Ukraine, or it's leadership at least, clearly believed in the promises from Russia (and from the Western states) in the Budapest memorandum, creating an own nuclear deterrent was out of the question. Not only would it have deeply angered Russia, the US would have been extremely angry too!
Not an ideal policy for Ukraine in the 1990's. Especially when Russia wasn't considered to be a threat, but a country that could fight it's way out of a paper bag (after the first Chechen war).
What if Russia wins? (Simon Kuper · Financial Times · Dec 21, 2023)
• reprisals, pro-Ukraine = anti-Kremlin, Ukrainian defense = terrorism, removals, oppression (some such already documented, non-hypothetical)
• whatever part of Ukraine that remains Ukrainian would remain in the Kremlin's crosshairs
• a quarter of all wheat exports would be Kremlin-controlled
• others are taking notes (China, North Korea, Venezuela, Azerbaijan, Russians (far-right'ers in particular)), can find encouragement rather than discouragement — also see The West’s Inaction Over Ukraine Risks Dangerous Conclusions in Moscow (Dara Massicot · Carnegie · Dec 18, 2023)
• NATO, the EU and Ukraine-friends seen as discredited across the board, suiting the Kremlin well
War Against Ukraine: What if Russia Wins? (Nico Lange, Carlo Masala · GLOBSEC · Nov 28, 2023)
• extremists fascists populists gain all around, division (and polarization) outside Russia (some such non-hypothetical)
• Ukraine unstable for the longer haul, Ukrainian defense = terrorism, Ukrainian animosity increasing, purges, oppression (some such already observed, non-hypothetical)
• instability ? increased risk of wider warring
• the Kremlin gains from emboldened Russian nationalism and neo-imperialism
• "new security order in Europe" and elsewhere, others are taking notes
• also check the "Zeitenwende" speech (Olaf Scholz · Bundestag · Feb 27, 2022)
The High Price of Losing Ukraine (Frederick W Kagan, Kateryna Stepanenko, Mitchell Belcher, Noel Mikkelsen, Thomas Bergeron · ISW · Dec 14, 2023)
• the Kremlin will have gained confidence and likely more domestic support, plus extra land and resources, to further their war path
The High Price of Losing Ukraine: Part 2 — The Military Threat and Beyond (Nataliya Bugayova · ISW · Dec 22, 2023)
• others are taking notes, Ukraine's friends can be manipulated
• post-Putin Kremlin will likely be further authoritarian, nationalistic
• increasing steps to extinguish Ukrainian (and Belarusian) identity
• higher risks to Russia's neighbors
• environment where moral relativism further resurges and values further erode
• normalization of the Kremlin way (pulling wider regress)
What a Russian Victory Would Mean for Ukraine (Adrian Karatnycky · Foreign Policy · Dec 19, 2023)
• others are taking notes, revisionists emboldened to forcefully change borders / run campaigns
• European division; to appease the Kremlin or to rearm?
• reprisals, pro-Ukraine = anti-Kremlin, Ukrainian defense = terrorism, removals, oppression, systematic cultural cleansing, directed indoctrination
• higher domestic support, higher risks to others
Some of the writings are worst-case here and there. Some expectations are easily reasonable. Not much mentioned about the Russian regress explicitly, this would eventually encompass assimilated land (which, on the other hand, was mentioned).
As an aside, for an alternative comedic dramatization of the Stalin ? Khrushchev transition, check The Death of Stalin (2017).
https://kyivindependent.com/poll-ukrainians-trust-in-zelensky-declines-trust-in-zaluzhnyi-is-high/
https://kyivindependent.com/poll-zelensky-tops-list-as-most-trusted-ukrainian-political-figure/
Well, Ukraine is preparing it's own defensive lines, so the likely outcome is a war like the Iran - Iraq war: a kind of WW1 stalement, until one or the other gets enough materiel and resources for an operational assault.
The opinion experts on the subject, as cited by Wikipedia, as well as the common sense reasons behind those opinions is "nonsense".
No, it's not nonsense.
I did not argue that Ukraine could not develop a nuclear program, I argued that doing so would risk Russia invading / nuking Ukraine before it could complete the task.
Where you have countries developing nuclear programs, they cannot be practically invaded / nuked by the countries displeased by the development. Both Iran and North Korea are mountainous countries that are difficult to invade.
Furthermore, both Iran and North Korea are very far away from the United States. Although anti-ballistic missile systems don't mean much against a strategic strike by Russia that has a viable triad, such systems could likely deal with a strike by a rogue state.
Remember the Cuban Missile crisis, how the US reacted to nuclear missiles right on its doorstep?
Russia's concerns about nuclear missiles in Ukraine would be exactly the same and the logical choice when faced with that kind of threat that you can do something about is to lower the threat level before it becomes a problem.
Ukraine is not mountainous and is right next to Russia, so it's a totally different scenario.
You're also just skipping over the endless talk of invading North Korea (which could very likely happened); it's not like the US position was "well ... whatayagonnado". The North Korean gamble worked, but arguably just barely and the factors in its favour are a long list compared to Ukraine (China doesn't want North Korea occupied and North Korea only exists because of that Chinese policy).
Likewise the talk of invading Iran that is still ongoing today.
It would also be a difficult sell in the 1990's for Ukraine to ask Ukrainians to fight a war to defend the right to develop nuclear weapons to avoid the war that they would be currently fighting. The former Soviet countries wanted to simply Westernize and get essentially what Westerners had and live in peace with the West ... fighting each other was even farther from any ex-Soviet citizens mind.
In similar vein, no one wanted nuclear war back then, the global mood was full of hope (except maybe in Russia and Ukraine that was spiralling into a corrupt kleptocracy): the great hope was arms reduction and for humanity to pull ourselves back from the spectre of nuclear annihilation in which the peaceful dissolution of the Warsaw pact was seen as a major step in that direction and peaceful coexistence.
No one was thinking "you know what would be cool and a good thing, a lot of small states having nuclear weapons deterrence capabilities in the event larger states decide to invade them in a few decades".
Except for Mearsheimer!! Which I admit is both as prescient as it is ballsy to hold that position.
I disagree with him on this point, as bad as the war in Ukraine is: not only is nuclear war worse but increasing its probability I would argue is worse than an actual destructive conventional war.
The lack of political will in the situation at the time was to fail to fulfil the above aspirations (a failing we can attribute to peoples, factors and processes both within and without Ukraine and Russia) and create a prosperous social democracy: instead of keeping all of the corruption of the Soviet Union without any of the communist handouts while achieving an actual decrease in longevity and quality of life.
As to the subject of nonsense.
The logic of "let's very likely cause a war so as to do something to protect us from war" doesn't make any sense.
Such as "let's try to reverse engineer these nukes so as to very likely cause a war to prevent us from successfully doing so, so as to deter wars". This is the nonsense position.
Likewise, "let's try to join NATO (even though they won't have us) and thus very likely cause a war in which joining NATO would have the purpose to protect us from" likewise is nonsense.
Quoting ssu
Unlikely.
People with even a little bit of political experience know these sorts of deals aren't eternal.
They got money (that they laundered a bunch to themselves and their friends) and they avoided a war in the short term. The same decision without the corruption we would likely view as just the common sense and essentially default position of every small nation that has joined the non-proliferation architecture.
Moreover, to what extent any of the Ukrainian leaders and policy analysts were confident in a perpetual peace, they certainly did not have in mind "great, we can just go ahead and join NATO" and they all could have easily explained that existing at peace with Russia would be contingent on not doing a few things.
Even if extremely corrupt, corrupt people are generally astute realists that have little trouble understanding and navigating actual reality; the trouble with corrupt kleptocrats is they put their understanding of people, systems and the world to evil purposes.
Yeltsin's army had huge difficulties with Chechnya, they actually lost the first Chechen war. But any Russian invasion wouldn't have been Ukraine's problem. The West, especially the US, wouldn't have at all liked the idea. Hence Ukraine would have become a pariah state thanks to it's strange obsession of having a nuclear deterrent.
And anyway, if then this would have prevented Russia attacking Ukraine, nobody would notice it! It would already be such an incredible idea that after the quite peaceful dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russia would attack and annex parts of Ukraine.
Quoting boethius
Go and tell that to the Swedes, who basically dismantled their armed forces, because it wasn't anymore the Cold War era. And go tell that to the Germans. Actually many West European countries. And all those American diplomats and administration that wanted to restart the relations after Russian previous aggressions.
Only the former Warsaw pact countries and especially the former Soviet states had realistic ideas about Russia being Russia and it's weakness not being eternal. The West did write off Russia in the 1990's. They were very surprised to find suddenly Russia backing Serbia and sending it's troops to Kosovo.
Quoting boethius
Ukraine did want to be neutral. But as all of the East European countries starting from the Baltics, sooner or later they understood what Russia's plans would be... when it got it's act together. The Baltic states being tiny countries understood this from day one. Hence their objective to join NATO.
[sup]— The Kremlin · Jan 18, 2023[/sup]
[quote=Vladimir Putin]
And here, on the Leningrad Front, representatives of many European countries participated in the siege of Leningrad and committed crimes.
Due to a certain tolerance and in order not to spoil relations, not to spoil any background of our relations with many countries, we have never spoken about this before. But this was not only in Leningrad, on the Leningrad front and during the blockade, it was everywhere. Just look at the Blue Division. Here, in Leningrad, on the Leningrad Front during the blockade, there were participants from all countries - from many, in any case.
But when you talk about the need to preserve historical memory, I have already said that I fully and completely support this. We will do this at the state level, we will do it persistently, including so that, as I have already said, nothing like this happens again.
Meanwhile, someone is deliberately oblivious to all these facts. As you may have heard, perhaps quite recently at the United Nations we proposed for voting a document condemning the glorification of Nazism. After all, 50 countries voted against it. Who could be against recognizing the glorification of Nazism as criminal? Well, what is it? This is not just some kind of historical or political amnesia. This is all being transferred here again, in our time. For what? In order to maintain such a common front based on the current political situation, put pressure on our country. So in this sense, unfortunately, little changes. This means that we must consistently defend historical truth and do what you suggest. This is what we will do.
[/quote]
Putin suddenly claims that representatives of "many European countries" took part in the Siege of Leningrad
[sup]— Alona Mazurenko · Ukrainska Pravda · Jan 18, 2023[/sup]
(Also, the Road of Life, Finland Station. Oh, and Sisu. :wink:)
Poland Is ‘Next’ After Russia Wins Ukraine War, Putin Ally Says (Aleksey Zhuravlyov)
[sup]— Carley Welch · The Messenger · Jan 14, 2024[/sup]
Russia to allocate funds for search of Soviet, Imperial Russian property abroad
[sup]— TASS · Jan 18, 2024[/sup]
Putin Orders Hunt for Property of Russian Empire, Soviet Union
[sup]— Bloomberg · Jan 19, 2024[/sup]
A treasure hunt for imperial gold? :sparkle: Poland + Finland + Estonia + Latvia + Lithuania? :) Retaliation for frozen assets (and possible seizures)? :fire:
Anyway, the Baltics, Moldova, Poland, have been (and are) looking toward Moscow with some...discomfort, and looking westward with some consolation. Ukraine likewise.
Some of Galeotti's good remarks:
- There are differences between how Putin views Ukraine compared to the Baltics and then the Baltics compared for example to Finland and Sweden.
- Russia defending the rights of Russian minorities is more rhetoric than an political objective. The West ought to use the Russian minorities, Russians that are in EU member states don't have the desire to be part of Putin's Russia.
- Europe isn't so so united as it says on the matter of Ukraine. For many the security threat comes from the south.
- We don't have the debate of "Why Ukraine matters". We should.
- Ukraine fatigue is real even if officially denied, the talk of countries having limited amount of years to get their defences up is part of this.
- Even if Trump likes autocrats, he likely isn't going to do something dramatic: notice what the Trump administration actually did when in power.
- Still, if US backs away from assisting Ukraine, Europe won't fill the gap. Countries will use that as the excuse.
Yet Finland actually didn't push to the actual fortification line surrounding Leningrad from the north. Last thing Finland wanted to do is to bang it's head against against the Karelian fortified region and lose troops for basically nothing. And Finnish troops didn't try to contact the German forces south of Leningrad when the took Shlisselburg. Hence Leningrad wasn't totally besieged and you had at winter 'Road of Life'.
(PS. The film Sisu is politically correct: the baddies are evil Nazis from the Lapland War, who apparently use a post-WW2 era Soviet main battle tank.)
If the Russians were really interested in conquest, why would they negotiate a peace in the opening stages of their invasion where they gave back occupied territory and WE were the ones to block the deal?
There's no way you can square that circle, and articles like these are warmongering in its purest form.
What are you referring to?
The contents of that peace talk were already known to us via the accounts of, for example, Jeffrey Sachs and Naftali Bennett.
Now we have first-hand accounts from the people directly involved on the Ukrainian side, like former Ukrainian ambassador and diplomat Oleksandr Chalyi, which I discussed here.
It is also confirmed by Zelensky's former spokesperson Oleksiy Arestovych, who gave an interview recently where he called for a more realistic and less emotional approach to the conflict.
Quoting Dmitry Medvedev · Jan 17, 2024
'A kind of trolling'. Why Zelenskyy needs decree on Ukrainian lands in Russia: Historian's view
[sup]— Danylo Kramarenko, Nataliia Direyeva · RBC · Jan 22, 2024[/sup]
:D There are certain...analogies to that decree signed by Zelenskyy; maybe that was part of Kyiv's thinking.
Ukraine-Russia war: Russian regions 'historically Ukrainian', Zelensky claims
[sup]— Tim Sigsworth · The Telegraph · Jan 22, 2024[/sup]
Quoting Roman Starovoyt
Quoting Dmitry Medvedev
Zelenskyy signs decree on Russian territories historically inhabited by Ukrainians
[sup]— Tetiana Lozovenko · Ukrainska Pravda · Jan 22, 2024[/sup]
Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, January 22, 2024
[sup]— Riley Bailey, Christina Harward, Nicole Wolkov, Grace Mappes, Karolina Hird, George Barros, Frederick W Kagan · ISW · Jan 22, 2024[/sup]
Quoting Sergey Lavrov
"It's the Kremlin's way or the highway." Some interviews/writings/speeches out of the Kremlin circle carry their authoritarian undercurrent. They seem to think (implicitly) that it's up to them to decide how "their subjects" (down to individuals) should live (perhaps up to government in general, according to them). With their self-entitlement, they extend that to the Ukrainians. If NATO-phobia led to the invasion, then what difference would grabbing Crimea + Donbas make?
The best argument in favor of slavery and imperialism. Those who do not accept this obvious truth are submissive idiots or coward exploiters. As Pro-Russians in this thread keep repeating. And the discours drammatically changes when the Palestinians are the aggressed and Israel is the aggressor. Palestianian resistence will win in the end, some day, no matter how much territory and lives they are losing for decades, no matter that they are led by an Islamist party (as totalitarian and brutal as nazis can be), no matter if they are idiots exploited by Iran and other powers hostile to the West.
And there have been attempts at peace after that, now Zelensky is trying to have them in Switzerland. Back then it was all about the denazification of Ukraine, which it isn't anymore (so clearly).
I think there's been ample moments when peace talks could have been taken, if both sides would be willing.
Whatever fig leaf you are clinging on, the fact is that negotiated settlements come usually into being a possibility when both sides see that they cannot win the war militarily. As the other option is unconditional peace, which means military victory for one.
The only ones clinging onto fig leaves are those who, understandably, have a hard time coming to terms with the fact that the West (read: the US and UK) rejected peace and chose prolonged war over the backs of the Ukrainians.
The complaint from Tzeench is completely idiotic since this proposal from Ukraine and Russia was STILL TO BE DISCUSSED WITH PUTIN, and needed a third party contribution (the security guarantors). Ukraine could find whatever agreement with Russia without any security guarantees from third parties.
It sounds like there was this wonderful peace just around the corner that everybody was taking, but then came the baddie Uncle Sam.
And if it would have been only about NATO membership (which also some portray this war to be about), just having those troops on the border would have and did de facto put away NATO membership. NATO would have never said it out loud because the treaty organization is open for everybody that qualifies, but Ukraine never would have joined. It wouldn't be just Hungary, it would be Germany opposing the idea. Hence the war was never only about NATO membership, which conveniently someone like Jeffrey Sachs forgets.
And this is now and there are proposals to have peace talks by Zelensky, but that hardly seems to matter for some...
I've linked you the Ukrainian former officials, one of whom was part of the Ukrainian delegation involved with the negotiations, telling us that the agreement as per the Istanbul communiqué was genuine, and to quote Chalyi, was a "very real compromise." Furthermore, the Ukrainians themselves confirm that NATO and Ukrainian neutrality was Russia's main concern.
You'll have to come to terms with the fact that this happened - Russia and Ukraine were ready for peace, but the US and the UK pushed for war.
And you can view the terms of the communiqué yourself, and see that it doesn't match up with your view.
Arestovych Interview (Zelensky's former spokesperson)
________________________
Quoting ssu
Chalyi said this about it:
Quoting Oleksandr Chalyi
Besides what the Ukrainian former officials (along with Bennett) mentioned is also how Zenesky's attitude toward negotiatons with Russia changed after Bucha .
from min 36
And yet...
It fired cruise missiles into Russia’s Black Sea fleet headquarters in Crimea’s Sevastopol in September, causing extensive damage and prompting Russia to relocate vessels to other ports including Feodosia and Novorossiysk.
The raids have proved so effective that they’ve helped Ukraine to break the Kremlin’s efforts to block its grain exports through the Black Sea after Moscow in July abandoned a deal brokered by the United Nations and Turkey that had ensured safe passage for ships. Ukraine shipped 10 million tons of commodities, mostly grains, through the passage since August.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/putin-forced-relocate-ships-crimea-050013706.html
Quoting Tzeentch
:smile: Did you listen to for instance what doctor Greame P. Herd said? Thorough explanation of the imperial aspects of Russia and it's policies.
But the first link doesn't give this kind of "smoking gun" argument: Chalyi simply states that the talks didn't go further. (It's btw a long discussion)
Chalyi does make some good points. Chalyi: Putin's actions was not only a crime, but a mistake. Putin came a victim of his own propaganda and, according to Chalyi, then understood this was a mistake. Here I can agree, Putin might really noticed that his swift quick capture of key objectives didn't go as they had gone as when he captured Crimea. Many have said this and the actual fighting on the ground tells this that what Russia had in mind was a quick lightning strike. But as @neomac has consistently said, there was no agreement on what kind of peace Putin would have accepted. Listening to Chalyi, it's evident that they hadn't come close to an actual peace or cease-fire arrangement.
Yet notice what Chalyi says about the present: it's a full scale war, for NATO a cold war. Chalyi believes that it's something there has to be some reapprochement, even if other matters, between the West and Russia. What he also admits (correctly in my view) that now Putin is willing to continue.
There was already a lot evidence for the blocked negotiations in March/April, and this is simply another piece to add to that pile.
Chalyi doesn't mention who blocked the negotiations, or why. Probably because he will have to fear for his life is he says too much (notice that Arestovych is also afraid to talk about who did it). But we have plenty of evidence who it might have been from the various other sources.
If you're expecting definitive evidence, obviously that is never coming. That's simply not how these types of things work. Biden isn't going to give us a statement admitting to the United States' many crimes. States always ensure they have "plausible deniability". However, as the list of contrary evidence grows, the plausibility of said deniability continues to shrink.
For example, in an official capacity the US probably still maintains it didn't base its wars in Vietnam and Iraq on construed evidence, but everybody with a brain knows that they did.
Ultimately it's up to you whether you continue to give these states the benefit of the doubt. I choose to go where the evidence points.
I literally stated:
Quoting boethius
After explaining all the military and intelligence problems of trying to keep and reverse engineer the nukes while developing a long term nuclear program.
Even if Ukrainian leaders wanted to keep the nukes and didn't believe in non-proliferation as a moral imperative, they were faced with a long list of practical problems and risks of keeping the nukes as well as developing new ones, and then (turns out we both agree) the best case scenario would be pariah status as both the US and Russia would be agreed on the policy.
So, it is was not a matter of "political will".
"Security guarantees" have been discussed for dozens of pages.
The fact that no contract is ever actually "guaranteed" as some sort of ontological status is not a reason to not enter into contracts.
Agreements change probabilities of future outcomes. "Probably" if you sign a contract with an employer and show up for work and do the work you'll get paid as agreed, but there's no "guarantee" that will happen. The word "guarantee" is meaningful only in the sense of being another word for promise, but it is not meaningful in the sense of some necessity a promise will be fulfilled. A guarantee in this context is simply a promise and like any other promise they are not necessarily kept. The word is purely ornamental in agreements between states.
Where guarantee in a contract is not ornamental is in agreements between parties subordinate to state power (or some analogue). There is first the other meaning of guarantee as in a warranty, which has to do with additional promises of maintenance or replacement if something breaks. In terms of simply embellishing promises, at issue here, again guarantee does not mean promises are somehow necessarily kept if they are "guaranteed" but a judge would take such wording into account in determining liability. You are arguably less liable for breaking a simple promise compared to a "super duper promise" that includes the word guarantee.
This should be common sense.
That any given company may go bankrupt and have zero assets and be unable to make good on any promises whatever is not a reason to not enter into agreements with said company.
We enter into agreements because it changes probable outcomes.
The reason to enter into a peace agreement is not that someone that elevates promises to some ontological necessary status, but because probably the outcome of a peace agreement is preferable to further fighting.
The main reason for Ukraine to enter a peace agreement, especially before the war or then in the beginning are:
1. Ukraine cannot prevail militarily over Russia even with Western support (that the West is likely willing to provide; so not nuclear weapons, for example).
2. A long war maybe of some harm to Russia but will be absolutely devastating to Ukraine, and not serve the interest of Ukrainians.
3. The West's promises are not "guaranteed" either, if we're talking about some ontological necessary status to the promise, therefore the ability to sustain a long war, even if desired, is cannot be counted on.
4. Russia has pressures to maintain a peace if Ukraine commits to neutrality and repudiates seeking NATO membership and cooperation. One such pressure is the diplomatic cost of breaking a promise, but there would be bother international and domestic pressures that would impose costs on Russia to reinvade.
If one evaluates all 4 points as likely true, then the choice to negotiate a peace agreement is extremely well supported.
However, points 1 through 4, each in itself, would be sufficient reason to accept most kinds of peace deals. The likelihood of each point would inform what would be reasonable to accept.
As for Bucha:
The choice to continue the war is the choice of continuing a bloody, ugly and messy process where innocent civilians are going to be hurt.
Being upset that has happened already is not sufficient reason to continue the war, thus causing more of the same.
X implies Y, I don't like Y, therefore I will insist on X ... is not a valid argument form.
Nah, I think Chalyi is still an Ukrainian diplomat. Hence he likely suppports his own country. That moment past, we are in a new moment. That came quite clearly from the debate. Only those who want to portray everything being about the US (with nobody else having effect on these issues) will replay this. as they take any kind of own decision making capability away from the Ukrainians in their own country.
Quoting Tzeentch
Actually, that will come.
As we know about the Molotov-Ribbentrop agreement and issues like that, these issues surely will be come out. And the simple fact is that the negotiations didn't go further. The war continued. And now Putin is quite hopeful that he will win. This is just speculation as we didn't go that extra mile.
Quoting Tzeentch
The Iraqi case is a slam dunk nowdays, thanks actually Trump himself. And in Vietnam the US was already engaged prior to the Gulf of Tonkin incident. Besides, Great Powers simply act this way, after all, to Soviet (and Putinist history), Finland started the Winter War in 1939 with an artillery attack on Soviet Union.
We have various neutral sources stating that the negotiations were blocked by the West. So the evidence is out there. Whether you find it convicing is up to you.
To me it's cut and dry, and there is little doubt in my mind.
So I guess on this issue we agree then.
Quoting boethius
And there's the possibility that this war would have started earlier and without the West so eager to give aid to Ukraine.
History will tell us, but again, we simply don't know what Putin would have accepted. Yet that strategic strike on Kyiv failed and the few days war got quite longer.
[sup]— bt · Index · Jan 27, 2024[/sup]
Quoting László Toroczkai (paraphrased)
:D
Quoting boethius
To me that’s just a straw man argument: first, you didn’t provide evidence that relevant Ukrainian, Russian, American politicians take “ ‘guaranteed’ as some sort of ontological status” whereby promises are necessarily kept as a reason to enter or not enter into contracts. Second, the word “guaranteed” is not ornamental at all, since it labels a difference in the legal and functional design of the agreement: indeed, its legal meaning is to be contrasted to the “security assurances” that have been provided to Ukraine in the Budapest memorandum (as well as to other failed agreements like the Minsk agreements). So if Ukraine (and Russia too, for that matter) is looking for “security guarantees” that means Ukraine wants them to be something else than the “security assurances” provided in the Budapest memorandum (and Russia likely wants them to be something else than the Minsk agreements). And this legal and functional difference is what deserves to be discussed not the ontological status of “security guarantees” you are blabbering about. For that matter, even NATO article 5 or the contract of any employer are not “guaranteed” if that word is taken to express an ontological necessity.
Quoting boethius
Besides you even contradict yourself because after insisting that “guaranteed” is ornamental because it doesn’t mean that promises are somehow necessarily kept if they are "guaranteed" and this would hold for contracts between states and work contracts between individuals, later you deny that the term “guaranteed” is ornamental “between parties subordinate to state power” even though that still doesn’t mean that promises are somehow necessarily kept.
And if “guarantee” can mean different things other than ontological necessity then “guarantee” can also mean whatever is taken by Ukrainians, Russians, and the West to decisively differentiate requested “security guarantees” from the Budapest memorandum “security assurances” and Minsk agreements. So if the label “guarantee” points to a decisive difference for all involved parties then it is not ornamental at all.
Quoting boethius
Formal agreements signal and codify commitments between contractors with implied reputational and material costs/hazards (as well as benefits and/or opportunities) and which can shape contractors’ expectations. To that extent, they can change the perceived likelihood of an outcome. So a plausible reason why the Instabul communiqué ("a protocol of intentions") was problematic is that the design of such security guarantees between Ukraine, Russia, and the West may not be convenient for all three parties AT THE SAME TIME due to their implied reputational and material costs/hazards (as well as benefits and/or opportunities). That is one relevant point that the “alleged” peace deal between Ukraine and Russia which “ was all but finished” intentionally or naively overlooks because even if there was an agreement between Ukraine and Russia but such agreement requirs a third party agreement (e.g. the West as security guarantor), the agreement can’t be considered as practically finalised if the third party doesn’t agree. That should be common sense!
It’s like me and my landlord agreeing that my bank will pay for my rents if I don’t pay. But what if my bank neither is nor will be committed to perform what our agreements established? And, in this case, what would be the point of protesting that my bank blocked the agreement between me and my landlord which was all but finished?! It would be a disingenuous or idiotic protest, yes?
Quoting boethius
I would question all your four points: point 1, it depends on the military objectives; point 2, it’s up to Ukrainians to decide what is convenient to them not to me or you; point 3, straw man argument; point 4, involved parties may consider also other reasons and means Russia (which has already turned to a wartime economy) can military and politically threaten the West and Ukraine to pursue hegemonic goals.
But, as far as I’m concerned, what your analysis is most evidently failing to take into account is that if the security guarantees concern Ukraine, Russia, and the West (or the US, if you prefer) then one has to take into account the INTERESTS OF THE WEST AND THE US in such security guarantees. If the interest of the West/US is to WESTERNIZE Ukraine (i.e. to take and keep it OUT OF Russian sphere of influence for political, security and economic reasons) AND the interest of Ukrainians is to be WESTERNIZED, then the Ukrainians must take into account Western conditions for such westernisation with all implied costs/hazards (as well benefits and opportunities), also for years to come. And without overlooking the circumstances of a profound mistrust due to past failed agreements, a declared defiant attitude by Russia against the Western-led world order, and all the current/incumbent international instabilities (also arguably linked to the Ukrainian war).
Quoting boethius
That’s irrelevant wrt the point I was making. The argument I was making is that people Tzeench cites mention that Zelensky’s attitude toward negotiations changed after Bucha, so claiming that the peace deal was all but finished but the West blocked it, is twice manipulative:
First, because the “blocking” may have to do with a problem of the security guarantees (actually also the status of Crimea could have been a problem, as one can also guess from Arestovych speech), so it’s matter of Zelensky’s political calculus, not of Zelensky’s knee-jerk subservience to a Western diktat.
Second, because Bucha may have also changed the Ukrainian sentiment about the war in some relevant sense no matter if you deem Zelensky’s choice as whimsical.
Besides, I’d also question the idea that Zelensky’s choice was as whimsical as you wish to depict it: indeed, Bucha may have reinforced the perception of the genocidal nature of Russia’s aggression and to the extent the memory of Holodomor and the Ukrainian patriotic sentiment is in Ukrainian bones (as much as it could be in Ukrainian leaders) that’s a big issue for any Ukrainian leader. So this may have very well introduced additional political costs to Zelensky’s choice of pursuing over-conciliatory negotiations with Russia.
Of course, it is still up for debate if Zelensky’s choices were based on political miscalculations. For now, my point is simply that no compelling evidence/argument has been provided to support the claim the West has blocked an agreement which was all but finished, or the claim that Zelensky’s choice was whimsically discounting the Ukrainian national interest (at least as perceived by the Ukrainians back then), or the claim that the word “guarantee” in “security guarantees“ is anything but “ornamental”.
They obviously don't.
American and Russian politicians are quite aware states can break their promises.
Ukrainian politicians as well. The story that one reason the peace agreement offered by Russia was not acceptable because the "security guarantees" couldn't actually be "guaranteed", that Russian "can't be trusted anyways", is not something the Ukrainian politicians and diplomats actually believe.
It is a piece of propaganda to appease the masses, and it works well on people such as yourself.
Quoting neomac
You need to really work on your reading comprehension.
The word "guarantee" appearing in a contract subordinate to state power is still ornamental. It simply embellishes the promise as an ornament to said promise, and if you embellish a promise then a judge will take that into account in determining liability.
It is not substantive though because you already promised whatever it is; adding that you guarantee it is simply promising twice, leading to even more actions by the promised party that are reasonable to take assuming you promise (and therefore more damaging if you don't fulfill your "super duper promise").
The issues of substance in such a dispute are "what was promised?", "was the promised fulfilled or not", "if the promise wasn't fulfilled, what are the damages that caused?".
None of the substantive issues relate to a guarantee (because guarantees do not change the ontological status of anything of substance; whatever is actually guaranteed, say "the laws of physics" obviously there would never be a court case where you promise the laws of physics will hold and that doesn't happen".
Where the word "guarantee" becomes relevant is once the substantive issues are settled and the promise has indeed been made but has not been fulfilled and indeed it caused much strife and consternation and rescheduling (aka. damages), then the fact that ornaments were added to the substantive meaning of the promise to embellish said promise will come to bear on the extent of liability or punishment for said damages; as a judge can easily say that when you flex your promises by guaranteeing them, and then don't deliver, I pity the fool!
However, between states, precisely because everyone knows it was an ornament, there isn't really any difference between calling something "security guarantees" or then "security promises"; the diplomatic cost will be the same whatever you call it.
Quoting neomac
You can question all the points.
My explanation is to expound on the correct analytical framework in which to evaluate a proposed peace settlement. If "security guarantees" (as in promises) can never be "actually guaranteed" (as in an ontological status of necessity), then that begs the question of upon what basis would a peace agreement be reasonable to accept.
The 4 points I list are the main issues of consideration to evaluate sufficient reason to accept a peace deal.
Of course, regardless of the evaluations of likelihood of the 4 points, one can always propose a peace deal that is unacceptable. For example, "You must rape every baby as a condition for peace" is arguably, and I would both argue and agree, worth fighting to the death to avoid accepting.
Similarly, one can always propose values in which any given peace offer is unacceptable.
Rather, a better way to think of it is that evaluating the 4 points expands the area of acceptable peace terms.
If one believes all 4 points are very unlikely, then one should be willing to make equally little concessions for peace.
If one believes all 4 points are very likely, then, likewise, one should be willing to make equally graet many concessions for peace.
Obviously, to do it properly you'd need some matrixes representing all possible outcomes and their respective likelihoods and the changes of those likelihoods under all possible peace terms, and so forth until everything we could imagine ever happening is nicely represented in some way we that is almost, but not entirely, meaningless, and then calculate some eigenvalues and eigenvectors and then dabble in multi-variable integration over abstract higher dimensional spaces, and then before you know it bobs you're uncle: QED.
It would all be very mystifying and edify absolutely no-one, I'm sure you'd love it.
Quoting neomac
Literally no one is claiming that Ukraine was "about" to sign the peace deal and then Bucha happened and that changed Zelensky's mind. Even the Western media recounts that the peace deal was rejected on advice from the West, and in particular Boris Johnson. Furthermore, the Ukrainian lead negotiator literally went on national television and explained what the Russians wanted and the reason they rejected the deal, which was not Bucha, which we've already discuss.
The reason no one mentions Bucha much in any narrative is because there isn't must solid evidence ether Russians even did it. Plenty of factions in Ukraine did not want peace and had the means and opportunity to stage such an event. There are of course plenty of factions in Russia that don't want peace either and likewise would have motive and opportunity. The evidence available does not actually resolve the issue, so best to forget about it, especially as we've learned since that war is so messy and ugly and turns out civilians get hurt in wars all the time.
If the Ukrainian leadership wanted a peace deal (as they had some analytical framework analogous to what I propose above and the calculus was clearly in favour of peace) they would have worked out the deal.
Fact is they either considered the relevant points, in my framework or some comparable framework, and decided they really could "win" or then fight to a better negotiating position at acceptable costs.
However, any analysis by decision makers will also be weighted by what they have personally to gain, so the West's offer of providing hundreds of billions of dollars in the form of a slush fund may have also influenced analytical outcomes of influential people involved in the process. "Getting close" to a deal with the Russians is of course leverage to extract more mulla from the West.
That is another way, a more free and capitalist way, to approach things where profit is the main driver of incentives.
Romanian far-right leader lays claim on Ukrainian regions, Moldova
[sup]— Martin Fornusek · The Kyiv Independent · Jan 29, 2024[/sup]
Yasmina (Jan 28, 2024) of NAFO has unflattering words ...
[tweet]https://twitter.com/yasminalombaert/status/1751734148866208132[/tweet]
, maybe Yasmina's word, "clown", is right. Anyway, so easy it is to lay claim to land.
Ukraine - Law 10288 (Amendments) (direct)
[sup]— EU's Venice Commission · Jan 22, 2024[/sup]
Ukrainian Parliament Amends Laws on National Minorities’ Rights
[sup]— Interfax-Ukraine · Kyiv Post · Dec 9, 2023[/sup]
The Kremlin sometimes take another approach to extend their authoritarian control (call it a variation of "neo-imperialism" or "neo-colonialism" or whatever), by setting up supposedly independent puppet regions, then accusing others of doing that (e.g. Medvedev, Starovoyt). Destabilization can be an action towards that, instability an excuse, immigration/deportation/etc a solidification. One advantage is deniability or distancing, though it doesn't always work well (e.g. Girkin). Nothing new I guess.
Quoting boethius
Quoting Sep 26, 2023
(? for an intact Ukraine)
With the Kremlin's swift sham referendums they kind of burned some bridges of their own, somewhat at least (if they care). There was a post-Soviet time when things were looking up, many wanted to cut military, create relationships with Russia(ns), trade, open offices in Moscow, what-have-you, but the emergence of Putinism gradually ended that, and now we're looking at a 2nd cold war.
Quoting ssu
Yep.
[sup]— Burç Eruygur · Anadolu Ajans? · Jan 30, 2024[/sup]
A faint whiff of desperation or anger or something in Lapdog's distractions? Maybe things aren't going as well as others are led to believe? Anyway, who knows.
Russia lawmakers pass bill to confiscate assets of those who discredit army
[sup]— Al Jazeera · Jan 31, 2024[/sup]
Ouch. Say something un-Kremlin'y about the war ? your house gone + jail? I imagine people in occupied Ukraine are feelin' it.
Viktor Orbán's interview with the French daily Le Point (in Hungarian)
[sup]— Orbán Viktor (interviewer Emmanuel Berretta) · Jan 30, 2024[/sup]
Quoting Orbán
OK. But then things take a downturn...
Quoting Orbán
First, I do not trust your telepathic powers to read into other people’s mind, so when you claim “ that Russian ‘can't be trusted anyways’, is not something the Ukrainian politicians and diplomats actually believe”, can you provide evidence about Ukrainian politicians and diplomats actually claiming that Putin can be trusted anyways? Because I have evidence of Ukrainian politicians and diplomats like Zelensky, Kuleba and Arakhamia making claims supporting the idea that Russia alone can not be trusted in negotiations and, given previous failed agreements, that doesn't sound implausible at all.
Second, your reasoning looks grounded on a self-induced conceptual confusion. That Russians can not be trusted can simply mean that the risks of Russian defection wrt agreements and Russian deceitful dispositions wrt declared intentions have historically proven to be high and costly enough for the Ukrainians, so that security guarantees for Ukraine must hedge against these risks by design and by contrast to previous agreements and security assurances. In other words, “guarantee” can still be understood in terms of perceived probability, not of ontological necessity.
BTW “ontological necessity” is abstract philosophical jargon so of little use for propaganda to dupe masses, one might wish to replace it with “certainty” or “beyond any reasonable doubt” instead. But again, there is absolutely no need to understand “guarantee” as “certainty” or “beyond any reasonable doubt” either, also because the negotiations took place in a context of mistrust due to past agreement failures and rivalry, which later embittered even further.
Quoting boethius
Talking about propaganda doesn’t work against me for reasons I repeatedly explained: first, we seem to have a significantly different understanding of the purpose or relevance of propaganda. Second, I can even more easily retort the accusation against you as spinning pro-Russian propaganda to discredit the West. Indeed, you didn’t provide arguments that Russia state propaganda machine and the Russian troll army wouldn’t conceive and spread to dupe the masses. In other words, your getting all frenzy and verbose over deconstructing ONLY Western propaganda (even if we pretend it’s plausible) is at best just expression of your pro-Russian bias, at worst ALSO of intellectual misery due to your populist bias. And I very much suspect it’s the latter.
In any case, I’m less interested in what politicians may say to the masses and more interested in what political decision makers may say to one another, especially behind doors. And the notion of “security guarantees” for Russia was requested by Putin himself to the West not to appease masses but to appease himself since he takes NATO and Ukraine inside NATO to be a security threat to Russia (https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/russia-demands-security-guarantees-but-what-putin-really-wants-is-ukraine/), if we want to take Putin seriously and not as someone who says things just to dupe the masses over his actual predatory hegemonic ambitions, right? In any case talking about “security guarantees” is enough intelligible in a context of geopolitical competition, security dilemmas, and historical diplomatic failures WITHOUT ever needing to blabber about “guarantees” as suggesting that promises among states are necessarily or certainly kept to dupe the masses.
Quoting boethius
Some more blah blah blah that doesn’t address the points I’m making AT ALL. To my understanding the SUBSTANTIVE and NON-ORNAMENTAL part is, as I repeatedly said, that all three parties, Ukraine, Russia and the West intend “security guarantees” to be by design something different wrt past failed agreements in terms hedging against risks of Russian aggression or defection from guarantors. So our understanding of “guarantee” doesn’t need AT ALL to go through your rhetoric quibbling over the ontological status of promises to deconstruct and discredit Western propaganda in favour of pro-Russian propaganda. It’s the historical and geopolitical context of past negotiations between Ukraine, Russia and the West that can give enough intelligible meaning to the word “guarantees” as concerned decision makers understand them and talk about them between them, even behind doors. Such guarantees likely have to establish as clearly and concretely as possible (namely, to a certain degree of acceptability for relevant decision makers) things like if there are going to be guarantors’ boots on the grounds, guarantors military aid and/or support to the Ukrainian military industry or army, the entity of such support, under what operational and legal conditions, and what preventive measures, will be taken to contain possible future Russian aggressions etc., in CONTRAST to past failed agreements. These concerns are intelligible and strategically plausible under certain geopolitical and historical assumptions, no matter whatever else the Western propaganda to dupe the masses claims.
Quoting boethius
Dude, I’ll repeat once more, I’m an anonymous nobody, and never claimed to teach anything to anybody (differently from you) nor to edify anybody with my posts. I’m discussing these things to my personal intellectual entertainment without any concern for anybody else’s edification. I do not give a shit about any self-entitled anonymous nobody’s opinions about me. I don’t take it personally. So the only way you can score points with me is by trying harder to focus on what I’m questioning and provide compelling evidences and arguments in support of your claims against mine. That’s the only game I’m interested in playing here.
Concerning your 4 points “to evaluate sufficient reason to accept a peace deal”, even if we assume they are a plausible way of framing the issue from the Ukrainian perspective, still likelihood and costs must be weighed by Ukrainian decision-makers, not me. At best, I can try to speculate or comment other peoples’ speculations about what such decision makers’ assessing process may be (given the available evidences plus certain geopolitical and historical assumptions), and if I find it rationally compelling enough (yet under the assumption that I’m in NO better position to assess what would be reasonable for Ukrainian decision-makers to do). That’s all as far as I’m concerned.
Quoting boethius
You really need to work on your reading comprehension. I didn’t write anywhere nor believe that Bucha was THE reason why Zelensky refused to pursue negotiations. I simply questioned what Tzeench claimed: “the peace deal was all but finished when Boris Johnson flew in to announce Ukraine would not be signing any deals with the Russians” or “the negotiations were blocked by the West”. I find such claims manipulative (especially wrt what else all people he cites claim) and instrumental to spin pro-Russian propaganda with a pretence of being unbiased and impartial. So the problem is not Boris, but what the fuck “all but finished” and “the negotiations were blocked by the West” are supposed to mean, imply, presuppose, or suggest.
And the reasons why I find such claims questionable are the following: first, there is the problem of the security guarantees from the West (but I think also the status of Crimea could have been a reason for concern in the exchange with Boris, and Arestovych gives hints on the issue of Crimea too, among other things which Tzeench overlooks). One can’t reasonably give for finalised an agreement that concerns third parties without third parties’ consensus. Most certainly so if there are such competing interests among relevant parties that even past agreements repeatedly failed. Chalyi too talks extensively about the importance of Western security guarantees for the negotiation from the Ukrainian perspective and the problems to get them.
The second reason why I find Tzeench’s claims manipulative is that the people Tzeench cited (Bennet and Arestovych which were also involved in the negotiations) mention Bucha as having or arguably having a profound impact on Zelensky’s attitude toward the negotiation. Notice though that I do not take this to mean that Zelensky immediately perceived Bucha massacre as a sufficient reason to refuse negotiations (I’m not the one assuming that Zelensky’s choice was impulsive or whimsically indifferent to the long-term national interest of Ukraine!), still Bucha may have “reinforced the perception of the genocidal nature of Russia’s aggression” and “introduced additional political costs to Zelensky’s choice of pursuing over-conciliatory negotiations with Russia” which Zelensky couldn’t ignore either ([I]“In late March, Zelenskyy said Ukraine would consider accepting neutrality as part of a settlement with Russia, but it would need third-party guarantees and approval in a referendum. However, that idea fell by the wayside as Ukrainian government and public attitudes hardened following the discovery of Russian atrocities in liberated towns such as Bucha and Irpin”[/I] https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/FP-20231213-ukraine-nato-pifer.pdf), ESPECIALLY if there were no sufficient security guarantees from the right guarantors. So Zelensky who was talking about Russian genocidal war crimes even before the discovery of Bucha massacre (https://www.timesofisrael.com/proof-of-genocide-zelensky-rages-at-russia-for-bombing-ukraine-maternity-hospital/) may have felt even more pressed to address the Russian genocidal crimes after the discovery of Bucha massacres in negotiations with Russia contrary to the text of the Istanbul Communiqué. And indeed at the next round Zelensky revised the conditions of the Istanbul Communique in less conciliatory terms toward Russia:
[I]Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy proposed in November 2022 a 10-point peace plan, consisting of:
1. Safety of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant
2. Protecting food distribution
3. Restoration of Ukraine's energy infrastructure
4. Release of prisoners and return of Ukrainian children deported to Russia
5. Restoration of Ukrainian borders prior to the 2014 annexation of Crimea
6. Full withdrawal of Russian military forces from Ukraine
7. Prosecution of war crimes in the Russian invasion of Ukraine
8. Remediation of ecological damage caused by the Destruction of the Kakhovka Dam
9. Guarantees against future aggression
10. A multilateral peace conference[/I]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_negotiations_in_the_Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine
Besides, the popularity of Zelensky among Ukrainians didn’t fall after negotiations were suspended, so Zelensky’s negotiation approach was approved.
And there is nothing surprising if Bucha plaid a role in Zelensky’s reluctance to pursue negotiations according to the Instanbul Communiqué AT ALL, if one sees how Israelis (the military strong) and Palestinians (the military weaker) react to wide and wild massacres over their civilians. Their first reaction is not: “All right brothers and sisters, let’s take a deep breath and then immediately negotiate a conciliatory peace-deal that would make brother Boethious and brother Tzeench happy, because no amount of killed, raped, decapitated of our own brother civilians and brother children should prevent us from making brother Boethious and brother Tzeench unhappy”. But more like: “Let’s smack the shit out of these genocidal motherfuckers! BTW… who the fuck are these two trolls?!”. That should be common sense, right?
So my understanding is consistent with what people Tzeench cited (Bennett, Chalyi, Arestovych), INCLUDING what Tzeench purposefully misses to mention to manipulatively support the claim that the peace deal was all but finished (and, maybe, the idea that the West is exploitatively dictating to Zelensky what to do and Zelensky executes as a coward, gullible, corrupt, servile lapdog of Western interests?… Just a wild speculation, of course). My understanding is also consistent with later Zelensky’s attitude toward the negotiation with Russia and Zelensky’s popularity trend. So I’m fine with my understanding so far.
And notice that the first to publicly declare that negotiations ”had turned into a dead end” 3 days after Boris visit was Putin not Zelensky! So I find it plausible that by timely and publicly declaring the negotiation as “turned into a dead end”, Putin was pressing Zelensky to either publicly reconfirm his willingness to pursue negotiations strictly according to the Istanbul communiqué or publicly renege it (and Zelensky did neither). Putin’s move was a convenient propaganda move by Putin to present Zelensky either as “a coward, gullible, corrupt, servile lapdog of Western interests” or as a honourable man which resisted Western illegitimate interference (to mess with Ukraine-West strategic alliance). Besides Putin could exploit such propaganda move to dupe the masses (and overlook the problem of Western security guarantees and Bucha massacre) for free, because Putin can count on the fact that Western “useful idiots” will never take Putin accountable for his own propaganda moves, ONLY the West.
Concerning the pro-Russian narrative over the Istanbul communiqué that I keep hearing in this thread, and which I find manipulative for reasons I already explained, let me see if I can even understand its premises:
- If Putin was so organsmic about the Istanbul communiqué (it was certainly conciliatory on the Ukrainian part, wasn’t it?) and the peace deal was “all but finished” why didn’t they call each other and rush into finalising the agreement in person? Two anonymous nobodies like Tzeench and Boethious PERFECTLY KNOW BEYOND ANY REASONABLE DOUBT that Zelensky OBVIOUSLY is a Western gullible/corrupt puppet SINCE EVER, how could Putin possibly not know that? Was he duped by the Western propaganda too? Is Putin, an ex-KGB spy and sovereign of the Russian troll factories, more easy to be duped by Western propaganda than two random anonymous nobodies on the internet?
- On the other side, if Putin PERFECTLY KNEW THAT BEYOND ANY REASONABLE DOUBT, then why was he so orgasmic about the Istanbul communiqué? Why the optimism? After all the Western puppeteers could easily sabotage it since Zelensky is KNOWN TO BE THEIR gullible/corrupt puppet SINCE EVER, couldn’t they? Western puppeteers hate Russia and want to exploit Ukraine as cannon fodder to destroy Russia, besides the Great Satan is treacherous as proven so many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many times, right? The Great Satan is blood thirsty because of the Military-Industrial complex, neoliberal blob, and remember Vietnam-Yugoslavia-Iraq-Afghanistan-Syria-etc? So why the orgasmic optimism of an ex-KGB spy and sovereign of the Russian troll factories concerning a slave of a treacherous and blood-thirsty Great Satan exactly?!
- But then if there was no reason for Putin to be orgasmic and optimistic AT ALL, and even less to be slow at closing the agreement, why the hell did Putin wait for Zelensky’s puppeteers to sabotage the deal exactly? Why not just profit from this opportunity to close the deal as speedy Gonzales fast as possible ONLY WITH ZELENSKY? It would have been also a formidable propaganda weapon against the Western puppeteers from the Russian perspective BESIDE obtaining what he obtained from the Instanbul Communiqué! Because either Westerners accepted the deal as fait accompli, so Russia could proclaim “Russia and Ukraine DID the right thing”! Or Westerners would have vocally protested over a FINALIZED agreement among SOVEREIGN STATE leaders which would have reinforced anti-Western narrative. And even if Westerns, later on, tried YET ANOTHER coup against Zelensky or political kill him with all sorts of fabricated scandals and bad press, this could have still plaid in favour of Putin’s anti-Western narrative while giving himself time to prepare better for the next political/military move, if needed. So, why not just profit from this opportunity and close the deal ONLY WITH ZELENSKY as fast as possible?
- BTW if Zelensky is so corrupt & gullible when he deals with the West, does that mean that Zelensky may still be corrupt & gullible when he deals with Russia as well? Or Zelensky is corrupt & gullible only when he accepts Western conditions and then he immediately turns into a fucking genius and man of honour when he accepts Russian conditions?
Quoting boethius
That’s false. Beside what Bennett and Arestovych (implicated in the negotiations with Russia) say about Zelensky’s reaction to Bucha, and you and your side kick conveniently overlook, here some more “narratives” mentioning Bucha and its possible impact on the negotiations:
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2022/04/04/us-music-awards-welcome-ukrainian-president-a77202
https://english.nv.ua/nation/bucha-shuts-the-door-on-dialogue-with-russia-zelensky-says-50234254.html
https://nypost.com/2022/04/04/zelensky-visits-bucha-after-mass-slaughter-of-civilians/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/04/03/ukraine-russia-zelensky/
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/04/world/europe/russia-ukraine-peace-talks.html
https://www.axios.com/2022/04/16/zelensky-russia-ukraine-mariupol-putin
https://www.straitstimes.com/world/europe/zelensky-says-russian-genocide-in-ukraine-make-negotiations-harder
https://www.agenzianova.com/en/news/Ukraine-for-the-Wall-Street-Journal-the-bucha-images-caused-the-negotiations-mediated-by-Turkey-to-fail/
https://thehill.com/homenews/3258673-zelensky-visits-bucha-says-russian-atrocities-will-make-talks-very-difficult/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_negotiations_in_the_Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine
[i]According to a May report from Ukrainska Pravda, the Russian side was ready for a meeting between Zelenskyy and Putin, but it later came to a halt after the discovery of War crimes in the Russian invasion of Ukraine, in particular the Bucha massacre on the 1 April. In a surprise visit to Ukraine on 9 April, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said "Putin is a war criminal, he should be pressured, not negotiated with," and that the collective West was not willing to make a deal with Putin. Three days after Johnson left Kyiv, Putin stated publicly that talks with Ukraine "had turned into a dead end”. Roman Abramovich visited Kyiv in an attempt to resume negotiations. Zelenskyy proposed negotiating two separate documents, one being a bilateral agreement between Ukraine and Russia, and the other involving Ukraine and the West. Ukrainian lead negotiator (at this point) Davyd Arakhamia stated in an interview on 24 November 2023 that the neutral status of Ukraine was the key Russian demand during the negotiations and that the western countries were aware of the negotiations and advised Ukraine not to rely on security guarantees. Arakhamia also denied that Johnson stopped Kyiv from signing an agreement stipulating Ukraine's neutrality saying that the Ukrainian delegation did not have the authority to do it[/I]
Quoting boethius
And that’s not pro-Russian propaganda to dupe the masses at all, of course.
Here some sources for an instructive comparison:
- [I]“Evidence of staged events in Bucha is multiplying“[/I] (https://tass.com/politics/1436063)
- [I]“War in Ukraine: 'There is irrefutable evidence of war crimes,' concludes Amnesty International investigation”[/I] (https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2022/05/07/war-in-ukraine-there-is-irrefutable-evidence-of-war-crimes-concludes-amnesty-international-investigation_5982661_4.html)
Quoting boethius
That could be an interesting point, once we remove the biased framing. The Ukrainian decision makers can very much calculate their moves wrt Western (as much as Russian) expectations and dispositions while pursuing their political agenda, whatever their personal motives are. Like “getting close to a deal with the Russians” as a leverage to solicit more aid from the West and/or as a way to buy time against Russia (as Merkel’s case may suggest). And then Russians and their Western "useful idiots" can exploit such circumstances to spin anti-Ukrainian and anti-Western narrative to dupe the masses.
It's really unclear what your point is.
What I'm pointing out is that evaluating the likelihood for Russia not reinvading Ukraine later if a peace deal is reached would be based on a bunch of factors, one of which is the diplomatic cost of breaking a "guarantee".
You are entirely free to argue that Russia would reinvade later even if Ukraine is neutral. Of course, this is only 1 of the 4 points I mentioned that need evaluating.
If you want to actually participate in the discussion you need to present actual arguments. Just linking to stuff is not a form of argument; you're basically just spamming with your preferred sources while not making any arguments.
Your reading comprehension continues to degrade and I will only fix this first error.
What I stated was:
Quoting boethius
What I am stating is that Ukrainian politicians are aware, like the US and Russian politicians, that states can break their promises.
How do you go from my literally claiming "American and Russian politicians are quite aware states can break their promises." followed by "Ukrainian politicians as well." to concluding I am claiming that Russia can therefore be trusted?
What is propaganda is stating the reason to reject the peace deal is a lack of trust.
It sounds like a good reason: We don't like Putin (he's invaded the country after all", he's the enemy, therefore he can't be trusted, therefore it is justified to reject the peace deal.
What I am explaining is that the basic lack of trust between states is always at all times (the US literally got caught spying on Merkel), and relationships between states are not and never all trust based.
Relations are pressures and interest based. Notably, pressures and interests are not the same thing. Your interest can be one thing but I can pressure you to do another.
When states collaborate closely, are "friends", it is not because of simple word giving, but because there are pressures and interests that keep them aligned.
"Saying this peace deal is otherwise good but we can't accept it due to a lack of trust" is simply insufficient reason. No country trusts any other country, yet deals are made all the time.
To give a non-state example, prosecutors cut deals with criminals all the time. Do they trust the criminals? No. If trust was a necessary condition of deals there would by definition never be deals between prosecutors and criminals. What's the basis of the deal from the prosecutors perspective (i.e. why does the prosecutor bet the criminal will stick to the deal)? Pressure and interest.
Why the Zelensky regime requires this myth that "Putin can't be trusted" is because:
1. If they did a proper analysis and concluded continuing the war was the best thing to do for Ukraine, obviously that analysis was wrong. If they were betting they could raise a 1 million man army, get NATO weapons and training, and then just spank the Russians across the Azov sea, in a short amount of time limiting the destruction to Ukraine, they were obviously wrong.
2. If they didn't bother to sit down and do a proper analysis (for example actually war-game out with Boris Johnson what he was suggesting, how it would actually work in practice) but rather just saw Dollars! Dollars! Dollars!!! So many free dollars raining down from the US and EU treasuries they'd be literally barfing with dollars, then maybe they just didn't really give a shit about their intuition that they were unlikely to beat the Russians and they'd be sending a lot of Ukrainians to die so that themselves and their friends could pocket a pretty penny.
Obviously case 1 is more honourable, but they were obviously wrong and admitting that would undermine belief in their competence and fitness to lead. Case 2 is less honourable, but as has been repeated in the media a lot lately, Ukraine does struggle with corruption.
For, if you reject a reasonable peace deal (i.e. not something like "rape all the babies" as a concession), sufficient reason still requires being able to win the war.
This should all be quite obvious. For example, if you're robbing me and pointing a gun at me and offer me the deal "just give me your wallet and you can go" the reason for me to accept is not because I trust you, I honestly don't trust you as hard that maybe before you to believe, but because you're pointing a gun at me and I view the odds of your interest (you want the wallet and don't want to kill anyone) and pressure (the state will hunt you more vigorously if you murder me) outweighs my ability to prevail with fisticuffs in a gun fight.
Now, if I think you're going to shoot me anyways if I give you my wallet (or the keys to the vault or whatever it is that you want), then that obviously changes the calculus.
The difference in relations between states is that losing a fight does not imply the deaths of all your citizens. It could, such as Genghis Kahn intent to make an example of your defiance, but that's not the case here.
One must evaluate all the potential outcomes, and their respective likelihoods, of battle, as well as the cost of battle, to determine the wisest course.
Simply because the West treats Ukrainian lives as expendable without a second thought does not entail that their worth really is expendable without a second thought.
Sure, but I’m more interested in ALL other alleged errors, though.
Quoting boethius
OK if you wanna put it in these terms, let’s test your reading comprehension now: can you literally quote a source where Ukrainian politicians or diplomats claim that “peace agreement offered by Russia was not acceptable because ‘the security guarantees’ couldn't actually be ‘guaranteed’”?
Either you are playing dumb or you lost focus. I’ll remind you that I’m targeting your argument that “guarantee” in “security “guarantees” is just ornamental and meant to dupe the masses because "American and Russian politicians are quite aware states can break their promises”. So your argument hinges on the premise that Ukrainian politicians and diplomats believe that “the security guarantees” couldn't actually be “guaranteed”. I’m claiming that the claim your argument hinges on is a manipulated claim that doesn’t show the actual meaning of “security guarantees“ for Ukrainian politicians and diplomats and Russia TOO, for that matter. EVEN PUTIN didn’t have any trouble to use the expression “security guarantees” FROM THE WEST when addressing his concerns to Ukraine and the West. “Guarantees” as ontological necessity of keeping promises plays absolutely NO role in Putin and Zelensky understanding of what they are demanding from the West/US. They want security agreements such that BY DESIGN they can feel MORE hedged against risks of defection from guarantors THAN it was the case in past failed agreements (like the Budapest memorandum, Minsk I and II). The problem is not to dupe the masses, the problem is really to see how Ukraine and Russia can find security agreements FOR THEMSELVES WITH the West/US in a more reliable way than in the past. The problem is not that “the security guarantees” couldn't actually be “guaranteed”, but that for Ukraine that SECURITY GUARANTEES SHOULD NOT BE GUARANTEED BY RUSSIA ALONE. And for Russia, that SECURITY GUARANTEES FOR UKRAINE SHOULD NOT BE GUARANTEED BY THE WEST ALONE.
Quoting boethius
So Ukrainians are either dumb or corrupted. No need to talk about their security concerns (as pro-Russian propaganda does with Russian security concerns, right?). Nice manipulative framing.
Quoting boethius
Another manipulative example. Here is another less convenient example (but still kind to you): if I’m pointing a gun at you and offer you a deal "just let me and my friends gang-rape your ass and take a video to post on TikTok and then you can go”, what will you do honourable man? What will Russians do? What will Ukrainians do? And Chinese? And Nigerians? And Iranians? And Arabs? And Mexicans? And Germans? And Jews? And Palestinians? And Afghans?
Again, I’m fine with your examples as long as you are not trying to frame things in such a way that ONLY YOUR way of assessing risks and costs is the acceptable/accepted one. You can’t take yourself as representative of the entire humanity, as far as I’m concerned.
It's honestly difficult to keep up and I don't have an over abundance of time at the moment.
But to take your very next sentence under consideration:
Quoting neomac
We literally just went over this:
Quoting boethius
The interview in question:
I totally get it, the policies of America are usually hidden behind a smoke screen of plausible deniability and key actors don't usually just come out and tell us what's up.
I do understand your frustration in trying to hold together your teetering tower of plausible sounding (to at least yourself anyways) alternatives to, if not the obvious facts, what is clearly very likely to be true.
Yes denazification and Russian-speaking population, and blah blah blah from Putin were cosmetic, political seasoning. But such Russian propaganda arguments to dupe the masses were the ones you cared so much to regurgitate in this thread. Just neutrality was fine for Putin to have peace, go figure.
Quoting boethius
Sure, and you got all wrong the issue of the security guarantees, because in that video Arakhamia (the same one I cited: "Arakhamia also denied that Johnson stopped Kyiv from signing an agreement stipulating Ukraine's neutrality") says Ukraine needs security guarantees (from the West) because they do not trust Russia, which is what I said while you claim that's not the reason because all politicians know that "states can break their promises", right?. There is also Oleksandr Chalyi that makes the same point I was making.
This still has nothing to do with your blabbering about talking of “security guarantees” as a piece of propaganda for the masses because “guarantees” doesn’t mean “ontological necessity“ that promises are kept, “security guarantees” have to do with what the Ukrainians and Russia demanded from the West/US to feel assured about their respective security concerns compared to past failed agreements.
Quoting boethius
What’s that now?! Dude, focus, read and answer my questions, rambling stuff as if you are talking with your imaginary friend is getting boring. I’m not your therapist. And I have no pity for you.
(The Wikipedia article has a summary)
Somewhere around "the middle" you'll find Hungary and Moldova
Seriously, do you really believe in everything those 'sources' and 'indexes' say? Don't you have a bit of criticism of Western metrics and propaganda? It will always be the same. Russia is corrupt and bad. Ukraine is nice and the son we all wish we had.
Was Putin also ready to hold hands with Zelenskyi and sing Kumbayah? :snicker:
Again, a bit crazy Putinist apologetics from you, but that's you...
If all that Putin had wanted is Ukrainian neutrality, all it would have taken is for those troops to stay on the border and never invade Ukraine. And oh wait, he actually did get those promises from Germany that Ukraine won't be in NATO.
Yet Ukraine was ready to fall in a few days, just like Crimea had been taken. Without a shot, or just a few.
But that fact isn't your line. Nope, bad boy US had it's evil intensions. :smirk:
(Since you make it personal, yep, I'm critical, though there's plenty of that already in this thread, I'll pick up some of the slack.)
Transparency International » Board of Directors (international)
Wikipedia » Corruption Perceptions Index » Assessments (critique)
Given the numbers above (36% is hardly admirable), I'm not convinced you checked or have any particular interest (other than dishing out "Propaganda!" when tickling your funny bone). Feel free to prove otherwise.
The Kremlin isn't that likely to go at NATO members (or non-expendable partners) the same way as Ukraine Moldova Georgia (at least not currently).
[sup](since some posters are adverse to reports, I've just stuffed a bunch into an ignorable attachment; up to the reader to weed out/in whatever im/plausible)[/sup]
Attachment: moldova_russia.txt
To what end? (hence remains a pertinent question)
And why would anyone care anyway?
The Baltics have been supportive of Ukraine, and have their reasons, e.g. 2023Jul9, 2023Dec20, that might be applicable to Moldova just the same.
Reports evidence observations commentaries analyses opinions ...
• Moldova–Russia relations
• Moldova and the Russo-Ukrainian War
• 2023 Moldovan coup attempt allegations
Hum... you are commenting my quote but "you" refers to Boethius, I guess.
It might be helpful to look at how such indicies are developed. No methodology is perfect, but they tend to embody the methodological choices political science suggests for such an endeavor. Labeling them "propaganda" doesn't change this fact. Nor do they seem particularly good for fulfilling that function, since generally the leading stories re Freedom House and other publications have been about the decay and sliding rankings of prominent Western nations on a whole host of metrics, particularly the US (and France to some degree). Generally, when you invent an elaborate propaganda ruse to boost your regime, it's headline story isn't going to be your own failures year after year.
And yes, Russia always ranks very highly in corruption and low on political freedom. It also ranks very poorly in metrics that are less easy to massage, e.g., it's sky high HIV rate, it's low life expectancy, it's high levels of violent crime, etc. That indicies attempting to track political freedom or good governance tend to track quite well with these more "tangible," metrics is hardly surprising.
The part about Ukraine is simply not true though. Ukraine is one of the poorest nations in Europe and routinely rates among the worst for corruption and not particularly well on political freedom either. The most you could say about the difference between Ukraine and Russia is that the former has at least moved up, haltingly and with much backsliding, while the quality of Russian governance has mostly atrophied under Putin. Again, this agrees with more tangible metrics, like the very high rate of emigration out of Russia and into the OECD nations. That is, millions of people have packed up and left Russia for the "degenerate West," particularly younger, more educated residents, exactly the class you'd expect to be most frustrated by poor governance and corruption.
Again the Nazi's are definitely there and definitely a problem (mainly for Ukraine).
One of those problems I, and others, explained at length was the Nazis are a problem also because they are excellent propaganda material for Russia, which will of course (regardless of the number of Nazis in Ukraine and their actual power) they will be exaggerated by Russia for propaganda purposes as well.
Ukraine and the West tolerating, arming, training, supporting and apologizing for these Nazis is an immense military and diplomatic gift to Russia.
Of course, the war and the reasons for the war are a lot bigger than just these Nazi groups, it's just a super easy sell to the Russian population. Especially at the start of the war, "denazification" is a lot easier sell than preventing Ukraine from joining NATO, which is a fairly abstract menace to a normal person.
At the point of interest here, the negotiation the negotiator is talking about, Russia had already effectively defeated Azov brigade in Mariupol, delivering the "denazification" PR victory required to sell a peace to the Russian people: We went in, spanked those Nazis and now we can live in peace with our Ukrainian brothers and sisters (would have been the basic narrative had a peace been achieved).
Back to the issue at hand, you're ask was:
Quoting neomac
I provide this evidence.
Instead of being like "oh, my bad, my reading comprehension is indeed pretty low considering we already went over this very topic", you then try to put the words of the Ukrainian negotiator in my mouth.
Obviously in any peace deal (at the start of the war at least) "denazification" would be cosmetic political seasoning as there's no peace agreement Ukraine would accept where banning Banderism or Azov Brigade and implementing that practically is not really feasible anyways.
The Nazis are a critical element to understanding the war, both understanding Ukrainian internal politics as well as understanding Russian internal politics.
A major reason I predicted there would not be a "collapse of moral" or major internal opposition to the war, as many were predicting at the start, because "we're killing Nazis" is a pretty good argument in favour of sufficient reason to prosecutor the war for the average Russian soldier or citizen: are the Nazis there? Yes, even according to the Wests own media!
It's basically their version of "support the troops".
Now, now where have I stated that fighting the Nazis in Ukraine was sufficient reason for Putin or the Kremlin to prosecute the war. Political and military leaders would need more reasons than that: NATO is one, resources another, as well as many other considerations may have gone into the decision (for example doing the war before AI gets out of hand and changes the power dynamic in unpredictable ways could have been one reason to do the war sooner rather than later).
Understanding that the Nazis in Ukraine is an easy and powerful argument for Putin to sell the war to his own people is just pointing out an obvious fact that is required to understand the war (and be able to predict, or then understand in retrospect, why the Russian soldiers were unlikely to flee and the civilians unlikely to topple the government, in addition to simply the regular reason that's unlikely).
Quoting neomac
Your reading comprehension is really disastrous.
Quoting Interview with David Arakhamia, head of the Ukrainian delegation at the peace talks
Is what he says. He doesn't say "oh, yeah, we were going to do it, but just needed some security guarantees from the West".
He's quite clear that the reason was they would need 100% confidence, which is simply propaganda.
Obviously there's no 100% certainty of anything: winning the war, continued support from the West to even tread water, etc.
He's also quite clear that Boris Johnson tells them to not sign anything and "let's just fight", not that he'd really, really like to arrange a Western security guarantee to increase the confidence the deal would last ... but, shucks, he just can't do that for various reasons.
Obviously when Ukraine rejected the peace deal they imagined things would be better now than they currently are. Maybe they believed the Russian troops really would mutiny and flee, or ATGM's were sufficient to win the war, or that they'd have a numbers advantage.
Unless you're arguing that they sat down and said: "Ok, ok, ok, war game hats, focus, focus we'll go on an offensive that will take a bit of land back on the flanks, then go on another disastrous offensive later that achieves nothing, then our army will be significantly diminished and we'll be at risk of the collapse of the front and the collapse of the government: Let's do it! Break! Hut! Hut! Hut! as our American friends say".
Obviously they did not foresee being in the current situation, therefore seems a mistake to have rejected the peace deal on offer, therefore saying "100% confidence" was lacking sounds a lot better than saying they thought they would have won by now, but turn out to be wrong about that.
It's all very obvious.
Quoting neomac
Truly remarkable.
Intellectual hobbits. You can learn all their ways in a month, and yet after a three hundred lives of men, they still surprise you.
I'll go ahead and assume you're responding to me.
It's literally raining straw these days.
I've spent several long posts (and many dozens at previous junctures in the conversation, explaining the same thing) that precisely you would not simply "trust" Putin to hold hands and sing Kumbayah.
You would assume the peace deal is not worth much more than the paper it's written on and that Russia would reinvade if there was interest and pressure to do so.
However, that is the case in all treaties and other deals between states and obviously is not a reason for states to reject treaty negotiations.
The 4 points I outline are the main points of consideration.
Indeed, you may find it very probable that Russia would just invade later anyways, but you still have to be confident to be able to win the war with Western support (and be confident in that lasting) to justify fighting the war at hand (and also that it would not be over some threshold of acceptable cost to "win").
There is a whole bunch of points needing consideration to justify sending men to die and absolutely wrecking the countries economy and demographics (which were already quite bad, and millions of young people who left as refugees are unlikely to return).
Which should not be a controversial position that wars should be based on more than whims and "bah! Can't trust Putin!"
Now, if you conclude it's probable that Russia would keep its word, it would not be based simply on the fact that they gave their word, it would be based on a projection of the political situation in which one expects Russia to have various reasons not to re-invade.
For example, had there been a peace relatively quickly, the gas flows to Europe would have likely restarted, a "peace dividend" everyone would have been happy to collect. So, this would be one reason putting pressure against Russia re-invading. Likewise, if Ukraine became neutral and wasn't a nuclear threat (of hosting NATO missiles) and Russia obviously kept Crimea, which was and is the major strategic consideration in terms of land, war in the Donbas resolved, and there wasn't really any "problems" anymore, then one may project out that the diplomatic and economic cost of restarting the war is simply far higher than anything Russia would have to gain in re-attacking a Neutral Ukraine.
I point out that Russia may have no interest (or at least one predicts that as likely) in re-invading a neutral Ukraine and so maybe very unlikely to do so for various reasons in addition to having signed an agreement, and you turn this into me saying that Putin wanted to "hold hands and sing Kumbayah".
Ok, the context of your question was:
Quoting Sep 26, 2023
... "something along those lines" ... "The question is what might we then have expected from the Kremlin. Seems like they covered their bases, but what might have transpired then?"
What bases?
Now, if the point of your comment is that somehow Ukraine "was neutral all along!!" we're already discussed that. Ukraine's definition of neutrality was ... doesn't exclude joining NATO which they were trying to do.
If your question was what would Russia have done if a peace agreement was reached, I note above the reasons to expect Russia to follow a peace deal (pre-blowing-up-Nord Stream) is the incentive to keep selling gas to Europe and so if the issues were settled, neutrality and the ongoing Donbas war, then my expectation would be that Russia would not re-invade simply because the risk would be gone and the costs outweigh the benefits (Crimea is important vis-a-vis oil transport across the Black Sea, but there's not really anything else in Ukraine that is worth more than the European gas trade; if that doesn't matter, only conquest, then I guess it's possible to have some convoluted plan to invade, get a peace deal and then reinvade later, but Russia also has other security concerns so I just don't see how invading Ukraine would come back as a priority if the strategic risk is gone).
That would be what I'd expect from the Kremlin if there was a peace deal at the moment in question.
However, for me, the more important question in deciding to fight a war is the ability to win the war. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes you're conquered and sometimes you're liberated, throughout history. For me, everyone dying on principle is not sufficient reason for many, many, many deaths.
When you say Ukrainian sovereignty shouldn't be controversial, well neither should Iraq's, Afghanistan's, Syria's, Lybia's, and so on.
More important, "isn't controversial" is not what actually matters, but rather "important enough to send our own troops to defend Ukraine".
The policy I have issue with is sending weapons, which scholarly work on the subject indicates simply causes vastly more deaths without changing outcomes of conflicts. If it's important, we should go fight for it, do the "standing up" and have ourselves a little nuclear standoff and see what happens. If it's not important, but we like to say it is, sending weapons in lieu of honour is a cowards move.
I don't deny that Russia, as a state, has some issues. As you noted, they always rank very high in corruption, lawfare, low freedom and individual rights, etc. But Ukraine holds similar marks in these issues, yet what the Western media is doing is just 'bleaching' the image of the country because hey! Ukraine is our friend now, and we want them to be a developed nation as quickly as possible.
The conclusion and my criticism of the links provided by @jorndoe is that they have the same result but hidden with a mask: both Russia and Ukraine are very corrupt, and no, the latter is not a consequence because Putin decided to start a war in 2022. Ukraine has always had this issue, as like most of the ex-soviet Republics. It just bothers me how the media is obsessed with manipulating us on the Ukraine issue. Dude, it is a backwards country. Simple.
Precisely, most of these rankings do not have a big impact in the end. Yes, we know Venezuela is highly corrupt, but we still buy their oil. Do we care about their citizens?
Finland always ranks very high in good standards, but @ssu is also critical to the system of his country, so there is nothing perfect.
I will let the time speak for itself and show how Zelensky acts afterward. Will he still be the angel we all wish to have as a friend?
Beside the obvious nonsense of 'nuclear threat' (again, no nuclear missiles have been deployed in any of the new NATO countries, so why exactly should that be an issue?), you are basically stating that if everything went back to the exact state that was in 2014-2022 (the war in Donbas would not be 'resolved' by any measure in March 2022), Russia would have no reason to start the re-invasion.
As to the question of neutrality - sure, Ukraine might pledge not to enter NATO (like it did in 2014, which made exactly zero difference), but it still would most likely arm itself and align itself economically with the West (so it would be like Sweden before 2022 - formally unaligned, but in fact Western-oriented. But that would not satisfy Russia in any way.
But that poses the obvious problem: these were the exact conditions which Russia made to invade in the first place.
There is one underlying cause of the conflict: Ukraine wanting to leave the Russian sphere of influence. And there seem to be only two possible resolutions: Ukraine doing that with Russia unable to stop it, or Ukraine losing its sovereignty to Russia to a much larger degree than before (i.e. Byelarussinization of Ukraine).
So you agree that denazification was basically Putin’s propaganda to dupe the Russian masses and the pro-Russian “useful idiots” in the West. All right. Still it is false that “Russia had already effectively defeated Azov brigade in Mariupol” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Mariupol): the Istanbul Communique fell in March while the siege in Mariupol ended the 20 May.
Besides the denazification narrative continued long after the siege of Mariupol was over (https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20220707-live-russia-s-war-in-ukraine-to-dominate-g20-talks-in-bali, https://english.aawsat.com/home/article/3625636/russia-says-israel-supports-neo-nazis-row-over-ukraine, https://www.timesofisrael.com/moscow-says-ukraine-must-denazify-demilitarize-or-onslaught-will-go-on/).
Finally, the Ukrainian neo-Nazi movements express a way in which the Ukrainian society responds to the historical Russian threat in the Ukrainian territories, as much as Hamas expresses a way in which the Palestinian society responds to the historical Israeli threat in the Palestinian territories. So, the Ukrainian society can’t get easily rid of the Ukrainian neo-Nazi movements as much as the Palestinian society can’t get easily get rid of Hamas. That’s a vicious loop triggered by security and identitarian concerns. Westernisation of Ukraine through NATO and/or EU might have helped reduce the Ukrainian security and identitarian concerns to some extent, and so the political pressure from anti-Russian far right movements, also because the Ukrainian government was/is likely far less influenced by such movements than the government of Gaza by Hamas. The problem is that far right movements are on the rise also in the West, also thanks to Putin.
Quoting boethius
Such propaganda may have had and still have an appeal to part of the Russian population in supporting the war (especially, among the older generation). That’s plausible, but there are other factors that may have weighed in: the fact that there was no mass mobilisation, that ethnic minorities, convicted, and mercenaries were abundantly used in this war. An additional reason can be that in Russian propaganda the main villain progressively moved from the less threatening Ukrainian neo-nazis to the more threatening West/NATO “aggression” against Russia. So now it’s more about Russia revanchism (for the hawkish Russian elites) or survival from the Western aggression (from the more dovish populace), than saving Russian minorities in Ukraine from the Ukrainian neo-nazis.
Quoting boethius
Dude, that’s PRECISELY the gist of the Ukrainian proposal in the Istanbul communiqué: discussing in 10 points the neutrality of Ukraine in exchange for security guaranties (which include the US and the UK). No mention of the Nazis or the Russian speaking people. Also the status of the occupied territories wasn’t addressed in resolutive terms.
https://www.president.gov.ua/en/news/na-peregovorah-iz-rosiyeyu-ukrayinska-delegaciya-oficijno-pr-73933
https://faridaily.substack.com/p/ukraines-10-point-plan
Quoting boethius
That’s again a manipulative interpretation.
First of all, you are conflating things: “100% certainty” is NOT used to explain the MEANING of “guarantee” in “security guarantees” but to explain why Ukraine needed “security guarantees” from other actors than Russia, namely because of trust issues. Which worsened after the discovery of what happened in Bucha. [I]“In Istanbul we still didn’t understand the type of war that Russia was waging, its genocidal intent,” Podolyak explained. “Once we returned from Istanbul and the Russians left the Kyiv region, we saw the beastly crimes that they had committed there. And we understood that Russia will try to annihilate Ukraine no matter what.”[/i] (https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-inside-story-of-russia-and-ukraines-peace-talks-nhbq0fn6k)
Secondly, “100% certainty” doesn’t need to be taken literally, because as I said “talking about ‘security guarantees’ is enough intelligible in a context of geopolitical competition, security dilemmas, and historical diplomatic failures WITHOUT ever needing to blabber about ‘guarantees’ as suggesting that promises among states are necessarily or certainly kept to dupe the masses”. PRECISELY because “there's no 100% certainty of anything” not even of NATO art.5, AND YET states like Finland feel safer by joining NATO instead of remaining out of it under the threat of Russian imperialism, that one can well understand why Ukraine is looking for security guarantees from the West analogous to the NATO ones, even if the degree of confidence would be less than 100% certainty (it should just be sufficiently above past previous failed agreements depending on the design of the agreements, that’s all).
Third, the importance of Western security guarantees rather explicit if one interprets Arakhamia’s comment also in the wider context of other claims by Arakhamia (https://korrespondent-net.translate.goog/ukraine/4462825-arakhamyia-ukrayna-khochet-sdelat-sobstvennoe-nato?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=fr&_x_tr_pto=wapp) and by the head of the legal team in the Ukrainian negotiators O. Chalyi (https://dam.gcsp.ch/files/misc/pb-8-chalyi?_gl=1*capwht*_ga*MTYwNjM3NzE1MS4xNjkzNDg3ODk5*_ga_Z66DSTVXTJ*MTY5NDEwMTgxNC40LjEuMTY5NDEwMTkxNy4yNi4wLjA.).
BTW, just for the sake of your manipulative argument which I reject for the above reasons, I’m not even sure what propaganda effect can ever achieve the usage of the expression “100% certainty” in an interview of Nov 2023 over the Ukrainian masses witnessing a failed negotiation back in March 2022.
Quoting boethius
He’s also quite clear that they couldn’t sign anything even though the Russians were pressing them, because they need to change the constitution and a referendum. And besides they need security guarantees because they didn’t trust Russia. LATER:
- there was ALSO Boris Johnson who advised Zelensky on the premise that the US/UK will not sign security guarantees ALONG WITH PUTIN and that Putin should not be trusted. Perfectly legitimate move if that was satisfying Western strategic interests, and Zelensky as a leader of a sovereign state was free to decide according to the Ukrainian strategic interests. And he realised that without Western security guaranties the Istanbul communiqué was pointless PRECISELY because the gist of the Ukrainian proposal in the Istanbul communiqué: neutrality in exchange for security guaranties (which include the US and the UK).
- there was also the discovery of Bucha.
That doesn’t exclude the possibility that BOTH Boris and Zelensky made miscalculations at that time (for example about the strength of Russia wrt the Ukrainian resistance plus Western support). But I’m not sure if such miscalculations are enough to support the claim that Ukraine had better to sign an agreement with Russia alone. Besides (geo)political reasons may very much trump the military ones for the good or for the bad. So the miscalculations I would focus on are political ones.
Quoting boethius
Ukraine didn’t have time to reject the peace deal, Putin did it first with the claim that talks with Ukraine "had turned into a dead end" 3 days after Boris Johnson met Zelensky. Indeed, after that, Zelensky was still proposing peace deals to Abramovich (who was believed to be directly in contact with Putin).
Quoting boethius
This is beside the point I was making which is that the expression “security guarantees” makes intelligible sense even without propagandistic intentions.
Anyways, I can’t exclude that there was a propagandistic intent in Arakhamia’s interview concerning responsibilities and miscalculations, as you suggest. Not sure however whether the hyperbolic expression “100% certainty” is what best reveals Arakhamia’s possible manipulative intent. Indeed, also for ordinary Ukrainians who perceive Russia as a threat is pretty much clear that with proper security guarantees like NATO they would hedge better against the Russian threat (see the NATO referendum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Referendums_in_Ukraine and the polls over NATO https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine%E2%80%93NATO_relations#Public_opinion_in_Ukraine). So also the ordinary Ukrainian masses may very much have the cultural tools to understand that “100% certainty” can be just hyperbolic in that context.
Besides I think the more plausible propagandistic intent is THE OPPOSITE of what you are suggesting: namely, the intent may be not to HIDE responsibilities and miscalculations, BUT TO “SOFTLY” HINT AT THEM in order to put the blame on Zelensky (he was a committed dude, but made miscalculations; Russia isn’t that bad either, Putin was just happy with neutrality after all; Westerners aren’t that committed allies either; Ukrainian negotiators couldn’t do much since they didn’t have the power or the authority to sign anything, but we informed Zelensky we were so close to a peace deal, etc.) and his reliance on the Western support. Indeed, we have hints that over time and especially after the so-called “failed offensive” internal conflicts within Zelensky’s government and around it Ukrainian vip’s voices started to emerge. So I find more plausible to read the most recent comments of Chalyi and Arakhamia, Arestovych, Klitschko, and Zaloujny as a way of distance themselves from Zelensky. In other words, Zelensky (& the West too, if Zelensky’s not enough) has to be blamed for whatever went wrong, the West needs to be pressed to get more support, or the anti-Russian narrative needs to be softened for future negotiations in a post-Zelensky era.
We'll know more about the Nordstream sabotage soon.
:point: A question: why do Moldovans get nervous and jittery when there's talk of Putin?
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Yeah. There are various aspects to the situation. Ukraine freeing themselves from the dominating neighbor to the north + east isn't easy, to the point of war. 2023Jul22, 2024Jan2. They're trying (from bomb shelters or wherever) and has shown willingness to do so. Not an overnight thing though, especially with the Kremlin in the way.
Quoting boethius
Hmm Shouldn't really need a side-track to (genuinely) try answering the inquiry. Anyway, irredentism and such has come up among others, promoted by the Kremlin circle as justification. But the Kremlin doesn't want Zelenskyy or his government in Kyiv despite having been elected, maybe it was different once. (Euromaidan...?)
The Kremlin has another weapon in its arsenal: Migration policy (archive)
[sup]— Caress Schenk · The Washington Post · Apr 11, 2022[/sup]
The War in Ukraine Is a Colonial War
[sup]— Timothy Snyder · The New Yorker · Apr 28, 2022[/sup]
Ukraine's Lightning Counteroffensive Has Russian Teachers Rethinking Plans To Work In Occupied Areas
[sup]— RFE/RL · Sep 17, 2022[/sup]
‘New Russia’ and the Legacies of Settler Colonialism in Southern Ukraine
[sup]— Olivia Irena Durand · Journal of Applied History · Dec 12, 2022[/sup]
Understanding Russia’s Actions in Ukraine as the Crime of Genocide
[sup]— Denys Azarov, Dmytro Koval, Gaiane Nuridzhanian, Volodymyr Venher · Journal of International Criminal Justice · Jun 13, 2023[/sup]
Russians actively change ethnic composition of occupied territories' population
[sup]— Iryna Balachuk · Ukrainska Pravda · Jan 4, 2024[/sup]
Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, January 23, 2024
[sup]— Christina Harward, Grace Mappes, Karolina Hird, Nicole Wolkov, George Barros, Frederick W Kagan · ISW · Jan 23, 2024[/sup]
Quoting boethius
Not "a peace agreement", but running with that peace proposal. ("something along those lines" ? e.g. toss in a fresh Kharkiv'esque Pact or whatever)
Quoting javi2541997
No angels around.
Some posters seem to think Ukraine is variously a kindergarten or just another sh¡thole or whatever. :point: Either way, wouldn't it be :up: if Ukraine developed toward something comparable to, say, Estonia, Germany, Czechia, Spain?
For the obvious reason that they could deploy nuclear weapons there.
Furthermore, the US started the dismantling of the non-proliferation architecture (based on mostly treaties that the US didn't ratify anyways, so was never US law to begin with, which doesn't inspire much trust as a starting point) in abandoning both in official "executive policy" (what I guess best describes non-ratified treaties that we're just going to pretend are meaningful) and action (actually developing the weapons systems banned by the treaties) the ABM treaty and then the INF treaty.
The US makes clear they are a "first use" nation.
The US Is the only country to have dropped nuclear bombs on cities. More importantly, US policy makers and citizens aren't too phased by it.
The sort of bullshit you're spinning in your comment definitely works in Western echo chambers (how dare they say our nuclear weapons and expanding our territory are threatening!!) but in the real world outside those echo chambers, people, especially people that US policy makers continuously refer to as "rivals" and "enemies", don't just go ahead and assume US nuclear weapons are not a threat and of course "they would never use them".
Facts on the ground can change. Russia really didn't like the forward positioning of US missile bases in Europe (that can be easily loaded with nuclear warheads). You can say all you want "But they would never load them with nukes!!! It was needed to counter Iran!!!" but what are those assurances worth?
Absolutely nothing.
Of course other powers are going to view US military hardware (of any kind) moving closer to their borders as threatening and will take action to mitigate that insofar as they can.
Additionally, with a long contiguous border with NATO where on the other side there's all sorts of "extremist nationals" anyone charged with analyzing the risks will come up with scenarios where small factions (who have no problem saying their goal is to start a war with Russia) could basically start some shit that then escalates.
It's so incredibly delusional to minimize the weight the threat of nuclear weapons and the potential for nuclear escalation impose on decision making that it's almost not worthy of retort.
It's literally "get a clue" level of delusion.
Even stupider is the circle people go in of "of course Ukraine wants to join NATO and be protected from Russia!" and then when it's pointed out that Russia will obviously react to that (regardless of whatever moral speech you may have about it) switch to "Ukraine declared neutrality!!"
It's just dumb.
I literally have no clue what you're trying to say and how it relates to the conversation.
You state they "covered their bases" and answering that is a side track? Or then you could just answer directly but are deciding to side track? Or is my question a side track?
You make no points, you just spam your articles. Pretty much all your questions are just "maybe this, maybe that" and then spamming all your preferred news sources. That's not arguing any points and thus participating in a dialogue, but just basically microblogging in an inappropriate place.
I honestly don't see why the moderators tolerate these kinds of comments, which I don't say often.
If we are in fantasy land, the US could deploy the nukes everywhere - in Ukraine, whether it was in NATO or not, in Alaska, or in Greenland.
Quoting boethius
Oh, please do tell which missiles in European bases can be 'easily loaded with nuclear warheads'. But be specific... which types and ranges did you have in mind exactly?
The fact remains that the US has not deployed the nukes in any new country since 1960s. To claim that it is more likely that the US would do that than that Russia would re-invade Ukraine (which it has already did twice in a decade) is beyond delusional.
Basically, your argument is: 'treaties are not worth the paper they are written on, but if Ukraine pledged neutrality (again), then Russia would not re-invade it'. That is obviously self-refuting.
Each side is going to use information to make their case and mix both truth and untrue information to do so.
Israel has used October 7th to justify their actions, they've lied and exaggerated plenty of things about it, did they therefore "dupe everyone" because they've also used false information?
If you're pro-Israeli genocide then you'll just say "of course they exaggerate and add in some lies where they can!!" they're fighting a war and also fighting an information war!!
Likewise, Ukraine has been caught with a long list of lies and if you're pro-Ukraine you'll just say the same thing.
If you're interested in reality, then separating the fact from the exaggeration and deliberate lies is one first relevant step. An additional step is understanding what impact this information, both true and false, has.
The Nazi's are definitely there in Ukraine (I am happy to re-post all those Western journalist documenting it) and are definitely a problem (mainly for Ukraine). They are also a genuine security concern for Russia (as they have no hesitation to explicitly say their goal is a war with Russia and to destroy Russia; so, at minimum, the same kind of security concern as armed groups who have no problem chanting "death to America" is to America), but far greater military concern is NATO (a bunch of terrorists are mostly a nuisance to powerful nation states, but where terrorist organizations, such as Azov, can have an outsized impact is in starting a war with another nation state).
So, since the Nazis are definitely there and pre-2022 already fighting a war against Russian speakers in the Donbas (which many Russian speakers in Russia feel some responsibility for) and their explicit objective is to destroy Russia, obviously they are one military concern, but, objectively not as big a concern as NATO.
There are a lot of reasons to go to war of course. A lot of analysis will go into including offices who make long term strategic analysis (which will focus a lot on nuclear weapons as they are "the threat" in any long term view of the position of any of the great powers; hence the resources spent on them).
Of course, resources and spheres of influence and so on are considerations too.
If you bother to read what I wrote, I did not dismiss the idea Russia would have invaded Ukraine come-what-may, I simply put down my reasons why I think that's unlikely (if Ukraine doesn't pose a threat, it's strategically far more advantage to "keep the spice flowing" to Europe; Ukraine really has to create a lot of problems to become a higher strategic priority than the spice flows).
So we can do the analysis and easily come up with most, if not all, the priority considerations in the decision to go to war.
The Nazis are definitely one important consideration.
Exactly how important in purely military terms, I don't know. The one thing that is certain is that it's mainly the Nazis that kept the war in the Donbas going and were killing so many civilians and once it was clear other sectors of Ukrainian society couldn't control them, a bigger war was essentially inevitable for this reason alone.
However, the Nazis also obviously play a role in both Russian legitimate reasons to wage war as well as propaganda to wage the information war.
In this, Ukraine and the West, simply gave Russia an incredible diplomatic and information-war gift.
The Nazis are obviously a much bigger emotional trigger compared to a lot of dry analysis that may require declassifying information to really make the case (information, such as vulnerability to a first strike by the US from Ukraine territory, that would never be declassified).
So, we can understand the Nazis are really there based on top-notch Western journalism before anyone got the memo that the Nazis were the good guys now and of course you need some colourful characters if you want to win!
However, we can also understand that if one side tolerates and basically promotes Naziism then the Russian side is going to be really angry about that and those facts on the ground will be very motivating a lot of Russian and also help consolidate the home front as "we're fighting the Nazis" is an easy argument to make (especially if you have Western journalists on YouTube interviewing those Nazis and there isn't really any doubt the Nazis are there and what they represent).
With they take what's factually true and exaggerate for the purposes of waging the information war, obviously, as does Zelensky and "Ukrainian Intelligence", as does Bibi and the IDF, as does Hamas.
So, in summary, parts of reality are simply necessary to understand a bigger part of reality and a single part can have multiple connections to other parts in different ways and on different scales.
To make the argument that Putin "duped" Russia into prosecuting the war you either need to accept Zelensky and Bibi do an equal, if not more, amount of duping their own populations, or then it boils down to whether you think the war effort is justified.
If you think Zelensky and Bibi are justified then their lies you won't think of as duping but just another aspect to the war.
If you don't think Putins' war effort is justified then you'll conclude the exact same kind of lies are "duping".
Actually determining who's justified in doing what is a complicated task, especially between nation states with a long history of conflict, and I have made it clear over the course of this discussion that I haven't done that analysis nor likely to.
For me, a pre-condition to justified warfare is the likelihood of being able to win. You need really extreme conditions to justify fighting to the death or sacrificing a large number of citizens and still losing; conditions I simply do not see in the Russia-Ukraine war.
I don't think Ukraine can win on purely military terms, I don't think anyone is coming to their aid, and therefore I think they should sue for peace and use their leverage of remaining force application to negotiate as good a deal as they can. If they can, with enough Western money and weapons consistently provided over a long period of time, eventually "tire the Russians out" and achieve some gains that way, I don't think that would be at an acceptable cost.
Ukrainian justification is secondary to whether they can win or not, and at an acceptable cost or not, in my view.
Now, I do not think Ukraine's war on the Donbas was justified, so based on this I'd conclude Russia's war against Ukraine is therefore justified.
As a Canadian we had Quebec separatists as a big issue when I was growing up, at no point did I (or that many Canadians for that matter) believe going and killing Quebeckers would be a justified course of action if they separated, even if we non-Quebeckers largely believed it to be "illegal".
So, to say Ukraine was justified in attacking the Donbas and killing Donbas civilians I would need to accept it would be justified for English-Canadians to go kill French-Canadians if they tried to separate (regardless of what I thought of their provincial run elections or provincial politicians or whatever). And I simply don't see why I'd be justified in going and killing French-Canadians in pretty much any situation of separation or how it was done or "if it was legal" or whatever arguments maybe lying around.
Furthermore, if Quebec was still right next to France and we English-Canadians decided it was a good idea to go kill Quebeckers and force them back into our confederacy, then I wouldn't be surprised nor see much grounds to complain if France, with their far bigger military, decided to spank us back across the Outaouais. And why wouldn't French speakers in France defend French speaking populations in Canada if being shelled by Canadians running around with a bunch of Nazi symbolism all over the place?
You play with fire, you get burned.
Of note, Quebec is still in Canada today and we didn't even have to kill anybody. We did have to recognize they're their own nation and can have all sorts of language laws; so, again, I don't see why Russian speakers wouldn't be as pissed about any language repression as French speakers in Canada would be (we accepted all sorts of pro-French language laws and many still wanted to separate, that votes were really close).
Yes, obviously, that's why all the focus on nuclear submarines.
However, in any large scale nuclear war, you [i]need a lot of nukes[/I] so forward operating missile bases significantly increase the amount of nukes that can be deployed in a short period of time, and if from a short distance that's a big strategic threat.
It's called reality, not fantasy.
US reacted so strongly to nuclear weapons in Cuba because it was close.
You ever hear anyone in the US administration (of on the entire planet) having said "If we are in fantasy land, the Soviets could deploy the nukes everywhere" ... to minimize their deployment to Cuba?
You'd really have the same analysis of the Cuban missile crisis as you have here?
You'd get up in front of your class and be like "the Cuban missile crisis was a big nothing border and all the US intelligence agencies and military and administration and the president were living in fantasy land and totally overreacted because the nukes could have been deployed anywhere anyways".
As I've said, this level of analysis is dumb and almost not worth replying to.
Quoting Jabberwock
The whole point of exiting the INF treaty (which was never entered anyways, just pretend entering and exiting) is to develop exactly those kinds of missile with size and range to ABM missiles.
You could literally take a ABM missile and simply put a nuclear warhead in it and fire it at a ground target.
Keep in mind also that ABM missiles are themselves first strike risks, which the ABM treaty was negotiated in the first place.
If you're doing actual analysis you care about risks.
There's a risk a combination of ABM and forward deployed missiles (and airplane deployed and sub deployed) could be used in a first strike (that may involve weapons or retrofitting of weapons you don't even know about).
There's a risk the US would want to execute a first strike.
There's a risk of geopolitical tensions going out of control and the US believes they're being, or about to be, first striked.
And so on.
In actual analysis that isn't on the level of "stupid" you list risks and start categorizing those risks and then evaluating those risks.
If you were a no-first-use nation and you evaluated the risk of a first strike on your territory as 0 then you wouldn't have nuclear weapons. Why would you develop a second strike capability to deal with a scenario that is 0 probability. You wouldn't.
Obviously when this sort of risk analysis is done, the likelihood of a nuclear exchange is quite low, but non-zero.
The other aspect of risk analysis (other than evaluating risk) is the impact of the events under consideration. It is risk multiplied by impact that determines actionability mitigation steps. The impact of a nuclear first strike is quite high, therefore the risk can be very low but still yield actionable motivation steps.
Is forward missile bases, either nominally ABM sties that could be fitted with nuclear weapons now or in the future (or then straight up abandoning "we're only concerned about Iran, tee hee hee" and simply overtly forward deploying nuclear missiles), in itself sufficient reason to start a giant war.
Now we know the nuclear first strike risk of these bases was worrisome enough to warrant actionable motivation steps by Russia, as they spent some diplomatic effort to try to stop that happening and then negotiate them being un-deployed and so on. So, obviously this forward deployment of missile bases enters into the Russian calculus.
The second thing any actual analysis of the situation would arrive at is that Ukraine is not such a stable place fill with people who only want peaceful relations with Russia.
It's unstable, so Ukraine entering NATO could lead to a series of escalations that lead to the US forward deploying nuclear weapons because they feel it is "needed" even if they didn't intend to do so from the outset.
Things change, and any analysis of these sorts of issues will go decades into the future. What can we expect the future to be like?
Could be more stable and happier than it is now.
... But ... there's a risk it's much less stable and a lot less happier than it is now.
Any risk analysis will go into those situations and, circling back to the missile bases, conclude it would be better if there was less of them and farther away.
Is nuclear risk the only analysis the nuclear powers do to inform decisions? Obviously not. But it is one dimension that informs their decisions and in particular military decisions (military institution of nuclear powers will have quite a lot of analysis going into nuclear war issues, as that's really the only way they can "lose" a big war and the consequences are much higher than simply losing a war, so it absorbs a lot of attention).
Cool! What paradise it seems to live in a developed nation. "Developed" is another word which is very ambiguous, but rather than theorise about what Ukraine would look like if evil Russia were not around, I will show some facts and data (using Western metrics and even Economics Nobel Laurates, when this prize always goes for the USA).
Economics: Russia is the 6th largest economy in the world, while Spain* is very mediocre (16th) and Ukraine is very poor, (60th).
Employment data and metrics: 9.8% of unemployment in Ukraine, and increasing according to the IMF. Spain: 11.6% (June 2023) and 27.9% youth unemployment (15 to 24 year-olds; June 2023). Russia: 3.7% (December 2022). Who is the developed here in economic metrics? https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/weo-database/2023/October/weo-report?c=926,&s=NGDP_RPCH,NGDPD,PPPGDP,NGDPDPC,PPPPC,PCPIPCH,LP,&sy=2021&ey=2028&ssm=0&scsm=1&scc=0&ssd=1&ssc=0&sic=0&sort=country&ds=.&br=1
Taking into account more metrics. Who is the one that contributed to the development of the world since the 2000s?
Let's see the Nobel Prizes and compare them...
Spain: ZERO.
Ukraine: ZERO.
Russia: SEVEN. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/
Who is the developed here in the metrics of research?
On education and school metrics: Russia has an adult literacy rate of 100%; (Spain) Spanish 15-year-olds are significantly below the OECD average of 493 in reading literacy, mathematics, and science. Ukraine was ranked 55th in 2023 in the Global Innovation Index. https://www.wipo.int/global_innovation_index/en/2023/index.html
*I will use my country as an example.
Honestly, I think the developed nation here is Russia. :eyes:
FACTS. NO PRESS AND MEDIA.
No, because Russia had a clear intention of deploying actually existing missiles.
Quoting boethius
Oh, so now you are talking about missiles which have NOT YET BEEN DEVELOPED? But you have clearly writtten:
Quoting boethius
So you are saying that Russia really did not like the positioning of non-existent missile bases with non-existent misssiles. And the FACT remains, that the US did not deploy such missiles in any new NATO countries since 1960s. Sure, they COULD do that, but the probability of this in the view of known facts remains low. Much lower than the probability of Russian re-invasion.
Quoting boethius
Again, you clearly have no idea what you are talking about. That is why I have asked you specifically for the types and ranges of missiles you meant: checking this up would save you from further embarassing yourself. So now is your chance again: read up on what kind of bases and missiles Russia has protested about.
Quoting boethius
In terms of ridiculousness the argument 'Ukraine could become so unstable that the US would deploy nukes there' reaches new heights. Obviously you are reduced to such arguments, because you have no others, simply because in view of the facts the Ukraine's alignment has practically no bearing on the deployment of nuclear weapons in Europe.
And, again, your argument is self-refuting. Finland has switched from neutral to being in NATO in a year. That is, if the US decides to adopt such aggressive stance as you describe, Ukraine's neutrality would make exactly zero difference, as its alignment can be changed much quicker than the US will be able to develop the infrastructure to use it. So against the nuclear threat you are describing any Ukrainian pledges would provide Russia with ZERO protection.
Russia's rank: 51st, Spain: 29th.
Well, I mean, the US already forward deployed its biolabs to Kyiv to work on "Slav-killing super viruses" that would be dispersed into Russia via "bats and pigeons," so nuclear weapons makes perfect sense.
Somewhere in the narrative shuffle, the biolabs theme seems to have been lost though, although if you go back enough pages in this thread...
You are so ignorant of the key issues that you are basically not worth talking to.
I will continue to do so, however, as I think you are well representative of the general ignorance of Western society.
There's literally a New York article entitled:
Quoting Title of the article
What is the very next sentence in the subtitle of the article?
Quoting Sub-title of the article
What are the points (made by experts) in said article?
Quoting On the Edge of a Polish Forest, Where Some of Putin’s Darkest Fears Lurk
And what is Putin quoted as saying?
Quoting On the Edge of a Polish Forest, Where Some of Putin’s Darkest Fears Lurk
And what is the key concern The New York Times brings up?
Quoting On the Edge of a Polish Forest, Where Some of Putin’s Darkest Fears Lurk
Again, what is the fantasy here is that some bullshit that will work handily in some Western echo chamber matters in the real world.
You actually think people doing actual risk analysis are going to be like "hmm, well today there's is not a missile that is produced that is literally labeled as 'Aegis Ashore compatible' so therefore there is nothing to worry about".
You really think switching out warheads in even the ABM missiles are some insurmountable task?
Risk analysis is about what people can do, what they might be motivated to do in the present as well as future scenarios ... not what some troll on the internet claims is not 100% already done, signed in blood, deployed in the tubes today, US forces themselves photographed and geolocated the nukes in the tube and the president of the United States already did a press conference with the photos, standing beside the missile bases with the nukes, assured everyone that the nukes are definitely in those tubes and, to make sure he couldn't be misunderstood, had already ordered several of the nukes to be fired to remove all possibility for doubt.
Again, as I said, plausible deniability, no matter how thin or implausible, in echo chambers is a great way to masterbate with fellow sycophants about whatever your point du jour is. It is not a serious framework for analysis.
Had the Soviets only deployed "missile bases" and "we don't know which missiles are in the missile tubes, tee hee hee" and "we haven't literally developed a missile called 'Surprise Mother Fuckers' and published the specification" and had some plausible deniability bullshit ... you're position is "well of course the US wouldn't have been concerned in the least".
And guess what!! The Soviets initially denied the photo evidence represented actual nukes. Did the US have "actual proof" the nukes were in what appeared to be missiles? No.
Plausible deniability does not matter at all in this sort of analysis or decision making.
Again, I repeat, analysis based on the idea that NATO bases and infrastructure does not represent a threat to anyone, is just dumb.
Your comments and your like-minded interlocutors, are relevant only as an example of how people gaslight themselves as well as can feel so confident to speak about subjects they don't even have the most basic factual knowledge of. Truly remarkable.
It is true that some metrics can differ from the main point, but the premise is they are more developed than us (my country) and Ukraine, although the abusive Western propaganda wants to urgently prove otherwise.
That is rather funny, given your following remarks.
Quoting On the Edge of a Polish Forest, Where Some of Putin’s Darkest Fears Lurk
It is not a point made by 'experts', it is a point made by Russians and just repeated by the journalist. Actual experts would point out that locating an offensive base within such range from Kaliningrad and Byelarus would not be optimal, to put it mildly, given the interception times. Moreover, their offensive capabilities, given the range and flight time of the relevant missiles, would be rather limited - you could get the same effect with a frigate in Baltic, which for the offensive purposes would have the advantage of not being in the same heavily observed spot. So much for your 'factual knowledge'.
Quoting boethius
Most likely unknowingly, given your 'factual knowledge', you describe the exact situation of Kaliningrad, 500 km from Berlin. Did NATO invade Kaliningrad for that reason? I cannot recall such situation.
Have you ever been to Spain? Have you ever been to Ukraine? Does this matter at all? :roll:
I haver never been to Japan but it is obvious that it is a developed and rich nation. What is your point?
Quoting boethius
Can you provide your evidence of Ukrainian Nazis who “have no hesitation to explicitly say their goal is a war with Russia and to destroy Russia”?
Quoting boethius
Can you provide your evidence for “it's mainly the Nazis that kept the war in the Donbas going and were killing so many civilians”?
Quoting boethius
Why "if not less" instead? As far as I’m concerned, there are two plausible reasons why Putin's propaganda machine is more free to manipulate the truth at home than Zelensky and Bibi’s propaganda machines in their respective home countries:
- Ukrainians and Israelis can have more easily access to views critical of the regime from the inside and the outside, than Russians. Even during wartime.
- Ukrainians and Israelis are exposed to direct feedback from relatives and friends engaged on the front line more easily than Russians.
Quoting boethius
As far as I’m concerned BOTH Russia and Ukraine may resort to spinning propaganda at convenience because that is another aspect to the war. Still there are different constraining factors which I can’t discount: in addition to the ones I mentioned earlier, there is the question of the propaganda addressing masses abroad, especially in the West because Ukraine depends totally on Western support for this war, Russia no. Now, given the democratic crisis in the West due to populism and anti-Americanism (promoted also by Russia), pro-Ukrainian propaganda is way more severely scrutinised than the Russian one. You and your sidekicks are the best example of this attitude in this thread. So I guess Ukraine would need to spin propaganda addressing Western masses more badly than Russia to gain Western support, and yet if it does, it may pay hard for that twice (when Russian deceptive propaganda against Ukraine succeeds and when Ukrainian deceptive propaganda fails), while Russia can play deceptively almost for free.
Quoting boethius
Quoting boethius
Quoting boethius
That’s a handy summary of your pro-Russian views. Not sure about its logic though.
So you conclude that Russia had sufficient reason to wage war against Ukraine from only these two premises:
- Russia was likely able to win against Ukraine.
- Ukraine was waging war against pro-Russian separatists in Donbas.
Is that right?
Quoting boethius
Your thought experiment discounts the fact that Canada and France are sovereign democratic and pluralistic countries. Yet I find it plausible that countries with strong democratic and pluralistic institutions may have constraints that would make an escalation to civil conflict or international conflict with similar countries way more unlikely than countries where such constraints are missing, like in strong authoritarian regimes as the Russian and weak democracies as the Ukrainian. BTW, as far as I'm concerned, that's also linked to the most compelling reason for Westerners to support Ukraine: to protect Western institutions from the political, economic and military threats coming from authoritarian regimes like Putin's.
Let me stop you right there, and apologize for (now leading you onto) this ? side-track:
Quoting boethius
Quoting jorndoe
(? see that? focus – "neutrality" – "what might we then have expected from the Kremlin" – "for an intact Ukraine" – please stick to the train of comments at hand)
Quoting boethius
Sure. Well, why did Imperial Japan lose out? (Nazi Germany?) I suppose we might consider when sovereignty is lowered by other concerns, though it could end up polluting the thread. This is where Putin-apologetics re-enter (apropos "like they covered their bases", e.g. irredentism).
Right, , anything unfavorable about Russia is a Western conspiracy. :D
Meanwhile in Georgia
President Grills Ivanishvili and GD in Final Address to Parliament, Offers to Mediate United Opposition Platform
[sup]— Civil Georgia · Jan 6, 2024[/sup]
More fingerprints.
[sup]— Srishti Singh Sisodia · WION · Nov 11, 2022[/sup]
Fundamentals of Security and Defense of the Motherland (en)
[sup]— To help the teacher · Nov 15, 2023[/sup]
This should bring back some Cold War memories, for some at least. It's worth noting that the only nuclear rattling lately has come from the Kremlin circle and North Korea, who appears to be partners. So, what's going on here? A "2nd cold war" path seems clear enough, though the rattlers haven't been particularly successful in provoking any such counter-rattling. Are those two attempting to reinvent the good old nuclear holocaust paranoia, to the point of domestic school curriculum...? Just your regular (warranted) updates to teaching kids? I don't know, except it doesn't seem random. Anyone have insights?
Recently western media, especially in Europe, is filled with high-ranking officers claiming that "there could be a war with Russia within the next five years".
Fearmongering at its worst.
It's hard to say whether these people are bought and paid for, or are really that short-sighted. I find both options equally likely.
It's completely nonsensical, since the Europeans themselves helped to facilitate war in Ukraine and forced Russia to expand their military operations by refusing negotiations and arming Ukraine to the teeth, even stripping their own militaries in the process!
If Europe wanted, it could stop dancing to Uncle Sam's tune tomorrow and have a negotiated settlement after which things could return roughly to normal. The fact they are not doing that, and choosing to warmonger instead, is picked up by the Russians and interpreted as a desire for conflict.
Europe truly has the most bone-headed leadership imaginable, but they play the role of Uncle Sam's stooges so, so well.
P1. If an omnipotent, omnibenevolent and omniscient X exists, then evil does not.
P2. There is evil in the world.
C1. Therefore, an omnipotent, omnibenevolent and omniscient X does not exist.
Now if one replaces X with Europe, US, the West, the Rest, voting Western citizen, multipolar world, anti-capitalist system, political ideology, humanity, political lobby, proletarian class, political leader, geopolitical expert, anti-system journalist, military-industrial complex, etc. one can hopefully see how intellectually myopic and hypocritical the "THEY could if THEY wanted" argument used as a bludgeon by the populist propaganda can be.
It seems more like they managed to come up with that by themselves (2023Dec31, Starovoyt), now apparently to the point of domestic school curriculum.
But, yes, recently there have been some military types (German, Polish, Nordic, Baltic) having aired concerns of them being attacked, however unlikely that seems (fearmongering of sorts).
Quoting Feb 5, 2024
The Kremlin sent operatives into Donbas to organize propagandize stage insurge arm shoot for years (eventually culminating with the invasion). Standard playbook. Oddly enough, they employ extremists of the sort they claim to be after in the first place (2023Oct8).
If we suppose for a moment they hadn't done all that crap (including invade), then Kyiv would have to constitutionally recognize minorities as per EU requirements/standards, as part of their EU membership negotiations. And why wouldn't they? It's not like they're anti-Tatar for example.
But that's a bit late now. The Kremlin's ongoing :fire: efforts, have created animosity (2024Jan18, 2023Aug22) that will take a while to heal.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraines-zelenskiy-says-time-has-come-changes-top-military-2024-02-08/
Only a totalitarian ass removes a person who perceives him as an enemy just because the people give more credibility to himself. This is why the state and Duma of Russia are so screwed, man.
What a minute! It is Zelenskiy who is acting like a totalitarian. What a bloody surprise. Folks, I thought he was running for the Nobel of Peace.
Surprisingly, this breakig news is not shared by @jorndoe. What do your journalists and media say about this non-democratic act?
It is Putin's fault. Zaluzhnyi is friends with him. :lol:
(I don't think Zaluzhnyi ran for office, though, .)
Zelensky's choice can be questioned and is controversial, given Zaluzhnyi's popularity, but that has nothing to do with totalitarianism or democracy:
"The Armed Forces of Ukraine (Ukrainian: ??????? ???? ??????? (???), romanized: Zbroini syly Ukrainy; abbreviated as ZSU or AFU) are the military forces of Ukraine. All military and security forces, including the Armed Forces, are under the command of the President of Ukraine and subject to oversight by a permanent Verkhovna Rada parliamentary commission. They trace their lineage to 1917, while the modern armed forces were formed after Ukrainian independence in 1991."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armed_Forces_of_Ukraine
It's Zelensky who appointed Zaluzhnyi as commander-in-chief and if Zelensky estimates that Zaluzhnyi is no longer fit for the job, he has the presidential power to replace him. Besides Ukraine is under martial law which grants the Ukrainian President democratically elected to constrain democratic life in wartime (like postponing presidential elections), always under the supervision of a democratically elected parliamentary commission.
The point experts made was just noting the distance to Russia (which you shouldn't need experts to point of the obvious, but in our conversation it seems to be necessary), you then take the point that literally follows:
Quoting boethius
... Which is pretty normal they would cite Russias concerns as according to Russia.
Again, you are so ignorant of the topic that you are not worth discussing except as an example of just how extreme people's ability to gaslight themselves and others really is.
Quoting Jabberwock
Oh, so you're saying it would be even better for NATO to move it's infrastructure even closer to Russia, like say in Ukraine?
You're literally making my points for me.
Now, yes, you can launch a missile from anywhere, but as I've explained that's not how risk analysis works.
You don't start risk analysis with "well, anything could happen really so therefore there is nothing in particular to pay attention to".
For example, take ships or submarines, trying to equate them with ground bases ... therefore there's no additional risk, is first simply a straight invalid argument form.
Even if we assumed the risk was the same ... then that's just more of the same risk. Russia and the US don't just have 1 submarine each that can end civilization, they have whole bunch each! So, if you wanted to consider missile bases on the ground the same kind of risk as a submarine, then the US is simply adding more submarines to their fleet inviting a response from Russia.
How an actual nuclear strike would occur is not some sneak attack, but a series of escalations in which one side concludes they have an "edge" and their best move is to strike first. Gaining an edge is about number of missiles (enough missiles to completely obliterate the opposing side as well as intercept a large number of the opposing missiles - some will certainly still get through but there's a difference between 10 nukes landing on your cities and 1000), which is why arsenals grew to such stupendous amounts at the height of the Cold War: enough nukes to target all their nukes (ideally multiple times), and then enough to survive both first strike and ABM interceptions and so on.
Of course, neither side in the Cold War could actually get to this comfortable position of having literally 10x more nukes than the other side, and a MAD balance of forces just requires missile parity (therefore it was rational to negotiate a reduction in the arsenal to avoid the chances of an accidental nuclear war).
However, in climbing down from the stupendous amount of warheads at the height of the Cold War, with the addition of advanced intelligence, targeting and ABM systems, you can start to come up with plans where you can (potentially) tactically outsmart your opponent in a first strike.
Of course, the US claims that it needs to develop these systems to protect itself from rogue actors, but all these systems have duel first strike use.
And that is simply in equating the risk of missile bases and submarines, doing so is anyways simply factually incorrect.
You can try to find ships and submarines on the high-seas, which if you do provides early warning.
A first strike is unlikely to be completely by surprise and out of the blue, as you'd still be likely killing tens of millions of your own citizens, but is much more likely in a series of escalations and the more missiles one side has closer to the other, the more likely they'll conclude they'll be better off after a nuclear exchange; likewise, because of this, the more likely the side at a disadvantage will first strike those bases leading to further unintended nuclear escalation.
In such a scenario the Americans would be like "Why'd you blow up the bases!" and the Russians would be like "We got scared so we blew them up!" and then the Americans would be like "They were totally there only for missile defence Iran, you just killed thousands of people for nothing, now we need to blow something up of yours!" to which the Russians would respond "You better not you Imperialist dogs!"
It's in these sorts of war games where you conclude that the more missiles closer to your border is very much a bad thing and therefore if you do not respond to NATO forward deploying missile bases then they'll just keep doing more of that.
The next thing you do is renew your ICBM capabilities and develop hypersonic intermediate missiles to be able to strike all the forward operating bases (either with conventional or nuclear weapons).
The argument that "well, the US is good and wouldn't hurt a fly so no one should worry about their weapons and where they are" is just stupid.
If I take out a gun and point it at you, you do not need to be convinced I intend to kill you to recognize the threat and react; if I then come closer to you with my gun drawn and slowly approaching your head ... the fact that I say I mean you no harm is not so reassuring. Would you let me do this if you had some chance of reacting and reducing the threat before I get my gun pressed up against your head? You have no evidence I intend you any harm: Maybe it's just a joke or Iran is hiding behind under your hat and I might have to take them out? Why does what I physically do with my weapon matter to you?
I'm honestly not sure you have the analytical ability to answer the question, so I will go ahead and do it for you. The reason you react to the threat is because the impact of me shooting you in the head (even by accident) is very high and therefore the risk that I do intend you harm or the gun goes off by accident warrants whatever action you can do to reduce the risk, such as drawing your gun and pointing it at me and telling me to back off, it's not funny and if Iran did actually live under your hat you'd blow your head off because you're a patriot.
If Putin had done this... Wow, all the press of the world would have gone mad against them. As I said, I will let time speak for itself, and we will discover how Zelensky actually is. You state we have to respect how the government acts towards the Armed Forces of Ukraine, although it is flawed.
OK, I ask you why don't we respect the 65th article of the Russian constitution too? :smile:
na zdravie!
Guess what!
Quoting Front de libération du Québec
Extremists also were in the FLQ, later sheltered by Cuba (maybe supported by Cuba or then the Soviets all along!?!?! who knows).
I said there were not circumstances in which I viewed a war against Quebec as justified due to separation. They want to separate, their provincial government declared independence, I would not view it as justified to have waged war against Quebec to subjugate them, even if there were Cuban or Soviet agents involved, and violence and extremism.
I specifically gave the example of a scenario in which France was physically next to Quebec and did whatever Russia did in the Donbas.
Countries breaking up has has happened a lot throughout history, it isn't "the end of the world", so if Quebec didn't attack us English Canadians I would not have, and still don't, view it as justified to have waged war on Quebec to maintain some sort of "Canadian pride" or whatever. It would be time to negotiate with this new political entity (whether controlled by the blasted French or not) and learn to live together. What would shelling Hull across the Ottawa river accomplish?
Furthermore, France was (and still is) a far more powerful country than Canada, so how would provoking a war with France have served English Canadian interests?
Canada is big so maybe France couldn't completely defeat us, but they'd do far more damage to us than we'd do to them, we wouldn't get Quebec back ... so what would be the point of the war?
I went through NATO training (in Canada) and one of the rules of war explained to me is that military action must have a military reason. Officer went through a long history of warfare with the catch phrase "then history evolved!" to explain each new rule we were expected to follow compared to the days of literally launching diseased corpses on catapults over city walls.
Military action must reasonably serve attainable military objectives, independent of the political situation and the political goals. Political justification of the goal does to justify a military campaign if it has no reasonable chance of attaining the military objectives.
We were instructed to surrender when further military objectives could no longer reasonably achieve the military objectives and further fighting would simply cause further loss of life without the potential of changing outcomes. Of course, reasonable chance in this context can be a small chance, depending on the impact of the goal in question in the context (i.e. fighting a hopeless rearguard action is justified in allowing the escape of a larger part of the forces); so actual analysis can be very complicated, but the basic point is that it is against the rules of war to fight on principle alone. Some wars are won, some wars are lost, the principle of minimizing harm reduces the likelihood of spirals of escalating violence (which we now see in Israel-Palestine can escalate all the way to genocide; overwhelming force being just as unreasonable in attaining a military objective as too little force to matter, which is why the other foundation of the rules of war is proportionality).
And guess what's totally not allowed?
Shelling civilians in Donetsk.
So I don't have much sympathy, on simply a soldier to soldier basis, for the Ukrainian forces.
Even according to our own Western civilians, Russia has killed less civilians in nearly 2 years of war than Israel has in 2 months ... yet Putin is Hitler and what Israel is doing is ugly but just the "reality of war".
The West has no moral high ground at the moment.
I wish it weren't so.
The full interview between Tucker Carlson and Vladimir Putin with English translation.
Carlson did a pretty professional job. It's also worth noting how remarkable it is that Putin is willing to sit down for a two-hour, non-scripted interview with a foreign journalist. I don't think many western leaders would be prepared to do that under today's circumstances.
The base in Redzikowo has three MK41 tubes with 8 cells each. That is 24 cells total.
A single Ticonderoga-class destroyer has 122 cells. The US has 22 of those. Arleigh Burke-class destroyer has 90 cells, there are 73 in the active service. If you take just those two classes of ships, you get almost 10000 cells. But that is comparison of capabilities of just a single type of a missile launcher... Of course, if you add all NATO frigates, etc. the disproportion would be much greater. And that is just tactical missiles - in a nuclear war SLBMs would have a much greater impact.
So sure, if you have 1000 guns pointed at you, if you add one, technically it is more. The question is, how much of a difference it makes, given that you also point 1000 guns at the other guy. By your logic, NATO should bomb Kaliningrad each time Russia puts a new frigate into service and sends it to the Baltic - as even a single frigate has more missile capacity than the Polish Aegis base.
For the sake of people following who don't want to live in total delusion, I'll explain things again to you.
Quoting Jabberwock
Your ability to not think, even for a moment, of you say is truly remarkable.
I explained it: moving ships to Russia's shores would be a provocation. How do you get 73 Arleigh Burke-class destroyer's next to St. Petersburg to quickly strike at targets in Russia.
Obviously you don't, there would a Naval blockade before then.
Likewise if you sent all your nuclear submarines to surround Russias shores for a first strike. Maybe it works ... but maybe it doesn't. There's a risk your ships are detected, and if not today, Russia can act on that threat by developing better detection capabilities.
To what extent US submarines can avoid detection close to Russia's shores I don't know, but they anyways would take time to get into position, and any realistic scenario of nuclear escalation it is not pre-planned. If Russian analysts sit down and consider the scenario where the US undertakes a first strike totally out of the blue, zero political tensions, maybe they conclude they can't really do much about that, other than strive to have a survivable counter strike capability. It's also an unlikely scenario as it's unclear that the US president could successfully order such an operation.
Again, risk analysis is about managing the spectrum of likely scenarios.
This involves:
1. Evaluating what this spectrum of likely scenarios are.
then:
2. Identifying what scenarios are "actionable intelligence"; there are things that can be done that reduces the risk.
finally:
3. A cost-effectiveness optimization of what series of actions lower overall risk over the spectrum as a whole, at an acceptable cost (which is just another way to say there's some larger risk analysis assessment where devoting more resources would create some greater risks elsewhere).
You can always imagine scenarios that are not actionable at an acceptable cost. I could be struck by a falling bullet at anytime, but I don't hide in a bunker because the cost isn't acceptable.
Likewise, for what is actionable, such as wearing a seatbelt in a car, you can always imagine a scenario where that is what kills you; you were a seatbelt because the spectrum of likely scenarios is weighted towards the seatbelt helping.
This is all really basic stuff. I definitely don't expect you to be able to follow, but I hope it helps others.
Quoting Jabberwock
For the reasons stated above, this is not the case, as the US doesn't have all these ships and submarines in Russian waters, positioned to strike all the time.
And you just completely ignore that this single base is (if not action is taken to discourage further bases) perhaps a trend and one of many to follow.
Anyways, typical American logic: I have a 1000 guns pointed at you already! Why do you care about 1 more!? You're overly sensitive!!!
... Well why are you so insistent on 1 more, perhaps it is the one that makes the operational difference, and if I don't do anything abbot 1, maybe it becomes 10 and then 100 and then 1000.
That's just common sense reaction to increasing the threat. Why? Why increase the threat?
The US attitude is just that they do because they can ... but ok, still, why?
You might say, well US is irrational, just likes putting missiles bases here and there even if it's a needless provocation, but precisely because US acts irrationally is why you shouldn't worry.
But no!! If there's no rational reason for the base, that's even more alarming to any normal person.
If you're capable of irrationally forward deploying your missiles then you're capable of irrationally conducting a first strike and killing millions of your own citizens simply because you'll kill more of ours.
That's how this sort of analysis goes, so you react to mitigate the threat: more missiles, faster missiles, invade Ukraine so the missile bases can't get at least that close.
Now, as mentioned, this isn't sufficient reason to invade Ukraine but it is one more factor of consideration and a big consideration for the military establishment to support the war (wars usually happen when there is both political and military establishment consensus; maybe Putin's main reason is just to get Russia's land back, typical political ambition, but then the military looks at it and says and says "NATO is forward deploying so it is the time for action").
You're fundamental mistake is thinking that just because you don't think nuclear escalation is likely and so there's no action to take about it, that therefore military analysts and military decision makers reason the same way. I can guarantee you they don't, they are paid and trained to analyze the military situation independent of any political consideration. Military people don't care that they don't think there's a political situation today that would result in a war, they are paid to prepare for any likely war anyways (if the likeliest war isn't very likely, non-evil soldiers are happy about that ... but they prepare for it as a first priority anyways).
When the US forward deploys military assets the opposing militaries, in this case Russia, start planning and routines and conduct war games to destroy it. The very fact you're developing various plans and position forces to destroy something is convincing evidence that it's a threat to you.
The fact no civilian believes it is a "actual threat" is not how soldiers operate. It's there, it could shoot us, therefore we will plan to shoot it first if ordered to do so.
To outdo the Redzikowo base, you do not have to move ALL US ships into the Baltic. In fact, you do not need any US ships at all: ANY single German frigate would outfire the Redzikowo base. I know it can be a shock to you, but German military ships are regularly sailing the Baltic Sea and they are not blockaded each time by Russia (and so do the American ones and other NATO ships - USS Gravely - i.e. the equvalent of four Redzikowo bases, was recently in a Polish port, with no Russian blockades). To have an equivalent of the Aegis OFFENSIVE capability, all NATO has to do is literally put into service another frigate. I will tell you a military not-so-much-a-secret: they do that quite often, with no or little Russian protests. Quite possibly, because Russians commission new missile platforms (and new missile types) quite often, too, EACH of which is much more powerful than the Aegis base in offensive capabilities. So in fact neither NATO nor Russia protest adding to the 1000 already pointed weapons, they do it routinely.
Quoting boethius
'Surround Russia's shores'? You are so out of your element that it is comical. Trident II has the range of 7500 km. Tomahawk's range is 2500 km. That is, a SLBM submarine, to reach the same targets as the Redzikowo base, needs to be... in the middle of Atlantic. In fact, SLBMs can reach the exact same targets from the OTHER side - while sailing around Alaska. Not to mention the Mediterranean Sea... Your fundamental mistake is that you are repeatedly doing 'analyses' based on your very limited knowledge of the facts.
This is sort of a red herring. The threat from Aegis Ashore is that it can shoot down Russia's ballistic missiles, not that the cells there could be used to launch an attack. Aegis interceptors have shot down SRBMs, IRBMS, and even ICBM targets in public tests. For intercepting Russian missiles, location is indeed incredibly important, and Aegis Ashore systems, be they in Poland or Korea, offer interception options that naval assets, being necessarily bound to the sea, can't offer. Plus, they don't have to go into port for maintenance.
You are right though that those sites do not worry Russia because of new US strike capabilities. The B-2 and B-21, which offer the possibility of a large, undetected, first strike, are far more dangerous in terms of decapitation/counter force attacks. The threat rather is that US ABM might become comprehensive enough that pounding the table and yelling about your mostly 40-year-old nuclear arsenal is no longer convincing. This is critical in that Russian behavior re Georgia or Ukraine would probably be dealt with the way the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait was dealt with, but for their nuclear arsenal.
If anything, the Ukraine War has only made this threat more acute, as it has simultaneously shown the weakness of Russian conventional forces and destroyed Russia's vast supply of old Soviet assets. Not only this, but it certainly has to call into question the readiness of Russian nuclear assets, given the corruption and lack of preparation shown in the rest of the armed forces. After all, they are, on paper, maintaining an arsenal 33% larger than the US one on a budget less than 2% of the size. The US nuclear budget, which we know to have been quite inadequate for the upkeep for all the weapons allowed under current treaties, is about the size of the entire Russian defense budget prior to the war. Nuclear weapons are not cheap, and they also aren't the sort of thing you can stick on a shelf and expect to work at a moment's notice years later. Tritium-based weapons from the Cold War are highly unlikely to actually work (not that anyone should bank on that lol).
Yes, I know that. It is boethius who insists that Aegis are 'forward nuclear bases' which pose a threat of the first strike.
Quoting boethius
... is a mad mess and has been for a while.
Given what we know now about the negotiations that took place in March/April 2022 in Istanbul, further questionmarks arise.
However, in the Tucker Carlson interview, Putin addressed this and said the following on the topic of the negotiations:
Quoting Vladimir Putin
Even though Putin clearly isn't a source that can be trusted at face value, this story is congruent with much of the factual information known to us, namely the intentional boycotting of the Istanbul negotiations by the West. Therefore I find Putin's story plausible.
It appears that not only did the West block negotiations, but that those negotiations were used in bad faith to get a concession out of the Russians which could be subsequently spun as a "great Ukrainian victory".
If this is true, and in my opinion it likely is, the clown car that is the European leadership is in a worse state than I thought.
Scholz and Macron spun a 'crafty' scheme at the expense of, first of all, the Ukrainians, and secondly at the expense of their own nations' welfare.
I'm not sure what these clowns were thinking, sacrificing all their diplomatic credibility and the chance of a peaceful settlement for the sake of spinning some meaningless propaganda. I bet they got headpats from Washington, though.
It begs the question, why is the West so disinterested in peace? Or dare I say, interested in prolonged war? Who benefits? Surely not the Europeans, so whose interests do Scholz and Macron represent? Uncle Sam's perhaps?
Dude, you made all this effort to flood this thread with your self-serving pro-Russian ruminations from the start till now, you might as well finish them by yourself.
You misunderstood. I was simply pointing out that in Ukraine, as in other democratic countries, presidents are entitled to hire/fire commanders-in-chief of the armed forces, and to invoke martial laws (which in Ukraine must be approved by the Verkhovna Rada) constraining freedoms and democratic life in wartime. So firing Zaluzhnyi by president Zelensky is controversial given Zaluzhnyi's competence and popularity, but that doesn't qualify the decision as an act of totalitarianism or lack of democracy. So much so that the popular Zalushny himself before getting fired was pressing Zelensky to make an unpopular decision of mass mobilization (500k new troops) which Zalushny believed as necessary:
“We must acknowledge the significant advantage enjoyed by the enemy in mobilizing human resources and how that compares with the inability of state institutions in Ukraine to improve the manpower levels of our armed forces without the use of unpopular measures”.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/02/02/zaluzhny-zelensky-white-house/
In other words, unpopular decisions of establishing martial laws, mass mobilization or removing a popular commander-in-chief can’t reasonably be taken as acts incompatible with democratic regimes in wartimes.
Quoting javi2541997
Maybe you missed my previous quote from wikipedia so I'll repost it again:
"The Armed Forces of Ukraine (Ukrainian: ??????? ???? ??????? (???), romanized: Zbroini syly Ukrainy; abbreviated as ZSU or AFU) are the military forces of Ukraine. All military and security forces, including the Armed Forces, are under the command of the President of Ukraine and subject to oversight by a permanent Verkhovna Rada parliamentary commission. They trace their lineage to 1917, while the modern armed forces were formed after Ukrainian independence in 1991."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armed_Forces_of_Ukraine
In other words, until we hear Verkhovna Rada complaining about the legitimacy of Zelensky’s decision to fire Zaluzhnyi , we can safely assume that Zelensky’s decision was a legitimate exercise of the Ukrainian President’s powers in wartime still compatible with democratic standards.
Quoting javi2541997.
If Putin replaced a competent and popular general while preventing the latter from obtaining a new mass mobilization to keep fighting the Ukrainians, pro-Ukrainians would more likely rejoice than get mad, of course.
Quoting javi2541997
That's false . Indeed, you can not quote me making such a claim.
But do notice one important fact: where Putin starts. He starts from history from the creation of Rus, hence for the long term here is something really important for Putin. Westerners typically don't give a shit about history or anything that happened a decade ago, but for Putin history (and his role in Russian history) means a lot. He isn't focused much in the next elections, but the long run. Hence the importance to what for example Putin has written about Ukraine and Russia is very important in understanding this war. And that simply refutes any idea that this was just about NATO expansion (and if that hadn't happened, Russia/Putin wouldn't care about Ukraine).
Yes, when Putin himself clearly denies Ukrainian statehood, declares he has right to shape Ukraine's borders and insists the war will not end until 'denazification', it is hard to argue that 'it was all about NATO'.
And this fact that Russia has been an Empire (if for some time called Soviet Union) is the basic reason just why the countries wanted so much into NATO. Even now Finland and Sweden too.
So well said.
Quoting Jabberwock
There's so much wrong with your reasoning here I'll put it in a nice list.
1. We're now far from your 1000 to 1 ratio here.
2. If political tensions were high Russia may very well start blockading US ships in the Baltic (not to mention that even now may have ships and aircraft closer to the ship you're talking about than an inland base; you simply fail to integrate the differences).
3. ABM itself is part of nuclear first strike capability.
4. The base may very well be not so significant at its current capabilities ... but its capabilities maybe augmented in the future covertly or overtly at any time.
5. Regardless of current or future capabilities, the base maybe one of many and even if each base was somehow kept at under-capacity to a frigate ... and so enough of them starts to add significantly to your 1001 points. Your "we only want one" logic just doesn't matter, everyone knows Americans are a gluttonous people.
6. Germany and the other Baltic states are non-nuclear powers, so nuclear shenanigans are far less likely coming from equipment under their command. American bases with American soldiers are de facto under American command.
7. Your whole argument is just dumb because if the bases add zero relevant military capability ... why build them in the first place? Even if what you said was true, an opponent would not conclude "well they're just wasting their money to create a provocation for nothing" but would assume the bases (especially considering the political costs they come at) must serve a critical purpose.
8. American does not even have a no-first-use doctrine, so you can't blame other powers for not taking America at it's word (when it comes to destructive violence); America has a first-use doctrine and therefore you should assume America prepares for first use-strike capability and even subtle military moves maybe critical in a first strike operation. You do realize "deception" is apart of warfare?
Some key concepts you clearly lack:
There's the whole issue of following orders to carry out a nuclear strike; the theory of the nuclear powers is that if you train people regularly to carry out a nuclear strike then enough of them (though unlikely all) will do so basically out of habit. You could also solve the problem by putting absolute off-the-wall psychopaths you are confident are frothing at the mouth to kill millions of people in charge of the nuclear keys, but then you might have nuclear war when you didn't want it, which is inconvenient at the best of times (the codes are supposed to mitigate this possibility, but in the past US set the codes to all zeros, totally legally as the order did not specify "codes that are hard to guess"; so maybe the code system works but you don't want to solely rely on it).
So, imagining a threat vector where US secretly orders German boats to fire nuclear weapons is very improbable, so improbable that it may not be actionable at all (but if it is, the plan would be to shoot them first if need be).
Likewise, the threat vector of seal team six being ordered to find a rusty fishing boat and take a covertly developed hypersonic ballistic missile and just sort of drift into Russia's shoreline and fire at Moscow for a totally out-of-the-blue decapitation strike, is not necessarily easy to pull off starting with the commanders currently in charge of the nuclear warheads wondering why you want a nuke again.
The likely result of the civilian authority ordering a totally out-of-the-blue nuclear first strike is some sort of military coup to hold elections on the topic.
Brining us to the next key concept you lack which is a threat model.
You can always imagine an opponent having so much greater capabilities and sophistication that anything you do does not help and is in fact counter productive. Which in the realm of ontological possibility things could really be that way (we could be in a simulation and I am an AI program with astronomical amounts of information and computing power sent to this forum just to thwart your every move and you have zero chance of scoring a single point; you know, that's totally possible, but you don't give up just because I maybe a super intelligence outside the universe as you know it basically toying with you; rather, what's more likely is that I am just a person capable of making human mistakes and that's your "threat model" you base your actions on).
The likely threat model of nuclear war is nuclear escalation.
One thing about ships is that they can move, relevant in both directions. If they are moving towards you and into position to fire, then you can blockade or even first strike them if you feel the need, as mentioned above.
But as critical ships can also move in the opposite direction thus deescalating the situation, a land base can't so easily move, so in a series of escalations involving ships the offensive side can easily back off at anytime (such as in the cuban missile crisis, Soviet ships backed away from America and the situation deescalated). Land bases can't do that, so in the same series of escalations you may see an ultimatum of moving these forward deployed bases backwards, which much more difficult both logistically and politically, so the ultimatum is rejected, now if the threat is not made good on you take a political hit as well as you may legitimately believe a first strike would start from these bases so taking them out would remove or reduce the threat of a full nuclear exchange (also demonstrates your weapons "work" in real world conditions, of which any doubt about supports the idea of a first strike).
In short, the bases change the strategic outlook and provoke a reaction.
As mentioned, I am not arguing the forward deployed missile bases are sufficient reason to invade Ukraine (in some absolute sense or then for Russia's military establishment, the Kremlin or Putin) but it is an additional reason to do so (prevent further forward deployment of these bases). If you simply had the bases but no NATO-Ukraine footsie, maybe Russia would just develop some new missiles and learn to live with this new threat (like all the previous threats).
Again, the major reason for a large war (in my view) was that there was already the war in the Donbas which Russia could not deescalate (despite 2 major diplomatic efforts the West later gloated was a bad faith move on their part and the part of Ukraine), would not play domestically to abandon the Russian speakers there even if Putin wanted to (which he definitely doesn't), leaving only one choice of completely demolishing Ukraine's military capability and economic viability over the long term. NATO-Ukraine footsie, forward deployed bases, resources, land-bridge to Crimea, are simply additional reasons to the inevitability of the war starting in 2014 escalating to a major conflict.
https://www.gov.pl/web/diplomacy/mfa-statement-on-president-vladimir-putins-10-lies-on-poland-and-ukraine-which-were-not-rectified-by-tucker-carlson-interview-of-8-february-2024
The historical claims are pretty easy to verify. In other words, Putin just openly lied to Carlson, completely unchallenged. In other words, when Putin says he was 'forced' to attack Ukraine, he is as believable as when he claims that Hitler was 'forced' to attack Poland in 1939.
I'm putting into practice your 1000 points of capability already exist greater than the base.
This is your reasoning.
To actually get these 1000 points of capability (missile frigates and submarines and so on) to a similar position as the base (which is close to Russia, that's why they don't like it) you have to sail these 1000 points of capability right up to Russias shores.
This is your scenario you propose in order to show that: Yes, you agree the base is additional capability added to that of the navy, but not significant enough additional capability to warrant mitigating action. It's just 1001 capability instead of 1000.
For your comparison to work, all those 1000 points of capability need to be as close to Russia as the base is.
ICBM's in silos and nuclear ballistic subs are second strike weapons, they are part of the MAD homeostasis.
If Russia has no plan to strike America then it has little fear of second strike capability.
What nuclear strategists worry about is a first strike.
To conduct a first strike you need different weapon systems, faster and closer to try to take out as much command and control and second strike capability as possible to then "fair better" in a post-nuclear exchange world. Sure, New York may still get hit ... but who cares about them anyways, is the logic of the first strike.
The consequences of a nuclear first strike is so high that reducing its probability any noticeable amount is almost always justifiable.
Therefore, if invading Ukraine reduces the probability of increasing vulnerability to a first strike (by reducing the probability of further forward deployment of US missile bases, and therefore reduces the probability of actual first strike occurring), then it is almost trivial exercise to conclude invading Ukraine is morally necessary.
As horrifying as the war in Ukraine is, it is morally and historically insignificant compared to a general nuclear exchange.
Now, what I am explaining above is how people paid to conduct this sort of analysis will go about things. Of course, they would have information I don't, they may also be smarter or then less smarter than me (especially if I'm a nearly eternal extra-your-universe AI sent here to the forum to frustrate you), so I am not saying my analysis matches their analysis but I am explaining the framework that would be used to evaluate nuclear strategy and military decisions.
Of course, developing new weapons is another approach, but Russia's economy is much smaller than that of the US so their worry is that they can be over-matched in nuclear capabilities and in conjunction to other strategic weaknesses (like a Ukraine in NATO and hosting several US missile bases) they would be vulnerable to a first strike in the future.
Furthermore, this entire process of nuclear escalation is unilaterally started and moved along by the US:
A. They sign non-proliferation treaties at the executive level but then don't ratify the treaties so it doesn't actually mean more than a gesture "we good bro?".
B. They drop out of these treaties they haven't even entered into, starting with the ABM treaty while rejecting to even discuss Putin's offer to jointly develop anti-rogue state ABM capability (an interesting part of the Tucker-Putin interview).
C. They then go ahead and actually develop new first strike nuclear ABM treaty as well as new warheads.
D. They forward deploy missiles bases that can be used in a nuclear first strike.
E. They have an official first-use policy.
F. They play footsie with Ukraine in a will-they-won't-they start WWIII somewhere down the line and have fun doing it, such as having a little sexy coup-play intermittent with their military copulation.
So, anyone who is not American would look at these sorts of things and say to themselves ... hmmm, maybe the US really is crazy enough to try to put in place a first strike capability.
Now, I get where you're coming from and empathize with your position. As the old saying goes, when all you have is bullshit everything seems like you're a complete idiot.
That is my point, there are some differences but even if you removed those differences and even if I accepted completely you're and others account of things (Russian spies and provocateurs and so on) and make the situation exactly the same (substituting France for Russia), I would not see English Canada waging war on French separatists as either justifiable nor having a military chance of any real success if the FLQ took over Quebec and was backed by France.
Of course, the dissimilates is why things didn't play out remotely the same way, but my point is that even if the situation was made the same I did not feel I had a right as an English Canadian to prevent by force the recognized government of Quebec separating from Canada (even if it was supported by French intelligence).
Borders change, countries expand and contract throughout history, it's not a moral imperative to keep borders the same (it's a complex moral, political and military issue to what extent and under what conditions is fighting over borders justifiable).
However, sometimes political subunits "get away" and, in particular if you have little hope of re-conquering them, that's "just how it is".
No, we are not. Add up all the missile tubes from just the non-US NATO ships and the Redzikowo tubes are still insignificant.
Quoting boethius
Oh, so you do not even know where Redzikowo is. Not that it surprises me. And you seem to miss what has already been written: with the NATO presence in the Baltic already, Redzikowo makes very little difference.
Quoting boethius
Sure, ABMs are a factor in the first strike doctrine. The issue is that you got confused and you believe it is because of their offensive capabilities. That just shows how little you know about the things you discuss.
Quoting boethius
Well, if missile launchers can just be added 'covertly', then the whole discussion is pointless, as we do not know how many covert missile launchers Russia has put covertly in, say, Belarus. And, again, you clearly do not know what you are talking about.
Quoting boethius
It is not just a slippery slope, it is more of a rollecoaster. You can make the exact same argument to ANY weapon, from destroyers, through frigates to warheads themselves. 'If we allow them to have one warhead, they will have a million'. No, that is not how any arms race works.
Quoting boethius
Oh, so Americans will just smuggle nuclear warheads. Right. Your disconnect from reality makes this discussion rather absurd.
Quoting boethius
I did not say that the bases add zero relevant military capability. They add a significant military capability - defensive one. That was the actual Russian concern - that their offensive capabilities will be diminished, even though US stated their are not the point of those. However, given that the argument 'you cannot defend yourself so well!' is somewhat harder to sell, they have also made the claims about the supposed offensive capabilities - which theoretically exists, but in fact are barely relevant. As can be seen, those more ignorant about those issues fell for it - like you and some journalists.
Quoting boethius
But I am not taking America at its word, I am just pointing out that, contrary to your claims, Aegis bases have negligible offensive potential compared to SLBMs and other shorter range launch platforms.
The rest of your fantasies is not really worth answering to... The idea of the first strike initiated from shorter range immobile platforms is beyond absurd. If you point a gun at someone who points a gun at you, you do not start the fight by kicking him in the shin.
Quoting boethius
You forgot to mention that the war in Donbas was instigated and started by the Russian Federation, with significant participation of soldiers from the RF. Girkin clearly stated that locals were not interested in starting the hostilities. To 'deescalate' all Russia had to do was to withdraw its troops and support for separatists (or not start the war in the first place). Even then, the war mostly deescalated itself: 50 Ukrainian soldiers were killed in 2020 in the zone, so it was a typical Russian 'frozen conflict'. Further escalation was started with significant build-up of Russian forces in 2021. Thus your scenario, as usual, has little relation to reality.
Basically yes, Macron and Scholz represent the US interest to:
1. Harm the Euro and remove that competition to the Dollar.
2. Create a permanent schism East-West in Eurasia and prevent Eurasian economic integration in which the US just becomes largely irrelevant to world affairs.
3. Sell LNG to Europe.
3. Create a new cold war in which the US arms industry is super relevant (and profitable).
4. More-or-less consolidate Europe as vassal states (satellites as Putin refers to them) in every economic, political and military dimension possible.
If China has BRICS, then the US will have North-America, Central America and Europe.
If you can't be any longer the top dog of the entire world, you want to at least carve out as big a piece as possible in which to continue to be top dog in.
One role US nuclear escalation has, that I describe above, is in provoking Russia into invading Ukraine. Accomplishing the above goals simply requires Russia to invade Ukraine, there's not really any other way to do it. You need a really big "new situation" to undo EU-Russia economic collaboration.
Why European leaders didn't stop the process (which they easily could have) is not that they take orders directly from the US.
Rather, from what I can see, the US has managed to weaponize humanist liberal values.
Neo-liberalism is essentially the ideology of US Imperialism in vassal states, it's the discursive framework in which the US Imperial core exchanges information with vassal satellite states (both in direct diplomatic exchange as well as cultural products).
Neo-conservatism is the ideology of the US Imperial core "kept for us" that operates behind this discursive surface exchange with vassals states within which how Neo-liberalism can be used to manipulate vassals can be understood and discussed and decisions taken.
"Culture" being just one dimension of "full spectrum dominance" that is the foundational principle of Neo-conservatism.
In more abstract terms, Neo-liberalism is a conceptual structure with its own internal logic (mostly delusional) and mode of operation, under which can operate a more realistic conceptual structure that can maintain and renew the upper level as well as manipulate it for the "actual goals".
"Prosperity for all" is the foundational principle of Neo-liberalism, so sounds good and if you're paid to believe it, why not?
One essentially permanent manifestation of this dynamic is invoking Neo-liberalism anytime it's desirable to remove trade barriers and then invoking "common sense US national interest" anytime you want to be protective. The conceptual contradiction between Neo-liberalism and "US national interest" is simply never addressed; it's basically "Neo-liberalism unless we say otherwise!".
In practice how this works is that the economic faculties of the prestigious Universities are jealously guarded by either true Neo-liberal believers or then closet Neo-conservatives who understand the need for a cast of what are essentially economic priests. So, when Neo-liberalism is what benefits the Imperial core then these economists appear in the media to talk about free trade and how much progress we've made and so on, and likewise whenever the Neo-liberal framework comes under attack as not delivering this promised prosperity for a vast amount of people, and destroying the environment and so on, they appear on TV and op-eds and so on to defend it.
Whenever a policy is in contradiction to Neo-liberalism you simply swap out the economists for serious looking military or intelligence serving or retired officers to explain the common sense truth that we gotta do whatever it is for obvious national security interests.
The scenes in which this theatre is played and the strings of these puppets are pulled by the Neo-conservative "core elite" who control the US military industrial complex (some of whom we know and certainly many we don't even know who they are).
However, the economic priestly cast is mostly a safeguard for the status quo, within the Neo-liberalist ideology you can also throw in whatever values you want when you want that then become moral imperatives.
For example, Neo-liberals have no problem truly believing gay and trans rights is super important, a moral imperative and thus self-sacrifice is justifiable to move forward these goals. "Main-stream media" essentially, for all practical purposes, a bunch of dials in which one value can be dialled up and others down to justify whatever policy is decided by the Neo-conservative core.
If we want to intervene in Africa, suddenly starving people there is a problem we need to deal with.
If we want to demonize Russia, suddenly their position on gay marriage and trans rights is abhorrent and we need to hate on them (suddenly we hear a lot about any gay or trans rights issue or protest in Russia).
You know it's theatre because Russia is not even close to having the worst gay-rights record, but those values in non-strategic locations are just footnotes in the news that "common sense realism" will inform us we can't do anything about when they are discussed, if at all.
So, once you see how it works, you can start to see how European politicians can be easily manipulated to act against their own self interest as well as any long-term realistic pathway to global prosperity.
In mathematics we have saying that anything can be proven from a single contradiction, which is not just a saying but a theorem, but we also just like to say it a bunch.
Applied to politics, probably it's less robust but the same theme holds that if you can make someone believe something false you can get them to do a great many things they otherwise wouldn't do.
How the Neo-liberal discursive political control framework works is not by promoting totally absurd false beliefs but simply exaggerating the importance of credibly true beliefs to deliver the desired outcome. If you can dial up and down what's important at any given time you can determine how people will react without needing to convince them of some simply false fact or change their values.
I.e. you can weaponize their values against them.
Macro and Scholz suddenly found themselves in a discursive framework where Ukrainian democracy and opposing Putin's authoritarian (but arguably democratically mandated) regime as the most important thing on the planet, more important than Ukrainian welfare, more important than European or global prosperity, more important than Africans eating, and so forth, and what follows from this belief is that war at any cost and rejection of any compromise is a moral imperative.
As important, the only time you truly feel "good" is when you aren't compromising.
The discursive framework also delivers these moral-feelings product to its clients.
Compromise is a morally ambiguous feeling, in the best of deals.
The greater the compromise the greater the feeling of moral ambiguity. Accepting a necessary evil is still a necessary evil and therefore a bad feeling. "Proving" something is in fact necessary is never easy nor certain, just a good guess at best.
If you can dial up certain values in importance compared with the rest then you can manipulate the subject of the experiment into rejecting compromise and doing what you want.
https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1756051693358191055
They are not "insignificant".
That's just dumb to say. Why would they be there is they were insignificant?
Quoting Jabberwock
Ships operate in the ocean where you can have your ships too as well as planes.
If you felt threatened enough you can much more easily sail to said threats and much more easily sail into other's territorial waters. You could go and blockade any port if you wanted to and this is less of an escalation than sending tanks and infantry to go surround a base on land.
land bases are also a lot cheaper and a lot faster to make, so if you "let the US make bases" then they could in short order create a lot of bases in a short amount of time.
That you don't get the differences between "land" and "water" is just dumb at this point.
Quoting Jabberwock
I did not get confused, I said at the start of this conversation that ABM in itself is already a first strike provocation, but that, additionally, the Russians were concerned about the nuclear intermediate capability of these missile bases, to which you said there's no reason to be worried because they hold ABM missiles and not nuclear ballistic missile, to which I then cite the New York Times citing the Russians concerns about the nuclear capability of these missile bases (that they can be easily retrofitted to fire other kinds of missiles, such as Tomahawk cruise missiles was the example given).
I have mentioned several times the Russians are concerned about both capabilities, you focused on only the offensive capabilities because somehow you think citing the current technical specifications of weapons systems would or then should in the mind of a military analyst in Russia mean that such systems can simply not do anything beyond their current public specifications (which is just stupid).
Quoting Jabberwock
Ah yes, it's more of a rollercoaster ... and your point is?
Obviously you can and people do make the exact same argument about every other weapons system, why you end up in an arms race when one side (the US side in this case) decide to go down said rollercoaster ... weeeeeee !!! We're having so much fun.
And "if they have one now, they are likely to get more later" is exactly how arms races work.
You think anyone in the Kremlin was arguing at the end of WWII that "the US only has a few nuclear bombs! why would we expect them to get more, this whole nuke thing is nothing burger and nothing to worry about. Hundreds of nukes! Bah, fear mongering!!"
The Russians respond to escalation in plenty of other ways as well, such as improving their second strike capability against the US and improving their first strike capability against Europe.
But every course of action has diminishing returns so once you've invested in one area then other areas become more cost effective. Stopping the forward deployment of US missile bases is one of several areas you can invest in to reduce the overall threat level.
Quoting Jabberwock
Your reading comprehension has reached rock bottom.
From the Russian perspective, covert deployment of nuclear weapons can be characterized as "smuggling". You could covertly deploy a nuclear missile to a fishing boat if you wanted, but it is much more likely, and so more to worry about, that you'd covertly deploy nuclear missiles to military bases you control than a fishing vessel; soldiers may not be onboard for the fishing-boat-nuke-plan, but moving military hardware between military bases is more banal, even nukes.
If something is more likely, then it is higher in priority on the threat spectrum.
Quoting Jabberwock
So Russia's concern is about their own first strike capability against NATO being diminished?
Literally WTF are you talking about.
Furthermore, you just literally agreed (after simply ignoring the point as long as you could) that ABM is a nuclear first strike capability.
So, you really think these "insignificant bases" are more worrisome to the Russians in diminishing their ability to attack NATO in a first strike than they represent a first strike threat to Russia?
What's the Russian offensive scenario that is frustrated by these insignificant missile bases?
Quoting Jabberwock
That's why the Russians point out as their major concern that these ABM systems can be easily converted to launch other missiles.
Your whole argument is based on the public specifications of a weapons systems the maximum extent of its capabilities ... while also accepting AMB in itself is anyways part of a first strike capability.
It's just stupid at this point.
Quoting Jabberwock
First, my scenario is Quebec separatism with whatever modifications are necessary to make it comparable to the Donbas (so replace Russian intelligence with French intelligence, and put France beside Quebec and so on).
Second, I do not care much about Girkin and whatever covert actions Russia has taken in the Donbas.
Covert actions do not constitute starting an actual war. There's spies all over the place and we don't say that because the US has spies in China, Russia, Europe, everywhere else that therefore the US is at war with these countries. That covert action and spies can affect political results is just part of the status quo the world currently accepts. If the CIA never did anything similar, but have always been good little boys never interfering with anyone self determination, ok, then complain all you want.
As it stands in the real world, intelligence and covert actions are not considered acts of war but just part of the status quo everyone accepts: you are allowed to affect political processes with your spies and the legitimate counter-action is trying to catch those spies while deploying your own spies.
If the separation was 100% Russian intelligence operation, Ukraine should have had better counter-intelligence. You snooze you lose in the spy game.
The actual civil war was not started by the separatists. They declared independence and then Ukrainian militias invaded their territory and Donbas war from 2014 to 2022 occurred on Donbas territory. For the separatists to start the war they would have needed to attack Ukrainian forces outside their territory.
You can provide whatever account you want of the history of the separation, but at the end of the day you had a separatist government in control of territory and then attacked on their territory; aka. Russia certainly had a hand in causing the separation, but did not start the civil war.
Now, you'll obviously say that the separations wasn't "legitimate" and therefore Ukraine had a right to attack.
No separation ever is! All states condemn all revolutionary or seditionist action except for whatever revolutionary or seditionist action created the state in question, then we're in the realm of heroes and common sense violence that was obviously justified and brings tears to our eyes.
The bigger problem though is that Ukraine had no pathway to victory to reconquer the separated land, and therefore their military campaign was stupid at best and profoundly immoral at worst.
Furthermore, the Ukrainian side would shell civilians, so whether it was evil or stupid to begin with, we can be safe in concluding it quickly became evil in any case.
They are insignificant as far as the offensive potential is concerned. They are quite significant as a defensive measure.
Quoting boethius
What? Again, your fantasy scenarios are so divorced from reality that it is hard meaningfully engage with them. Ever heard of conventional surface-to-surface missiles? That what would be used to neutralize both ships and any land base. It is 300 km from Kaliningrad to Redzikowo... In fact, Russians declared that exactly that would happen.
Oh, the slippery slope again. If you let them build one base, you have to let them build a hundred. Because that is how international treaties always work. Really...
Oh, I do. The former are much less effective for offensive purposes. You said yourself that ships must be effectively tracked to be neutralized. The land base cannot go anywhere and you know much earlier if anything unusual is happening there. So yes, it is stupid, but not on my part.
Quoting boethius
So if fifty Quebec separatists attack police stations and local government buildings and kill the policemen, they are in their rights? Even if the rest of Quebec citizens do not necessarily support such violent course of action? That is obviously absurd.
Quoting boethius
Actually, you simply do not KNOW much about Girkin and his obviously non-covert actions in Donbas. And based on that ignorance you produce so many paragraphs, which are completely irrelevant, because they have nothing to do with reality. The issue that repeats oh so often in our discussion.
Quoting boethius
No, that is not what happened at all, which you could check in five minutes. But you just abhor the facts.
If you do not believe the Western sources, at least you could read what Russians, such as Girkin, have to say about it. 'I'm the one who pulled the trigger of war. If our unit hadn't crossed the border, everything would have fizzled out, like in Kharkiv, like in Odesa', he said. His unit has crossed the border and started the hostilities, most of the unit was not even the separatists, but regular Russian soldiers. He then complained that the locals are very reluctant to join the rebellion. Then they have executed the local government officials and policemen, taken the weapons cache. Modern cities are not prepared for local defense, any larger bunch could take one in a day. Claiming that doing so would immediately give them any rights and the intervenening force would be 'invading their territory' is clearly absurd.
Quoting boethius
Sure, but the issue is that if a foreign government actively provides troops and weapons to fuel such actions, it is rather hard to tell whether the right of the people to self-determine has been preserved. Possibly, the people of Donbas would like to be a separate republic or to join Russia, the issue is that nobody asked them, as you cannot seriously treat the referenda organized under the separatists' guns as valid. By the way, that would be exactly the case with Quebec: what if the separatists were in minority - would they still have the right to declare independence just because they have rebelled? You just treat all Quebecans and all Donbass citizens as homogeneous group with the exact same views, which is certainly convenient, but as unrealistic as most of your other arguments.
Quoting boethius
The claims of indiscriminate shelling of civilians have not been confirmed by OECD. The number of civilians killed in 2021 was 110. Even if we attribute all of those to Ukrainians, the argument that Russia just had to kill 10000 civilians and raze numerous cities to the ground to stop that is rather questionable.
So let me get this straight, your process is:
1. Ignore ABM as itself a first strike system
2. Trivialize the missile bases as 10001 compared to 1000 capacity of US ships (and also German ships for some reason).
3. Insist they are insignificant even if you then laugh at you own "1000" ship points scenario of all these ships literally being on Russia's shore at the same time.
4. Agree that ABM is itself a first strike weapon ... but that's somehow not part of "offence"
5. Agree the bases are significant, just not offensively even though on step 4 you agreed anyways ABM was an offensive first strike system.
You're literally a walking clown face meme.
But the result of your idiocy is that you clearly agree even in your own analysis that the ABM bases are a significant increase in first strike capability.
Add to that the fact people can put nuclear strike systems in those bases, make the bases bigger, make more bases and so on, and the threat is even more significant.
Quoting Jabberwock
What fantasy scenario?
This is literally what happened in the Cuban missile crisis. US felt threatened by ground bases in Cuba (even though the Soviet had ships!) and started a blockade of Soviet ships. The situation was deescalated when the Soviets withdrew.
Now, Soviets had been sending ships to Cuba anyways, and have nuclear submarines and so on ... why did the US react to missile bases in Cuba? Because it significantly increases the threat, enough to react to it.
Quoting Jabberwock
I thought it was a rollercoaster?
Anyways, slip-and-slide or rollercoaster, this is literally what an arms race is.
Slippery slope is not a fallacy. You have to demonstrate that the slippery slope doesn't exist to call it a fallacy. For example, you have to demonstrate that allowing gay rights won't result in beastiality and child rape and sexual abuse (which I hope we agree are bad things). This can be done by pointing out gay and beastiality and child rape are different categories, one does not imply the others.
However, "arms" and "more arms" are the same category, and depending on the situation, definitely the precedes of some arms build up maybe a predicator of more arms buildup, resulting in an arms race.
Arms races also include military action. The US didn't respond to the Soviet Union placing missiles in Cuba (a military action to get an advantage in the arms race) by just building more arms, but by a naval blockade (a military action to directly mitigate the Soviet's military action).
Again, your points are just dumb and I'm pretty sure it's intentional at this point, but if you insist you are just that stupid then I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. You're owed that much.
Quoting Jabberwock
I also said you cannot only track ships you can go and intercept them.
In any realistic scenario (what analysts actually worry about) some political tension already exists and escalation already exists, so at some point in your escalation scenario you make an ultimatum that any ship or submarine X Km from your coast will be fired upon: that they stay on their side and you'll say on your side.
At this point in an escalation scenario you've deployed counters to close-threats (first strike threats), if you don't plan to conduct a first strike yourself then you aren't concerned about second strike capability further away.
Additionally, at this point in an escalation scenario the opponent can also deescalate. It's not much military or political cost to just withdraw your ships from an area.
Yes, you know where the bases are, but the worry is they fire their weapons before you blow them up, they can't as easily militarily or politically be withdrawn (why the Cuban missile crisis was a crisis, as the Soviets now have to pay a political cost in withdrawing equipment from Cuba; it's totally legal, states have "rights" as we've all recently learned, so it's a loss of face to withdraw the land assets; mores than ships).
Quoting Jabberwock
I really don't care about Girkin.
End of the story is that the legitimately recognized local-government there declared independence, the locals that "didn't want hostility" didn't stop it happening either, and then Ukraine attacked the separatists thus starting the civil war.
A declaration of Independence is not in itself starting a way.
Ukraine started the civil war. If somehow their justification does make some sense in some political theory, then they were just stupid. If they had no argument that wouldn't also work against Ukraine's own declaration of independence from the Soviet Union, then the war is just evil.
Either way shelling civilians is evil and either way picking a fight you know Russia will respond to is stupid.
Quoting Jabberwock
He's talking abbot crossing the border into Ukraine, not crossing the border and attacking the rest of Ukraine.
But again, I do not care about how things played out (as I've made clear with my analogy to Quebec separatists and making it clear that if the situation was France did in Quebec whatever you want to claim Russia did in Donbas, don't care).
At the end of whatever process happened you had a separatist government in control of territory that Ukraine attacked and continued to do so, including war crimes like shelling civilians, for 8 years.
Most, if not all, political entities come into existence without any right to do so.
The US had no "right" in the previous legal system to secede from the British empire and fight the British.
Secession is an extra-legal issue as nearly all countries that exist today seceded or then conquered (sometimes several such events) at some point tracing out their state lineage. Ok, so the states we have now get together and say "secession is totally bad". Who gives a shit?
The more important question is do you have the force strength to successfully secede if you feel in whatever system you care about you have a right to do so?
If you do have the power and the allies then whoever you secede from complaining about it doesn't mean jack shit.
The separatists obviously had the power to secede as they do so. If alliance with Russia is part of that power then that's just being politically astute. If Girkin was a problem and "the key to everything" then Ukrainian counter-intelligence should have dealt with him sooner.
Sessions and revolutions always attract extremist foreigners.
I do not care about Girkin because Ukraine could not win the fight they picked, and if you pick fights you can't win why expect any sympathy?
Quoting Jabberwock
Again, wish it wasn't so, but the current international status quo is that supplying weapons is not an act of war.
All the great powers want to sell weapons and affect political outcomes (US most of all) so they all accept that is just how the game is played.
US has armed all sorts of groups, I don't see you whining about it.
Right, because you're as hypocritical as you are purposefully stupid.
Now, if the question is whether the world should have a different international status quo where there's greater cost for intelligence and arms supply interference? Sure, yeah, great, get on that, I'll vote for it.
I don't really like spies. Mainly because they're often the worst kind of dumb: people who think they are smart.
You'd fit right in though.Quoting Jabberwock
The West hasn't confirmed that their "friend" they supply arms to hasn't been committing war crimes? Oh. My. God. Stop the presses!!!
It doesn't really seem to be disputed the shelling of civilians by Ukraine, even recently there was the cluster munitions used on a market.
However, again, it's not so important to me because my main view is that picking a fight with Russia is stupid. If you want to believe the Azov guys have been perfect rules-of-war angels since 2014, be my guest. Believe what you want.
What I provide here is a framework of risk-analysis and political-analysis.
So if you're not disputing the framework just arguing the facts are that 2014 was already some sort of "Russian invasion proper", not covert and arms supplying actions that are not considered acts of war in the current framework, or then you're not disputing that Ukraine is indeed stupid to pick a fight they can't win but they haven't committed any war crimes since 2014!!! No shelling of civilians, none whatsoever! Then, again, feel free to believe that.
Doesn't seem plausible to me, but then again I am a super intelligent AI, of which you have no hope in defeating in verbal fisticuffs, sent specifically to mess with you from what is essentially another dimension, and perhaps I haven't picked up yet on all the subtleties of our simulated subjects and their secessionist shenanigans.
No, if you had read anything with understanding, you might get a better idea what I think.
Here is the article on the first strike strategy, it also lists the weapon used for it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_strike_(nuclear_strategy)
Can you point out all the ABMs from that list?
If add all short range platforms that NATO has in the Baltic Sea, 24 tubes ARE insignificant. As I wrote, you can get the same effect by commissioning another frigate, which Russians do not protest. For this you have no answer beside 'land bases are not ships', but the reasons you give are utterly silly, not mentioning all the reasons why this particular base is much worse for offense than a ship-based platform.
And no, they do not have to be 'on Russia's shore', just like Redzikowo is not on 'Russian shore'. If you had any idea about what you are talking about, you would know it is closer to Germany than to Russia... But you just abhor the facts, as is already well known.
That is your original confusion, which might be somewhat understandable. However, your clinging to it despite all the times I have tried to correct you is inexplicable. Yes, ABMs can be a part of the first strike because they can PREVENT the enemy from making a successful first strike or weaken it.
No, I did not agree to that, it is just your reading comprehension that is so frighteningly low.
Quoting boethius
No, they are significant for their ability to neutralize first strike capability. Their offensive capability is still limited for all the reasons I have listed several times already.
Quoting boethius
The difference is that the potential launch platfoms (both ABMs and SLBMs) has significantly changed since that time. You did not have anything even close to Aegis that could be used on a frigate. Now Russia can send to Cuba a ship that significantly outfires the would-be Cuban bases, US can send Gravely to Gdynia. And somehow there are no blockades and no protests.
Quoting boethius
The slippery slope is your seeming view that if you allow one side to have certain armaments, then you have to agree to anything else. That is obviously false: US and Russia has agreed that they can arm themselves in certain weapons and protest against other weapons. Thus Russia can allow one base in Poland and protest in the exact same way against the second one or the third one, whichever threshold it considers to be significant, exactly as it happened with all other armaments in the past.
Quoting boethius
Make sure that you also stick out our tongue... I thought I was discussing with an adult, though that belief was indeed strained at some points.
Quoting boethius
There is this wonderful site called Google Maps. I suggest you look at it and check where is Rostock, where is Redzikowo, where is Gdynia, where is Kaliningrad and where is Moscow. Then check the ranges of the missiles in question. Maybe then you will understand why your 'X km from' scenario is simply nonsensical, but I do not have high hopes.
Quoting boethius
Lol. Legitimately recognized by whom exactly? And locals might not want to attack armed militants, they might prefer for the military to show up. And if they did not care, it is not much of an argument for forcing their independence.
It is Russians that started the killing. That is what Russians themselves are saying. If you close your eyes and shout 'I do not care about Girkin', it does not change that fact.
Quoting boethius
No, Ukraine did not start it. Girkin's unit of mostly Russians has crossed the border and started the hostilities.
The obvious difference is that the Ukraine's referendum was not made under the guns and threat from regular military forces of the neighbor. But I suppose you do not care about such details.
Quoting boethius
They did not pick the fight, a foreign power has instigated an armed rebellion on their territory to destabilize them. If you believe that might makes right, then sure, it is not a problem. Not everyone does, though.
Quoting boethius
They supplied troops. Girkin himself (and most of his unit) were Russians. If you read obituaries of some Russian combatants of the war, you might see that the list of their accomplishments starts in 2014.
Quoting boethius
So Ukraine should just let Donbas secede, because a band of armed thugs has said so. Then the same band would appear In Zaporozhia. And then Ukraine should let them secede, too, because you do not pick fights with Russia. But Odessa has always been Russian, Putin says. Then send some 'separatists' there, too. Is there any country that would allow that?
Quoting boethius
I would appreciate that you post your answers when you are sober. It would facilitate the discussion a lot.
Honestly, I stopped reading the rest of your argument when you state that Ukraine is a 'democratic' country. No, it isn't. This is why I would like to point out your double standards and hypocrisy. It is one of the main objectives of West media but, mate, I will not cross through that door...
You start with a false premise: Ukraine is a democratic country, which follows with another false middle premise: 'The Ukrainian Forces are dependent upon the President' and then with a false conclusion: Zelensky is entitled to remove him.
Well, in the real democratic world it doesn't happen as you state...
I agree that my country is not the best example. To remove a special chief or commander here, they have the right to be heard by a special commission and then conclude if the subject deserves being removed or not.
If a person unilaterally removes others without back up, it is totalitarian. I think the West is failing in defending Zelensky under all circumstances.
https://www.politico.eu/article/oleksandr-syrskyi-ukraine-commander-in-chief-butcher-volodymyr-zelenskyy-war-russia/
So I'll stop reading the rest of your post.
Do you really consider Ukraine as a democratic nation? Yes/No. Explain why.
Does Zelensky act like a totalitarian? Yes/No. Explain why.
Trump 'encourages' Russia to attack NATO states not paying 'bills'
https://www.euronews.com/2024/02/11/trump-encourages-russia-to-attack-nato-states-not-paying-bills
Not just Girkin. Anyway, Surkov was reportedly one of the godfathers running covert Donbas operations.
Quoting javi2541997
Quoting Nov 28, 2023
... whereas Russia has gone in the other direction, despite their wartime situation. (? more repetitions in the thread) Dismissing their efforts with a handwave, reeks of bias prejudice discrimination or something like that. But, maybe you're right, maybe they ought to look into legislative amendments on appointing military leaders.
Thank you for understanding what I attempt to say to @neomac.
To my understanding this is not a yes/no answer. According to some index, Ukraine is considered a hybrid/transitional regime (so neither a consolidated democracy, nor a flawed democracy) given the levels of corruption, civil unrest, and the war. Not surprisingly so since Ukraine is struggling to survive as an independent state out of the influence of Soviet legacy and Russia’s interference (having Russia a consolidated authoritarian regime and hegemonic ambitions). But Ukraine has also shown a certain degree of political representation (free political competition, free elections and referenda), freedom of press/media, in addition to democratic institutions (constitution, division of powers, human rights), and openness to Westernisation (NATO/EU which can be also external factors of further democratization) which look promising to me. Another aspect is that Ukraine is considered semi-presidential so the president is directly elected and has normally more powers than a president would have in a parliamentary democracy.
Anyways, the point I was making has less to do with Ukraine and more to do with your understanding of democracy vs totalitarianism. Replacing a top general (popular or unpopular) from leading the armed forces in wartime is not something incompatible with democracy AT ALL. Making unpopular decisions in wartime like imposing martial law, mass mobilization, and replacing a popular&competent top general is not something incompatible with democracy AT ALL.
Quoting javi2541997
Not sure what act you are referring to. If you take the removal of Zaluzhny as a totalitarian act (and by "totalitarian" you mean the opposite of democracy), I don’t and explained why.
Strangelove limb control (1964 · 28s)
Putin limb control (2024 · 12s)
Oh really?
Hmm, let's see.
Quoting Jabberwock
Let's put aside you're already admitting ABM is a first strike capacity and just directly answer your question.
On the page you link to, there's a section literally called:
Of which the very first sentence of this "First-strike enabling weapons" is:
To continue to do your reading for you, the very next sentence is:
Which is exactly what I describe: The bases increase first strike capability, and so something to worry about, especially if the trend is allowed to continue and you end up with 100s of "limited continental missile defense".
Quoting Jabberwock
Ok ... yes ABM is a first strike capability, you now agree again with this obvious fact.
However, it is not a first strike capability in that it defends against a first strike, that makes no sense. If you've been struck first then you are not carrying out a first strike.
You literally don't know how sentences and words work at this point in the conversation.
ABM is a first strike capability, fulfilling the role of an "enabling weapons system", because it can reduce the effectiveness of the second strike of your opponent, thus increasing the desirability of a first strike.
If you can intercept some or even most of your opponents counter-strike while striking first, then you can expect to suffer significantly less damage in the exchange.
This is extremely basic stuff, which you would have understood by now if you had either common sense understanding of how "stuff works" or then simply read your own sources.
The point of a first strike is to neutralize (as much as you can) your opponents ability to strike back
... so ...
Quoting Jabberwock
If a system can neutralize part of your opponents strike capability then it is by definition part of a first strike capability.
The whole point of the AMB treaty was to reduce the need for further buildup of nuclear weapons by reducing first strike capability (and thus building more weapons to ensure both survivability and delivery of a counter-strike).
In the words of the Arms Control Association:
Quoting Arms Control Association
And notice how the US withdraws from the ABM treaty and then starts building ABM bases.
Quoting Jabberwock
Your points are so idiotic that what strains belief is that I'm dealing with a good faith interlocutor.
It is a grave mistake, in my disposition, to give respect to someone who deserves none. That would just be insulting to people who have actually earned some respect by being of good faith.
You are obviously aware that forward deployed or continental coverage ABM is a first strike capability.
You are obviously aware that you can also bring in (covertly or overtly) and deploy nuclear missiles from an ABM battery.
You are obviously aware that if you build one forward deployed base maybe you start building more, and therefore an opponent is going to try to frustrate that process and impose costs to doing so.
Therefore, forward deploying ABM is a provocative move that your opponents is going to react to.
Your trying to argue that it's not obviously provocative—first "insignificant" then when that was demonstrated to be completely idiotic argument, now the trope "it's only for defence against a first strike!!" which is equally idiotic—is all clearly bad faith.
Your debate strategy is just to go in circles around your bad faith and idiotic arguments.
Forward deploying ABM obviously increases first strike capability which an opponent is going to react to ... which, in this case Russia, has clearly said is a primary concern of their that they are going to react to.
Quoting Jabberwock
Again, just dumb.
First, Russia didn't "agree" to the bases, but disagreed, the US then deployed them anyways despite Russia disagreeing.
The slippery slope is that if action does not backup said disagreement, to impose a cost on the US for forward deploying the bases, then the US would just make more bases. Therefore, even if one bases isn't "so significant" it is anyways the start of a likely trend.
There was a status quo of not forward deploying missile bases, the US breaks this status quo, why would they stop there? No reason to expect them to stop there and so you come up with a strategy to counter those moves.
Yes, missile the bases are not literally in Ukraine right now right next to the Russian, but would't that be the case if Ukraine is in NATO. Therefore, one way (the ultimate way) to prevent the US continuing its police of NATO expansion and forward deployment of missile bases following that expansion is to invade Ukraine.
Now, are the bases themselves sufficient cause for the invasion? I would argue no, but it's a contributing factor.
Quoting Jabberwock
I want to highlight this as particularly stupid since the US has withdrawn from ABM and INF (which weren't real treaties anyways, since the US didn't ratify them).
In the case of ABM the reasoning was:
[Arms Control Association;https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/abmtreaty]On December 13, 2001, U.S. President George W. Bush, who argued that Washington and Moscow no longer needed to base their relationship on their ability to destroy each other, announced that the United States would withdraw from the ABM Treaty, claiming that it prevented U.S. development of defenses against possible terrorist or "rogue-state" ballistic missile attacks. During his presidential campaign, Bush said he would offer amendments on the treaty to Russia and would withdraw the United States from the accord if Russia rejected the proposed changes. However, the Bush administration never proposed amendments to the treaty in its talks with Russia on the subject.[/quote]
Which is just an insulting way to go about diplomacy.
In the case of INF, the US blamed Russia, and even has a page about it:
Quoting U.S. Withdraws From Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, US Defense Department
Now, whether you blame the US or Russia, what is clear is that there isn't much agreement at the moment on what the US and Russia "can arm themselves in certain weapons".
And what the hell is the "protest against other weapons" about?
You think the US and Russia are non-violent hippies that if against a policy of the other is going to just go and protest with some signs or something?
They can do a lot more than protest if they don't like what the other side is doing, up to and including invading countries.
Your whole position seems to be that the US can do whatever it wants, place missile bases where it wants, and Russia should limit themselves to protesting that. That they can do. But they're just big meanie-boos if they do anything else about it.
Quoting Jabberwock
First, your main piece of evidence is Girkin saying things would have fizzles out if he didn't arrive.
Second, the definition of a government is control of territory.
Whether Girkin was "the key to everything" or not, at the end of the day there's a government in control of the territory, which Ukraine then waged war against for 8 years.
Quoting Jabberwock
Girkin himself says in your citation of him that things would have "fizzled out" without him, so even your own evidence you use to support your claims clearly claims things had started before that.
What is clear is that a new government independent of Ukraine controls the territory in question (the definition of government) and Ukraine wages war against it for 8 years.
Obviously the separatists separated and so started the separation, but that is different than starting a civil war. The civil war starts with Ukraine trying to reconquer the territory.
If the official government in the Donbas did not declare independence or then didn't do it "legitimately enough" for you, then that would be a coup and not starting the civil war part.
If Ukraine did not try to reconquer the territory then there would not have been a war for 8 years, the new government would just be there and there wouldn't be any violence; it would be a diplomatic question what happens next.
Quoting Jabberwock
I do not care if Ukraine cannot anyways re-conquer the territory.
It would matter if there was something that could be done to reverse things. If something is easily reversible then it is a moral question of whether the change was really justifiable or not.
To contrast, if some street in Monaco seceded from the rest of Monaco and the Monaco asked the European community to come in and compel the street back into the principality rather than tolerating this street trying to make a new dutchapality.
Obviously Europe, or just France, could easily reverse this dutchapality seceding from the principality of Monaco. So, it would be a moral question of whether it is right to do so. Should we recognize the citizens of the street right to self determination and support their effort to free themselves from the oppressive yoke of the Prince of Monaco? Or should we recognize Monaco's claim over the street?
In such a context, it would matter a great deal if the people on the street even wanted to secede and if anything was used to coerce them one way or another.
We could then get into hundreds of years of history, legal and moral precedent, to try to tease out who has just cause in the affair.
Whatever happened in the initial Donbas secession, it was reversible.
What is clear is that there's a lot of Russian speakers there unhappy with Ukrainian language and cultural oppression, so the idea that there were no genuine separatists at all I feel far fetched.
What exactly the majority genuinely wanted I think is up for debate and we may never know.
What is clear is that they become a separate government to that of Ukraine and Ukraine had lost control of the territory without any realistic way of reversing things (without being invaded by Russia).
Quoting Jabberwock
Playing footsie with NATO, Russian language oppression, random violence against Russian speakers, promoting Bandera as a national hero, then attacking (including shelling civilians) the separatists, is all definitely picking a fight with Russia.
True, you can argue that Ukraine has "a legal right" to do all these things, join whatever alliance it wants and repress whoever is on their territory they want to repress and put down any rebellious activity. Definitely other countries (including Russia) claim to have the same rights.
Many of the factions supporting these provocative policies vis-a-vis Russia had no qualms of explicitly stating their main goal (to Western journalists on camera) is starting a war with Russia that will destroy said Russia.
All this does not change Ukraine's actions as "picking a fight". Picking a fight is not a moral expression, you could be in the right and so have a right to fight, doesn't make it wise though.
Ukrainian elites, decision makers and faction leaders knew the policies they were pursuing could easily, maybe even likely, start a war with Russia, especially waging war on the Donbas for 8 years. Some tried to reverse course (I have zero problem believing Zelensky legitimately wanted to make peace with Russia and avoid a way) but failed to do so and others bet NATO would save them and still others seem to have wanted a war as a "purifying" experience to Ukrainians.
Quoting Jabberwock
Yes, once they lost control of territory filled with Russian speakers and right next to Russia, they should have recognized there was no military option to reconquer the territory: any potentially successful attempt would trigger an invasion by Russia.
Therefore, their options were diplomatic, and had they implemented Minsk I or II that would be far more likely way to regain the territory than what they've decided to do instead.
As for foreign intelligence agents operating elsewhere in the country, the response to that is counter-intelligence.
Quoting Jabberwock
I guess you really don't much at all.
You're main counter argument against action vis-a-vis the military bases has essentially been the bases don't matter as we can think of a scenario in which they are superfluous to a first strike and other assets can easily deliver the maximum blow.
The AI example is that in all situations you can imagine a threat-model against which you can do nothing, indeed a threat model in which everything you do is actually counter productive.
For example, you could imagine me as a world-view threat model in which everything you in the conversation accelerates your descent into madness.
If you just "don't get it" I am happy to go deeper and explain to you why positing this kind of threat model doesn't lead to the conclusion that therefore no action is reasonable.
Though I agree with you here, using martial law to ban critical media, ban any dissent of the war policies, banning political parties, postponing elections are all anti-democratic and despotic and arguably totalitarian.
Ukraine is only a democracy on paper at this point.
Maybe this is what you describe NOW, when I have finally educated you about the matter. Your previous claim was 'You could literally take a ABM missile and simply put a nuclear warhead in it and fire it at a ground target'. Sure, you COULD do that, but its effectiveness when launched from a ground base would still be very limited as compared to the offensive mobile capacity NATO already has. Then you have wasted three pages of discussion about the supposed advantages of land bases as a 'forward offensive base', because you believed that ships have to 'surround Russian shores'. This was to prop your argument that: 'It's unstable, so Ukraine entering NATO could lead to a series of escalations that lead to the US forward deploying nuclear weapons'.
But now that you have finally educated yourself, we can finally close the argument 'the US will deploy nukes in Ukraine'. You could do that the first time I have pointed that out and save us both the trouble, but I guess you do you.
Quoting boethius
Only if you do not know what you are talking about, which you clearly do not (because, as you wrote, you do not care). He referred to protests and demostrations, not to violence. And even 'things had started before' clearly contradicts your ignorant claim that 'Ukraine has started the war after separatists have declared independence'. That is still not what has happened, grasping at straws will not change that.
Quoting boethius
Sure, there were separatists who wanted independence and possibly join Russia. But as you say, it is now impossible to say whether that was the view of the majority. Given that it is unknown, and given what we know from the direct participants of the events, we can conclude that there would be no rebellion. So, again, Ukraine did not start this war - Russia did.
Quoting boethius
Yes, I know the whole list of Russian grievances, they still have nothing to do with the real cause of the war.
Quoting boethius
Can you provide the exact quotes in which Ukrainians claim that they want to destroy Russia?
Quoting boethius
I have already given you the number of casualties in 2020. The conflict was as deescalated as possible, Ukraine has practically given up any idea of recovering the territories, without openly admitting that. The status quo could be maintained practically indefinitely, just like in other frozen conflicts instigated by Russia in other republics.
Quoting boethius
Maybe try to read why the Minsk agreements failed. Neither side was interested in implementing them, so blaming just Ukraine is pointless. And obviously you still do not understand why Russia has started the hostilities in Donbas in the first place.
This is the key exchange that created the discussion on this topic:
You start by dismissing the 'nuclear threat' as nonsense.
Quoting Jabberwock
I point out the obvious (that nuclear weapons and risks aren't "nonsense"):
Quoting boethius
You then double down on your no-risk position:
Quoting Jabberwock
I then explain exactly the points you now claim to have had since the beginning:
Quoting boethius
Notice how I explain that you could obviously substitute a missile, whether existing or to be developed, in an ABM as well as just putting a nuclear warhead in an ABM missile if you wanted to.
Then notice how I state very clearly that "Keep in mind also that ABM missiles are themselves first strike risks".
Go through this exchange and maybe consider the fact that not only is my position correct from the start:
1. ABM bases can be converted to launch nuclear missiles.
2. ABM is anyways a first strike risk.
So after all this you're actually capable of claiming:
Quoting Jabberwock
Which, if you aren't able to retain what I cite you claiming at the top of this post, let's compare:
Quoting Jabberwock
Obviously ABM is not nonsense when it comes to increasing nuclear risks not the bases, as you now explain yourself with the absolutely incredible claim of "educating me" going along with it.
Even more ludicrous, you then complain about:
Quoting Jabberwock
While again demonstrating your inability to either in good faith have a clue what the discussion even is or then, more likely, your bad faith in trying to just spew bullshit in the discussion as you think that's a good propaganda tactic.
For, surrounding Russia's shores is your scenario of the US having 1000 points of first strike nuclear capability anyways and thus the bases are irrelevant.
In your comparison, you'd have to get those ships close to Russia, likewise any planes to conduct a first strike, which are what are called "warning signs".
The bases quite dramatically increase first strike capability (both in the ABM and nuclear capacity) above what would just be normally "hanging around".
Now, you'd certainly want a lot more bases before actually conducting a first strike, and ideally in Ukraine, which is one explanation of why Russia has made counter-moves to prevent that happening.
You can disagree those moves (invading Ukraine) were optimum or morally justified or political astute or whatever, but the argument that "NATO isn't a threat" and "nuclear threats are nonsense" is just dumb.
Yes, nuclear war today is unlikely, likewise tomorrow and the next day.
The problem analysts tasked with managing nuclear capabilities and deterrence have is that the likelihood is low but non-zero (and much higher than some super low 1 in a 10 trillion realm of odds, considering we've already had close calls with nuclear war). Therefore, something happening has some level of appreciable odds, given enough time, will likely happen; so, if escalation begins even small changes in the balance of power could be decisive in both deterring an opponent (i.e. pushing the odds as low as possible) as well one's side surviving a nuclear exchange better than worse (at least taking out a large proportion of the opponents capacity so as to have more people / organs of the state survive, once nuclear exchange begins).
You obviously don't take the subject seriously enough to even read your own sources you cite, but maybe you can stretch your imagination enough to realize that people who actually deal with nuclear force issues do take the issue seriously.
Yep, NATO is a threat: to Kremlinian free military (and such) actions, and to Putin's ambitions.
Mearsheimer has argued that Crimea would be, or is, a great geo-political-power-military asset to Russia, which the Kremlin apparently couldn't pass up. Land grab. Then a variation of "neo-imperialism" or "neo-colonialism" or whatever.
The Kremlin has instead proven a direct present tangible ongoing threat to Ukraine and Ukrainians. (And others.)
It seems unlikely that the Kremlin would have accepted this peace agreement, for example.
Maybe Kyiv's democratic (and such) aspirations are a threat to Putinian authoritarianism, to their control and influence. :D Well, their efforts threw a wrench in Kyiv's attempts to free themselves from their large neighbor.
NATO nuclear weapons in Ukraine was always and remains unlikely. Russian nuclear weapons and rattling on the other hand...
NATO was kind of simmering down over the years, but, with Putin's crap, that seems to have ended.
If Putin's Russia were to assimilate a fifth of Ukraine, then their NATO-phobic (and "West-phobic") argument would continue to apply to the remaining intact Ukraine. If Putin's Russia was to assimilate all of Ukraine, then Putin's logic could equally be raised vice versa by Moldova Poland Romania Hungary Slovakia, and hence the EU. It's open-ended perpetual crap.
And to what end?
? nothing new here
I was clearly referring to this statement and all my arguments referred to this. I am not sure why you were unable to follow it, I tried to be as clear as possible.
Quoting boethius
And I have asked you specifically which missiles you have referred to. It should be well noted that you did not do that, only backtracked to claim that they could be 'developed'. Because the simple fact is that at this time you cannot put a nuclear warhead on SM-3 missiles which are deployed there. Sure, maybe such warheads could be developed, but it is rather pointless to assess the risks of of launch platforms based on missiles which have not even been developed yet... Not to mention that their maximum range does not even reach Moscow, so their use would be rather questionable as the first strike weapon. And sure, you could put Tomahawks in the tubes, but it is far more complicated and rather difficult to do 'covertly'. The fact is that at this time it is not possible 'to switch nuclear missiles/warheads easily' (and this does not even touch the issue that an offensive base needs specific targeting infrastructure which is different from the defensive one), as you have claimed. Add to that the fact that no nuclear weapons have been deployed in any new NATO countries since the sixties, then we have no reason to assess the risk of deploying nuclear weapons in Ukraine as high, which was your exact claim.
As to your watered down position:
1. ABM bases can be converted to launch nuclear missiles.
Yes, they can, but not easily nor covertly. To switch the warhead you have to develop new warheads to fit on existing missiles, or, alternately, replace the missiles themselves, which cannot be done covertly. And their effectiveness compared to mobile platforms is quite limited, especially for a base located 900 km from the Russian border currently equipped with missiles with 1200 km range.
Quoting boethius
Oh, so you did not look at the map, how unsurprising. Hint: Redzikowo is not 'close to Russia'. With current missiles it would reach about 300 km behind the Russian border (another hint for non-users of maps: Russia is a bit bigger than that). To make it any sense, it would have to be equipped with Tomahawks. But tell me, which is easier: to covertly smuggle a Tomahawk with a nuclear missile through the whole Europe to install it in Redzikowo, which is most likely observed all the time, or just to load it in any NATO port into one of ten German or Danish frigates which have the exact same launchers (only bigger, so more effective) frequenting Danish and German territorial waters 200 km from Redzikowo, which, given the range of the missiles, put them practically in the same distance from Russia?
Quoting boethius
No, an immobile base 900 km from Russia with missiles with max. range of 1200 km does not dramatically increase nuclear OFFENSIVE capacity. As pointed out above, a single frigate present in German or Danish territorial waters (i.e. in its regular habitat) provides more potential offensive capacity than the Redzikowo base. And, shocking as it may be, German and Danish frigates quite frequently are in German and Danish territorial waters, possibly even now.
Quoting boethius
This I have never questioned. If your argument was: 'forward intercepting base in Ukraine would diminish Russian offensive nuclear potential', I would simply agree. But your argument clearly was: 'they could deploy nuclear weapons there'. With this I do not agree, the risk of that is very low for all the reasons given above.
Two things incorrect here. ABM bases being converted to nuclear launch sites is absolute nonsense. Just look at the Western nuclear deterrence: it's made up of land based missile silos in the heart of the US, submarine launched missiles, aircraft launched cruise missiles and free fall bombs. What is there to "convert" in ABM bases for these weapons? Just what system needs some fixed site?
Secondly, Russia has had actually the first ABM system in operation for decades. It's first operational system was the A-35, which came operational basically in the late 60's early 70's. It's most modern version is the A-135 (Nato codename ABM-4) Gorgon and a newer system is in the works (A-235 Samolet-M). Modern Russian GBAD (Ground Based Air Defense) systems are also capable of target missiles: even a BUK-M1 can destroy a Scud missile (if the target is known and the air defense system is ready for the incoming missile). The S-400 is quite capable, and actually many say that Russian GBAD missiles are better than Western ones as they have focused on the missile development so much (whereas the West focuses on air power).
Thus US created it's Nike Zeus ABM missile, btw also using a nuclear warhead as it's Russian counterpart, but the system was canceled I think by McNamara. Patriot was a lame version and actually didn't shoot anything down in the Gulf War decades ago. Only know Israeli and Western missiles have improved to the level of taking out ballistic missiles.
And thirdly, the ABM treaty talked (perhaps intentionally) only vaguely about "strategic" missiles, namely ICBMs and SLBMs. Hence the A-135 could wiggle it's way out of the ABM treaty. There were Theater Missile Defense negotiations, but these didn't go anywhere. And the Gulf war showed that TMD was something that wasn't limited to US/Russia confrontations.
So again to say that it was US that is breaking the ABM treaty is biased, if and when you don't take into account that Russians never actually cared so much about it and have had ABM systems operational far longer than the US had any.
The willful ignorance of basic common sense is honestly stupendous.
Why was the US concerned about missiles in Cuba when the Soviets had silos, and submarines and aircraft launched missiles and free fall bombs and so on?
By your (and others') logic here, the Cuban missile crisis was about literally nothing.
Russia doesn't like missile bases close to itself for the same reason the US doesn't like missile bases close to itself.
For a bunch of reasons ABM in Eastern-Europe isn't as provocative as actual nuclear missiles in Cuba, so did not solicit the same kind of response, but it is the same kind of thing, just a lessor degree.
Quoting ssu
Are these positioned anywhere close to the USA?
Quoting ssu
When did I say the USA was breaking the ABM treaty?
It removed itself from the ABM treaty and therefore wasn't breaking a treaty it was no longer in.
Vague notions are obviously up for debate, and if the US was still in the treaty then obviously Russia would argue these ABM assets are "strategic" in scope and nature etc.
However, my points have nothing to do with accusing the US of breaking the terms of the treaty it exited from. The point of mentioning the ABM treaty is to demonstrate that ABM is of obvious first strike concern, as that was the point of the treaty.
Obviously you can argue that these ABM bases are of "little" first-strike use at their rated specifications, though I object to the argument that they are entirely insignificant.
The main reason of concern would be covert or overt increase in specifications somewhere down the line, such as launching intermediate range nuclear missiles, and also the proliferation of more such bases.
For example, let's say the ABM treaty was still a thing, and indeed it's as you say that the A-135 could "wiggle" out of the ABM treaty, then one may naturally wonder if enough such bases and enough such missiles all around Russia would have the same overall strategic effect that is banned by the treaty. Whether it's technically "legal" or not, obviously Russia wouldn't like that and would react to it.
There's also many escalations scenarios, and what is the common thread between all those scenarios is that it does actually matter what military assets are where in terms of what you can do or not do.
This is all extremely basic common sense.
US doesn't like Soviet or Russian missile bases close to itself and neither does Russia. Assuring the Russians that there's no other missiles that would ever be thought to be launched from the bases and the ABM missiles that are there aren't "so significant" etc. they simply may not find convincing.
Obviously there's a probability such assurances are true and a probability such assurances are false, and, either way, what is of genuine intention today could change tomorrow.
What anyone with any analytical ability at all would conclude about these bases is that: yeah, sure, maybe the US doesn't have missiles ("strategic" ABM or hypersonic intermediate range missiles) so relevant for a first strike today, but maybe that can change in the future; therefore, maybe they are building out their base infrastructure now while it "seems benign" and then later when they have the missiles (which they may already have) we have no way of knowing anyways if they are deployed to these bases or not.
The US likes "strategic ambiguity" so even if they didn't forward deploy first strike weapons, there's no way to be sure of that. Indeed, even if the US doesn't even develop first strike weapons, there's no way to be sure of that.
As a military man, I'm sure you understand that the Russians view de facto US bases close to Russia as long term strategic threats.
We can talk all day long about weapons that exist and the public knows about and discuss their public specifications, but that's not how strategic analysis works. Obviously whatever first strike capabilities the US lacks today can be developed and deployed tomorrow.
Therefore, it's a prudent strategic move to try to prevent these bases getting even closer to Russia's border. You can argue that invading Ukraine wasn't the best way of doing that, but it is a way.
And the Russians say themselves in the NY article that I cited their main concern was the bases being able to launch other kinds of missiles, including nuclear missiles, and Putin says in his long interview (which I have no problem agreeing is good evidence that Putin's main concern is reconquering "historical lands") that his reaction on hearing about this ABM plan of the US was that they'd be forced to react in various ways and proposing non-escalatory ways to achieve the US "rogue state" ABM goals.
Denial of this common sense military reality (the bases of one's adversary are a threat) is truly stupendous and, like other topics we discuss, I'm sure this is another one in which we actually agree.
Does Ukraine have a "right" to host US bases and US missile bases? Certainly it does in the current international law framework.
Does Russia have a "right" to invade Ukraine to prevent it from doing so? In principle we could argue all day (or year ... or even years at this point) about who attacked who first (maybe it really was Girkin who attacked Ukraine first and started the civil war), but in practice Russia can just veto any resolution. And that's how legal systems work: before there is some actual authoritative decision on the matter then the various arguments for and against aren't "resolved" and are open questions, no matter how preposterous.
More importantly, can we easily predict Russias invasion of Ukraine? Yes. Can Ukraine "win". No.
So whatever you feel about the law, the movement of NATO and NATO bases closer to Russia and then trying to go even closer is obviously provocative and results in the predictable outcome of this war in Ukraine. As RAND already informs us, this strategy of unbalancing Russia by getting aggressive in Ukraine is one way to harm Russia but at the "expense" of Ukraine, and, more presciently, if the USA pushes and provokes a bigger and Russia then wins that war then it could easily backfire in terms of USA prestige.
We literally already went through this trope several times:
Quoting boethius
But if you want to go through the same tropes again, I'm pretty sure I have time to entertain even more idiocy.
Quoting jorndoe
Mearsheimer is correct.
The Black Sea is an important energy and other export corridor and Crimea is a strategically important position in the Black Sea.
Now, the Kremlin could obviously pass up land-grabbing ... since that's obviously what it did until 2014. What changed in 2014 is that risks to its naval base significantly increased (obviously not short term, but long term having a naval base in a hostile country isn't so great strategically).
So, in 2014 the diplomatic costs of conquering Crimea were outweighed by the military threat to their naval base and position in the Black Sea.
Where Mearsheimer is also correct is that when threatened the great powers react to those threats, will give up quite a bit in economic position and diplomatic position to secure their military position, which is an observation of how the world actually works (not how it should work).
USA does the same thing all the time, just for Americans this is natural and good but anyone else doing so is unnatural and evil.
Because they were actual offensive weapons! Not just SAM sites.
Quoting boethius
Real strawman there. Now your way off.
Do you understand what nuclear weapons the US, France and the UK have? Those weapons don't need ABM missile sites or any kind of fixed forward sites to operate. In fact, bringing them closer to Russia just increases the ability to Russia to strike them. Please educate yourself first on the nuclear strategy of the Western powers. A fixed site has severe disadvantages: it can be targeted itself by nukes and other weapon systems. Hence there's a reason just why the US fixed silos are in the center of the US. And why Russian fixed silos aren't on the Russian border. Or that fixed Chinese sites are in the middle of China, not on the seashore.
Quoting boethius
Yes. But NOT for the reason you gave. Converting ABM sites to offensive missiles sites is nonsense. The fact is simple: ABM systems shoot down ballistic missiles and thus they present a challenge to either a first strike or to a counter strike. Hence the whole reasoning for an ABM treaty.
Quoting boethius
A-135 is operational. They basically have it for one place: Moscow. That the way to counter MIRVs and basically the complexity of hitting an extremely fast tiny object that actually slows down extremely fast when hitting the lower parts of the atmosphere has been to use an airburst nuke. Well, even if that doesn't have the similar effect than an ordinary nuke, I wouldn't like to be under the detonation. But I guess it's OK for other places around Moscow.
And simply there are economical limits to such costly weapon systems. If they would be cheaper, I guess the Soviet Union would have built them a lot more.
Quoting boethius
Of course.
Quoting boethius
I think the disagreement is only in that I think that there were also other crucial reasons than just NATO enlargement for Putin to invade Ukraine. Putin has made them quite clear in his writings, speeches and actions.
First, my statement that they could obviously deploy nuclear weapons there is in response to your statement that the nuclear threat is "nonsense", but now apparently you're comment that started this discussion was in response to my comment that happened later?
Your argument literally require time travel now.
Obviously a nuclear threat would include both nuclear weapons and whatever systems enable to use of those weapons. So "enabling weapons systems" such as ABM fall under the category of nuclear threat.
Which now turns out you agree that ABM is indeed a first strike capability threat, so obviously the "nuclear threat" is not "nonsense" simply due to the nature of ABM itself.
So your original position that the bases representing a nuclear threat is "nonsense" you have since debunked yourself.
Moving the goalposts to the idea you only meant nuclear weapons being deployable from these missile bases is "nonsense" is also wrong.
As I stated, obviously you could put nuclear weapons there and launch nuclear weapons from ABM tubes; you could develop the capacity covertly or overtly, today or tomorrow, so an adversary is going to include that in their risk-analysis.
Quoting Jabberwock
Again, the Russians say themselves their concern is that the tubes could easily be converted to fire other missiles.
It is literally a tube where you put in a missile and fire said missile. There's nothing special about the tube that would prevent you from firing things other than ABM missiles, and you could also put a nuclear warhead in an ABM missile if you wanted to.
If the US doesn't have this capacity today it could easily develop the capacity tomorrow. It's really not a an insane complicated task that no one has ever accomplished before and pushes up against the laws of physics to take (or develop) a missile of the appropriate size for the tubes or then develop a nuclear warhead that you simply put in the ABM missiles (the literally put nuclear warheads in artillery shells in the past, so I'm sure the US military industrial complex could manage the feat).
Quoting Jabberwock
There's no need to look at a map, the New York Times calculated the distances:
Quoting On the Edge of a Polish Forest, Where Some of Putin’s Darkest Fears Lurk
That is called way closer to Russia than the status quo during the Cold War.
At no point did I say these missiles covered the whole of Russia, so thrashing at this straw man is particularly stupid.
The missile bases increase US first strike capability, as I've stated any first strike would involve plenty of other systems too.
The first critical thing to do in a first strike is hit command and control to disrupt, delay, and ideally prevent a strategic counter-strike even being ordered. With a little bit of delay one's chances of hitting those strategic nuclear launch facilities and other equipment increase dramatically.
So missile bases getting closer and closer increase the effectiveness of a first strike. The closer you are, the less warning time and so more able to decapitate the leadership and other systems.
Sure, you can say "well I don't think nuclear war is likely anyways, so people should be complacent" but you seem to fail to appreciate that the people in charge of said nuclear weapons systems aren't complacent; if the threat model increases noticeable they pay particular notice (since the consequences are so high anything noticeable at all becomes of serious concern).
That's why, if you followed the exchange, the Russians say their main concern is the ability to convert the cites to launch other kinds of missiles:
Quoting On the Edge of a Polish Forest, Where Some of Putin’s Darkest Fears Lurk
Everything I've explained is not just "my theory about it", it is literally the New York Times explaining to us the Russia's views on the topic. I'm simply explaining the common reasons someone would have to express such an opinion.
You guys seem to expect the world to operate on the principle of "everyone should take the United States at its word, and if they say their missile bases aren't a threat to you and you should just go ahead and ignore them, then that's just the way it is".
It's really bizarre. I empathize a lot better now when Mearsheimer says he just doesn't get how people can be so dense and not get how Russia views our missile bases as obvious threats.
Quoting ssu
So had the Soviets brought in only "ABM" equipment, the US would have been totally cool with that?
Let's even imagine there was no ABM treaty or then the missiles the Soviet (say they) bring in can "wiggle out" of the ABM treaty.
You're saying the response from the US would have been nada?
That's really what you're saying, comparing the two scenarios is a straw man?
Now, obviously they aren't exactly the same scenario, and I've pointed out where differences lead to differences (that Russia did not start military action directly against the bases; but instead developed new systems and prevented further bases getting built in Ukraine, by maintaining a border dispute and then later a general invasion of Ukraine).
My argument (if you bother to read up before interjecting in the conversation) is that forward deployed ABM is a first strike capability so (even ignoring the ability to deploy nuclear missiles to the sites anyways) the Cuban Missile crisis is in the same category of one power reacting to their adversary increasing first strike capability.
Quoting ssu
Ok, so please explain why the New York Times writes:
Quoting On the Edge of a Polish Forest, Where Some of Putin’s Darkest Fears Lurk
Key word "easily".
Why doesn't the New York Time explain the "simple fact" that ABM systems "ABM systems shoot down ballistic missiles".
And again, even if we ignore that you can obviously put nuclear missiles and warheads in a metal tube (the threat is more the logistics are more opaque and psychologically more compatible for soldiers to do compared to setting up nuclear warheads in Polish barns, as I've explained, than the tubes themselves), you again repeat the obvious: "they present a challenge to either a first strike or a counter strike."
The fact forward deployed ABM present a threat to counter strike is what makes them a first-strike enabling system.
Rear deployed ABM protecting your own silos is where you'd put your ABM if you were just concerned about surviving a first strike and maintaining a counter strike deterrence (to then hopefully dissuade a first strike).
It honestly seems bizarre how you, and the others, accept anyways this premise that ABM is a first-strike capability (an "enabling weapons system" as Wikipedia describes it) but then simply deny that firs strike capability in some vague sense does not increase by deploying these first-strike-enabling systems.
Yet, as far as I’m concerned, your argument is pointing less to a specific problem of Ukraine than to a more general problem for democracies in war times. Indeed:
1) My premise is NOT that Ukraine is a consolidated/flawed democracy but a hybrid/transitional regime with some democratic institutions (so more fragile than consolidated/flawed democracies, yet still better than institutions of actual consolidated authoritarian regimes and vested interest to more Westernization/Democratization). And the other premise is that this hybrid/transitional regime of Ukraine is engaged in a defensive war for its political self-determination and territorial sovereignty against Russia. Russia instead is a consolidated authoritarian regime with hegemonic ambitions, so with a penchant for heavily interfering with other countries’ business and bitterly hostile to greater Westernisation of Ukraine. On such premises, there is little to be surprised if Ukraine may take unpopular measures such as postponing elections, mass mobilization, and removing top generals non-aligned with the government’s objectives in war time. And if there are pro-Russian collaborationists in Ukrainian politics and media (which is something very much plausible given the historical and ethnic ties between Russia and Ukraine) then Ukrainians OBVIOUSLY are compelled to silence and ban them in war time (maybe also in the ways Ukrainians have learnt from the Russians) to prevent them from sabotaging the government’s activity. National unity is vital in war times for all regimes, authoritarian AND DEMOCRATIC. And even democracies could not reasonably allow parties collaborating with an aggressor arguably genocidal towards them. Of course, pro-Russian propaganda can then predictably spin the narrative of a Ukrainian totalitarian regime due to such unpopular/controversial measures with the aim of duping Western masses (coz Russians don’t need it, and enough of them are rather happy with their consolidated authoritarian regime and home propaganda). And Western populists who are eager to be duped by anti-American/NATO/EU/West propaganda will obviously echo such pro-Russian propaganda, since they already have such a penchant for publicly and extensively whining about censorship and authoritarian measures in their democracies during peacetime, that the Western support for Ukraine, an “allegedly” totalitarian state, is just a too convenient hanging fruit up for grabbing for more whining. In any case, as I said many times, I don’t find predictable manipulative claims particularly compelling (even if there is some truth to them).
2) To my understanding, states at war are not engaged in a beauty contest and wars OBVIOUSLY can degrade democratic representativity and solicit unpopular measures also in Western democracies (the infamous democratic backsliding): Churchill too postponed elections in wartime, and in the US there was a fierce persecution/paranoia targeting communist collaborationists during the Cold War. After all, democracies are grounded on more fragile institutions than authoritarian regimes, i.e. they can consolidate and be functional ENOUGH under certain favourable circumstances (which very much likely do not include wars), otherwise they can not consolidate or, worse, they can turn dysfunctional to the advantage of hostile authoritarian regimes. Which is also pretty bad news for Western democracies, because that means they can be hijacked by powerful and hostile authoritarian regimes (e.g. through infowars, economic/security blackmailing and bribing/lobbying) aiming at playing divide et impera within the West, and wearing out Western popular support for their regimes way more easily than the other way around. So thanks to this institutional asymmetry democracies can more easily be destabilised and lead either to dysfunctional political polarization (see the case of the US) or to reliance on more unpopular (or even authoritarian) measures to quell corrosive political antagonism and actual/incumbent civil unrest. In other words, as far as democracy is concerned, Westerners have more to lose than the Ukrainians if Russia brings home a strategic victory against the West. That’s also why, as I argued in previous posts, the West is strongly compelled to counter the Russian threat and frustrate Putin’s ambitions to destabilise the West and lead an anti-Western coalition. And that’s also why I can’t take the infamous American neoliberal agenda to export democracy in the World, as simply or mainly motivated by hypocritical humanitarian concerns to cover actual and economic exploitation (at least, according to the Western populist and pro-Russian propaganda for which only the West is exploitative, hypocritical, and with no security concerns while the Rest is the opposite). Indeed, the spread of democracy is very much important also for security concerns (of the US and other Western democracies too), independently from any propaganda.
3) The Ukrainian unpopular measures don’t look to me as worrisome as you have argued: not only because they still look within a frame of constitutionality and legitimate exercise of presidential powers, as far as I know. Not only because the popular support for Zelensky is still strong enough, as far as I know. But also because there is still enough democratic transparency: indeed, Ukrainians are open to and can access to Western democracies’ monitoring and investigations about the political/military/economic situation in Ukraine, more than the Russians. So if the latter would be missing, then OK I’d start to worry more about the fate of the Ukrainian democratic institutions but still I wouldn’t be much disappointed nor would I find it particularly effective in discrediting Ukraine or the Western support to Ukraine, given the predicament in which they both are under the security threat posed by Russia (and its Western minions).
Quoting Revolution of Dignity (Wikipedia)
But, hey, a "dire existential threat" promotes a sense of urgency (fearmongering), and is also neat for picking up any anti-NATO (or anti-West) sentiments anywhere.
[sup]† 2024Feb5, 2023Dec26, 2023Dec25, 2023Oct15, 2023Oct11, 2022Nov13, 2022Nov4[/sup]
? nutn' new thread-wize
That's why I explain the importance to the Black Sea.
Quoting jorndoe
Maybe why the West keeps on repeating the war is "existential" not only for Ukraine but also NATO.
However, nuclear force issues are actually existential, so moves on one side trying to "slip in" some nuclear first strike capability maybe even with a little "wiggle room" vis-a-vis a treaty that is no longer relevant, are carefully observed and options considered to balance things by the other side.
It's honestly bizarre the trivialization of nuclear war when it's convenient for a narrative.
Fine. Yet this is Russian rhetoric to give one reason more against the ABM sites. It is political rhetoric. Because just why would you put attack cruise missiles in a fixed well known position? Cruise missiles are subsonic. Did the US field ground launched cruise missiles? Actually yes, during the Cold War they had few BGM-109G Ground Launched Cruise Missile, and they were mobile. Something you hide in a warehouse... somewhere, not in fixed site with actually not much if any protection to the missiles. And FYI, those were scrapped in the INF treaty.
What's the purpose of having a slow moving weapon on a fixed, well known site? There is absolutely no logic to this, but for the Russians there is the logic to give more reasons why those ABM bases should not be deployed.
Quoting boethius
Hey, those Mk 41. VLS can also easily repurposed to fire the RUM-139 VL-ASROC, an anti-submarine missile. Or they easily be repurposed to fire the Nulka decoy system to leer away anti-ship missiles.
Key word "easily" too!
If you would think about or understand military thinking, the Mk 41 VLS is obviously for a layered air defence system as obviously you won't use the ABM missiles to shoot down things like slow aircraft of attack drones. Because obviously forward based installations can be attacked by a plethora of various weapon systems. Layered air defence is the way you deal with different kinds of threats.
Note the three kinds of different weapons protecting here Russian Hmeymin air base in Syria:
Quoting boethius
Yes, I think we agree on this.
And thus both Russia and the US have put effort to make their GBAD systems capable in the ABM role. S-400 and the S-500 are quite capable in this field, so much that actually the A-135 might be replaced by the S-500. The dubious and questionable nuclear tipped ABM missiles of the 20th Century are now history. After many decades the ideas of Reagans "Star Wars" are emerging into reality. The US has built it's capability around navy warships, which by moving around on the oceans make them far more difficult target than some fixed emplacement that has permanent map coordinates.
Quoting boethius
Or, if the possible actor has just few ICBMs and has a limited territory to shoot them from, you put an ABM site between your country and the launch site. Just look what is the shortest range between Washington DC and one certain Middle Eastern country the US hates so much. Which btw the US insisted on being the reason. :smirk:
Russian ICBM go over the Arctic Sea and Canada into the US. Not over Poland. ABM sites in the tundra of Canada and Alaska would be a different issue.
Are things really fine? Let's see.
Quoting ssu
As I've explained many times, if you wanted to conduct a totally by surprise out-of-the-blue first strike, you could literally put missiles on fishing boats and just sort of drift into the Russian coast.
These bases are still relevant of course in terms of being able to join in saturation fire of both nuclear missiles (which if you're covertly launching missiles from fishing boats it is definitely within your ability to retrofit ABM missiles or just develop entirely new missile to fire from the ABM bases) as well as the original purpose of ABM and track missiles in the theatre generally speaking and so on.
Such an out-of-the-blue strike would be premised on the assumptions:
1. One, or a few choice launches (as close as you can get) could destroy critical command and control. Fishing boats, farms in Poland or heck let's do Estonia too as well as "routine" flights, certainly submarines, and whatever other way to get as close as you can to hit as fast as you can. Of course, ideally you'd fire all your missiles in this first attack, but the more you fire the more likely your opponent would initiate counter strike. So there's some optimum that is as much as you can get away with before the leadership is dead.
2. Then a a saturation attack would target as much further command and control and counter-strike capability as possible: subs, silos, planes, airfields, etc.
3. ABM then shoots down whatever counter strike capability manages to launch. A volley of ABM missiles can be launched at the the silos or any potential launch location in parallel to step 2 above to try to "time it" and intercept ICBM's in the boost phase. This is where computer modelling comes into to help optimize all these factors.
Whether you neutralize counter-strike capability with a nuclear strike or ABM is of no difference as long as it's neutralized. Sure, even one ICBM can have multiple warheads and decoys, but if they are small enough in number and you have enough ABM maybe you can get them all. As mentioned, anyone conducting a first strike would accept multiple of their own cities as acceptable loss for the total obliteration of the their opponent. The theory is to "be better off" in a post exchange world.
This is why deployment of ABM to cover a wide area, both protecting your own cities and assets (such as Europe and the bases in this case) as well an additional launch site of missiles for various purposes in the 3 steps above, is, as Wikipedia informs us, is a "first strike enabling weapon".
A first strike would be an immensely complicated task involving all sorts of assets.
The ABM bases are one of those assets you'd want in place (and as many such bases as possible) to conduct a first strike.
Quoting ssu
If you were conducting a first strike you'd do so with the fastest missiles possible for obvious reasons.
Converting ABM missiles to nuclear warheads would make more sense than cruise missiles.
Maybe US doesn't have hypersonic nuclear missiles undisclosed to the public, maybe they do. Russia can't be sure about the today nor in the future.
And you guys simply ignore the future entirely.
Nuclear assets in place today are in place for decades. We don't know how things will evolve, who will be in power in the US. So this sort of analysis quickly ignores how people "feel" today.
What analysis worry about is mostly escalation pathways in some totally different geopolitical situation in the future, new weapons systems that don't exist today and so on.
We also don't know what the future stakes are. Today we don't feel any reasonable person would think it reasonable to risk the total destruction of even one of their major cities, in addition to the wide range of nuclear winter outcome risks and fallout and so on, but maybe there is some crisis in the future in which this sort of risk starts to seem acceptable.
Deterrence is not necessary just the ability to get through one missile against a first strike, you really need to be confident your opponent is confident their entire society will be obliterated for all meaningful purposes and they won't be "better off" after a nuclear exchange.
Hence, the non-proliferation architecture was all about pulling back first strike capability: ABM, Open Skies, INF were all about providing confidence to the other side that one wasn't in a position to do a first strike, but could definitely do a counter strike.
This is the dynamic that establishes MAD.
Otherwise, you get on the slippery slope (some may call a "rollercoaster" instead" of going towards what I call MAD CRACK, where one side tries to crack the MAD equilibrium by getting enough assets in place to deliver a devastating first blow.
US claims the right to deliver a first strike.
US withdraws from the ABM treaty, which is not just one pillar of a first strike it is the essential enabling part as a first strike really needs to assume that whatever counter-strike gets through can be reasonably dealt with by ABM. Reasonable in this context is New York may still be blown up anyways, but Ohio, glorious Ohio may just survive and thrive.
US starts forward deploying its ABM capability.
US withdraws from the INF treaty ... the other critical weapons systems to conduct a first strike of taking out command and control in the first phase, while insisting Russia accept it's terms of renegotiation that were never even offered.
US partisans are just like "nothing to see here, move along, trust us bro".
No reasonable analysis would see these things and be like "hmm, that's totally normal, nothing to worry about."
Quoting ssu
Obviously rogue states are a legitimate threat, no argument from me here.
But capacity to deal with rogue nations is also capacity to deliver a first strike, in particular against Russia if you put those assets close to Russia.
Likewise, if you don't even bother to try to renegotiate the treaties to maintain the non-proliferation architecture while dealing with rogue nations (which are also a problem for Russia), again that's not a good sign.
But it doesn't really matter anyways opinions on people's intentions now, since once the assets are in place a totally different administration could be in power in the future.
We just recently experienced Trump threatening to turn North Korea into a lake of fire, maybe there's someone even more unhinged in power in the future.
Likewise, even if "normal politicians" are in power, as mentioned above, there's no way to predict the stakes that maybe at play in the future.
Therefore, if you're vulnerable to a first strike you would conclude it is likely to happen given enough time and the immense scope of totally unpredictable things that can happen in the world.
As mentioned, it would be probably undoable to order seal team six to go launch a nuclear missile from a fishing boat on some totally innocuous day to start WWIII. However, after a series of escalations it's much more likely missiles would be "moved into place" for defensive measures in completely routine logistics etc. and in a "proper place" and then if tensions get to high everyone understands they'll need to launch if ordered to do so.
There needs to be a sort of "social tension" for people to start to believe they are actually about to launch nuclear weapons; a tension that has existed before, such as the Cuban missile crisis.
So the rational course of action when first strike capability is deployed, is to conduct the risk analysis based on what people can actually do with this new capacity and react to mitigate the risk. If there's no actual intention to carry out a first strike then great! the moves are redundant but you'll still feel better.
Okie then, you concur, land grab, because power and such, NATO or not. (By the way, they have other Black Sea presence + Sea of Azov.)
Their "dire existential threat" rhetoric was/is a call for nationalism (unity), without which waging wars is more difficult; goes hand in hand with their...other efforts. Also, you might have noticed that nuclear posturing is on them, though North Korea is more worrisome.
And to what end?
[sup](hint)[/sup]
Faisal Islam: Russia’s war economy cannot last but has bought time
[sup]— Faisal Islam · BBC · Feb 10, 2024[/sup]
No doubt there are / will be effects, but they're hard to predict. Forecasts, anyone? Effects on their war efforts?
When you have described the 'nuclear threat', you have specifically used the phrase 'they could deploy nuclear weapons there'. Pretending that it was not your main point is just silly.
Quoting boethius
My original point was that it is nonsense that there is significant risk that US will deploy nuclear weapons in Ukraine. You can try to obfuscate that as much as you want, it will not change the fact that you are unable to support that claim.
Quoting boethius
It is hilarious how hard you are trying to undermine your original argument... If the Redzikowo base is just a tube in the ground and Americans can shoot nuclear missiles from anything, then the base loses all sigificance, as it would be equally easy to put the said tubes in the ground covertly and quickly anywhere else.
Quoting boethius
Then maybe that should be the lesson that you should not take anything that the press publishes for granted...
Yes, the '100' sounds scary, unless you are familiar with the geography. 100 is to Kaliningrad, which is actually a tiny piece of Russian territory wedged in between NATO countries. Yet somehow the New York Times does not write about the Russian missiles 40 miles from the Polish territory and 300 miles from Warsaw... So if two Russian frigates leave the Kaliningrad port, they immediately have three times the firepower twice as close to NATO borders than Redzikowo. Should NATO leaders be fuming?
Quoting boethius
Then I ask for the third time: how does the Redzikowo base used for OFFENSIVE purposes DRAMATICALLY increase the offensive potential as compared to a German frigate sailing on German teritorrial waters?
Did we?
You seem to always be arguing with someone else.
I have zero problem recognizing Russia's actions are imperialistic. Russia's "national interest" is defined on the exact same basis as US "national interests": preserving and expanding imperial power.
We had no problem calling the Tzarist Empire, spanning nearly the entire Northern Asia, an Empire and it's basically the same size now.
And I have zero problem with people who condemn both US Imperialism and Russian Imperialism.
For myself, I'm an anarchist so I don't believe nation states (empire or otherwise) have any intrinsic value in themselves. So I don't care about borders or national pride or any of the trappings of country of empire in themselves.
Where nations and their dramas and sagas are of relevance to me is in their consequence on real people.
To put that in perspective, if Americans are painting stripes and stars on their faces and running around screaming USA! USA! USA! With flags as capes and so on. That doesn't bother me. If that's their level of philosophical understanding and how they choose to identify themselves and it gives them some pleasure, why not. Likewise any other display of some other national pride by anyone else.
Where I take notice of this whole nation thing, is when the US and Russia are in a great power rivalry and escalating cover and overt attacks on each others Imperial interests, which don't matter much to me but obviously do matter to them and their management.
In this sort of thing, what exactly is happening is much more important (compared to questions such as how many stars exactly to they have painted on their faced) as the consequences (for real people, not mythical representations of "a people") and potential future consequences are very big.
The world has a lot of problems we anyways have to deal with, so my preferred outcome is diplomatic stability. If the people of the world insist they have nations states as we know them today, then it is better to avoid wars and each people need figure things out for themselves, and hopefully cooperate with other nations where that's possible.
Based on that you would certainly conclude that I am against the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
If that was the whole situation, then I would be, but the more important question in anywise is "what do we do about it". Being morally against something is not a course of action.
However, as it stands things are more complicated. The situation is not that there's poor innocent defenceless Ukraine and then a random attack by Imperialist Russia.
US is also interfering in Ukraine since many decades and also increasing nuclear tensions (starting with reneging on ABM, insisting they'll get Russia to agree to new terms first ... then never even negotiate that). The interference of the US is also manipulative and bad faith, dangling the NATO carrot without ever having the intention to have Ukraine join NATO (and the US could just make a bilateral defence agreement with Ukraine any moment of the day if it was so concerned).
Then there is the war on the Donbas. Since I don't care about nation states, I do not care much when pieces secede and declare their own nation state (if it's more-or-less the same thing as before, maybe a good economic move or maybe a bad one).
The very foundation of anarchism is that you have no moral obligation to political structures you find yourself in. Political structures much justify their existence by providing real and accountable value, not by swearing oaths and creating myths for school children and so on.
In my view there is no moral obligation to stay part of a political alliance (such as being a citizen of a country) and one has every right to secede individually or collectively at anytime. It's a constant moral right, and the right the US founders claim in their own secession form the British empire
The question is not moral but rather "is it a good idea?". If you secede as an individual and then starve in a forest, maybe not the best strategy for whatever it is you're trying to do.
Likewise, if you secede as a collective and then are demolished militarily by the political structure, no matter how repressive, you just seceded from ... again maybe wasn't the best idea. Of course there can be situations where fighting a losing battle is the best moral choice, but I'm sure we'd all agree it's good to be both in the right and also win.
Donbas secedes. It's messy, like most secessions are, but they manage to maintain their independence. They need Russian support, but so too did the US need French support; once you're a new political entity it is incumbent on you to seek out support where you can find it.
The US guards jealously its right to secede from the British; the war of independence was costly and bloody but they won (with the help of foreign powers hostile to Britain).
I don's see why I would reduce in meaning the Donbas Declaration of Independence.
Ukraine tries to reconquer the Donbas, fails, creates the inevitable intervention of Russia to resolve the situation.
All I see is that Ukrainian elites have mismanaged things diplomatically and militarily, perhaps because they are among the most corrupt in the world, and I don't see why I'd have sympathy for that.
Now, if despite all that, the West intervened militarily to defend "Ukrainian sovereignty" I would not have a problem with that either.
The rights of nations are what is called "underdetermined"; there are more claims than can be coherently resolved (hence the real solution is to no longer have the nation-state system).
My main problem is with sending arms in lieu of honour, as I've said there is a pretty wide consensus that supplying arms in a conflict does not change the outcome but simply results in more death and damage (mainly to the losing side).
The West is cynically using Ukraine for our own purposes, up to and including the predation of Ukrainian farm titles by Western multinational agribusiness.
If it was actually about democracy, then I'd be more sensitive to that goal and what strategies could actually preserve and strengthen democracy in Ukraine. But it's not about democracy, that idea is a mythical smear of shit over a horrifying truth.
Quoting Jabberwock
It is my main point.
That you can deploy nuclear weapons to these bases is a larger threat than the ABM missiles.
It is not logistically as easy to deploy nuclear weapons to a barn or seal team six on the USS rusty fishing boat than it is to a military base. If tensions starts to rise, it's far easier to deploy nuclear missiles to the bases in "routine" shipments than other locations.
You'd have no way of knowing. Likewise, ABM missiles themselves are duel-use and can be programmed to attack a ground target and loaded with warheads.
Russia has been regularly accused of using ABM missiles on ground targets (including Poland), no one has been like "but ABM can only go up, only up!! Never down!!"
Now, just so happens that ABM anyways is a nuclear first-strike system, as I've explained.
It is not the case here that you've dealt with one of my points but "forgot" that ABM is anyways a nuclear first strike "enabling system" so are somehow 1 for 2.
You have dealt with neither issue.
Quoting Jabberwock
More terrible bad faith.
We were talking about forward deployed bases. There is significant risk that the US deploys nuclear missiles to those bases, if not today then maybe tomorrow, as well as that they'd continue to march their bases closer to Russia, and so into Ukraine, if Russia let them.
Why wouldn't they?
If your opponent allows you (or then can't prevent you) from gaining some strategic advantage, why wouldn't you do that?
In addition to your bad faith, you have a terrible imagination. These bases will be there for decades, so who knows what American leadership will be in decades to come.
The bases are there, the US de facto controls them, the US has nuclear weapons, therefore the US could deploy nuclear weapons to the bases for a first strike (with either existing missiles we may not even know about, or then develop missiles in the future, again we may not even know about).
That is the basic risk analysis of the situation, and it is just foolish to believe that Russia would not react to an increased first strike threat.
The US attitude and justification of these kinds of nuclear escalation moves is basically "suck our dicks", and US sycophants, such as yourself, manage to genuinely maneuver themselves into believing it and being all like "yeah, what gives, why not suck America's dick? I don't get it, what's with these people, why the fuss".
If you say the risk is significant (because it can easily be done) but is small of being used in a first strike today. Sure, the risk is small. However, a small risk multiplied by many days, many years, many decades, in all sorts of totally unknown future scenarios, easily becomes a much larger risk.
Your argument is basically "well I don't think the US would conduct a first strike today, they're just worried about Iran and just want to flex on the Russians, and aren't worried about nuclear war because that's unlikely, so there's nothing to worry about".
Quoting Jabberwock
I've explained this several times, as I did above, again.
You definitely could launch a nuclear missile from just about anywhere: farm, fishing boat, a yacht, etc.
However, it's much easier from a military base. If you ordered people to take a nuke off base in the back of a mini-van, they'd be like "WTF are we doing?".
You'd have to convince a whole bunch of commanders and soldiers to take a nuke off base and randomly launch it at Russia. There's a whole bunch of psychological and logistical issues involved in such an operation that make is less likely (fortunately).
However, moving military equipment between bases is much more logistically "normal".
You could have some AMB missiles retrofitted with nuclear warheads and instruct a ground attack without even informing 99% of the base they even have nuclear weapons. Which is the common sense operational approach to a first strike, as the less people who know the less likely the information would leak and also the less likely anyone would refuse orders on moral grounds.
Once the first strike is irreversible, then it becomes a more usual "shoot them first" situation and most people would be in a psychological state of "we gotta do what we gotta do".
As mentioned, a first strike is pretty unlikely just randomly out of the blue; it is much more likely when tensions are already extremely high and several escalation steps have already been passed, and one side thinks their first strike can really work (maybe a few cities are destroyed, but that's acceptable losses in the kind of situation we're talking about).
This is why first strike capability such as forward deployed missile bases are destabilizing.
Why literally having a first strike policy in the first place is destabilizing.
Why withdrawing from the AMB and INF and Open Skies treaty is destabilizing.
And why all this instability? Apparently because of a fear of a rogue nation being able to launch a single nuke ... well how does that make sense, why increase the odds of getting hit with a hundred or a thousand nukes (even a tiny bit) for fear of being hit by one rogue nuke launch?
Quoting Jabberwock
Why does Russias actual border not count again?
How close was Cuba to Washington?
These distances simply aren't very far for missiles flight time, much less far than the bases not-being there.
Quoting Jabberwock
"NATO borders" aren't the US' borders. Poland is not close to Washington. You would not launch a first strike against the US to take out command and control etc. from Poland or Estonia.
You're trying to conflate "NATO borders" with a threat to counter-strike capability.
That Poland, Latvia, and Estonia are close to Russia is not a risk to the US counter strike capability, as their counter strike capability is not in Poland, Latvia or Estonia.
You just completely leave the realm of common sense. Truly remarkable.
Again with the moving the goalposts.
You're initial point was, to remind you:
Quoting Jabberwock
"Nonsense" then you defended this position by simply ignoring that ABM is anyways a nuclear first strike enabling system, and focusing on the "insignificance" of these bases, by comparing the missiles (so far) deployed to these bases to all the missiles tubes in the entire US navy.
I've explained how that it is just completely wrong. For the entire US navy to be of equal threat, it would need to be equally close and maybe Russia would be like "hmm, wonder why all these ships are coming to our shores".
I do not once use the world "DRAMATICALLY".
I've explained what role the bases would play (both in launching nuclear missiles by surprise and their ABM capability) in a first strike. Of course, plenty of other assets would be needed as well.
The more first-strike systems you have (such as ABM) the more able you are to craft an operational plan that would more likely work.
The US is accumulating first strike capability.
Why any increase in first strike capability is taken seriously is because even a small increase in daily risk of something like nuclear obliteration of your entire society, multiplied over a long amount of time becomes a big risk.
Your whole framework is basically the risk of nuclear war isn't "a big deal". If the US builds out appreciable increases in first strike capability (while withdrawing from all the treaties that were signed to prevent that) your basic position is "nuclear shmuclear, Who cares! Boats man! Boats! They already have nukes!"
You have zero clue what you're talking about.
If you wanted to conduct a first strike, or then analyzing your opponents capability of conducting a first strike, each category of weapons systems has a diminishing return on investment.
For example, you can launch nukes from planes, obviously, but you can't put all your planes in the air and send them to Russia as that trigger a reaction from Russia. So, maybe you decide you can casually have 5 planes that "just so happen" to be doing routine flights in key locations to launch some nukes. Likewise with submarines, if you send them all to Russia shoreline maybe they'll be noticed, but maybe you can get through 1 or 2. Then there's whatever ships normally have in theatre. Finally, there's your bases in theatre.
The basic plan would be to build up enough capacity, ideally without your opponent being aware of it but if they are then hopefully underestimate it.
The bases are a major category of first strike system, and your point is basically the Russians should ignore that since there's plenty of nuclear capability anyways.
But then why create these nuclear provocations, send all these signals of withdrawing from treaties and building bases, and so on all in the context of not even repudiating a first-use policy. Sure, could be the goal, right now, is just have ourselves a little arms race as that's highly profitable. But even if that was the case, once the capacity is built up, who's to say some future administration wouldn't then use it because they have it.
And again, the reasoning framework of "these are the weapons systems the US has publicly disclosed right now, therefore nothing else exists now or in the future" is just dumb.
We've recently experience Trump being the best of friends with Kim Jong Un. No other US president ever has met with the North Korean dictator. So go figure.
And btw during Trump's administration, North Korea tested quite large nuclear weapons in 100+ kiloton range. So at least now the US isn't in denial about the North Korean nuclear weapon... as it for the first test said it might be just a large conventional explosion. But a 6,9 earthquake on the Richter scale you don't get with conventional explosives.
It was a love firelake relationship.
Quoting ssu
Definitely no doubt about the rogue nation threat.
However, the Russian perspective (at least according to Putin) was they were willing to renegotiate ABM and other treaties to deal with rogue nuclear threats while maintaining the non-proliferation architecture.
Furthermore, if you're analyzing this sort of thing in the Russian's equivalent of the pentagon—I'm going to hazard a guess that it's some sort of quadragon—then you could believe this is the main reason for it, but if it has a secondary effect of building up first strike capability against Russia then that's what you're going to be concerned about.
Especially the long time frames involved in nuclear strategy, very quickly the dominant factor is whether or not you're vulnerable to a first strike.
Now, all I've tried to explain on the subject is that building ABM missile bases closer to your nuclear opponent is a noticeable increase in first strike capability (certainly worth analyzing and placing on the list of risks to consider mitigatory action). Obviously for the Russians it's a big enough concern to take diplomatic action against.
However, how much of a risk Russian analysts or high-command view it and if it makes sense or noth, we'd need access to their top secret intelligence.
People (mostly on reddit) already like to say most of the Russia's nuclear arsenal is defunct in some way and the US could already easily carry out a first strike today. Maybe that's true. I doubt it, but a big difference in today's world vis-a-vis the Cold War is much more sophisticated signal intelligence as well as computation. Perhaps with just the right mix of weapon systems and sophisticated deployment and computer management (presumably even better now with AI) of the whole affair, a first strike is "doable" in at least some computer simulations. Or maybe it's basically not doable today or in the near future. But in terms of reacting to maintain the nuclear balance of power and ensure MAD, that it's not doable today doesn't exclude mitigatory action as you don't know what weapons systems will exist in the future.
No, it is not. The main Russian concern is the defensive capability of ABMs. However, for obvious reasons that does not sell as well, as I have already explained.
Quoting boethius
No, the ABM missiles deployed in the bases are not capable of carrying nuclear missiles. To load the tubes with nuclear missiles, Tomahawks would need to be delivered (and the tubes rearmed). So yes, it would be quite obvious if the base was under surveillance (and of course it is). And even Tomahawks with greater range would not be that effective as a first strike OFFENSIVE weapon. That is why the article on the doctrine does not list any ABMs as the likely or potential offensive weapon.
Quoting boethius
For the same reason they have not deployed any nuclear missiles in any new countries since the sixties.
Quoting boethius
And Russian command and control center is not within the reiiable range of the missiles deployed at the ABM missile site. As you would know if you have looked at the map, which you flatly refused to do.
Quoting boethius
I see the question was too hard. OK, I will try again:
How does the Redzikowo base used for OFFENSIVE purposes DRAMATICALLY increase the offensive potential as compared to ONE German frigate sailing on German teritorrial waters?
Be sure to notice the word ONE (1). It means that I ask you to compare the offensive potential of the Redzikowo base to a SINGLE German frigate. That means a number less than two. Will I get an honest answer to that question or not?
Quoting boethius
What is this then?
Quoting boethius
You cannot remember your posts which are on the current page? That explains SO much...
Quoting boethius
Sure, the issue is that you are just wrong. The base does not have missiles which are capable of carrying nuclear warheads, and even if they were, their range would be too short for the first strike. The tubes could be loaded with different missiles, but that cannot be done easily or covertly. Not to mention that it would be rather pointless, given that a single frigate sailing where it is regularly sailing could have the exact same effect.
"Ukrainian Special Forces Interrogate Wagner Mercenaries in Sudan"
https://www.kyivpost.com/post/27637
Russian landing ship Tsezar Kunikov hit in Black Sea, it has sunk
https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2024/02/14/7441777/
To defend against a Russian first strike?
And where do you even get what the "Russians really think" from?
You just makeup total bullshit, whatever is required to simply directly contradict obvious common sense.
Nuclear threats, first strike threats, are far greater than an ABM threat to your own first strike.
This whole areas is far from US shores ... this ABM base does not protect Washington (or any part of the US counter-strike arsenal), from a first strike.
Totally moronic point.
Quoting Jabberwock
Please explain how these missiles are simply "not capable" of having their ABM warhead swapped out for a nuclear warhead. We can literally put nuclear warheads in artillery shells but this feet is just not possible.
Your points are just a series of direct denials of common sense statements, without argumentation or evidence.
Quoting Jabberwock
Therefore, if the same tensions emerged as in the sixties we could expect the US to deploy nuclear weapons to new countries.
Your imagination levels are literally zero. You can't even imagine something that has already happened, and a key point of yours, simply happening again.
It's honestly difficult to believe you're really that dull, but maybe you are.
Quoting Jabberwock
Again, a ship you can get your own submarines, planes, other ships closer to than an inland base.
It's also easier to sink a ship than a land-base.
The land bases are also simply in different positions so expand the radar coverage and missile coverage.
This is really the most basic common sense possible that a single ship is less capable than a ship + land base.
If it was so insignificant why would such a base be built? Answer: because it's not insignificant but increases capabilities in the theatre.
Quoting Jabberwock
"DRAMATICALLY" does not equal "dramatically".
"DRAMATICALLY" is significantly more dramatic than merely "dramatically".
A citation should be exact, I do not all-caps words because I can rely on "arguing a point".
Quoting Jabberwock
Ah yes, They can't! ... but if they could (because they obviously can) here's another goalpost move.
We've literally but nuclear warheads in artillery shells, so what's your argument that swapping out the warhead in these ABM missiles is beyond what US engineers are "capable" of?
Go on, I'm all ears.
As for "easily or covertly" just loading different missiles: if you're carrying out a first strike you aren't in "easy" territory but maybe willing to do things that are somewhat difficult, maybe even medium difficultly.
And can't be done covertly?
Again, just making up bullshit direct contradictions against obvious common sense reality.
You're really saying that the missiles couldn't be modified (such as the ABM missiles or otherwise) to more easily fire from these tubes, and if went beyond what was "easy" in preparing your first strike, you couldn't do the difficult task of converting the tubes in some covert way, part of regular maintenance etc. on your own base?
Good insert that according to Putin. Because when you look at modern surface to air missile development, the longer range systems are all basically developed to engage ballistic missiles. So the idea of any ABM treaty now is a bit hypocritical. So it's not only the Russians who are here hypocrites.
For example Israel had no trouble of hitting the Houthi ballistic missiles and the success of the Arrow system obviously can be seen from the simple fact that the Houthis aren't lobbing long range missiles to Israel anymore. Much time has gone from the time Saddam Hussein was firing Scuds to Israel and basically got half of the USAF fighter bombers searching in vain the empty vast desert of Western Iraq.
Quoting boethius
Of course it's a concern to the Russians. But basically those ABM sites in Poland would basically protect... France and the UK. It's a simple fact that Russian nukes launched from Russia will fly over the Arctic, over Canada to hit continental US and the USAF missile silos in the center of the US. If those sites were planned to be in the tundra wastes of northern Canada, then the role would be totally obvious. ABM missiles have to be very close to the actual flight paths of the missiles as simply there isn't much time to defend against an ICBM launch.
https://www.politico.com/newsletters/national-security-daily/2024/02/08/zaluzhny-is-out-the-butcher-is-in-00140206
https://twitter.com/Tatarigami_UA/status/1720814139600232737?s=20
https://twitter.com/NeilPHauer/status/1756470879142170805
Their proposal (and what Bush said publicly he'd insist on Russia accepting) was to renegotiate the ABM treaty to update it to recent threats, such as North Korea.
Russia doesn't want to be nuked by North Korea or some other rogue nation or terrorist cell either.
Without a treaty obviously Russia can do what it wants, so I don't see the hypocriticalness on their part you're talking about.
Quoting ssu
To what extent ABM is effective against the most advanced missiles is always an open question as we see few such engagements.
However, the most advanced systems of your opponent are going to be limited in number.
Presumably if you're going to deliver a first strike your belief is that your ABM systems are going to be able to deal with whatever counter-strike gets through.
However, there's a lot of "knowledge based risk" in nuclear escalation analysis, such as was clearly demonstrated in Strange Love. Maybe your plan has no chance of succeeding but you think it will.
Hence, first strike assets in place are destabilizing and lead to further arms escalation because you want to be certain your opponent knows you have survivable counter-strike capability. You might believe you do anyways, but you want to be sure your adversary believes it too.
Hence what stabilized the nuclear arms race was a series of treaties to wind down first-strike capability well below what each side was confident was inadequate (as well as each side confident the other side was confident).
Now that those treaties have gone away, we see escalation in at least arms if not also the invasion of Ukraine partly due to the collapse in nuclear trust.
It's easy for nuclear considerations to dominate the discussion (in high places). "Ah but nukes" is always a powerful rebuttal, and we saw a significant amount of Cold War policy driven by fear of nuclear weapons. The soviets were particularly paranoid as they were technologically behind and the US demonstrated its willingness to use nuclear weapons to blowup cities.
But as I said, we'd need to know Russias top secrets to know what they actually think and on what basis.
They may have high confidence in the survivability of their counter-strike assets and very low confidence in American (or any for that matter) ABM systems to deal with a counter-strike. That's definitely their public position but we can't really know what they really think or are worried about.
However, fears of nuclear war is always one piece of the puzzle in understanding geo-politics today.
What we can say for sure is that the US doesn't help assuage those fears by declaring a no-first-use policy; they like to keep us guessing, so here we are.
And that is one way to sum up the idiocy of American apologetics on this issue: If America's official policy is to "strategic ambiguity" so adversaries fear a nuclear strike and they can leverage that fear (for deterrence of "American interests") then you can't say "well yeah, we need strategic ambiguity is so adversaries fear a first strike, but they also have nothing to fear! Haven't deployed nukes to new countries since the 60s!!"
If your public policy is that adversaries should live in fear of nuclear annihilation, you can't really then blame adversaries from acting out of fear.
Quoting ssu
That's why I've been mostly focused on the so called "decapitation strike" potential of the missile bases, and that it's logically and psychologically far easier to do from base than a fishing boat.
Obviously you could launch your decapitation strike from fishing boats and barns, but it would be a pretty complicated situation.
A more realistic scenario is that tensions increase, there's some escalation steps caused by whatever, and the decision is made to forward deploy the nukes "just in case", and then because the nukes are there the "just in case" turns into "we need to strike first" and the first-strike plan is put into action.
In the same scenario it would be much harder to "deploy the nuclear fishing boats".
When things are calm, even relatively calm with a hot war in Ukraine, it's easy to "feel" like people won't launch nuclear weapons. But if you increase the stakes and the stress enough that changes along with people doing crazy things under stress.
This is why you don't just want "probably" a survivable deterrent, you want your adversary to be convinced your counter-strike will most definitely survive, so that this belief persists even into high stress situations.
There's also the fear that if your command and control is destroyed and your society is essentially obliterated, that remaining commanders will not "see the point" in revenge.
Hence, the nuclear powers are sensitive to increases in first strike capability; why the Cuban Missile crisis was a "serious thing" and not "but they have boats and subs anyways, a 1 in 1000 increase in capability that was totally meaningless". Literally no serious analyst has ever deployed this "bases aren't a deal yo" to the Cuban missile crisis.
As for the ABM capability itself, presumably there would be nukes also going towards Europe you'd want to destroy.
You'd of course need other ABM assets to deal with nukes going from different directions. Might need literally hundreds of thousands of ABM missiles to be "somewhat confident" your first strike plan will work.
May simply be not feasible today, which is why I explain that the problem (from the Russian perspective) is also the trend. Maybe today there's just not enough ABM missiles in the world to deal with a counter-strike, but what about tomorrow? What if they let these bases proliferate and then tomorrow there's effective ABM systems in vast quantity that exist? And with AI to distinguish decoys and be more accurate, organize the whole effort, etc. you could need way less missiles per target than today.
If you read the article, he seems to be called the "the butcher" not exactly in a good way:
Quoting Zaluzhny is out, the ‘butcher’ is in
That's why I posted it. If you read my links, all of them are criticizing Zelensky's choice of replacing Zalushny with the Butcher.
Honestly, the article is really surprising to see in a Western media outlet.
Quoting Zaluzhny is out, the ‘butcher’ is in
I think useful to highlight that I, personally, wouldn't base any conclusions on anonymous X posts, so I wouldn't say this is good journalism, so no surprise there, but it is surprising to see this level of criticism coming from a Western media outlet.
Ah ok, noted.
Honestly surprising to me, both that he has this reputation and Western outlets would run with it.
The Duran had a theory that Zelensky picked Syrskyi precisely because he wasn't a political threat, so this would be further evidence of that.
Quoting neomac
Well, I'm not saying twitter posts can't be credible, but if you're citing anonymous twitter posts as a journalist, I think the bare minimum is to explain why.
How do we know it's not some troll, larper, or even Russian intelligence?
So, if there are reasons to trust (history that is clearly credible), which I have no problem believing your reasons are good, the bare minimum I'd expect from a journalist is to explain those reasons, or at least assert that they've gone through the post history and find it credible.
The era of "someone close to the matter" and "anonymous poster" and "open source intelligence" is really zero-credibility journalism, as I'm sure you agree.
Also, if Syrskyi isn't popular, it's definitely setting the stage for a coup.
Zelensky may not realize it's in many ways easier for Zalushny to execute a coup in this situation than as commander.
Now, "his boys" can do the coup to "restore democracy" and then he is just standing for election just like any other citizen has the right to.
Way cleaner.
Zaluzhny is also rumored to have been involved in talks with the Russians, whereas the West hasn't yet been able to pressure Zelensky into seeking for compromise.
This is likely because Zelensky was pushed into pursuing this "no negotiations" strategy, and now that the West is realizing its mistakes and pushing for compromise, it's basically asking Zelensky to take the fall, which he refuses to do.
Furthermore, there were a lot of rumors that Zelensky might appoint the head of intelligence (I forget the name) to replace Zaluzhny, which was seen by some as a clear signal that the Ukrainian strategy would be shifting to fighting an insurgency war. This is something the West probably wants, because that's what they have been counting on all this time would beat the Russians or at least make their life very difficult.
The fact that Zelensky didn't do that, and instead chose Syrskyi is basically a signal by the Ukrainians that they're still not done duking it out with the Russians on the battlefield.
Your points are certainly possible, but I'm not so sure.
The West has enormous leverage over Zelensky in terms of the money; of course, Zelensky has the leverage of letting the country totally collapse. But of the two, money is the far stronger negotiation position. Letting Ukraine collapse would be embarrassing for the West, but people would move on pretty quickly. Literally two weeks after people were literally falling off the last US planes to leave Afghanistan, it was basically a non-story.
We've had in person visits to Ukraine from the head of the CIA as well as very recently Nuland.
So it could be the changes we see are what the CIA wants. The head of Ukrainian intelligence could have been floated to just make the appearance of a contest, but it would really not make much sense for someone from intelligence to suddenly be the top military commander.
Moving to an insurgency also just doesn't make sense to me at all. These aren't the mountains of Afghanistan with a totally different culture and language and religion to a foreign occupier. Insurgency hasn't been a notable factor in any of the areas Russia already occupies.
Therefore, if Ukraine stopped maintaining the front, Russia would just advance to wherever it wants and declare victory, then build up the multi-layered defensive lines that proved barely movable by Ukraine at enormous cost in their much anticipated offensive.
A key part of the military leverage Ukraine has outposts like Avdiivka from which you can shell Donetsk, which is only about 15 km away.
People still live in Donetsk so the current front line is not very desirable.
Why there's so much confusion over the "strategic importance" of these front line fortress cities.
Bakhmut and Avdiivka aren't so important against a Russian campaign to conquer all of Ukraine, so it seems like an insignificant distance to accomplish that goal and so why not fallback.
However, if Ukraine starts falling back and is no longer in artillery range of important Donbas cities, then Russia can just establish a buffer zone where basically nobody lives. One consequence of the high intensity warfare we're seeing is nearly everyone is forced to leave these cities and they're nearly totally destroyed, so if the Russians can push the Ukrainians back enough then they have a safety zone where basically nobody lives.
Once they have a safety zone they can essentially declare mission accomplished, but since the war isn't over until Ukraine sues for peace then Russia will just continue with standoff munitions which I suppose Ukraine can just continue to deal with as it has provided Western support, but it would be heavily in Russias favour and the West is already getting critical of more money to Ukraine.
The West floats essentially the entire Ukrainian economy and that's how it's able to withstand the disruptions of the Russian missile campaign. As soon as that support ends, Ukraine is in a severe economic crisis.
To circle back to the original point of contention, I just don't see how insurgency tactics would help Ukraine in the scenario that Russia establishes a safety zone. Once Russia does, it's difficult to spin that as something other than a Russian victory and that Ukraine has little military strategic options left (something people are already saying after the failed offensive, but if they fail to maintain defensive lines and Russia establishes new multi-layered lines, probably more people will start saying it).
Therefore, to help Biden win the election the best plan is to prop-up Ukraine to maintain the status quo as much as possible (that can at least be spun as "holding the line") of slowing the Russian advance enough that a clear safety zone isn't established that even mainstream pundits could easily explain on a map of how the Ukrainians are here, the Russians are there, and this whole depopulated zone in between is the Russian's defensive matrix and Ukraine can do basically nothing, as we've already seen.
So, to do that, as Politico informs us, you want someone in charge willing to send wave after wave of their own men into a meat grinder and has the affectionate name of "The Butcher".
Of course, you'd still want to arrange the media in such a way that it's "Zelensky's choice" and "Ukrainians choice" to keep fighting, that they aren't "finished duking it out" just as you say.
Certainly some elements in the West want to push Zelensky to negotiate, but I don't see how that could serve Biden's image going into the election year.
The main tools you need seem to be an electric drill and some leather jackets.
Once you have the leather jackets and drill, you're all set to begin your nuclear first strike adventure.
Because, depending on who their narrative is directed to, Russians have often skipped that point.
Quoting boethius
Sure, I might be wrong. Can you provide evidence which specific nuclear warhead can be used with SM3? They keyword is 'specific'. Asserting that it can be is not evidence, not to mention that it takes down your whole argument, as I have already pointed out: if Americans can put their nuclear warheads into any missile (irrespective of its capacity and range), then the base is even less significant, as we can imagine anything that flies can be a carrier and there are alot more of those. Just put nukes on ATACMS and drive fifty of them to the border...
Quoting boethius
No, your assertion was that Americans would certainly deploy nuclear nukes if they could. And that is simply false - they could for all those years and they did not. Maybe you should consider why.
Quoting boethius
Lol. Hint: nowadays, ships do not battle by firing broadsides. If you believe that a base located TWENTY KILOMETERS from the shore is somehow out of range of modern weapon systems, then it just shows that your lack of knowledge is comical. Oh, wait, you still have not looked at the map, have you?
Quoting boethius
Given the ranges of the missiles, the 150 km distance does not change the 'missile coverage' significantly. YOU. DID. NOT. LOOK. AT. THE. MAP. AGAIN. And we are not talking about 'radar coverage' at all, as both countries have other radar stations much closer than that base.
Quoting boethius
Yes, because land bases are not sunk at all. On the other hand hitting a stationary base is easier than a moving ship. So again you insist on providing the evidence you do not know what you are talking about.
Quoting boethius
No, we are comparing a SINGLE ship to a SINGLE base. Because, you know, NATO can always build another ship. So the question is: would NATO get a better offensive capacity if it just built another frigate instead of the Redzikowo base? And the answer is, yes it would (more tubes, better mobility, flexible deployment).
Quoting boethius
*sigh* Yes, I have already said so. The base is not insigificant, if it is used for the purposes which *surprise, surprise* it is actually built for.
Quoting boethius
Of all the hilarious of your backtracks this is the best one... You claim that you did not use 'the word'... When I have pointed out that yes, actually you did use the exact same word, you claim that the same word in all caps is not the same word? Seriously, can you get more absurd? Oh, yes, you can: you then argue that your use of the word 'dramatically' was less dramatic.
Quoting boethius
Bare assertions are just that: bare assertions. Again, if you have evidence that the specific missiles can be used with nuclear warheads, provide it. Hilariously, even Russians with all their propaganda are not making that argument. And, again, this nonsensical point basically destroys your whole line of argumentation: if you can put a nuclear warhead into any missile, then the whole issue is moot, because both sides have literally thousands of untraceable missiles which then could be used (in your imagination) for dozens of strikes. You do not care about the sizes, capacities, ranges, it is all the same to you.
Quoting boethius
So your bright idea is to take missiles specifically developed to counter the threat of ICBMs, which are quite effective in that role, and convert them to a role in which they would be much less reliable, with a range so short that they would not even reach Moscow, not to mention any control centers. Because it would enhance the offensive capacities dramatically (no caps), even though you can get a better effect with a SINGLE frigate, more suited for that purpose.
But sure, let us use our imagination... If you can rebuild launchers covertly, then you can just build another launcher in the ground somewhere else - after all, it is just a tube, as you claim...? If that is so, then what stops Americans from covertly putting such tubes anywhere they want? This is certainly something they are capable of? But then why Russians would protest that single overt base, if they know that Americans can put launchers wherever they want covertly (and if they can, they most likely did, because that is what they do, as you claim)?
Why would Russia be nuked by North Korea???? Would the US be nuked by the UK or France? I don't think so.
North Korea has just given a massive assistance to it's de facto ally Russia with the million or so munitions given to the Russian army to fight the war in Ukraine.
Let's remember the facts here: Soviet Union created North Korea. Kim il Sung was put to be the leader of North Korea by Stalin. Soviet Union provided support to North Korea during the Korean War, where air regiments of Soviet fighters fought it out on "MiG Alley" with the Americans over North Korea. Russia has a treaty of "Friendship, Good-Neighborly Relations and Cooperation".
It's hilariously ludicrous to think that for Russia, North Korea is any kind of threat. It's one of those few loyal allies it has.
There was and is no such independence, remember? :D Rather, regions were grabbed by the (regressing) Kremlin empire after their campaigns. (odd how these ? comments keep skirting other stuff, oh well)
Quoting boethius
Covertly, no protests or the like? After all, Zelenskyy was democratically elected. Protests seem unlikely in the current (wartime) situation. But, hey, who knows.
[sup]— Edith M Lederer · AP · Feb 12, 2024[/sup]
Quoting Vasily Nebenzya
Whenever the Kremlin circle says ? this (emphasized), I can't help but wonder if they know how ridiculous it is. Along the lines of their alternate world type stuff. (Going by the latter part here, which isn't new.) How to talk with someone that doesn't care about truth?
Russian — not German Chinese American Antarctican Japanese — military is killing Ukrainians and the Kremlin has chosen to do so, more or less ongoingly. (besides, the attackers?defenders relationship isn't symmetrical, attackers choose for both, defenders can't choose otherwise)
By the way, has Nebenzya considered North Korea (and Iran) to be "complicit" in "the cost [s]of[/s] to Ukraine and the lives of its citizens"? After all, reportedly, North Korean bombs are on a killing spree, via Russian military, by Kremlin order.
So, the Kremlin circle evades/shirks their responsibility, and pseudo-offloads to others instead. I'm guessing one person could pick up the phone and change the killing in a jiffy, well, maybe. They indirectly admit to creating "a tragedy", but ... no ... (Misdirection.)
They cater to a particular argument (intended) to appeal to (against) supporters: The defense supporters cause the attacks that kill Ukrainians — implicitly, the attackers are one (unbendable righteous superior) and the killing is necessary. The defense supporters must cease and desist — remove cause and effect ("the tragedy") disappears. (Slippery slope.) Are the invaders unmovable and don't care about ("the lives of") people? In analogy, should supporters "be the bigger person" in some way, abandon the defenders, appearing to confirm the attackers' rhetoric?
Quoting Robert A Wood
Accuse others of what you're doing. Kindergarten'ize victims. Grab land. Carry on with impunity. :ok:
The fact is US covertly interferes all over the place and governments change.
When that happens we point to the people in the country in question who wanted the change to legitimize it and recognize the new government and everything is totally fine and of course the West is going to support the people we like.
There's plenty of evidence a large amount of people in these Russian speaking regions did not like the CIA backed coup to change the government in 2014.
The exact same reasons used to legitimize the coup in Kiev can be used to legitimize the secessions from Ukraine in the South.
Russia was involved in the sessions exactly the same way the US was involved in the coup in Kiev (just way less sloppy as there isn't recorded phone calls with whoever Nuland's counterpart in Russia would be talking about hand picking the new governments).
And you can split hairs about the legitimacy was "really actually legitimate" in one case and not in the other, because Girkin!!!, so feel free to do so.
However, if you look at the history of governance changes the US, Europe, the world in general, accepts as legitimate, there's no standards. The only thing that matters in the end is control of the territory long enough (that's what governance is; do we like the Taliban all of a sudden? No. But they control the territory for long enough so they are now the legitimate government). Controlling territory includes diplomatic relations to get support.
So, the regions become independent and control the territory, there's not any other standard of legitimacy that can be employed that I view as particularly meaningful.
Not that control of the territory implies any sort of moral right. We still don't like the Taliban.
Rather, once control of a territory is established it becomes a consequentialist question of whether trying to change that from the exterior is sensible. Plenty of governments that have no moral claim to their rule, but we don't go toppling them because it does more harm than good or is unlikely to succeed.
Once Ukraine lost control of the territories the relevant moral question is not a moral evaluation of the new governments there or how the control was lost, but what's the consequence of trying to retake the territory. If there was a consequentialist case (not an abstract or hypothetical or wishful thinking case, but nitty-gritty real world case) that the territories could be retaken and result in a better situation for the inhabitants and everyone else (such as men forced to fight and sacrifice) that is the only justification.
For example, plenty of countries just fell to the Nazis without much a fight (Belgium, France, Denmark, Norway etc.) and literally no one makes the case that because the Nazi's were bad those countries should have fought harder or fought to the death. Why? Because that the Nazis were bad is not sufficient reason to fight them, one must consider the consequence and not waste lives.
So, why do we view it that the US and UK an obligation to fight the Nazis? Because the had more power and so more means to do so and get to a good outcome of winning the war (with the help of the Soviets of course).
Sending men to die for unattainable objectives is not justifiable, outside incredibly extreme circumstances that we don't even apply to the Nazis (we don't say Belgium and France should have fought to the death).
Reconquering the lost territories is simply an unattainable objective. It was clear that Russia would not let that happen, Ukraine can't defeat Russia, the campaigns to reconquer the lost territories were a fools errand, but worse because the attempt could predictably result in the present war and losing far more for Ukraine in both people and land.
Quoting jorndoe
I'm talking about a military coup.
Zelensky was elected, but has since suspended elections, so pretty easy for a the military to have pretext for a coup to have elections.
I'm not saying Zaluzhny is actually planning a coup, but if he's popular and "The Butcher" isn't popular, then the only reason to sack Zaluzhny is fear of a coup. I'm just pointing out that's a double-edged sword, as a straight-up military coup and placing the top commander as president would be a bit "much", but a coup to have "elections" would be far easier to spin.
If Zaluzhny had the military support he needed to stage a coup as top commander, then removing him wouldn't change that much.
So we'll see what happens.
What we do know is that it wasn't so easy to fire Zaluzhny and he had no problem making that clear to everyone.
Quoting Revolution of Dignity (Wikipedia)
Seems reasonable enough to me. Except, such a tedious lengthy damned process, surely if wanting to join modern democratic clubs and wrestle free from ghosts of the past. But the Gremlin threw a wrench in that with a roar...err war.
Anyway, the repetition is also getting tedious.
And there still was/is no such independence. Probably not really the Gremlin's plan in the first place.
:lol:
Exactly, when the US interferes covertly in other countries it's ok because it's "for good".
Why we should suspect US intentions is that US officials have zero problem continuously stating basically every policy is for "US national interests" and whenever that conflicts with human rights: "Get real! US national interests!!"
However, for the purpose of this point of discussion, "legitimate governments" simply means control of territory over a long enough term regardless of how they come into existence.
Capitalization is part of the spelling of a word.
"DRAMATICALLY" is not how you spell properly, and just shouting because you have zero points.
If you accuse me of using the word "DRAMATICALLY", you should be able to site where I use the word "DRAMATICALLY".
Or then add the caveat of "of course not all caps because you're not a moron and need to resort to all capitalization".
But go ahead, both of you, explain again how the bases are zero significance; that a missile base and a missile ship is not dramatically more missiles than just a ship.
It's just dumb.
For example, feel free to try to explain how if the Cuban missile crisis was about Soviets moving ABM into Cuba, the US would be like "insignificant, we cool with it, soviets already have ships".
It's honestly incredible how deeply people believe the double standard delusions of American foreign policy analysis.
No, you need to resort to use words like 'dramatically' (and half a page pseudo-philosophical ramblings), because you do not know the basic facts of the things you discuss and when faced with that you have to resort to inane rhetorics. When asked about specifics, you flatly refuse to engage with facts, because you abhor the facts, you do not even look at the map.
Quoting boethius
Lol, you do it again... The Cuban missile crisis was about land-launched ballistic missilies which had SIX TIMES (some argue more) the range of any ship-borne missiles that Russians could realistically deploy in 1962. For those map-averse: a regular-service Russian submarine anchored right at the Statue of Liberty equipped with R-13 could penetrate the American continent to about Pennsylvania. R-14s launched from Cuba could reach California. Admittedly, Russians had one submarine, K-19, which in 1961 was equipped with three R-13s (with the range doubled, but still three times shorter than land-based missiles), but it was only one unit and prone to failures (or, rather disasters: in 1961 and later twenty sailors died of radation, the boat was nicknamed 'Hiroshima').
So yes, at that time the land-based launchers did provide an enormous advantage over the ship-borne ones, which you would be aware of, if you had the slighest idea of the things you insist on talking about.
First, as already argued elsewhere, I don't find the double standard accusation particularly compelling in geopolitics because indeed double standard reasoning can very much be part of the game: namely, depending on the circumstances, one may STILL feel rationally compelled to support an ally who is wrong, precisely because he is an ally, than an enemy who is right, precisely because he is an enemy.
Second, as far as I'm concerned, the Cuban Missile crisis serves better pro-US propaganda then pro-Russian propaganda: indeed, in the Cuban Missile crisis we are talking about an ACTUAL case of medium-range and intermediate-range ballistic nuclear missiles on site [1] not about a prospective deployment of nuclear weapons conditional on Ukrainian accession to NATO (which was far from being imminent while the existence of the NATO alliance itself was challenged by Trump and Macron), yet the US was able to solve the crisis without invading and annexing Cuba, massacring Cuban civilians, deporting Cubans (including kids) in the US, and colonizing Cuba with American beach boys, wasn't it?
[1]
"After the failed U.S. attempt to overthrow the Castro regime in Cuba with the Bay of Pigs invasion, and while the Kennedy administration planned Operation Mongoose, in July 1962 Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev reached a secret agreement with Cuban premier Fidel Castro to place Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba to deter any future invasion attempt. Construction of several missile sites began in the late summer, but U.S. intelligence discovered evidence of a general Soviet arms build-up on Cuba, including Soviet IL–28 bombers, during routine surveillance flights, and on September 4, 1962, President Kennedy issued a public warning against the introduction of offensive weapons into Cuba. Despite the warning, on October 14 a U.S. U–2 aircraft took several pictures clearly showing sites for medium-range and intermediate-range ballistic nuclear missiles (MRBMs and IRBMs) under construction in Cuba. These images were processed and presented to the White House the next day, thus precipitating the onset of the Cuban Missile Crisis."
https://history.state.gov/milestones/1961-1968/cuban-missile-crisis
Quoting Revolution of Dignity (Wikipedia)
[sup](you're free to work backward from the facts, but no matter)[/sup]
And there still was/is no independence in the grabbed regions.
So, to what end?
:/ Another one bites the dust:
Russian activist and Putin critic Alexei Navalny dies in prison
[sup]— Andrew Roth, Helen Sullivan · The Guardian · Feb 16, 2024[/sup]
The person resorting the drama is the person screaming "DRAMATICALLY"!
What facts are you even talking about? That the US doesn't have a weapon right this moment with publicly available specifications that literally says "for nuclear deployment in ABM tubes"?
I literally posted a video showing how to take a warhead out of a nuclear bomb.
What are the salient facts:
1. Obviously you can load a nuclear warhead into an ABM missile tube or then just an ABM missile itself. (After denying this was possible, you finally accepted it was possible but not "easy" and could not be done covertly. When I ask you why it being easy or hard matters to someone setting up a first strike, and also why it couldn't be done covertly ... nada, no specifics, just random denials based on nothing.)
2. The ABM treaty (which the US withdrew from) was negotiated because ABM is first strike capability, arguably anywhere but for sure in forward deployed missile bases.
3. The bases we're talking thus represent an increasing nuclear first strike capability and the Russians would make the same analysis and same conclusion and take mitigatory measures. Perhaps they view the risk as low and the only mitigatory measure they saw reasonable to take was simply diplomatically complain about it (to for example setup taking stronger measures if more bases are forward deployed) or then maybe it was one factor in the decision to invade Ukraine.
What facts have I not engaged with?
Quoting Jabberwock
I asked if the US would not have reacted if the Russians deployed ABM.
Quoting boethius
You can't even read correctly.
My question is, make the Cuban missile crisis of similar nature to the US bases in East-Europe. So whatever analogue of ABM missiles you want to imagine being deployed to Cuba.
For your whole "it's insignificant!" argument to work, obviously you have to hold that same argument if things were reversed.
Would US just go ahead and ignore the ABM missiles in Cuba and not do anything?
Your answer should be "yes, of course, if the Soviets did some analogous thing of a land based ABM missile system in Cuba, then that would have been insignificant and the US, being a more reasonable nation, would not have taken any measures whatsoever".
Since you basically can't read and you'll just answer again that it wasn't the same situation, my question is imagine it is a comparable situation: ABM missile bases increasing the Soviets ABM capability to the same extent these bases in Eastern-Europe increase US ABM capability?
Go with your 1000 to 1 ratio if you want, as that's your position, from there you should have no problem concluding that if the Soviets had done a similar thing it would not have provoked a reaction from the US as the bases would be insignificant.
If you're unable to say that, it's because you don't even believe yourself in your position, it's just a lie.
First, I have not forgotten your long post explaining this pick-a-hegemon position, which at least strives to resolve surface level contradictions. I will get to it when I have time.
But, in short, you are describing realpolitik and the justification for supporting the ally in the wrong is going to be ultimately a consequentialist argument that not-doing-so would lead to some worse outcome (losing a war to some fascist state, for example).
I do not mind this realpolitik approach, it is essentially my basic argument in this debate just I have different realpolitik conclusions:
1. That Ukraine very likely cannot win militarily.
2. That the war very likely strengthens, rather than weakens, Russia.
3. That most of the rest of the world is sympathetic to Russia and don't give much of a crap what we Westerners think (most of the rest of the world is authoritarian, anti-gay, anti-trans, and have a long memory vis-a-vis Western colonialism and CIA interference); Russia is "standing up to the West" in this alternative view point.
4. That the war greatly harms the European economy and makes it structurally less competitive over the long term significantly decreasing Western leverage in general (and most ceding it to China).
5. That creating a global economic schism in which Russia is pioneering a totally different economic framework structurally decreases Western leverage over the long term.
So the war isn't good neither for Ukraine nor the West, and the idea that Ukraine is harming Russia is a dangerous myth.
Of the objectives the US achieves:
1. Destroying the EU as a competition to the Dollar.
2. Selling LNG to Europe.
3. Fully subordinating the (current) European political class.
4. Making mad bank in arms exports.
Are terrible for Europe (and I'm European) and I would also caution that they are in the "careful what you wish for" category even for the United States.
As the RAND documents makes clear, escalating military conflict between Russia and Ukraine would likely result in Russia winning any such escalation and would significantly harm US prestige and strategic position if Russia were to win.
So, if Ukraine could win and Russia was actually an enemy (which I don't buy that it was) then there would be at least the realpolitik case for supporting Ukraine, even if it would be a double standard vis-a-vis plenty other causes as or more just.
Quoting neomac
As I already responded to @Jabberwock, my question is to imagine the situation analogous, it would follow that your position is the same if the situation was analogous.
That there would not only be no crisis but the US would not react at all to such insignificant ABM bases (with radars, missile and missile tubes and connected to Soviet logistics) on Cuba.
It's a simple question: had the Soviets some analogous ABM system to Cuba, the US would not (or at least should not have) reacted in anyway because such ABM bases are insignificant?
I am talking about who controls the territory.
Ukraine lost control of the territory, regardless of what legal or moral arguments you want to make about it, Ukraine lost control of the "grabbed regions" if you want to call them that.
Ukraine had and has no way of getting them back by military force and trying to do so would super very likely trigger a Russian invasion (plenty experts predicted this).
If your point is just "well I don't like it, phoooey", ok, yeah, sure, I have no trouble believing you don't like it.
You can make as many moral and legal arguments as you want, believe Russia is as bad as you want, doesn't change the fact Ukraine lost control of territories in question in 2014 and their attempt to reconquer them was met with a Russian invasion (predictably).
And the facts now are that Ukraine is very severely damaged and has lost even more territory.
I can see literally not a single fact of factor supporting the strategy of trying to impose Ukraine's will on Russia by force.
It has not worked, and will continue not to work.
It was you who have used the word, because you were unable to show how the base is more significant than a single frigate. And obviously still cannot do that, so you resort to such comical claims as that a base located 20 km from the shore (of which you were unaware, of course) is somehow more difficult to hit than a ship.
Quoting boethius
The fact is that the US does not have a nuclear warhead that is capable of putting into the ABMs deployed in the base. AND you still ignore the fact that their range is too short for the first strike.
As I wrote, even Russian propaganda does not make that point - they only refer to Tomahawks (which, as you seemingly are still blissfully unaware, are not ABMs), not SM3. In other words, Russian simply ignore what you believe is the greatest threat (i.e. 'easily switching the warheards in ABMs'). Why do you think is that?
Quoting boethius
After five pages of discussion you still have no idea what missiles you refer to... I have pointed out that that while theoretically it is possible, it would be pointless, because ABMs (and SM3 in particular) are rather poor surface-to-surface weapons AND they do not have sufficient range for the first strike. That is why Russians are NOT saying this. And yes, you can put Tomahawks into them, but it is rather hard to do it covertly. On the other hand, you CAN put covertly the exact same missile into a frigate launcher sailing 100 km from the very same base and you get the same effect (only more tubes).
Quoting boethius
And I have explained more than twice already that sure, ABMs play a defensive role in first strike capability. I cannot help that in your confusion you got it to mean 'ABMs can be easily loaded with nuclear warheads and used for the offensive first strike'.
Quoting boethius
Except that you have insisted that the biggest threat is using ABMs as an offensive weapon and that a single base 'dramatically' (your word) increases the offensive capacity. Neither of the claims are true.
Quoting boethius
You have asked specifically 'if the Cuban missile crisis was about Soviets moving ABM', so I have retained all other characteristics of the particular event taking place at particular time and just switched the weapons in question - and then the question makes no sense, because there were no equivalent weapons at that time. Your question could not be 'how would the US react if Russians have deployed ABMs in Cuba today', because you wrote specifically 'Soviets'. So which particular time and technical and political situation did your question refer to? The obvious answer is: none, because you had only a vague idea of what you were asking.
Quoting boethius
If Russians have deployed ABMs in Cuba today, they would be significant in intercepting all the ICBMs flying from the States toward the South America. So I suppose their significance depends on how serious are the US plans of nuking South America.
As for their offensive capacities, if the analogues of SM3 were used, they would be capable of nuking Florida, maybe a bits of Georgia, Alabama and Louisiana. So their sigficance depends on the fact how much of the US command control infrastructure is located in Florida (or bits of Georgia, Alabama and Louisiana).
A fictional dialogue ("When what happens in Moscow, goes to FUK3") translated to English:
Some of the footage that came out of the imprisonment reminds a bit more of Hannibal Lecter treatment than a political opponent. Putin fears Navalny, Putin makes example of Navalny, Russians fear becoming another example?
Quoting boethius
Not saying right/wrong, just that you keep interspersing postulates. Per earlier, the war was about loss of control. (Aren't resources/assets among the most common reasons for warring?)
Quoting boethius
To my understanding, the scenario which I find more compelling for European risk analysis is roughly the opposite of yours:
- If Ukraine can not “militarily win” (in some debatable sense), maybe neither can Russia “militarily win” (in some debatable sense) if the West keeps supporting Ukraine enough. While if the West stops supporting Ukraine, Russia can more likely “militarily win”.
- If the war very likely strengthens, rather than weakens, Russia. Surrender to Russia in Ukraine will strengthen Russia even more.
- The claim that “most of the rest of the world is sympathetic to Russia and don't give much of a crap what we Westerners think”, could sound to Westerners as compelling as “most of the rest of the world is sympathetic to Palestinians and don't give much of a crap what Israelis think” to Israelis, if not less. Yet, the Israelis seem willing to handle it and far from being intimidated by it.
- Concerning the fourth and fifth point, letting Russia win (and indirectly China as its strategic ally), betraying the American leadership which is still (but hardly) policing international commercial routes with its military navies/air force and reasons to refrain from a more aggressive economic competition with Europeans as an ally, while leaving Europeans (in demographic declines) dependent for its input and output on a world contended by more equipped and aggressive powers, could not only destabilise the system of strategic alliances within the West (which NATO and EU are expression) from internal and external pressure, but make more likely democratic backsliding, social unrest and proxy wars inside Europe. And in this case, I deeply doubt that Europeans will be in a better position to compete with China in any meaningful sense.
- Concerning the US, if the US wants to keep its world dominance, it needs Europeans (and other allies) to reduce the burden of imperial overstretch, so plausibly a enough economically and military strong EU. Or give up on world dominance and leave Europe to be contended as Africa and Middle East by other hegemonic competitors (as anticipated in my previous comment https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/872479). In the latter case, the 4 benefits that a predatory US will earn at the expense of Europeans in your scenario, will simply be split among 3 predatory hegemonic competitors STILL at the expense of Europeans in my scenario:
1. Destroying Euro as a competitor to any hegemonic competitor’s currency.
2. Making European countries dependable on any hegemonic competitor’s commodities.
3. Fully subordinating the European political class to hegemonic competitors’ will.
4. Making mad bank in arms exports.
To make your assessment more compelling to me, you should seriously argue for why 3 hegemonic competitors (2 of which are consolidated AND, POSSIBLY, "VICTORIOUS" authoritarian regimes while the third at risk to become more authoritarian and more confrontational e.g. if Trump wins [1]) will give any chance to Europeans (= the ex-Great Satans which turned into the current Great Satan’s lapdogs) individually or, worse, collectively either to economically and democratically prosper in a peaceful limbo safe from power projections and security threats coming from these 3 hegemonic powers (to put it simple, because there is also Islamism that one can add to the scenario), or to grow as a military force capable of power projection (which, notice, may also require nuclear proliferation) and therefore support hegemonic ambitions in a contended world. Alternatively, you could argue in support of European politicians which will peacefully & safely make their countries economically and democratically prosper (and even militarily intimidating) DESPITE the external pressure of powerful and predatory hegemonic powers OUT OF SHEER WILL, MORAL SUPERIORITY, POLITICAL WISDOM, DIPLOMATIC AND ECONOMIC SKILLS, HUMANITARIAN CONCERNS, EGALITARIAN MISSION, EXEMPLAR PATRIOTISM after that an avalanche of WESTERN populist propaganda ALREADY ABUNDANTLY INFILTRATED, BRIBED, LOBBIED by hegemonic competitors kept SHITTING OVER AND OVER AND OVER Western democracies, media, economy, economic/political elites and leaders, EU and NATO ON WORLD STAGE FOR SEVERAL DECADES. And in this case, I’m just looking forward to hearing their names.
Until then, I’m fine with my understanding of the stakes. According to it, the LEAST benefit of the war in Ukraine for Europeans is to BUY TIME for European politicians to figure out their approach in a contended world in order to minimize the damage, and this may very much require greater investment in the Western system of strategic alliances (among European countries and with the US, Ukraine included) and greater effort to do more economically/militarily within greater international constraints (difficult but maybe not unfeasible). Anyways, given the predicament in which we are, I can't ignore that European populists will do their worst to screw that too, though.
[1]
Notice, I don't need to take Trump's words about NATO at face value. It's still arguable that Trump is very much interested in keeping NATO and the US in Europe and/or that the American establishment will make it hard for Trump to really disengage from Europe. Yet the future of the American support for the European security is getting dangerously uncertain while the threats are dangerously increasing.
Quoting boethius
What RAND documents?
Quoting boethius
As the Multivac, I’d say “Insufficient data for meaningful answer”.
I’m far from being a military analyst, even at an amateurish level. So instead I would argue against the way you framed your question ([I]”my question is to imagine the situation analogous, it would follow that your position is the same if the situation was analogous”[/I]) because it looks grounded on either a non sequitur or a tautology. Indeed, I don’t see why I should assume that threat perception would be the same over similar factual/hypothetical military scenarios and, if the same, that the reaction would be the same. On the other hand, if the “analogous situation” already includes also threat perception and response, then of course the position would be analogous by definition. Not to mention that threat perception can be miscalculated or inflated for propaganda reasons.
Besides, as far as I’m concerned, there is no need to make such a convoluted thought experiment, because the Cuban Missile crisis readily offers a historical study case about threat perception and copying mechanism from the US that we can use for comparison. And what this study case suggests is that while the US chose diplomacy to an actual present threat, Russia chose aggression to a hypothetical future threat.
Not to mention that from a political point of view: 1. the US needs Ukraine neither to put its nuclear bases closer to Moscow because Baltic countries could be enough for that, nor to widen the front of nuclear threats since Finland could be enough for that. 2. While the US was the only country to use nukes against a rival which was aggressed by on mainland, the ONLY one which keeps threatening to use nukes, in the current crisis, is Russia after aggressing and annexing part of an acknowledged sovereign country. 3. The US has shown a concern toward perceived nuclear threats by Russia, in at least three significant occasions: Cuban missile crisis, not deploying further east offensive nuclear weapons, Budapest Memorandum in which the Ukrainian nuclear arsenal was returned to Russia (with great disappointment of Mearsheimer himself, go figure).
The largest country in the world...? :brow: Russia will persist, Putin is 71. Once again conflating grand (somewhat USSR-style) vision, at the expense of Ukraine (and Russia(n youth) for that matter). [sup]2024Feb16, 2024Feb12, 2024Feb7[/sup]
Milchakov participated as a volunteer in the war in Donbas from 2014,[2] stating later he wanted "to kill".[6] According to his own account, Milchakov formed Rusich together with Yan Petrovsky in the summer of 2014, after going through a paramilitary training program run by the Imperial Legion, the military branch of the Russian Imperial Movement.[8] He has openly bragged about photographing the bodies of mutilated and burnt Ukrainian bodies from the paramilitary Aidar group in 2014.[2] Milchakov is also reputed to have cut ears of Ukrainian corpses and scratched swastikas on their faces.[9] By 2015, he had been sanctioned by the European Union, United Kingdom and Canada.[2] He has used the call signs "Fritz" and "Serb"[/i]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexey_Milchakov
[i]Russian Neo-Nazi, GRU officer Alexei Milchakov (him of puppy torture/killing fame), who fought in Ukraine in 2014, talks about how he cut off the ears of the Ukrainian military (Aidar Battalion) and got high on the smell of burning flesh.
In Russia this pillock is called an "anti-fascist' and "Defender of Donbas".
Milchakov has links to Dmitry Utkin, founder of Wagner Group.
He's a Russian GRU operative and Neo-Nazi - a supporter of Nazi SS formation.
Utkin's career with Putin shows Russian hypocrisy. Moscow falsely accuses others of "Neo-Nazism" while itself using services of true fascists.
Translation of Milchakov's mad ramblings:
-I'm a Nazi. I'm a Nazi. I'm not going to develop this - am I a nationalist, a patriot, imperial direction etc, I'm saying directly I'm a Nazi. I could raise my hand.
- You see, when you kill a person, you experience a hunter's rush of excitement. Those who have not been on a hunt, try it, it's interesting.
- Regarding Aidar (Ukrainian Battalion), the guys have burned. Burnt out at work. It happens. They smelt great. I'll tell you honestly, when we went on to the road, the smell was... my jaws clamped together, we were hungry, we were looting a car with gingerbread and condensed milk, and it smelt great.
- Here are ears, here are guys, burning asses. It's my trophy. Those who judge me can go f**k themselves, this is my trophy. I'm like a hunter. It's mine, I took a photo. What's taken in a fight is sacred and these photos made the necessary impression that I expected. Everyone was laughing at the base, yes, the ears were meant to go as gifts... by the way, the photo of one cut off ear, it's just the one that you have. Yandex and Google had a lot of stuff...[/i]
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=648020209618444
The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) released an audio recording on 5 May that they said was a phone call between a Donetsk separatist leader named Dima Boitsov, and the leader of the far-right paramilitary Russian National Unity group Alexander Barkashov. In the recording, Boitsov said he wanted to postpone the referendum due to the DPR's inability to control all of Donetsk Oblast. Barkashov said that he had communicated with Putin, and insisted Boitsov hold the referendum regardless of the separatist leader's concerns. He suggested that Boitsov tabulate the results as 89% in favour of autonomy.[26][27] Separatists stated that the recording was fake.[28] However, the 89% mentioned in the phone call exactly match the result of the referendum, which took place on 11 May 2014, i.e. several days after the recording had been published.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Donbas_status_referendums#Allegations_of_fraud
On 16 October 1990, Barkashov and a few dozen followers gathered at his home on Moscow's Dubinin Street and founded "the National Unity for a Free Strong Just Russia" (soon shortened to "the Russian National Unity", and informally among the Barkashovtsy [Barkashovites]: "the Unity" [Yedinstvo]). Historian Walter Laqueur writes that Barkashov stated in an interview that he is a Nazi.[2]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Barkashov
The Russian National Unity movement was founded on 16 October 1990 by a splinter group of the National Patriotic Front "Memory" (NPF "Pamyat"). It grew from 1990 to 1991. Members have been reported to wear black and camouflage uniforms. The group also adopted a red and white swastika emblem and openly expressed admiration for German National Socialism and public celebrations of the rise of the Nazis, although the organization officially denied any support for Nazi ideology.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_National_Unity
As we can see from the example of just one single day, the war came not only to Donetsk, but also to other cities of Donbass. [b]However, there were not many people willing to defend their native land. Enough for certain operations and at least some resistance, but nothing more.
According to unofficial statistics, in 2014, 0.28 percent of the total number of men living in Donetsk and the Donetsk region who were old enough to hold a weapon joined the militia.[/b] This is not even 1% or 5%, but 0.28%!!! At that time, local militias made up 50% of the total militia, 40% were militias from other regions of Ukraine, and 10% were volunteers from Russia.
I remember how in August 2014 I went to Makeevka, to the center. We were then based on the outskirts, closer to Khanzhonkovo. From there we went on missions. A man, about 35 years old, approaches me in the center with a beer in his hands. He tells us how much he’s rooting for us (probably putting likes on our contacts) and asks when this will all stop. I didn't know what to answer him. I was ashamed of him and others like him. I simply invited him to go on his way in peace.
[/i]
https://asd-news.translate.goog/articles/voyna/kto-stoit-za-donbass/?_x_tr_sl=ru&_x_tr_tl=en
https://khpg.org/en/1608808721
https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/07/21/7412402/
https://www.nytimes.com/video/world/europe/100000002742154/cctv-shows-crimean-parliament-takeover.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capture_of_the_Crimean_Parliament
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medal_%22For_the_Return_of_Crimea%22
What I think remains more murky though is the actual role of the Russian oligarchs with their militia and imperialist ideology in starting the war. Maybe, at the least in the earliest phases, they had a greater initiative and also support from Putin's entourage (like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladislav_Surkov), than from Putin himself. That also means internal political dynamics (which Putin most certainly nurtured but which he didn't fully control or used for plausible deniability) may have very much concurred, if not prevailed, in driving Putin into war with Ukraine.
[1] https://www.aa.com.tr/en/politics/ukrainian-opposition-turns-down-yanukovych-s-proposal/187670
[sup]— Danica Kirka · AP · Feb 20, 2024[/sup]
The Threat from Russia's Unconventional Warfare Beyond Ukraine, 2022-24 (pdf)
[sup]— Jack Watling, Oleksandr V Danylyuk, Nick Reynolds · RUSI · Feb 2024[/sup]
Well, the Kremlin organizing and sending operatives (destabilizing insurging propagandizing staging arming shooting), employing extremists (including locals), invading (shooting bombing all over), land grabbing (annexing intimidating referendum'ing (foretold?)) ... can pass for a variety of neo-colonialism. (? steps fairly well-documented, including in this thread, not ad hoc story-telling)
The former parts (destabilizing etc) need not lead to the latter parts (assimilation) though.
Although Ukraine likely isn't going to collapse. But likely this conflict will end like the Korean War. Technically it won't end, just like the Korean war.
You know, I think there's this attitude that people have forgotten Ukraine or don't want to hear about it, so you have to instill something to get the focus of the people in Western Europe.
Russia does what it does. It's an Empire and does things Empires do. When it reaches objectives that Putin can say were the original objectives, then it can declare it has won a great victory. And Putin can die happy that he has made it to history as one of those Great leaders of Russia.
https://www.firstpost.com/world/russia-ukraine-war-moscow-paid-billions-in-gold-bullions-to-iran-for-shahed-drones-leaked-documents-reveal-13704242.html
[sup]— CBS (+ AFP) · Feb 23, 2024[/sup]
Would the authorities (also) be scared of an independent medical examination? Seems ehh...appropriate, given the circumstances.
Meanwhile in Belarus:
Ukrainian children are taught to love Russia: special camps, "Lyube" songs, meetings with the military (investigation)
[sup]— Maxim Savchuk, Andriy Shauliuga · Radio Svoboda (RFE/RL) · Feb 22, 2024[/sup]
I moved the following snippet over here, where it's more on topic:
Quoting Benkei
Quoting Benkei
Sure, maybe that's an aspect of sorts, yet it was never about NATO specifically. It's about the Kremlin's vision of Russia, at least the current authoritarian leadership, and that losing control of Ukraine or parts thereof would be contrary to that.
Quoting Benkei
Yep :up: if Europe can get its act together (I intentionally expanded "the EU" to "Europe"). Do you think Europe can create + maintain an effective defense? Hopefully so. (I don't just mean some "blue eyed" part of Europe, or Western Europe, I mean those wishing to be part thereof that can meet a set of requirements.) Yet that, all by itself, could be argued the same way by the Kremlin: "Can't have such a strong (capable) defen...err..threat on our doorstep. Offensive!" Authoritarians don't require much discussion debate bureaucracy agreement back-and-forth etc, things we've seen in North America, Europe, and elsewhere. The Kremlin, in its aggressive posturing, would further argue Ukraine wanting to join a European defense as being a "dire existential threat", "critical security offense", whatever. Again, it was never about NATO in particular, but about a grand vision of Russia's "destiny", that Ukraine has been forced into, evidently with little concern for Ukrainians or their aspirations.
Ukraine accuses Russia of 'colonial conquest' at feisty UN session
[sup]— Bernd von Jutrczenka · dpa international · Feb 23, 2024[/sup]
Quoting Dmytro Kuleba (Ukraine)
Quoting Vasily Nebenzya (Russia)
Quoting António Guterres (UN)
Quoting Annalena Baerbock (Germany)
Quoting David Cameron (UK)
At least there is some talk, not just Russian North Korean Iranian Belarusian bombs falling on Ukraine. What people want others to hear is communicated. Not that it'll lead anywhere for now.
War can be attractive to some, like money for family (or a promise anyway), ... There are some similarities between reported stories:
Deal ‘with the devil’: Meet the Cubans who’ve joined Russia’s war on Ukraine
[sup]— Eva Hartog · POLITICO · Sep 25, 2023[/sup]
Putin speeds up a citizenship path for foreigners who enlist in the Russian military
[sup]— Dasha Litvinova · AP · Jan 4, 2024[/sup]
Russia has recruited as many as 15,000 Nepalis to fight its war. Many returned traumatized. Some never came back
[sup]— Sugam Pokharel, Matthew Chance, Mihir Melwani, Nishant Khanal · CNN · Feb 11, 2024[/sup]
Delhi approaches Moscow for early discharge of Indian ‘army helpers’
[sup]— Vijaita Singh · The Hindu · Feb 24, 2024[/sup]
Unlikely that death as cannon fodder will benefit family here though. Anyway, same old story.
Why?
Quoting jorndoe
What's the logic of breaking up the Atlantic relations, which is the primary objective for Russia? Russia is far more powerful than any European country, so this would benefit them very much.
And what do you have in mind when saying that Europe getting it's act together? There's no nuclear parity between Russia's nearly 6000 nuclear weapons compared to France's 300 deployed nuclear weapons. You think the people in Brussels would want (or have the ability) to suddenly start a large nuclear weapons program? I'm not sure how much @Benkei want's his tax dollars to go to pay for a new nuclear weapons procurement program.
Besides, when the US starts one of it's hopeless not well thought wars, there's no automatic mechanism that NATO members have to follow the US into the next epic American quagmire.
We have already seen this before and we are seeing this today. Biden has just gotten in his "whack-the-Houthi" war only his trusty sidekick, the UK, to assist with few Typhoons from Cyprus to join in. France hasn't. NATO hasn't. And when it comes to the crazy war against Shiia militias of Iraq, even the UK isn't there so Biden has to go alone there.
And even if another NATO member is attacked (or a member asks for help), then it's still to up to the member state just how to assist (perhaps send blankets, humanitarian aid and a "We're with you!" card).
Trump bitching about the US leaving NATO might do enough for Europe to get it's act together. And Trump has been more successful in that than Obama was.
I'm all in favor of the EU and Europe NOT taking the role of the US and going on elsewhere in the World with military adventures. To assist Ukraine is enough and has a rather clear mission. Supporting a country that has been invaded by a larger country that wants to annex large territories from it is enough reasons for me.
Getting tangled into conflicts around the World isn't a good solution for the EU. If a member state wants to do it, they can if the need to.
Because US politics doesn't align with EU interests and they are warmongering reptiles. If we stay in NATO sooner or later we will be pulled into a war which isn't anything else but the death throes of the end of an empire.
Quoting ssu
We only need enough to deter. Take out population centres and infrastructure and command.
We have enough.
If we're not careful it's even worse - we'll be the ones sacrificed on the altar of American hegemony, since the US fears that Russia and Europe will become the laughing third once it becomes engaged in a security competition with China. To prevent that, the US endeavors to draw Russia and the EU into conflict with each other, which is why it intentionally undermined the key to stability in eastern Europe - a neutral Ukraine - and subsequently did everything in its power to prevent a peaceful and diplomatic solution.
And thus by that note, abandon defense, especially sufficiently strong ones? Nah.
Quoting Benkei
It's not just nuclear deterrence. But Europe should get its act together, NATO or not. I don't think you can dismiss a large, authoritarian land-grabber with a hand-wave.
Quoting Benkei
Maybe? Prophecy aside, that's certainly what the Kremlin would have (everyone think). By the way, acting on what seems like overall "European interests" isn't so straightforward. For that matter, it's quite easy to find anti-EU sentiments within the EU, and some defer to NATO for defense.
Quoting ssu
Cooperation for starters. I wouldn't vote against NATO, though. It's fine, for now anyway.
Quoting ssu
And quite a few have found reasons. (Not that this thread is particularly representative.)
Let's try some...humor...of sorts:
Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya are already 3 wars the Dutch were pulled into where we shouldn't have been. That only happens because we are in NATO and the USA is portrayed as an ally, except of course or isn't when it's the agressor.
No. They are not. You cannot reproduce with reptiles being a human. But with Americans you can. :wink:
Quoting Benkei
NATO has shown it again and again that there is no automation for this. Remember Freedom Fries?
Hence it's the Americans that will voluntarily leave and thus force Europe to think about itself.
Secondly, the vast majority of Americans are blissfully unaware just what kind of a crown jewel NATO still is. Just look at your country or Belgium next door. Both countries have totally morphed their armed forces to operate as part of NATO, not alone. This shows just how deep the integration and the acceptance of NATO has gone. Then you can see how simply both CENTO and SEATO simply collapsed. The member countries simply didn't share much anything in common, hence no integration. All those 'pivot-people' arguing that the US has to pivot to face China seem not to notice just how little teamwork there is between US allies.
Quoting Benkei
And you could have not participated, just like I think you didn't participate in the Iraqi invasion of 2003. And yes, face then the wrath of the Americans, just like the French with "Freedom Fries".
If there's one thing clear that you don't get brownie points on sucking up to the US. The administration won't care a shit about what you did with the last administration and how loyal ally you have been. The UK hasn't gotten any special treatment even if it has been the most loyal ally. Israel get's it, but that's because of the Israeli lobby in domestic US politics.
And you should then ask yourself, IF the EU would go all alone here, why would it not get to situations like in Libya by itself then?
When that happens, NATO and American influence in Europe will be used to send Europe into chaos, the seeds for which have already been sown when the US sought to change Ukraine's neutral status which was the key to stability between Europe and Russia.
What is happening is that the US fears that Russia and/or Europe will become the laughing thirds when the US is sucked into a large-scale conflict in the Pacific. Provoking war between these two is the way it intends to stop that from happening.
People here are simply misunderstanding the US' central strategic challenge, which is to keep the Eurasian continent divided (as described by Mackinder, Wolfowitz, Brzezinski, etc.) in times of peace, and in utter chaos in times of war. (and also to stop any regional powers to arise in the Western Hemisphere, but that's another topic).
There is no other way for the US to protect its hegemony due to its limited population and relative inability to intervene on the Eurasian continent. (thousands of miles of ocean works both ways)
Finland made a critically short-sighted error when it jumped on the NATO bandwagon right as US power is waning. Not only is the US in no position to actually protect Finland in the case of a conflict, but Finland is actually ensuring it is first in line to suffer the consequences when the US pulls the plug on Europe with the intention of disabling it as a rival for the foreseeable future.
Europe is heading for absolute strategic disaster.
The situation is way worse than people realize, since they have been lulled to sleep over the last decades, foolishly believing that the Americans are our 'friends' when in fact they represent as much of a strategic threat as Russia or China.
Also, on the topic of the UK getting special treatment - it certainly does.
It is part of the Anglosphere and the Five-Eyes intelligence pact which is essentially the part of the US sphere of influence that the US actually cares about, because all nations within the Anglosphere share the US central strategic challenge, since they're all island nations.
This is why the UK should not be part of a functional European security structure either.
Note that it was the US and the UK who blocked the Istanbul agreements. Given what I just told you about the strategic challenges of island nations, it is no wonder why specifically it was these two nations who sought to block peace.
Who said that? I'm saying that the view most people have of NATO as a purely defensive organisation is false just because its charter says "help when I'm under attack". And really, if you read everything they do, their expansion into space is direct aggression and breaches other international treaties. Any military alliance increases capability and therefore is aggressive towards any country not in the alliance. It's like developing a bishop from the back rank to cover a diagonal. It constricts the possible moves of your opponent and that happens irrespective of their strategy or intent.
This was understood when Clinton started it. All new post hoc rationalising due to the Krim and recent Ukraine war not withstanding. Opposition to NATO Expansion
Then there's their expansion into space as an "operational domain". Which just raises a shit ton of questions while simultaneously opening up space for every other country to start militarising space. Quoting Woomera project
And what actions in space would warrant an article 5 intervention under the NATO treaty?
And let's be clear; it was NATO first who openly declared space an operational domain thereby introducing the pretend notion that this can be done legally. (And of course we aren't stupid enough to think countries didn't develop space military capability secretly but declaring a crime legal so you can continue to do it, isn't exactly moral).
I forgot Serbia (a war of aggression when you read, for instance, Indian or Brazilian news at the time). The point being that NATO has shown itself to be leveraged to pursue aggressive wars. That countries can "opt out" is no excuse. You cannot say "it's just a defensive alliance" and then leverage the integration of NATO to attack other countries and maintain NATO is a defensive alliance. It simply isn't because it would've been irrelevant at the end of the Cold War.
I've put the question to many Finns:
"Ok, imagine tensions rise, whatever it is, and Russia nukes Finland (military bases and so on) as a precautionary measure.
"Do you actually believe the US is going to nuke Russia in response?"
Answer: blank stare.
Turns out that people simultaneously believe that Russia won't nuke them because they'd be nuked by the United States in turn as well as the United States won't actually nuke Russia in turn because, true, there's no reason for the United States to do that and risk its own cities getting nuked.
Now, I'm not saying this is super high probability, hopefully tensions don't ever escalate that far, but it is higher probability than Russia nuking Finland when it's not in Nato and likewise higher probability than being attacked by Russia conventionally to steal our trees or something.
I have not encountered a single counter-argument to the likelihood of joining NATO simply increasing tensions in itself (making some nuke play more likely) and the most likely outcome of a nuclear exchange is Finland (and I think likely only Finland) getting nuked.
Because once Russia nukes Finland to demonstrate it's serious about whatever the tension is about, and then the US does not nuke Russia in response, the argument is over.
Hopefully it doesn't happen, but I can see zero situation, as you note, where the US actually protects Finland in any concrete way.
Russia demonstrating it can nuke a NATO member without causing a strategic exchange, because that's not rational for the US to do, is far more likely than Russia nuking a neutral country.
Ok, let's run with that.
The US strikes some targets in the middle of nowhere, neither side wants to escalate further, then the argument ends.
Is this a good outcome for Finland?
There's no scenario where that would happen. If Russia builds up forces in preparation for an invasion of Finland, NATO would counter-escalate and there's no way conventional Russian forces can take on NATO. Nor would Russia be crazy enough to nuke NATO troops.
And now the Afghans have been left in the hands of a barbaric theocractic cult. How unfortunate.
You wrote "generally [...]" which applies to an emerging European defense force that's sufficiently strong just the same. Such "a fourth power" will border the world's largest country in a few places. For that matter, it would be naïve to think they won't launch whatever (aggressive) campaigns to influence counter propagandize ... to assert power. They wouldn't suddenly start focusing on creating a democracy, because "look, friendly neighbors, kumbaya". (2024Feb21, 2024Feb23)
Quoting Feb 5, 2024
The present Europe isn't sufficiently strong. (Germany and Hungary might argue, France and Slovakia might argue, Croatia and Serbia are arguing (2024Feb25, 2024Feb26), ..., meanwhile in Moscow...) Europe should get its act together, NATO or not, though at least NATO is there for now. Has come up before, more than once, maybe you missed it... "Can't have such a strong (capable) defen...err..threat on our doorstep. Offensive!"
Furthermore, "generally [...] - until it isn't" applies to defense (which is what NATO is, and what such a future European defense force presumably would be). Sure, defense can turn to offense, defensive organizations might launch offensives (I've yet to see anyone accurately predict the future in detail). Yet, by this logic (by implication), defense ought then be abandoned. (Docility? "Peacemongering"? Spinelessness?)
Implicitly placing trust in the Kremlin and blanket distrust in NATO is plain out of whack. You can ask the good folks of the Baltics if it isn't clear enough to you (might compare with the Moldovans by the way). Let's not have more Belaruses emerging, please.
It wasn't specifically about NATO anyway. It was about the Kremlin losing control of Ukraine. (2024Feb12, 2024Feb23) Again, to what end?
[sup]? with the embedded links you can see there's not much new here[/sup]
Scholz Reiterates No Taurus Delivery To Avoid Ukraine War Involvement
[sup]— dpa via RFE/RL · Feb 26, 2024[/sup]
Although (vaguely)...
Macron refuses to rule out putting troops on ground in Ukraine in call to galvanise Europe
[sup]— Patrick Wintour · The Guardian · Feb 27, 2024[/sup]
Orlov isn't so vague:
Rights campaigner calls Russia 'fascist' in court
[sup]— Lucy Papachristou, Gabrielle Tetrault-Farber, Mark Trevelyan, Philippa Fletcher · Reuters · Feb 27, 2024[/sup]
Macron's sort-of-suggestion doesn't seem likely though, at least not at the moment.
I agree; it is something to aspire to.
After all, following WW2 I thought the idea was that Germany wouldn’t have a strong military, but the U.S. and U.K. would maintain a strong presence to hold the Ruski’s at bay. That time has passed now and it’s time for Germany, or should I say the EU to rearm.
There definitely is a scenario where that would happen.
Precisely because, as you say, Russia cannot fight a conventional war against all of NATO, its only recourse is nuclear weapons; which the Russians have said on many occasion exactly that.
Geopolitical tensions are already pretty high, they can go much, much higher.
In the event of a new crisis, Finland is the "front line" of hostilities breaking out between Russian and NATO.
The only reason that doesn't seem at all likely now is because there is the war in Ukraine, so Russian military focus is there, but that will be resolved at some point, and in any build up of tensions with NATO after the war is over, the Russian military focus will be on the giant border with Finland.
Now that there is a giant NATO-Russian border (with some strategic depth on the NATO side), tensions can far more easily go hot; shells being exchange, "they started it" sort of things.
Let's say NATO brings into Finland enough forces to legitimately threaten an invasion of Russia and conventional victory over Russia.
The US wants Russia to comply with whatever it's demanding, and it's a push come to shove moment and the US escalates build-up in Finland.
If a full scale conventional war breaks out, Russia maybe looking at real defeat and destruction of most of its airforce. It's somewhat speculative how effective F-35 and other high-tech platforms are (as well as all the AI drones that will exist shortly). But if even if your "guess" is that the high-tech end of US forces aren't so effective, you can't know for sure. The US is far away and this will be a fight right on Russia's border and on Russia territory with deep missile penetration possible hitting all sorts of targets.
The stakes are much higher for Russia than the US in this sort of situation, which motivates the US to push because it has less to lose.
So, freaked out by the potential for conventional loss, especially of air assets (that could happen very rapidly), the situation can be that the US bets Russia is bluffing about whatever the crisis is about and Russia then bets the US is bluffing about nuclear retaliation.
That both sides think the other is bluffing is how things then go to the next step of escalation.
For, it's not actually rational for the US to risk its own cities in nuclear escalation simply to protect or avenge Finland.
So, Russia launches a dozen or so nukes to "eliminate the threat".
What's the rational response from the US?
Ok, maybe hit some outposts in the middle of nowhere to "show strength" but also calibrated to not escalate further and instead it's already agreed over the hotline a deal to deescalate.
Either no nuclear retaliation or then limited retaliation to have a "ok, we both did some nuky-nuke, time to calm down" is the rational course of action, and therefore the most likely course of action.
Which is why you have things like "madman theory" in nuclear war analysis, precisely because the rational decision is to not escalate to a full nuclear exchange, your opponent can count on that if they think you're rational; therefore, the rational policy is to make your opponent think you're irrational.
During the cold-war, the ideological war was the plausible basis of a madman strategy. Strong ideological motivations can make people insane for all practical purposes. We no longer have that ideological war that would justify nuking everything rather than let the commies win, so the Russia could reasonably bet that nuking Finland would not cause further nuclear escalation while eliminating the conventional threat.
People like to assume, as you do, that hitting NATO troops somehow would be met with a full nuclear exchange, but why? There's zero reason. If the response is limited, neither meant to escalate further conventionally nor nuclearly, then it's just a cost of doing business. If the response is to escalate further towards a full nuclear exchange ... well why would the US do that just because Finland?
No reason.
The other thing that changes with a long contiguous border is the missile time is extremely short.
The biggest thing that this changes is that there's little risk of your missile attack being misinterpreted.
If forces are far apart then even if you wanted to just casually nuke a base here or there you'd have to consider the possibility that your opponent misinterprets your intentions and believes this to be the start of a larger strike and so unloads their arsenal, or then a larger response plan (that you don't think is rational if they knew you "only wanted to nuke a few things"), in a panic.
However, if it's all over in a minute there's no risk that your intentions are misunderstood, exactly what targets you wanted to hit, how hard, and without a followup volley to put the ball "in the other court" etc.
No one will be wondering as they watch the radar screen "where is this missile going, should we panic? Like, honestly, I feel like panicking, anyone else?"
(Targets far away also don't really serve any purpose to randomly nuke, which is very different to targets right across your border, is also another difference.)
The US would never go to nuclear war over Europe, and the Russians would only go nuclear if Russia itself is invaded by overwhelming military force.
Sure, chance is slim but the consequences are very high, and so wroth discussion .
It's also been an explicitly stated reason for plenty of policy decisions, such as not sending troops, not sending "offensive" weapons, not sending "heavy weapons", not sending long range missiles, and not sending fighter planes, and not sending stealthy fighter planes, and so on, is to "avoid WWIII".
The chances of nuclear war is fundamental for understanding the war, as without nuclear weapons we'd probably already be in a WWIII situation. People want to minimize it when it's inconvenient for their preferred policy (such as send more weapons to Ukraine or intervene directly) but then exaggerate the threat when again it's convenient: such as Finland has absolutely nothing to fear because a nuclear strike on Finland would for sure result in nuclear retaliation from the US.
It's this minimizing-maximizing to suit one's conclusion that I take issue with.
Likewise, simply dismissing the issue altogether because chances are low is equally unmerited. NASA put some effort into evaluating the risk of an extinction size space rock hitting us, no one claims that's a waste of time to consider because chances are low but consequence would be very high.
Quoting Tzeentch
That's exactly my point.
If the US would never go to nuclear war over Europe, what's the deterrence for Russia to use nuclear weapons to assert its policies?
Of course, a lot of escalation would be needed, and I don't see that happening while the war in Ukraine is ongoing, at least in its current form.
However, let's imagine the war in Ukraine comes to an end and a decade from now there's some entirely new crisis we can't really imagine now between the US and Russia.
Or then Macron makes good on his threat to send in ground forces, and tensions spiral out of control and Russia is risking conventional defeat.
By your own reasoning Russia would then use nuclear weapons.
If the US is just wants chaos in Europe (your own point you just espoused, which I agree with) ... how would that be bad for the US to push Russian into a little nuke play? Wouldn't that cause maximum chaos and thus maximum benefit to the US?
Once nukes are used, US doesn't even need to continue intervening in Europe to ensure tensions and chaos are at an acceptable level, so it's really the economically efficient strategy.
That's piling hypotheticals upon hypotheticals.
Besides, Macron is a clown. France has no capable army and the people of France would probably have his head at la Place de la Révolution before going to war with Russia (again :lol:).
The other thing I take issue with is ceding the low probability risk-analysis to a given side.
For example, in this case the justification for Finland to join NATO is the low probability that Russia conventionally attacks Finland for basically no reason (Finland has not strategically important locations or resources). Therefore being in NATO will deter this low-probability largely irrational invasion.
So, to then dismiss the counter-argument that there's also a low probability scenario where being in NATO results in being nuked, when otherwise Russia would neither nuke Finland nor invade Finland conventionally, is extremely bad faith.
Which is not what I'm saying you are doing, but obviously the decision to join NATO was taken by Finland so the reasoning is clearly relevant to consider.
Like you, I don't see the US going to nuclear war over Europe, and therefore I don't see being in NATO as providing Finland a nuclear deterrent. At best being in NATO is irrelevant (or drags Finland into other pointless wars elswehre), and so increasing geopolitical tensions generally while providing no benefit to either Finland or anyone else, and at worst causes exactly that thing which being in NATO was meant to avoid (a fight with Russia).
And the decision to join NATO was based on non-hypotheticals?
You're basically arguing that the hypothetical situation which serves as the justification to join NATO is relevant but the hypothetical situation which would justify not joining NATO can be dismissed on the grounds it's hypothetical.
Even if it was a foolish decision, it was based on a very tangible perceived 'Russian threat'.
What the Finns missed is that they are only putting themselves in the line of fire while there's literally zero chance of the Americans coming to their rescue when they get into trouble with the Russians - trouble that they themselves brought closer by joining NATO.
Moreover they seem to have also failed to realize that they put themselves into prime position to be used as a pawn by the United States in the geopolitically tumultuous time we are heading into, in which the United States will view Europe as a potential rival to be kept down (destroyed even) rather than 'a friend'.
We are roughly in agreement on that, I gather. But what I'm taking issue with is making the discussion about nuclear war that will never happen.
The only correct answer to someone bringing up nuclear war and Finland is: Russia won't go to nuclear war over Finland, and the Americans won't go to nuclear war to defend it.
Simple as.
Yeah, sure, but 'Russian threat' also includes being nuked by Russia precisely because you joined NATO.
Quoting Tzeentch
We agree. Hopefully doesn't happen and I would also guess Finland would still have to let itself be played in escalating things to the point of getting nuked, so hopefully we don't do that.
Quoting Tzeentch
We agree on both points.
I only have a problem with people dismissing the prospects of nuclear war entirely. Even if it never happens, which hopefully it doesn't, that would be precisely because decisions are made to avoid it.
Quoting Tzeentch
For now.
But as you just said above, Finland is now put itself in the position of being used as a pawn.
What I fear, as a Finn, is that the war in Ukraine comes to a close, situation is stabilized, and Finland then becomes the only vector in which to stoke military tensions with Russia in the future and the US engineers a situation in which suddenly its "all eyes on the Finnish border".
Even simply being used as a focal point of tensions and needing to mobilize to show Finland and NATO are "serious" would bring serious economic harm to Finland. Along with being dragged into wars far from Finland and that have nothing to do with Russia, these sorts of smaller happenings I would agree are far more likely than being nuked by Russia ... but if we agree that the US won't actually defend Finland then we Finns are just insuring costs to support US policy without even getting the main benefit.
May not be so relevant to anyone else, but as a Finnish-Canadian I feel the onus to serve as cultural bridge to explain to my fellow Finns that the US isn't gonna come and help us and few Americans would even notice Finns being killed in some new foreign policy fiasco, which, as you've pointed out, is the fundamental policy of the US in Europe.
Of course, the hypothetical discussion could go on indefinitely and perhaps Russia one days goes around nuking every non-NATO country on its border and we Finns can breath a sigh of relief; I just find that of all the low-probability scenarios getting nuked is the highest probability. But it's all very low probability, I'm not making any predictions, and as a Finnish-Canadian I definitely don't need to stick around if it turns out our leaders made a foolish decision.
My main beef is that we were promised a referendum on the NATO question if ever it seemed necessary, by the very same politicians that then explained that promise meant absolutely nothing and took a dump on their own word; so that for me is breaking the social contract in a very profound way and I feel no responsibility to fight for Finland in an eventual war with Russia. If there had been a referendum as promised, and we joined NATO, then I would feel responsible for defending a democratic choice that just so happened to lead us to war.
?
Quoting Tzeentch
Quite incredible idea. This goes into the tinfoil hat category.
Quoting Tzeentch
This is the kind of anti-US bullshit that won't fly, if you don't even give any kind of actual reference of Wolfowitz, Brzezinski actually saying this.
If your capable of giving actual quotes, then it's fruitful and interesting to continue this discussion forward.
And if by "Eurasian continent" you mean Russia with the rest of Europe as the junior partner, just look at the mirror and asked just who and how got neutral countries like Sweden and Finland into NATO.
NATO's not going to do that.
We are currently seeing the breaking point of the Ukrainian defensive line.
I would argue the reason the West didn't setup any maintenance system for the heavy weapons, such as tanks, is not because they "forgot" as the Western media seems to imply, but because their military analysis concluded it wouldn't matter.
There's simply too many limiting factors coming into play to sustain the Ukrainian war effort on the current front, most notably air defence.
Therefore, the West's, in particular the Biden administration's, main strategic concern since the much hyped counter offensive is setting up the blame game for the Ukrainian front collapse.
"We forgot to do things like setup maintenance" is one reason: "Oh yeah, we really gave it a good shot, but, shucks, forgot that maintenance thing".
Of course, the main reason is that the Republicans didn't pass the funding, setting up blaming the Republicans for the failure in Ukraine.
Money won't change much on the ground from here to the election so passing the funding would be a politically a bad decision at best and political suicide at worst. Imagine if the 60 billion was passed and Ukraine suffered defeat after defeat anyways, which the funding wouldn't anyways prevent.
Ensuring the funding doesn't pass, allows at least blaming the Republicans for failure in Ukraine.
"Ukraine is a disaster!" can now be met "Because you didn't fund it!" and democrats will go wild for that sort of pun.
Of course, a bare minimum of funding is necessary to avoid a total Ukrainian government collapse which would be more politically damaging than collapse of the front ... meet the EU.
Under assurances that the 60 billion would certainly be passed (the deal from the outset was certainly 50-50 in terms of financing Ukraine), a "who goes first" situation arose.
Guess who went first.
Europe went first.
From what I can tell, the plan is to keep Ukraine (with Europe's money so that the US, more specifically Biden, isn't "funding failure") in a tactical retreat mode until the election.
I'm not the first person to point it out, but this puts Russia in a prime position to influence the outcome of the election by determining events on the ground. Of course, exercising such influence can always backfire, but presumably what actually happens on the ground in Ukraine favours one candidate over the other.
Longer term, Ukraine simply has an immense demographic problem.
Ukraine is already in a demographic collapse and then millions of young people left the country and aren't going to return. Men aging into the military is a critical factor of sustaining a long war.
Not only do older men accumulate health conditions and their combat effectiveness isn't so good, generally speaking, but they also accumulate skills that are vital for the economy and maintaining the war effort generally speaking. Boys that pass the age limit have neither of these problems.
Which is the fundamental reason I would guess (as others have) the latest mobilization hasn't taken into effect as there's just a limit to how many men you can take out of other work and things keep functioning. For example, a lot of men are needed to repair the power grid, move enough of them to the front and the power grid can no longer be repaired and you have a much bigger military problem than the men were worth as frontline soldiers. Sending women to the front is likewise a double edged sword that doesn't necessary help ("fighting for the women" is a foundational factor in morale; if they're dying on the front too things make less sense).
In short, we are now seeing the consequence of entering a war of attrition with a far larger adversary.
Now that Russia has "the momentum" it can more easily recruit foreign mercenaries (lot's of people are willing to fight for money ... but only if they think you're winning), can more easily shore up both domestic and foreign diplomatic support.
Beyond simply the attritional resource battle, the Russians are now reaping the training dividend.
2023 was all about training hundreds of thousands of new recruits while Ukraine fought mercenaries, such as prisoners, that no one cared about.
In order to simply tread water in the war, Ukraine needed essentially full commitment but also limited training potential. The ability for Ukraine to train in Ukraine is limited by the threat of airstrikes, whereas NATO training some 30 000 troops over a few months, is not that much, and in different countries through interpreters on totally new equipment, is simply not comparable to Russia's cohesive training over a whole year.
Why not?
Let's say tensions rise, use your imagination, and Russia is building up on Finland's border, even if everyone understand's it's just "to flex", doesn't NATO need to respond in kind to show it's equally capable of "flexing"? Does not a tinderbox scenario result where a single shell can start the war?
What's the point of having Finland in NATO if that doesn't threaten Russia?
You really think the US sat down and said to itself "we really need to protect those Finns, could be next on Putin's chopping block, we can't let that happen! We need them in NATO so they're safe and protected"?
... or because it's a way of applying pressure on Russia?
Pressure that leads to tensions that can lead to escalations that can go out of control and have unintended consequences.
I think the real problem was that many countries thought after the collapse of the Soviet Union that Russia a) would never get on it's feet and b) never would return to it's old imperialist ways. People genuinely thought that Russia could join NATO. Yet both a) and b) happened. It took a long time, several wars, several annexations (both in Ukraine and in Georgia) and simply one all out war for people to understand this. People eagerly dismiss all the "rebooting efforts" the US made on the way. Just like the US thought that through time Communist China wouldn't be run by Communists, even if they themselves say that they have figured the correct way to go with Marxism.
The real problem were all those people "inventing" a new role for NATO and declaring that the old idea of military defense of European territory to be old. Last person to say so was actually incredible Donald Trump, a decade later than anybody else, but still. In fact I'm happy that Finland became a NATO member only now, because if it had become a member in the 1990's, it would have been NATO itself demanding Finland to dissolve it's "antiquated ideas" of a reservist army that defends it's own territory. Sweden did that and basically dismantled it's army. Luckily there was more understanding about the Russian's here.
And in truth EU as a defense treaty of NATO minus US (minus Canada, perhaps minus UK also?) would simply be far more weaker entity and far weaker even in defense. So weak, that likely many countries choosing the road of Finlandization with Russia. But if let's say the Turks invaded some islands belonging to Greece or tried the full invasion of Cyprus, would your or my country go to war with Turkey in the traditional way? After all, it would be an non-EU country attacking an EU country. Likely not, as if Erdogan did this hypothetical (and crazy) thing, he wouldn't try to bomb either Amsterdam or Helsinki.
And furthermore, even if the EU can entangle itself in debacles (like Libya) without even the US, it is lacking very important factors, starting from the fact that it's not a single sovereign entity and not a Great Power itself. It's de facto a confederacy of independent states with large amount of bureaucrats. However much it wants to be the United States of Europe, it simply isn't!
And lastly, if you want that an European country doesn't get entangled with military adventurism, have then universal conscription and a reservist army! With "volunteer" armies people get the strange idea that the military is just a service as anything else which they pay with taxes and there's nothing else to it.
The Geographical Pivot of History (Mackinder, 1904)
Defense Planning: Guidance FY 1994-1999 (aka "The Wolfowitz Doctrine", Paul Wolfowitz, 1992)
The Grand Chessboard (Brzezinski, 1997)
But you don't need to read these works at all to understand that what I'm laying out is the basic formula for US dominance. It must keep the Eurasian mainland divided, or lose its dominant position. With strong powers on the Eurasian mainland, the US would simply be an island with a mere 300 million inhabitants, incapable of securing global dominance.
That's the basic strategy which has propelled US foreign policy since the 1900's, and with renewed intensity after the end of the Cold War. It's the basic strategy that one talks about when they talk about the Project of a New American Century (PNAC), 'neocons', etc.
The Anglosphere, consisting of all 'island nations' in practical terms, shares this basic strategic challenge, which is why the Anglosphere and the Five-Eyes alliance is the actual military alliance the US cares about. Europe simply represents temporary interests. When the US can no longer control Europe (and we are rapidly approaching that moment), it will seek its ruin. Just like the US cannot allow Russia or China to rise, it cannot allow Europe to rise either.
And this is what is propelling US strategy today. This is why the US is pursuing long-term war in Ukraine - with the express purpose of dragging Europe into long-term conflict with Russia.
Talking about "conspiracy" is just an admission of ignorance. All warfare is deception, and "conspiracy" is the rule, not the exception.
Macron is talking about sending troops into Ukraine as we speak ... and you're arguing that NATO wouldn't send troops into NATO.
Makes zero sense.
But it's not necessarily troops that would be the focus of tensions but weapon's systems.
You may say ... well because of all this Finland won't allow in provocative US weapons systems.
But then the problem with that logic is why be in NATO to protect yourself from Russia if you don't want NATO to increase your defences against Russia. Whole point of being in NATO is as a deterrent, so that logic easily dominates the logic of being less provocative (that was the logic of being neutral); you can't have the benefits of NATO and neutrality at the same time, so if you're already in NATO you easily conclude you should at least have the defensive benefits.
From those I've read the Grand Chessboard and even if Brzezinksi can be quite accurately be seen as proof of the evil intentions the US has for Russia (assuming one ex-security advisor literally speaks for US foreign policy), he never states what you said about Europe. For example he goes so far as to say that a Russia divided to three parts would be the best. But that's about Russia, not about the whole continent.
Actually a very interesting document, but it also doesn't AT ALL SAY WHAT YOU ARE IMPLYING IT SAYING. Keep Europe divided, keep it in chaos during war? Nothing like that! And anyway, why was the US so OK with European Integration in the first place???
So learn how to use references, @Tzeench. It's very sloppy and wrong (at least in academic circles) to say something and then refer to papers that don't say what you are saying!
So educate yourself first and stop fabricating things up.
They paint a clear picture. I could dig through them to find the exact quotes, but I have done that enough times to know you will handwave them simply because it's not something you want to hear.
It's this type of willful naivety towards US intentions that allows the US to get away with things like Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukraine etc. (it's a very long list...), and Europe will be the next on that pile of nations ruined by the US.
If you think I'm going to conform myself to academic standards to educate people who don't want to be educated you are sadly mistaken.
Engage with my arguments instead. They are simple enough.
No, if you say person, be it Brzezinski or Mersheimer says something, then they really have to say that. Not something similar.
Learn to use quotes.
Or then simply say "I think".
So how come you have failed to notice chapter 2 makes exactly my point?
Dishonesty? Illiteracy?
Again, you have wasted my time.
Quoting Zbigniew Brzezinski
This once again proves one cannot be too cynical when analysing US foreign policy.
I'm saying NATO is not going to pour troops into Finland as part of some invasion force that Russia will feel compelled to nuke. NATO will have a presence in Finland. That's it. NATO has no interest in invading Russia.
And if France sends troops to Ukraine, Russia will not nuke them. Russia knows France has no plans to invade Russia.
Ever since the end of the Cold War, there has been plenty of anti-American sentiment in Europe as a result of the various wars that have been fought.
Populism / nationalism are on the rise, and such movements are generally critical of participating in the US' geopolitical games (for example, PVV in the Netherlands, AfD in Germany).
We are soon approaching a point where populism takes over, and the muppets and puppets who have been shilling for the Americans will be ousted.
Moreover, the US will be forced sooner or later to address China, giving it less room to focus on Europe.
As I mentioned, at that point Europe will simply be seen as a potential rival, and there are a lot of buttons the Americans can press with which it can try to embroil Russia and Europe into a long-term war with each other, which I have no doubt they will try to do - in fact, I believe this is already the American strategy for Ukraine.
The fact that their goal is "to weaken Russia" is clear for all to see. Now it's time for the Europeans to realize that "to weaken Europe" is the other side of that coin.
Quoting Tzeentch
Perfect example of your faulty argumentation. As you can notice, Brzezinski is talking about 'brutal age of ancient empires'. It's the Noam Chomsky's of the World who do this, and they aren't running the US.
Usually US leadership and even former security advisors don't relate the US to brutal ancient empires. But actually from Brzezinski himself you can find just how wrong you are.
Best here a QUOTE (meaning to write what the author has said about the issue at hand) Brzezinski. Here's what for example Brzezinski wrote in 2000 about the US and Europe:
And in fact, Brzezinski continues later where he actually says exactly what you get wrong:
See Living with a New Europe
And that's exactly what I think you are saying: that the whole Euro-Atlantic alliance is some kind of powerplay from the US to keep Europe down. Or as Brzezinski says, the penchant for Machiavellian duplicity.
And moreover to the point, the US has actually done exactly the opposite to a Machiavellian power play by giving an OK to European Integration in the first place. If the US would be such a Machiavellian player when it comes to Europe, why favor then the emergence of the EU? The simple fact is that the relationship has been mutually beneficial, just as Brzezinski said above. The US was crucial in the start of the European integration process and the European states do not want that the US goes away from Europe. This couldn't be more clear from the fact that the US wants the European countries to arm themselves and take more role in their area.
Yet many naturally think otherwise, especially those who have the naive idea that everything evolves around the evil doings of the US and everybody else is either it's stooges or it's victims. These kind of attitudes don't take into account that global order is the end result of larger and smaller players acting together and totally dismiss even the idea cooperation that creates mutual benefit.
If WW2 ended with the allies occupying Germany, that there are still US troops in Germany isn't a sign of a continued occupation, but that the fact that actually Germany, as the Europeans, want the US to be hear as the Euro-Atlantic link has been successful.
That's easy. The EU is an undemocratic, untransparent, bureaucratic monster of an institution - inept and easily corruptable by design, which grants the US easy avenues of influence and saves it the hassle of having to deal with each European nation seperately.
Gee, thanks America!
I'm sorry, but this is just naive.
Again, such limited imagination.
How escalation works is a series of tit-for-tat actions which spur each side to buildup and "show of strength".
As I mentioned, how things go hot in these sorts of scenarios is when each side decides to call the others bluff. There's some new crisis, Russia engages in some sabre rattling and NATO calls that bluff and builds up forces in Finland to "protect NATO's border", insert misunderstandings and shenanigans of various kinds, and Russia decides to make good on it's threat and call NATO's bluff of retaliating with nuclear weapons.
We're not talking about now but a time span of many decades. Things can look very different to what they look like now.
Maybe the US becomes weak, maybe the US is the first to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in some other theatre and it's "just what nuclear powers do now", maybe Russia's position as a energy exporter is rock solid and it feels it can basically get away with anything and should demonstrate its resolve to do so.
Of course, speculation can go both ways, and, as I mention, maybe Russia goes around nuking every non-NATO member.
EU is basically a confederacy of sovereign states, so wtf with it being "undemocratic"?
My country is democratic and I don't wish any intergovernmental union to have any more of that sovereignty, especially when we do have the European Parliament and it's elections.
Untransparent, bureaucratic, yes! Well, so is the UN and still I would keep that organization around too.
So if you naively think that Brexit made the UK better, then that's your opinion, not mine and not something that many Europeans would agree on. And just ask how many Britons are satisfied how that went. We should thank the British of showing how awful it is if and when similar UKIP idiots would be followed. The BREXIT disaster put off similar aspirations in other EU countries pretty well.
Quoting Tzeentch
Which actually also is a benefit for smaller countries when they have to hassle with Russia. Another good effect that EU membership gives. Without the EU, Russia could bully European countries picking them individually.
Transnistria asking for help!!!
Let's see when how this is masked to be a NATO plot, especially when Moldova is neutral by it's constitution. :smirk:
Pesky to announce that the Kremlin is carefully considering their request to come to the aid of their operativ...err...pu...cough compatriots, ahem after a proper democratic vote of course (ending separatism), and that violations against Transnistrian brothers and sisters will be addressed.
At the very moment Putin threatened NATO with nuclear weapons on the day of the invasion of Ukraine, that understanding ended and we will now see the re-arming of Europe. The U.S. will be glad of this as they are likely to become overstretched if they pivot to the east.
[sup]— Lucy Papachristou, Gareth Jones, John Davison · Reuters · Feb 29, 2024[/sup]
Uncanny how little change to the relevant parts could make it a speech by the Ukrainian president instead. Then there's that whiff of alternate world stuff again. So hard life is for poor Mr Putin :cry:. Or Mr Putin's vision, let's say.
Just about all nuclear posturing lately has come out of the Kremlin circle and North Korea. (2023Oct20, 2024Feb7)
Why would anyone in their right mind want to invade Russia? (e.g. hostile takeover)
What sort of nuclear threat is Russia faced with?
Omitted above: "backstabbing" (supposed) partners of Russia; long-range attacks; threats to their land-grabbing and neo-colonialism.
Maybe it's the (present) Kremlin that's the main threat to Russia at the moment? They allegedly have popular domestic support.
Russia (including Kaliningrad) borders
Belarus borders
? NATO member
? presence of nuclear weapons (theconversation 2022Apr1)
† nuclear posturing
Yes. But that's the way nuclear weapons bring peace, one might argue.
Yet once there here, the nuclear arsenals of Russia, US and in the future of China, which are at least theoretically capable of a first strike, you do need to think in terms with them. Military thinkers in Russia have to think about them. You can disregard things like the British nuclear deterrent, where the missiles in the four ballistic submarines seem not to be working (see Trident missile test fails for second time in a row).
Yet US / Russia balance is crucial for Russia. Just ask yourself: If Russia didn't have nuclear weapons and US/NATO would have, what is the probability of NATO having declared a no-fly zone over Ukraine at the start of the war? I think that that would have been high. The war happened because and only because Russia had nukes and Ukraine had given them away. As history has shown us again and again, nuclear weapon countries can go and invade countries without them. Just look at Israel. (The Falkland islands was so remote, that Argentina could easily understand that Thatcher wouldn't respond with it's few nukes)
If already nuclear weapons are absolutely crucial for Putin, I think Putin is really saying honestly what he is thinking and I think it's no surprise that he was talking so much about nukes. US Presidents hardly say anything about them, even if they have the extremely costly program to replace the age old Minuteman III missiles with a somewhat mediocre system (The Sentinel ICBM). Nuclear deterrence is the one thing that Russia has to cling on at all cost. If there was one thing even Yeltsin did hold on to, it was the nuclear deterrence. Russian/soviet soldiers could die of starvation on a remote radar site in Siberia because of the Soviet collapse and the state could have huge difficulties to get the last Kosmonaut back from space, yet nuclear weapons were improved even during the chaos of Yeltsin.
Here's a good 51 minute primer on what the US nuclear war plan looks like and what the nuclear triad is like. Assuming the old missiles work. The video also teaches the nuclear jargon and what is meant by counterforce and countervalue.
Nuclear weapons are this delusional realm that has little if any attachment to real life, yet it's real. They do exist. And obviously Putin and his close circle thinks a lot about them.
Presidential Address to the Federal Assembly
[sup]— Vladimir Putin · The Kremlin · Feb 29, 2024[/sup]
Others might comment·suggest·mention·talk ("space weapons", "ground troops") and be recast (in the extreme), or consistently shut up. Either works for the Kremlin as long as the recast is taken seriously. I don't think people are going to shut up. For that matter, the Kremlin circle isn't shy about dishing out nuclear and other threats.
Did "not ruling out troops on the ground" hit a nerve? Maybe "troops on the ground" is a major concern (fear) of theirs after all. Not NATO though, I think it was just French, maybe some Baltics, and everyone else declined. Well, "our territory" isn't Ukraine; French soldiers in Ukraine isn't French soldiers in Russia; ask anyone but the land grabbers, the significant majority.
With Gorbachev a kind of optimistic attitude — not Russophobia, but Russo-hug — aired in the world in terms of Russia. Now there's a kind of Kremlin-phobia, largely due to the (present) Kremlin circle, especially in Ukraine. (Is Putin sort of looking for "payback" for the cold war, having learned from that...?)
As mentioned before, the clear threat to them is against the Kremlin's free reins to bomb, grab land, sham, destabilize, their neo-colonial ambitions, etc. That's one primary "threat" they're faced with. And related to bona fides peace.
Only they, along with North Korea, are doing nuclear posturing. With the attitude on display, what's to stop them from nuclear blackmail anyway? Hopefully North Korea won't jump on South Korea (whether on a signal from Moscow or not).
Don't they wonder why their claims·arguments·sentiments are so markedly outnumbered? And apparently need friends like Kim Jong Un? Maybe if they wonder in public they'll go the way of Navalny (not the best way to avoid revolutions).
Some US-Europe efforts after the 2nd world war that came to mind...
• keep it from happening again
• the Marshall Plan
• keep the USSR from taking over
How much was in good/bad faith? NATO has helped dull national attention to defense in Europe, which has since been criticized (Obama, the Clown, whoever). I suppose we might compare East/West Germany (back then), North/South Korea, ...
So, to what end?
Anyway, good to see that Putin is addressing domestic issues like poverty, even if the details surrounding numbers and such are opaque.
The Ukraine debacle is slowly becoming complete.
Though, one may wonder why Vicky resigned, since the US approach to Ukraine has been mostly successful. 15 years of prodding the bear finally bore fruit and got them the conflict they were looking for.
Perhaps Washington is disappointed by the lack of enthousiasm for war in Europe?
Oh poor, poor Russia!
The US intentionally sought to flip Ukraine, while a neutral Ukraine was the key to stability in eastern Europe and everybody from the administrations in Washington to the Kremlin knew it, and openly complained about it.
Well, they got what they wanted: war.
Vicky did her job.
Worse still, they always knew they were just going to prop up Ukraine until it eventually collapsed, to maintain at least some international credibility towards their other allies. Vicky taking the fall for this was probably established way beforehand.
If you have the time, here's a good (but extremely long) discussion by Lex Fridman and historian of Ukraine. Lex asks him seemingly everything that comes to his mind about Ukraine. NATO enlargement and why Putin attacked and what was the situation in the peace talks at start of the war all all discussed. Luckily you can find the topics on the youtube video (for example why did the peace talks fail starts at 2:09:30) or then listen for more than three hours. A long walk is great when listening, exercise is healthy.
Ignoring those in favor of random people who say what you want to hear is silly and a clear sign of bias.
[sup]— Yuliia Dysa, Bernadette Baum, Gareth Jones · Reuters · Mar 7, 2024[/sup] [sup](— WION 3m:7s)[/sup]
Further troubles if the Greek Prime Minister had been killed? I'm guessing much noise, but nothing drastic. There are a few examples of Russian attacks, not particularly military (infra, civil). Coming up with denials excuses rejections isn't hard, whatever the truth of the matter.
Observation: A few comment as if Russia is invisible, "the unmentioned attacker", the Kremlin a machine in a Siberian basement somewhere, blind to the Kremlin circle, only to repeatedly go "NATO bad" "Ukraine sh¡thole" "US evil" ... I guess it's up to others to pick up the slack?
Was just going over some analyses of seemingly influential dis/mal/misinformation campaigns, maybe I'll post something later. Will likely remain applicable for the foreseeable future.
Part of what I'm also seeing (personally) is a Ukraine trying to develop past the sticky (post)Soviet shadow, trying to free themselves from the dominating regressive authoritarian north+east neighbor, trying to make new friends if you will. But then they're sh¡t all over by some instead — "Nazis" "Banderas" "Genociders" "Beggars" "Burdens" "CIA-puppets" "Fools" "Betrayers" "Underlings" what-have-you — prior having allowed them to try. Well, some people are decency-challenged. Bombed all over too, by a Kremlin seemingly lost to keep them from developing/trying, while working hard at reasserting control over them. Trying is a pertinent part of what's going on, which admittedly takes time.
What they wanted: (Different in Russia...? :chin:)
Quoting Revolution of Dignity (Wikipedia)
At least with support they've proven more than a mouthful for the world's largest country. Good for them I guess. And in mentioned north+east (check "I want the Soviet Union back" :fire: :grin:):
Quoting Sergey Lavrov · 2024 Jan 22
Quoting Vladimir Putin · 2024 Feb 18
Some developments so far:
Quoting 2019 Ukrainian presidential election (Wikipedia)
Wouldn't it be cool if Mr Bush, Mr Putin, and various (politically) related persons, headed to The Hague for public hearings and inquiries (and potential trials, depending)? :)
(end rant, and pardon my French)
When you take the side of the aggressor, you have to vilify the victim. Hence a) Ukrainians have no agency over their own country and b) they have to be corrupt and neo-nazis.
Quoting Pesky · RIA Novosti · Mar 6, 2024
Ironically, this was during a "Knowledge.First" marathon of the Russian "Knowledge" Society. :)
This is really the strangest of the propaganda vis-a-vis Ukraine.
Western policy is Western policy. "Ukrainian agency" is not a cause of Western policy.
If Western policy has been to manipulate Ukraine to its detriment, that "Ukrainian agency" has chosen this path is not somehow a justification for the policy.
If Boris Johnson went to Kiev and made the argument and certainly made promises and assurances of Western support, and on that basis Zelensky decided to reject the Russian peace proposal, the Western policy here is even potentially justifiable by Zelensky agreeing to it.
Why does everything the West and Ukraine do need to be justified by "Ukrainian agency"? Because it's clearly turned out to be terrible decisions that have completely wrecked Ukraine. The situation is really bad.
"Ukrainians chose it!" Is not a justification for Western policy, even discounting the influence the West and the dozen or so CIA bases have in Ukraine.
To the extent the West has goaded Ukraine into this total war with Russia, that was a bad policy for both Ukraine and the West.
To the extent the West goaded Ukraine into this total war with Russia based on promises and assurances they knew to be false (Whatever it takes! Ukraine will join NATO ... anyway now!), that was an immoral policy.
Quoting ssu
The corruption and the neo-nazis, though closer to just straight up nazis, are extremely well documented fact. I can post the videos of Western reportage on the nazis and corruption again if you to actually go through them and explain how these are fabricated or the journalist's are "reading the runes wrong" or something.
Does the corruption and nazis in Ukraine in itself justify Russia invading? Well, one could argue it would be appeasement of Nazis not invade. However, to get into this argument we'd need to start with a definition or estimation of how many Nazis with how much power would justify invasion, as to do otherwise would be appeasement, or then there is no threshold and any amount of Nazis is ok. No one has ever even attempted to answer this question, and without an agreed threshold then saying things like "sure there's nazis but not too many nazis" isn't really meaningful; one needs to start with a definition of too much and then demonstrate Ukraine does not reach this threshold.
The corruption and the nazis are also critical to understanding the war, as there are real effects from both the corruption and the nazis on outcome of events.
Obviously dealing with reality deflates enthusiasm to just cheerlead more for Ukraine, and if your starting point is "Ukraine good, Russia bad" then anything that may reduce our sympathy for Ukraine (such as nazi groups doing their best in the Donbas to trigger the current larger war, and explicitly explaining to Western journalists that's what they want: a grand purifying war and destruction of Russia ... and then Berlin!) obviously is a bad thing that should be just ignored and trivialized if the goal is just more cheerleading the war.
Which is another reason why "Ukrainian agency" is so vital, for if Ukrainian Agency is what justifies Western policy then an objective review of Ukraine and their decisions and policies is simply superfluous.
However, the reality is that there is no onus on the West to support one side of a conflict. The decision to send arms is not justified simply because Ukraine asks for it. Ukraine is owed zero arms.
Since the beginning (just as the RAND report clearly stated) an objective view of the situation is:
1. Nazis are bad and the West (to the extent "Western values" have any content at all) shouldn't arm and train Nazi factions in Ukraine; so whatever the policy it shouldn't support Nazis. Likewise, Ukraine and the West tolerating and arming these nazi factions is simply (at best) handing an immense propaganda win to Russia both domestically can internationally, so it's just bad strategy even if the goal is to have a big war with Russia.
2. Ukraine has little chance of winning on the battlefield against Russia and simply the attempt would be (and has been) extremely destructive to Ukraine.
3. The West is no chance in hell in it for "as long as it takes" and saying so is simply lying. That Ukraine has "agency" to not believe a lie doesn't excuse a lie. Any individual has "agency" to prevail in hand to hand combat, but that doesn't excuse murder. It's just a maddening argument to use Ukrainian agency to justify Western policy and lies.
4. Ukraine is in terrible demographic situation and a long war has removed half or more of the younger generations, less and less of whom are likely to return to Ukraine the longer the war drags on.
5. Encouraging and "leaving the door open that you are not allowed to walk through" of Ukraine joining NATO simply helps cause exactly the war the purpose of joining NATO would likely cause. That Ukraine maybe delusional enough to believe "Western values" would cause the West to just throw Ukraine into NATO and blow up Russia with nukes if ever Russia attacked Ukraine, is, again, not a justification for having a policy that encourages Ukraine to pursue something self defeating. Fighting for the "right to join NATO" (which was a main slogan and justification for fighting at the start of the war, before there was so much bad blood and it was clear to everyone the the war could be stopped anytime and the main issue of contention was NATO) when you can't actually join NATO is stupid. Again, at best, it is simply providing a propaganda victory to Russia both domestically and internationally that this hostile alliance was trying to expand to its border (pretty much any statesperson outside the West will empathize with Russia in this situation—as no nation, and especially the other great powers, want a hostile alliance to expand to its border, and would therefore act to stop it—which goes a long way to explain why no nation outside the West has gotten on board with the sanctions). However, even if Russia believed Ukraine was unlikely to join NATO today, the fact that process exists leads to the conclusion that as soon as Russia is in a weak position that Ukraine could then be "slipped into NATO", would be the military fear.
Which sure, you can look at the objective reality that negotiation (since before 2014) was a better way to manage the situation with Russia rather than building up arms and negotiating in bad faith the Minsk agreements and not carrying them out, repudiating negotiation of a new security architecture before the war and then encouraging Ukraine to fight, and making it clear that was the only choice the West would support (rather than an integrated negotiation strategy of both Ukraine and EU leverage, obviously the US wouldn't participate, to negotiate peaceful relations), and then still have the view that "Russia bad". No problem.
What is problematic is the Western discourse has degraded to a series of thought-terminating clichés such as "Ukrainian agency" and ad hominems against Putin such as he's Hitler (while Israel can genocide by starvation an entire population in overt genocidal practice of gaining their Lebensraum, and ... we cool, we cool). That's pretty much the entire Western discourse at the moment.
Why was the women beautiful in the first place? Her fault. She had the rape coming!
Sorry, no matter what you say and try obstinately push the Russian rhetoric and Russian talking points: Russia wrecked Ukraine. It attacked in 2014, it attacked Ukraine in 2022.
How is this in anyway related to what I explain?
The core question is what is the best policy to manage the situation. For me I am primarily interested in Western policy, as that's where I live and the policy I'm responsible for.
Now, if you want to take this premise of Ukraine as an innocent defenceless maiden, I am the only person in this entire discussion that even entertained the idea of putting NATO boots on the ground in Ukraine before the war started (or, more precisely, larger war starting in 2022), and also made clear I'd be for such a move if our goal was indeed to "protect democracy" (also, if it worked and avoided war and nuclear exchange, that would be good too and I explained how that was achievable using common sense, negotiation leverage and the "strength" we keep hearing is Putin's only language).
The reason why Western institutions and talking heads dismissed this option out of hand is because the only way it's workable is in combination with a negotiation strategy to prevent the war actually happening. Basically create a Cuban missile crisis standoff. Obviously to actually prevent the war from starting there would need to be an offer to Russia that Russia could accept, better than fighting, mutually beneficial, makes sense, etc.
However, if the goal really was to protect Ukrainian sovereignty then you'd certainly consider very carefully the idea of sending troops into Ukraine in a "escalate to deescalate" strategy (that you've repeated yourself many times the basic logic of how that works). Even moreso if you thought Ukraine a defenceless innocent fair maiden.
The reason it was not considered at all, just throw a little WWIII thought-terminating cliché of why that's impossible (to go with the thought-terminating clichés of why sending heavy weapons "wasn't possible" ... it was just "no, no, no, of course note, don't be silly" ... until they send those exact weapons systems), is because the policy is to have a war and not protect Ukraine.
The drip feed of weapons systems policy doesn't go from "obviously not, of course not, don't be silly" to "send them in! whatever it takes! everybody send everything they got!" because there's a change of heart, or change of analysis, or change of policy. The policy remains exactly the same: have a war.
In order to ensure on having a war you need to calibrate between two scenarios:
1. Russia winning outright, which ends the war, and therefore more arms and heavier weapons systems are needed to prevent this scenario whenever your risk threshold of this happening is surpassed.
2. Ukraine winning outright, which may result in Russia simply retreating to their borders and ending the war that way and taking the L or then resorting to nuclear weapons and so also ending the war, just in a different way.
Of course, the policy of just wanting the war (for war profiteering, getting Europe on LNG, weakening Europe and the Euro structurally over the long term, distraction, maybe also even harming Russia a bit), eventually fulfils its purpose.
Stocks are liquidated, war spending is up, the gas lines are blown up, recession all over Europe ... and, oh! what have we here, the 60 billion promised to Ukraine and critical to keep fighting are held up. Fancy that. Fancy fucking that.
Quoting ssu
Ok, say you're right.
Well, what did we do about it?
Yeah. Now you gave the Chomsky refute.
So not much interest in Ukraine, Ukrainian history, Ukrainian people, Putin's fixation in dubious history and the role Ukraine has for Russia or Russian imperialism and so on.
Because you don't live their. So we have to ONLY concentrate of errors that the West made. :smirk:
Well, we don't live there, yet we are talking...so I'll try to answer.
Quoting boethius
You won't even understand? Who attacked? Who? I think you do understand it as you continue:
Quoting boethius
I disagree.
The real reason was that they simply couldn't fathom the idea that Putin would go and invade Ukraine even more than it had done 2014. That's it!
All Minsk agreements and their failures had just put them to think that "Oh well, this is one of those frozen wars" as we know from various places. They have their own domestic politics, so they don't give much thought to a conflict before it actually happens. The only thing they were giving Russia was assurances that Ukraine won't be a NATO member. Naturally they cannot give that in writing, because that would go against the NATO charter of it being open to countries. But Germany said that they would be firm in not letting Ukraine into NATO.
Quoting boethius
Escalate to de-escalate is a horrible idea! I've emphasized it because it's a really, really, bad idea. Because what can the Escalate to de-escalate give justification? A Pre-emptive attack! You see, the idea comes from the narrow view that other side would behave logically to your illogical escalation. Well, it can simply create a shock that justifies more escalation.
And which European country would have then put forces to Ukraine when the Ukrainian government was downplaying (at least publicly) the threat of a Russian invasion. Oh, the Putin lovers would have had a field day with that one!
Quoting boethius
Umm, what? That countries took Russian threats of nuclear war seriously and are timid then to back up Ukraine isn't because of the nuclear threats, but because they want war and not to protect Ukraine?
Now your are starting again with the similar rhetoric "She obviously was so stunning, that her beauty sent mix messages. So it wasn't the rapists fault."
Oh poor, poor, POOR Russia. All the time everybody else wanting it to start wars. How wicked from others. :snicker:
Quoting boethius
That's the most lurid thought for a long time. But of course, as in your alternative universe the West has planned to get Russia to attack Ukraine (just like the beautiful women sent mix message with her stunning beauty), of course the only viable objective for the West is to have a perpetual war. Because...what else would the evil West want? (Hence with deduce that beautiful women want to be raped by rapists.)
Quoting boethius
Or do about it?
It's still going on, the war you know.
I think it's up the Ukrainians to decide. They have tried to open negotiations. Putin still wants more territory from them and still the ludicrous denazification is there, so I'd say to continue supporting Ukraine until otherwise.
Likely Putin is still happy with the war economy that he has. If he gets to hold the land that he has, he can put is as a victory, especially saying that he was fighting all the West. Perhaps then Putin is then in his happy place, worthy to be remembered with Peter the Great, Stalin etc. A great Russian leader.
You keep repeating that:
“such as nazi groups doing their best in the Donbas to trigger the current larger war, and explicitly explaining to Western journalists that's what they want: a grand purifying war and destruction of Russia ... and then Berlin!”
“Many of the factions supporting these provocative policies vis-a-vis Russia had no qualms of explicitly stating their main goal (to Western journalists on camera) is starting a war with Russia that will destroy said Russia.”
“The Nazi's are definitely there in Ukraine (I am happy to re-post all those Western journalist documenting it) and are definitely a problem (mainly for Ukraine). They are also a genuine security concern for Russia (as they have no hesitation to explicitly say their goal is a war with Russia and to destroy Russia”
Can you link your source?
Guess when it’s Ukrainian lives it doesn’t matter. It’s easy to undermine peace talks and be uncompromising in that case.
The US succeeded in:
- driving a wedge between Europe and Russia
- tanking the German economy (a geopolitical rival)
- changing the nature of European energy dependency
- creating fertile ground for further conflict in eastern Europe
And,
- is in the process of remilitarizing Europe, which will further increase the chance of escalated conflict between Europe and Russia in the future.
This is the ultimate goal: to prevent both Europe and Russia from becoming the laughing third once the US gets sucked into large-scale security competition in the Pacific, by embroiling the two in a war with each other.
That's why Ukraine matters to the US - it's a geopolitical pivot area and the key to stability in eastern Europe, thus the key to stability between Europe and Russia.
Thus by controlling Ukraine, the US got to decide when conflict would break loose. After all, the Russians made it clear over the course of some 15 years that Ukraine was a red line for them: if the US wanted conflict, which they did, they knew exactly what they had to do to get it.
Russia and Europe also represent a gigantic market that the Chinese will have to rely on once the conflict between the US and China starts. The US will block Chinese overseas trade; that's why the Chinese started their Belt & Road Initiative - to create an alternative to sea trade, to keep their economy going when conflict erupts. If Europe and Russia are in shambles, it will negatively impact the Chinese economy and deny them the market that they need to keep their economy going.
It's a classic strategy of divide and conquer, and, if all else fails, of sowing maximum chaos on the Eurasian mainland, which is the only way the US can maintain its primacy with its relatively small population of 300 million.
Don't let the MIC or BlackRock play the patsy here. Again, it's US grand strategy that is driving this conflict and US decision making. Corporate interests are just the vultures flocking to the smell of fresh corpses.
I point out my primarily responsibility: Western policy.
First, it's not an exclusive statement, we can obviously also talk about Russian and Ukrainian policy. Indeed, our policy would be vis-a-vis policy elsewhere so understanding that is critical.
Second, pointing out that the West was lying to Ukraine when it made all sorts of long term assurances ... I just don't see how we would be justified in ignoring that "because Russia bad". Is it justified to lie to Ukraine and manipulate it for our (mostly the US) policy objectives because "Russia bad"?
I just don't get how this logic is even supposed to work.
Quoting ssu
Ah yes, the "real reason" is because Western policy makers simply didn't even read their own policy documents and the long list of warnings by experts that Ukraine was a redline for Russia and a war would result if the West continued its policy there.
Furthermore, what was Minsk 1 and 2 even nominally about if not to resolve the war in the Donbas and prevent it from escalating?
You really think no one took that seriously during those negotiations, that it was a minor and irrelevant process because they "couldn't fathom the idea" of an existing hot war escalating?
We then have directly from the French and German leaders involved in those negotiations that it was to "buy time" ... well buy time for what? To build up arms to deal with an escalation in the conflict. Obviously, they thought that was a good idea at the time, and if they thought it was a good idea because arming Ukraine would deter Russia from escalating, well obviously they could therefore fathom Russia escalating the war as their plan was to mitigate that. But was that even the plan? Blinken himself pointed out that any buildup of arms in Ukraine would simply be matched, likely overmatched by Russia.
This whole idea that policy makers of the largest most powerful nations on earth are essentially children who don't even read anything, don't know anything, can't imagine anything untoward ever happening, is honestly one of the most bizarre aspects of this whole conflict.
Quoting ssu
Again, Merkel and Hollande literally sate Minsk was just to "buy time" for Ukraine. Where does anyone even try to explain what you propose here that it was just "oh well, back to domestic issues".
You're really arguing that Merkel and Hollande didn't have experts pointing out that a failure to unwind the war in the Donbas would potentially, perhaps likely, lead to Russian escalation? That everyone just expected Russia to do nothing if the Minsk process didn't work and fighting in the Donbas continued indefinitely. The conflict was not frozen, it was a hot war between 2014 and 2022.
Quoting ssu
Yes, obviously.
If they wanted to protect Ukraine they would need to brave Russia's nuclear threats with their own nuclear threats: put boots on the ground and dare Russia to attack them and risk nuclear escalation.
If their actions are determined by taking Russia's nuclear threats seriously and simply avoiding nuclear escalation, that's just another way of saying they are going to let Russia win the war to avoid nuclear escalation.
So why prop up a half-assed war?
Because it serves several policy objectives that has just summarized I think adequately.
The only thing I would add is that the war profiteering is fundamental in corralling US elite and politicians into going along with the war (until it has served its purpose of course). "US defence contractors go bling bling" is a much faster and easier way to explain the rationale for the policy to most US politicians, who are on a need to know basis and that's all they need to know.
And US politicians have no shame in just saying that "hey, this money is going to US defence contractors, not even leaving the US!" because that's how it was explained to them and it just makes sense.
Quoting ssu
It takes two to tango: I have stated many times that the fundamental cause of the war on Russias part is Russian imperialism.
The conflict is a feature of the nation state system and within our system simply makes a lot of sense from the Russian policy maker point of view. The Russian response is the expected response that experts predicted and that former policy makers predicted.
The difference is that Russia made a lot of attempts to avoid this situation through diplomacy. Putin has not come out and said he negotiated Minsk in bad faith, maybe he did, who knows, but he gets the benefit of providing us no basis of accusing him of bad faith ... because his counterparties admit to it first! Truly unbelievable.
We have a situation that is a recipe for war. The events as they appear in the public domain is that Russia attempted consistently to avoid the inevitable war with diplomacy and the West consistently pressed on towards the war even admitting that the little diplomacy that was engaged was bad faith.
Now, maybe Putin was masterminding the whole thing and playing the West like a fiddle, taking advantage of Western duplicity and cupidity, in order to bring the West along the path of war that Putin wanted, but it's convenient for a lot of reasons for all available evidence pointing to the US primarily pushing for the war that the US also wanted. That's possible, there's just no evidence for it.
Quoting ssu
Lurid thought in a long time?
I've presented exactly this though on numerous occasions. I've been presenting and defending the "drip feed hypothesis" since near the start of the war, and pointing out all of its predictions coming true: a new weapon system is only introduced when previous weapons systems fail to pose a serious problem to Russia.
Why not F-16s and all manner of fancy missiles for the much hyped counter offensive of last year?
Is it because "we can't supply F-16s and longer range missiles"? No, as we're doing that now.
The reason is because F-16s and a bunch of fancy missiles last year may have actually broke through and reached Crimea causing a "real problem" for the Russians (not something that is legitimately or then can be easily played off as a tactical retreat, while pointing out to achieving the critical military aims such as a land bridge to Crimea).
Now it's clear Ukrainian offensive capability is spent and so more advanced weapons can be sent in to prop up the war a little longer, such as avoid an embarrassing total collapse.
Likewise, the optimum time, from a military point of view, to supply Ukraine with Western tanks was day 1, as then logistics and proper use of the tanks with the most experienced crews could be worked out, even a working out the best use of Western and Soviet tanks respectively.
Most importantly, weapons systems are most effective when all the other weapons systems available are still operational and effective in order to maximize synergy.
Why this didn't happen?
Because Russia was vulnerable in 2022 with not so many soldiers mobilized; so had there been heavy weapons supplied to Ukraine then there was a real danger Ukraine's million man army if actually supplied with "whatever it takes" could have routed the Russians; continuing the Kharkiv and Kherson offensives far deeper, cutting the land bridge for example.
Now, even if the Russians retreating from Kharkiv and Kherson was a tactical retreat, they only needed to tactically retreat in the first place because they didn't have the manpower to hold, much less advance, in 2022. A tactical retreat doesn't mean your "winning", just is different from a route in that you can inflict heavier casualties on the opponent while the retreating (i.e. a well executed tactical retreat loses territory but at significant losses for the opponent, compared to a route which is both losing territory and significant losses of men and material); it's of course still better to not need to tactically retreat, and it was then when the Russians were weakest so more / better weapon systems would have had the most effect in the outcome of the war. Likewise Russia needing to deal with the sanctions, uncertainty in diplomatic relations, potential unrest at home etc. all amplified the weakness in 2022.
Basically, Ukraine's only strategic advantage in military terms in the whole war is the total mobilization at the start of the war. A smaller nation coming under attack can fully mobilize and covert rapidly to total war, whereas as invading imperial force doesn't have that option as easily (as invaders are less motivated than defenders, it would be embarrassing to need to totally mobilize, would cause all sorts of long term economic harms that an empire needs to think about).
The time to make gains for Ukraine, therefore, is at the start, in 2022, which is when we saw them make gains and additional weapons systems would have had optimum effect (as well as setup the experience and training needed to continue to use those weapons systems to keep said gains).
I pointed all this out at the time, that if we actually wanted Ukraine to "win" we'd give them all sorts of stuff. Instead not only do we not do that but we maintain this creeping Overton window of what we can even discuss giving to Ukraine.
Why the limitations and narrow scope of what weapons systems can even be considered?
Because the policy is not to support Ukraine in any sort of rational military way, but to prop them up to accomplish other policy objectives.
Yeah, sure, maybe "harming Russia" as some sort of lesson about invading other countries is one of those policy objectives; feel free to argue that, but what goes along with that is totally wrecking Ukraine to deliver this spanking and finger wagging exercise to Russia.
Quoting ssu
So basically continue with the status quo? Continue with the drip feed of weapons system that results in Ukrainian losses and no way to "win" the war. Putin gets what he wants.
But Ukraine decided that's what they wanted, if it was based on lies from the West about "whatever it takes" then that doesn't matter, so much ado about nothing in the end?
Am I reading you correctly?
https://www.jpost.com/international/article-789156
• ? Ukraine to develop on a self-chosen path
• ? maintain a Kharkiv Pact of sorts
• ? force Ukraine into a vision of Russia of theirs
• ? democratize
They're running with the 3rd and rejecting the others (so far), for all to see. :death:
Largest countries, further perspective: military, population, area
Apparent reasons are themselves straightforward enough ... (attempt to) assert control in order to implement their idea of what Russia ought to be; (attempt to) manage threats to said vision ... Common to invasions, power ambition resources etc, evident origin.
Here apparent threats risks dangers include ... Ukraine going its own way, e.g. democracy (can be unpredictable); NATO membership, or any strong defense; Ukraine increasingly looking to others (the EU) and decreasingly Russia (slipping away) ... Threats everywhere, poor Kremlin.
And threat management includes ... counter-threats; diversions, e.g. point fingers at others; muddle the waters; oppress, strangle, solidify ... Here be playbooks.
When freedom and sovereignty themselves are perceived as threats then we get results like what we're seeing (word, infra, civil, grab). Too bad for Ukraine, eh? They're not ready to get sucked down that drain.
Will we see an end to it? As it stands, is there any progress in sight or available?
[sup](? taking available evidence into account is relevant, un/controversial main/fringe-stream less so)[/sup]
10 years since the far-right coup in Kiev
[sup]— A Ukrainian socialist · World Socialist Web Site · Feb 28, 2024[/sup]
In Kiev visit, Trudeau reaffirms Canadian imperialism’s support for US-NATO war on Russia
[sup]— Roger Jordan · World Socialist Web Site · Feb 28, 2024[/sup]
Ironically, they could have come straight off the Kremlin's propaganda press, and Putin's Russia is not socialist. I'm more "socialist", in a democratic sort of sense anyway. TF? :D
Quoting Tankie (Wikipedia)
Quoting tankie (Urban Dictionary)
The World Socialist Web Site has been infiltrated by Putinistas or there be tankies (in a pejorative not-so-socialist sense), something like that. Can you tell which?
And that policy has to start with the real situation. Not the imagined one where everything revolves around the West and it's actions or failures.
The relatively stable and friendly relationship between Russia and the West in 2008? :chin:
My primary responsibility does indeed revolve around the West and its actions or failures because I live in the West.
I have zero problem discussing other people's responsibility in other countries independent of the West's policy vis-a-vis whatever it is, including Putin's responsibility, it's just not my main focus.
Sure, analysis should start with the reality of the situation, a few points of reality:
1. Maybe it was Putin's intention was to invade Ukraine all along, there's just no evidence for it. Maybe it was secretly his goal and he then used the fact the US also wanted bigger tensions to maneuver the EU and Ukraine into the war he wanted all along. Well, if so we played into his hand and he's outplayed us, that's my main take-away; but independent of that, if we assume Putin "gracefully lured the CIA into Ukraine" and managed everything precisely to this end all along ... doesn't really seem to change the other salient facts.
2. Ukraine simply cannot win a long war with Russia and the only way to even have a chance to do that involves extreme harm to Ukraine.
3. The West simply does not value Ukrainian sovereignty enough to send in its own troops. I'm always accused of being pro-Putin yet I'm the only one here who has advocated Western troops in Ukraine (ideally before or at the start of the war, now it's less workable for a bunch of reasons).
4. If you put point 2 and 3 together, the only reasonable conclusion is that the West should (especially before or at the very start of the war), if we cared about Ukraine (just not enough to send our own troops), used the West's immense negotiating leverage to workout the best deal possible for Ukraine. Putin wanted to continue to sell gas to Europe, that's why they built a bunch of giant pipes (unless that too was a cunning ploy knowing the US would blow it up and that would cause tensions in the alliance ... or then know the US would threaten to blow it up and Putin could then send his own frogmen out there right under NATO's nose in the thickest thickets of sonar traps and blow it up and everyone would think it was the US since they literally promised to bring it to an end come what may, and they have means of doing it), and a whole bunch of incentives to agree to and stick to a peace deal as well as the disincentive to try to resolve things on the battle field as the arming of Ukraine during the negotiations is further leverage the West has.
Of note, if the West was putting reasonable proposals on the table that are obviously acceptable to all parties, then it would have been natural to send in more advanced Western equipment (equipment that is obviously necessary at some point if the war continues, so at the start is so crazy a lot better for so many reasons). Likewise, the whole point of sanctions is that they will be lifted if a reasonable deal is accepted (if we're talking rational, good faith and ethical diplomacy). Would Putin resort to nukes when there's a reasonable deal on the table? Could Putin be sure to actually hold on to the land bridge in 2022 if the West was sending in advanced tanks, HIMARS, and so the other weapons we've sent anyways (which could be far more effectively employed)?
If the West was pursuing a reasonable and ethical result for Ukraine, it had immense amounts of leverage to do so and if Putin stubbornly refused then all the advanced weapons could be front loaded to Ukraine and it would much better chances.
I explain for over 2 years how to get the best outcome for Ukraine: diplomacy, using both economic incentives and the potential for continued violence (which even if devastating for Ukraine is still harmful for Russia and, most importantly, there's huge error bars on all sorts of processes and events at the start of the conflict, which must be priced into decision making) as leverage in that diplomacy, prevent tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of deaths, mass trauma and injuries, a large part of the entire youth of Ukraine permanently gone, retain as much territory as is viably possible ... and somehow I'm pro-Putin.
Cheering on Ukrainians to die fighting Putin as basically a gesture to represent "we don't like him" is not pro-Ukrainian, it's pro destruction and death on the off chance it harms Russia.
Ukraine has no means to resolve this conflict on the battlefield, so the choices are to send in Western troops or then have a negotiation strategy (in which arms can be one of several vectors of leverage, but in the context of a workable deal).
It may seem (for people who think Putin is literally Hitler ... while an actual genocide is carried out elsewhere) emotionally satisfying to see Zelensky repudiate negotiations and simply demand Russia leaves Ukraine and we'll negotiate after that!
However, it is not good for Ukraine. Russia can resolve this conflict on the battlefield; if there is no reasonable peace proposal, Russia does have the means to simply attain a battle field outcome.
Encouraging Ukraine to fight without any negotiating strategy that is plausibly workable is simply cheering the death of Ukrainians for no benefit to them or anyone else.
The decision to send men and women to die should be based on something more than "what sounds good to hear" and thought terminating clichés such as "Russia can end the war any day!". Men who are for the most part drafted, cannot legally leave Ukraine, and it may not be their desire or their own volition to fight Russia for no viably achievable objective or even no desire to fight at all.
As we speak Russia has achieved air superiority over the front line, certainly with standoff glide bombs but there's also reports of fighter jets flying directly over the front, Ukrainian lines are collapsing and the combined arms matrix that allows assets to remain in the field at all (even many kilometres behind the front) is crumbling.
Which is all expected and predictable since months, and since the very start of the war I explained exactly this would happen. You can hold out for some time against a superior force but eventually one side breaks, and it's usually not the superior force. The comparison to WWI made in the media and therefore it's some sort of stalemate they would conclude is preposterous; WWI was not a stalemate! One side won, the other lost. Just in trench warfare the process of losing is not gradual loss of territory but breaking.
Things hold until they don't, then it happens very quickly the destruction of the remaining forces and assets in the field.
Likewise, what's being learned: Russia is learning how to systematically break Ukrainian lines while Ukraine is learning they have no way to stop that happening.
The idea a smaller force could hold against a larger force that overmatches them in every category of arms is just ludicrous ... and our leaders were selling us that the smaller force would not just hold but achieve total victory!
... idea suggests a single point of decision, like monolithic or "one voice". Yet, that's the kind of thing that happens in autocracies. Ukraine's supporters are broad and wide, they discuss debate quarrel, back-and-forth, dis/agree alike, both domestically and internationally, subject to whatever bureaucracy, you name it, "many voices" (to accommodate). Should be evident enough. Too bad perhaps, but Ukraine's supporters are readily susceptible to divide et impera.
Quoting boethius
Hmm Your responsibility? (For the occasion?) :halo: Anyway, when will we then see something about your domestic extremists? (Does Hells Angels count? Actually, they're international.) By the way, what the Ukrainians wanted is consistent with "Western policy", the Kremlin not so much.
Quoting boethius
Geo-power-military-political aspirations include long-term control over Ukraine ... irredentism, "demilitarization", anti-NATO/defense, land grabbing (no independence), Mearsheimer (Crimea), vision ("destiny"), industrial strength nationalist propaganda, a variation of imperialism/neo-colonialism (according to some), ... Loss of control (threat, danger) ? act :fire:. Potential loss of control (risk) ? act :fire:. Threats dangers risks include Ukrainian (and Russian) free democracy, strong Ukrainian defense (like NATO), Ukraine steadily looking away from Russia towards the EU (or "West").
(? not new in the thread)
At least for Finland, but also for other European countries...yes relatively stably and friendly relationship.
Compared to now, of course.
That has come obvious to others, yes. :smirk:
Quoting boethius
LOL! :grin:
Soo... how many other countries does he call "artificial" and being an integral part of Russia. How many other countries Russian spread far before maps of parts of it belonging to Russia? Like this from year 2015.
Putin has been very consistent. Yes, he has also mentioned that NATO enlargement is what he doesn't like, but the annexation of Crimea and further the other oblasts that he has now annexed into Russia (even they all aren't in Russian held territories) simply just show he wasn't kidding with all his references of the historic connection of Russia and Ukraine. And then you say there's wasn't no evidence. Hilarious! Perhaps later we can look at this thread and see how ingrained Putinism and Pro-Putinists were.
Quoting boethius
Just like in the case of my country, the real question is if Russia cannot take over the country it attacked. What then? Well, then Russia simply admits defeat, like it did against the Japanese. Or the Poles. Or in a way, with us Finns making this kind of Peace deal without annexation or creating the country to be a satellite state. Likely Ukrainians have no dreams of the war ending with an Ukrainian military parade on the Red Square. But please, do promote the vast power of Russia here, if you want.
Quoting boethius
And that naturally should happen from an advantage point. Hence military support of Ukraine should continue as long as the Ukrainians want and are willing to fight.
Quoting boethius
The fact is still that it doesn't have the air superiority that it should have taken in a few days.
Many things aren't new in the thread. Some want repeat over and over their version of events prior to the war. That we discussed hundreds of pages ago.
Because there's not much else for them to say. Other than Russia is strong and the West should capitulate and let Ukraine take care of itself. (Which means Russians taking care of it)
I've posted the same Western reporting on the Nazis in Ukraine I think 4-5 times now. It's the same cycle, someone mentions the Nazis in Ukraine as mere Russian propaganda, I post the evidence based on Western reporting, and then no one wants to talk about it anymore.
Got through these videos and you will see what the concern is.
Once faced with the evidence, the denialists will then say "well there's not enough Nazis!", but then refuse to answer the question of how many Nazis would be enough. It's a simple question, if I say "this isn't enough water to live on" presumably I have some standard in my head of what is enough water and could inform you that a thimble is not enough water but about 2 litres a day is a normal healthy amount (but may vary quite a bit depending on the conditions).
Now, maybe there isn't and has never been enough Nazis in Ukraine that not-invading and destroying said Nazis would be the appeasement.
But, they're clearly there with quite a bit, even if "not enough" power, and it is foolish to dismiss their presence, goals and how they impact events, in both direct and indirect ways.
It's also important part of the conflict as it's simply giving Putin and the Kremlin immense propaganda wins. Russians don't squint their eyes and debate exactly what kind of runes we're looking at when they see obvious Nazis talking obvious Nazi shit.
Of course, simply because something is true doesn't mean it won't be used and exaggerated for propaganda purposes, and in this case it is a simple motivator that goes some way to explain why Russian troops didn't just run away from the battle field as they low morale and "didn't know why they're fighting" and other lines repeated by Western media.
The discourse then transitioned to focus more on Ukraine being already apart of Russia in order to build up and then justify the annexations of the territory. Russia also captured a lot of Azov leaders in Mariupol and of course that was a symbolic victory over the Nazis in Ukraine so you also just want to mix things up a bit in public relations in any case.
Another reason for the discourse to change to focus more on historical relations and Russian speakers and so on, is because Putin and the Kremlin are aware that the only end to the war is a negotiated settlement, as most of Ukraine is simply not desired by the Kremlin (the Ukrainian speaking parts). Therefore, if you keep emphasizing the Nazis and exaggerate too much and call all Ukrainians Nazis and so on, then it makes it harder to sell the peace agreement. It's much better to have some symbolic victories under the belt, such as Mariupol, and then just declare whatever standard of denazification was being used, it was a success.
However, the Nazis as they really are in Ukraine and what they are up to and how the effect and influence events is distinct from how the Nazis appear, or disappear, in Russian discourse, what effect and influence that has, and what are the reasons for all that.
Likewise, if Putin builds up too much NATO as a threat then it becomes harder to sell an eventual peace with NATO later, or can even cause further undesired escalation with NATO; war of words can often translate to actual war, or more actual war in this case. A change in emphasis may does not mean a change in facts nor the perception of those facts.
I point this out because the Western media analytical methodology is to take anything Putin says or doesn't say, or emphasizes or de-emphasizes, as some sort. of "proof" of reality when they're able to spin it their way, and if not they just call him a liar.
Any genuine analysis must keep separate reality to perception of that reality by different people as well as what people say about said perception.
The actual Nazis are one thing, the perception of those Nazis by Russians and Putin and so on is another thing, and their discourse about said Nazis is still yet a third thing. Of course, how we know anything about reality is through our and other perception and discourse on those perceptions, in this case we can be confident of some degree of objectively confident view of the Nazis due to the reporting of credibly unbiased reporters that have no stake in the outcome of whether the Nazis are there or aren't there or what they are doing or not doing (a credibility that would be based on yet still more perceptions and discourse on those perceptions).
I hope all these explanations help your understanding of things, and if you are interested in the sources they are reposted below:
Quoting boethius
Quoting boethius
Quoting boethius
Quoting BBC
Quoting boethius
Quoting boethius
Quoting boethius
Why would other people's responsibility be a greater focus than my own?
It seems my position here is almost at the level of a tautology: that one should mind one's own responsibilities first is the direct corollary of what the definition of responsibility.
Quoting ssu
The tensions started in 2008 when NATO declared Ukraine and Georgia were on the path to NATO membership. Russia's first response was to invade Georgia.
The theory that Putin's been "planning it all along" requires believing he started increasing the tensions by somehow causing NATO to increase tensions.
The facts are NATO expands towards Russia all while referring to Russia as their "competitor" and "enemy" and so on, and Russia has been reacting to that expansion.
Of course, now that Russia has annexed the territory, it makes sense to justify that historically.
However, there is zero evidence that before or since 2008 events have been driven primarily by Putin's desire to retake parts of Ukraine.
As I say, perhaps Putin has been relying on the West's escalation in tensions to eventually provide the casus beli to invade Ukraine, but, if so, he then gets the benefit that the facts are the West pursued that escalatory policy.
Quoting ssu
The critical pivot point was 2014 when there was a coup in Kiev and Russia annexed Crimea.
Again, Russia was reacting to what the US was doing, "fuck the EU" Nuland was literally handing out cookies during the protests.
There just zero evidence for your theory that all the events leading to war was some long term Putin plot. Furthermore, if it was the West played into it and provided the pretext and propaganda material required to prosecute the war successfully.
Now, if your argument is that Putin wanted Russian speaking regions back or then taken for the first time, that's certainly true. Everyone in Europe wants their historical lands back. I'm pretty sure most Finns want Karelia back.
What's at issue here is whether Putin put in place some sort of a plan (many allege he did, going all the way back to the 90s) to conquer Crimea and Donbas. It's of course a possible hypothesis, there's just no evidence for it. What there is evidence for is the West continuously expanding NATO and continuously provoking further tensions and continuously threatening Russian core security interests (which the West has zero problem illegally bombing or killing whoever is threatening their own security interests) until there was a literal crisis funded and orchestrated by the CIA and US state department in Ukraine which provided the legitimate security requirement or then casus beli, depending on your disposition, to annex Crimea.
Sure, maybe Putin all the way back in 99 was thinking to himself ... hmm, well let NATO expand to our borders and then we'll take what's ours!
It's possible, it's not a falsifiable theory what Putin was thinking. However, the facts are that the West escalates and Russia attempts diplomacy to resolve issues (that Russia can credibly say is done in good faith), the West rejects diplomatic solutions, tensions continue to escalate until a crisis.
Now, if so, well by letting the West be continuously escalating tensions and continuously either rejecting diplomacy, or then conducting it in bad faith, Putin gets the benefit that there are no facts available that would support a theory that this was some sort of long term Russian plan.
Quoting ssu
Russian power is far greater than Ukraine. "Vast" is perhaps an exaggeration though.
We Finns did the exact opposite of Zelensky: we had a diplomatic plan and used military force as leverage to get the best deal feasible in the circumstances; a deal that was both a surrender and admitting culpability for the war and repaying massive reparations to the Soviet Union (i.e. a deal that would be potentially preferable to the Soviet Union compared to continued fighting).
This is the most frustrating "making up history" in this whole conflict. Yes, we Finns are a model of what to do when invaded by a superior, but Ukraine is not following that model. So saying the Finns had a success in admitting defeat (in a peace deal that involved compromise on both sides compared to maximalist objectives) is not an argument in support of Ukraine fighting without any diplomatic strategy whatsoever and what diplomacy they do, if it can even be called that, is just declaring they aren't willing to compromise on their objective one bit and Russia should just do exactly what they want.
The lesson to learn from the Finnish-Russo Winter War is that it's a difficult position to be in and you need to be clever and spend lives judiciously in a fundamentally diplomatic plan that makes overall sense and is achievable. The Finns continuously negotiated with the Soviet Union during the conflict and military action was in support of that diplomacy. The Soviet Union was fearful of an invasion by Nazi Germany (as well as a potential Finnish-Nazi alliance) which was de facto additional leverage in the negotiation. Therefore, once the Finns demonstrated they could inflict unacceptable costs on the Soviet Union, there was motivation to settle. Because the Soviet Union settled the (first) conflict, Finland was motivated not to attack Leningrad (aka. Saint Petersburg) from the North, compared to a situation where the Soviets didn't settle, the Finns held on and then simply fused with Nazi forces during operation Barbarossa (which of course the Soviets didn't know about in advance, but an attack by Nazi Germany was their main concern).
So there was a lot going on that informed the Finnish negotiation and war fighting strategy.
Ukraine could have easily had a similar plan, but didn't and doesn't now.
Quoting ssu
There is no negotiation strategy. What the West should do if it was moral and, in particular Europe also self-interested a bit, would be to condition support on a feasible negotiation strategy. Otherwise, sending hundreds of billions to Ukraine structured in the form of a slush fund and just wanting them to fight as long as possible really puts into question who exactly we're talking about in expressions such and "Ukrainians want and are willing to fight". You just completely ignore the fact men can't leave the country, how is that "willing"?
Quoting ssu
It's honestly incredible to me how the propaganda of "Russia should have conquered Ukraine in 3 days!" or in this case gain air superiority in a few days, is successful.
Ukraine has ground based air defence, both at the start of the war and supplied by the West since, and although Russia took out a lot of air defence assets in the first days of the war it's not really a reasonable expectation that Russia would destroy them all. Furthermore, Russia destroying them all would be extreme incompetence on Ukrainians part, and the idea that failing to achieve total destruction of all air defence assets is the real incompetence is just zany.
Now, as long as a military has functioning ground based air defence systems it's simply not feasible to gain air uncontested air supremacy over the regions the systems cover. Maybe (and it's a big maybe) stealth works wonders and would allow uncontested operations over regions covered by ground air defence, but Russia doesn't have a sizeable stealth fleet.
Therefore, the Russian strategy has been to attrit Ukraines air defence missiles by waves of missile and drone attacks of various kinds as well as develop the cheaper standoff munitions of the glide bombs, in order to drop ordinance at a safe distance.
It should be noted that if an air defence missile has a range of 100km, then a plane can still penetrate this air space as long as it still has time to outrun a missile fired at it. Air defence missiles Ukraine has travel between mach 3-5, so a plane that can accelerate to mach 2 can still penetrate some distance the envelope and be able to outrun a missile. For the sake of simple numbers, a plane travelling at mach 2 can penetrate just under 50km into a 100km air defence envelope and still outrun a missile travelling at mach 4. So can compress the effective range quite a bit. Of course in practice the plane would need to turn around and accelerate which takes precious time, but the point is "being able to run away" decreases defence missile ranges quite a bit.
Which makes the glide problem only solvable by moving missile batteries closer to the front where they are far more vulnerable, and it seems have taken heavy losses doing precisely this.
Point is, the idea that Russia was "supposed" to destroy all of Ukraines air assets in a few days is preposterous and the West simply supplied more anyways, and to attrit away everything the West can throw at Ukraine in this regard is obviously going to take time and a lot of various attritting activities, intelligence and also pitched battles with air defence systems.
I watched your 4 out 5 videos (one is not available) and I couldn’t find what I expressly asked: your evidence to support the claims “they have no hesitation to explicitly say their goal is a war with Russia and to destroy Russia”, “their main goal (to Western journalists on camera) is starting a war with Russia that will destroy said Russia.”, “explicitly explaining to Western journalists that's what they want: a grand purifying war and destruction of Russia”.
So I’m still waiting for your source to support such claims.
Quoting boethius
I doubt that you watched the videos you linked since one can find there many pertinent answers to what you have been asking to the denialists.
Take video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUgKTfe-IqA
At minute 9:39 the guy says “if you look at the electoral results of the far-right political parties in Ukraine, they actually only add up add up to 1.65% IN TOTAL, which is less than some INDIVIDUAL far-right parties in other European countries have achieved” and that doesn’t even reach the bar for obtaining any seats.
At minute 15:54, the guy answers to question about the scale of the Azov phenomenon as follows: “In absolute numbers, it’s a TINY TINY TINY of the Ukrainian population. None knows for sure, but I think the last reliable figures were about 2000 active fighters at any one time”, while the wider Azov movement is max 20k people.
At minute 12:32, the guy goes even so far to concede: “If there wasn’t a neo-nazi problem before this war, there might be afterwards”. So Putin’s war would be the reason why there is a neo-nazi problem for Ukraine that wasn’t there before the war.
The Ukrainian neo-nazi problem was such a non-problem that in Ukraine there is a Jewish president, there are Jews fighting in Azov Battalion and fighting against Russia for Ukraine:
https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/article-762000
https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/israeli-government-welcomes-azov-battalion-leader-as-honored-guest/
https://www.timesofisrael.com/senior-zelensky-adviser-40-jewish-heroes-fighting-in-mariupol-steel-plant/
https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/ukraine-conflict/1651655303-russia-claims-israelis-fighting-alongside-azov-militants
https://genevasolutions.news/ukraine-stories/in-ukraine-jews-embrace-their-double-identity
Quoting boethius
If you watched those videos you linked, the neo-nazi problem in Ukraine is never taken to be a problem primarily for Russia! But for the US and Europe given the international far-right network and far right terrorist attacks in the West. And more so for Ukraine itself after the war with Russia, because there is a chance that neo-nazi may fight against any peace agreements with Russia made by the Ukrainian government (as shown when they protested against Zelensky in 2021 https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-right-protesters-zelenskiy/31410694.html).
Notice also that even Prigozhin the leader of the Wagner Group questioned the nazi narrative of Putin: https://www.euronews.com/2023/03/24/wagner-boss-openly-defies-kremlin-ukraine-nazi-narrative
Quoting boethius
The nazi problem which Russians lament is not a NAZI problem AT ALL. It has nothing to do with Nazi symbolism, antisemitism or white suprematism for the simple reason that the neo-nazi, white suprematists, far-right ideology and militia in Russia is not only bigger in volume wrt Ukraine (https://library.fes.de/pdf-files/id-moe/09348.pdf, https://css.ethz.ch/content/dam/ethz/special-interest/gess/cis/center-for-securities-studies/pdfs/RAD-135-10.-12.pdf, https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/AD1022970.pdf, https://www.osce.org/files/f/documents/0/e/27072.pdf, https://www.foi.se/rest-api/report/FOI-R--2592--SE, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/301232300_The_New_Russian_Nationalism_Imperialism_Ethnicity_and_Authoritarianism_2000-15) but WAY MORE influential abroad (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Managed_nationalism). Indeed, Putin and Russian ideologists (like Dugin) have been actively engaged in exporting and supporting such far right movements abroad (https://www.justsecurity.org/68420/confronting-russias-role-in-transnational-white-supremacist-extremism/).
Not surprisingly Russian neo-nazi militia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-Nazism_in_Russia#Groups) are the ones involved in Euromaiden and the conflict in Donbas (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_separatist_forces_in_Ukraine, https://ukraineworld.org/en/articles/infowatch/russian-neo-nazi). I wrote a series of additional notes on this, starting from this post: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/882175
The problem for the Russians is not if Azov battalion is ideologically neo-nazi, but that they are "Russophobe"!
Quoting boethius
Yes, I can collect videos too:
[quote=“boethius;887616"] This one's just adorable.[/quote]
As these ones:
You keep framing things in a way that I find rather questionable.
To me, “the West” refers to a political strategic alliance between numerous democratic countries: there are conflicting agendas between Western countries and within Western countries. And Western governments have also changed over 20 years. Russia is one country, with a despotic regime that has been lasting for more than 20 years. Westerners likely care about not losing their standards of life more than Russians. Westerners can voice their discontent more often, more loudly, more widely than Russians and can be infiltrated by pro-Russian propaganda more than Russia can be infiltrated by pro-Western propaganda. Competing political/economic lobbies (including those financed/guided by foreign powers like Russia) can thrive and weaponise Western people’s discontent against any government. That’s why boosting military build-up, implement coherent/timely foreign policies over a long period of time and getting confrontational with a foreign foes, namely foreign policies that demand sacrifice to the nation are much more easy to enforce for Russia than for the West. In other words, the decision-making process and the political will in Western democracies is structurally more weak and vulnerable to international shocks, than in the authoritarian regimes.
So to the extent there was/is a Western failure to support Ukraine adequately this may have less to do with ethic of Western decision makers than with the structural problems of Western decision making as such. And what makes your argument still pro-Putin is again its hypocritical purpose of morally discrediting the West, even if the lack of resolve and cohesion in the West is not inherently immoral and it stems also from people like you whose prejudicial distrust over Western institutions amplifies lack of resolve and cohesion.
Again it is insufficient and illogical to start viewing these conflicts from 2008.
Both Abkhazia and Southern Ossetia conflicts had started well before 2008. So again, it's far more proper to start with 1991-1992 South Ossetian war (and btw. there was in 1918-1920 a Georgian-Ossetian conflict with Ossetians siding with the Russian Bolsheviks). In Abkhazia the war was fought 1992-1993, where again the Russians supported the rebels.
The similar strategy seen in Moldova (Transnistria) and Ukraine (the Donbass) could be already seen here. When the pro-Russians insurgents were losing it, suddenly Russia intervened and put "peacekeepers" to make it a frozen conflict. Just like prior to 2022 invasion the Russian army came to help if the rebels were in trouble.
And this also questions your idea that all this started in 2008 and with NATO enlargement. It didn't start then. Just as it didn't start in 2008 with the attempts to make Crimea Russian. Those ideas started basically as early as Ukraine came independent. Far before the Budapest Memorandum of 1994. Only when Putin came to power started the annexations and wars after Putin had defeated the Chechens. For Putin, going to war had been a very successful endeavor until 2022 (as the last war he started is still ongoing).
Quoting boethius
Again this delusional rhetoric from you. We've already have had this discussion.
It's very questionable from you to sideline the Partnership for Peace, the "new NATO" that focused in fighting terrorism, the Cold War being over, the various times of "resetting" the US-Russian relations done by George W Bush, Obama.
Quoting boethius
There was a very popular revolution in Ukraine, not a coup how ever you try to point out Nuland and others talking to the Ukrainians. And in your narrative you totally forget the important elections afterwards where the far right lost their seats in Parliament. That kind of example how Ukraine has improved it's democracy isn't good for your narrative. But great that you at least admit that Russia annexed Crimea. Not that Crimean people opted to join by referendum Russia after Crimean volunteers (who looked and still look like Russian VDV paratroopers and special forces) occupied the Crimean parliament and other installations.
Quoting boethius
Exactly the opposite? I disagree. Zelensky has tried actually to negotiate far more than Finns did. Ukraine is far larger than Finland and in a totally different situation. Besides, Finland didn't start peace negotiations in 1941, 1942 or 1943. And this is quite logical: when there's imminent collapse (in 1940) and a hopeless situation in 1944.
Ukraine's situation is not hopeless. Although Russian propaganda tries to promote this, just as the idea of Europe being "tired" of the war and ready to throw Ukraine under the bus.
One of the basic problems is that there isn't similar case like Ukraine when the West has supported one side in an conflict or had it's own conflicts. Invasion of Iraq was quite dubious, done with false arguments and little understanding of how unstable Iraq was. Yugoslavian civil war was indeed a civil war. And Serbia shows that even if Serbians ousted Milosevic, they weren't at all happy with the US after NATO had bombed their country. Yet the assault on Ukraine 2022 is a clear cut example of one country attacking another with Putin giving even more delusional arguments (neonazis controlling Ukraine and hence a denazification of Ukraine) than the WMD argument for invading Iraq.
What we should note is that if Putin would have opted just for Crimea and not tried to instill revolution in all Russian areas (which didn't happen in Kharkiv or Odessa, but only in the Donbass), it might have worked. We could have been fine with that as Europe was already at easy with a "frozen conflict" in Ukraine. Yet February 24th 2022 changed all that. Now it's quite simple.
Yet some have this idea of "forever wars" and want to see it totally differently with the US as the perpetrator of the war. It starts with just focusing on the West or on the US and then not thinking of anyone else being an independent agent with their own objectives. Hence all the flak against Ukraine, when actually there rarely is a more simple case for supporting a country against it's aggressor. Ukraine is fighting for us.
And the invading Russians have installed people they allegedly sought to do away with. For that matter, Kadyrov's Chechnya resembles Nazi rule noticeably more.
But their Nazi thing is a great (rabble-rousing) rhetorical/propaganda device (like sort of extending The Great Patriotic War), and that's what it is here, bullshit or lying, ready to get picked up by others. How do you talk with someone who doesn't care about truth? Maybe that's why Kyiv cut lines to Moscow.
From memory, this campaign of theirs started also accusing other countries of Nazism, sometimes covertly (e.g. university campuses), but they didn't continue like for Ukraine.
[sub]Russians bring in security forces for sham presidential elections in Ukraine's occupied territories
[sup]— Tetyana Oliynyk · Ukrainska Pravda · Feb 28, 2024[/sup]
Russia increases police and military presence in occupied Ukrainian territories ahead of sham presidential ‘elections’ - NRC
[sup]— Alla Shcherbak · The New Voice of Ukraine · Mar 3, 2024[/sup]
What to know about Russia’s presidential election, set to give Putin another six-year term
[sup]— Katie Marie Davis, Dasha Litvinova · AP · Mar 10, 2024[/sup]
On Russian TV ahead of the election, there’s only one program: Putin’s
[sup]— Emma Burrows · AP · Mar 11, 2024[/sup]
Moscow 'to falsify' votes in occupied Ukrainian regions
[sup]— Oleksandra Vakulina · Euronews · Mar 11, 2024[/sup]
Ukraine-based Russian armed groups claim raids into Russia
[sup]— Jaroslav Lukiv · BBC · Mar 12, 2024[/sup]
Occupied Ukraine encouraged to vote in Russian election by armed men
[sup]— Vitaly Shevchenko · BBC · Mar 13, 2024[/sup]
Viewpoint: Russian authorities seek strong election showing for Putin
[sup]— Jonathan House · GZERO · Mar 13, 2024[/sup]
Russia's 2024 presidential election: What is at stake and what is not
[sup]— Caprile Anna · European Parliament · Mar 13, 2024[/sup]
UK intelligence explains how residents of temporarily occupied territories are forced to vote for Putin
[sup]— European/Ukrainska Pravda · Mar 13, 2024[/sup][/sub]
Your mileage may vary. The articles are by and large consistent, though. And the Kremlin denies transparency / independent monitoring. I'd like to have seen Duntsova with a strong open free campaign, coverage, country-wide.
Among other issues, there is one which I find philosophically deep and troublesome: namely, the notion of sovereignty as it is shaped by the Westphalian system (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westphalian_system)
Quoting ssu
That sounds about right. BTW how are the Finns taking the recent Russian threats: https://www.deccanherald.com/world/putin-says-russia-will-deploy-troops-to-finlands-border-now-it-is-in-nato-ria-reports-2935190 ?
:up:
Quoting jorndoe
Yes the Russian forget to mention that before the Great Patriotic war there was:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pact
And that during the Great Patriotic war "while millions of Ukrainians fought against the Nazis as part of the Red Army during WWII, approximately 250,000 Ukrainians joined the German forces and participated in the Holocaust and other German atrocities."
https://origins.osu.edu/read/living-ghosts-second-world-war-and-russian-invasion-ukraine?language_content_entity=en
Not to mention, that there was a comparable number of Russian collaborationists of the Nazis:
https://www.feldgrau.com/WW2-German-Wehrmacht-Russian-Volunteers/
The Westphalian system is the backbone of the international order. Or it should be. Here many would point out how much the sovereignty is breached by the US and the West. I think the simple fact is here that when a sovereign state loses or is incapacitated from securing it's borders, other sovereign states morph into vultures around it. Perhaps they aren't interested in the country itself, but they are interested if other nations try to get a hold in them. There are some many examples of this: Yemen, DRC, Libya etc. Especially what is worrisome that in the case of the Libyan civil war, the backers of different sides ought have to been allies! This is very damaging to the US as it's so-called allies don't act in a cohesive way, but against another. Luckily the situation in Ukraine is still clear and simple and Western Europe is committed to the support of Ukraine. The real question is the US.
Quoting neomac
Well, the border has been quite empty from Russian froops since 2022 for some reason. Finns were more worried about the refugee swarms, but that seems to have calmed down. There wasn't any confusion this time as Russia had already used the approach (sending refugees and migrants to the border) years ago. Then people didn't understand what was happening. Now they did and simply closed the border.
Well these other pre-2008 things are not really vis-a-vis Ukraine, it's seems closer to reading tea leaves.
Of course there's a historical context and lot's of things relevant before 2008, but that definitely seems the pivot point that changed the status quo with respect to both Georgia and also Ukraine. Merkel literally warned her American colleagues that Putin would interpret the intention to expand into Ukraine as a declaration of war.
And again, I'm not arguing some sort of contra-positive that for sure Russia would not have invaded Ukraine if there was no push or "pretend push because we're doing something we somehow also know and everyone knows we're not going to do" of NATO into Ukraine.
I'm arguing that if Putin had designs on Ukraine since 1999 or even 1991 or even before for that matter, that NATO expansion played into his designs and provided him the pretext to consolidate domestic support. Russia had become pretty integrated with the West by 2008, so it's a "easy thing" to just up and invade Ukraine and upset the applecart. If there was no reason to do so there was a lot of business and money in dealing with the West so it would be a difficult sell to other Russian elites as well as the public.
Quoting ssu
True, we have had this conversation before and it's always the same total at-odds. It's honestly bizarre the idea that Russia should view NATO as just a force for peace and stability and is good for Russia.
... And you're arguing here that Russia actually does view Russia that way.
Obviously they don't.
The US has literally codified Russia as an official state "adversary" and they have all sorts of books and papers by policy makers completely dedicated to the topic of avoiding peer competitors, even regional, arising anywhere as their singular obsession.
The US, via NATO, has done all sorts of offensive military actions. Even if you really did believe it was all out of the "goodness of their heart" it's honestly baffling the idea that the Russians not only should but do also see it that way.
Quoting ssu
First, how do we know what a populate revolution is without elections?
Oh yeah, it's whatever we say is popular.
Second, a coup is still a coup even if popular.Quoting ssu
The idea Zelensky has tried to negotiate more than the Finns in the Winter War (what I was talking about) is completely absurd. In the Continuation War of course the "main thing" is the battle between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union and Finland is largely a bystander.
I don't have much time now, but I do have time I'll write down some citations of historians on the Finns negotiation strategy in the Winter War and then likewise the Continuation War.
A little spoiler, the Finns never make declarations like they'll only negotiate after the Soviets Withdraw their forces or then "Stalin could end the war any day he wants" and so on.
Yeah sure you can equate Ukrainian Nazi indoctrination with Russian nationalist Neo-Tzarism or whatever you want to call it.
The point of my argument and the evidence that supports it is not "Ukraine bad! Russia good!"
The point of the argument is that the West supporting the Nazi groups in Ukraine is at best handing an amazing propaganda victory and reason for war to Putin and the Kremlin and at worst are far more powerful than the West realizes and these groups will successfully execute a coup.
And who are the Russians that would be predisposed to a war to regain territory anyways? The Russian nationalists! So is making an equivalence with Russian nationalists going to convince Russian nationalists that the Nazis in Ukraine are fine? Obviously not.
It matters only for Western propaganda that first the Nazis in Ukraine are denied they even exist, and then once that's untenable to just wish-wash it away with "oh there's Nazis everywhere" and when that doesn't actually work because there simply aren't similar groups everywhere then ending finally with "well Russia also has extreme Nationalism too".
If we're concerned about the real world, then what effect these Nazis have is providing a convincing reasons for Russia to fight in Ukraine. Now, if you want Russia to invade Ukraine then supporting the Nazi factions is definitely something you would do. If you don't want Russia to invade Ukraine or if they do you want Russian soldiers to more likely have actual morale problems then you'd want to suppress these Nazi groups and make it clear they aren't the "West's boyz".
The other problem with equating Ukraine to Russia as an argument to defend Ukraine is that just begs the question of why we're on Ukraine's side. Ok, Ukrainian nationalism is as problematic, bad and out of control as Russian nationalism ... so why are we supporting Ukraine again? Seems at best a coin flip, but Russia has more resources so probably more practical to just side with them in this scenario, if we had to pick sides.
Anyways, you asked for my sources to backup my claims, I understand by your moving the topic to Russian nationalists that you accept said sources do indeed lend sufficient reason to my claims.
Before "the special military operation":
And after:
Ukraine left as a small region around Kyiv, Russia having absorbed most, the rest divided between Poland and Romania, with a small snack for Hungary. At least Moldova is untouched (until further notice). On Dec 19, 2023, Putin suggested something similar. Well, anti-Ukraine rhetoric is easy enough to find, especially (but not always) from the Kremlin circle. I suppose, if those other countries can be turned against Ukraine, then who knows? A week prior:
Quoting Lavrov (Jul 20, 2022)
On Mar 4, 2024, he presented the same maps again at the Russian 2024 World Festival of Youth in front of a large audience, held just south of Sochi. (By the way, a somewhat similar map was posted on Mar 24, 2022 by the late Illia Kyva.)
Quoting Medvedev (Mar 4, 2024)
Whatever one makes of it, some analysts have commented. The irredentist rhetoric has been seen on many occasions by now. There is sort of a consistency here, whether calculated for intimidation, plain propaganda, or more.
ERRATA (thanks ):
[quote=Medvedev]In the brain of the President of Ukraine, damaged by psychotropic substances, the following picture of the bright future of his country arose (Fig. 1).
Western analysts believe that this will actually be the case (Fig. 2).[/quote]
On the contrary, they show what Russian foreign policy in it's near abroad is like. And shows the reason why the Eastern European countries especially the Baltic countries wanted to join NATO and were quite correct in joining NATO.
Quoting boethius
(Before 1991 you did have the Empire intact with the Soviet Union.)
Boethius, nobody is contradicting you here. I think everybody agrees with this. I've stated myself years ago before 2014 that NATO enlargement was the threat number 1. in Russian military doctrine.
Quoting boethius
Putin doesn't care about international business and economics. That has been obvious for quite a while. He has made his career from starting wars, actually. I think he is quite happy place with Russia transforming to a war-state.
Quoting boethius
Well, Russia didn't start talks about aquiring parts of Ukraine as in the case of Stalin with Finland, if that is your point. But otherwise it's quite different. The Finns didn't start negotiations with Russians in the start of the Winter War, only when the military situation was desperate. Just ask yourself then: when did the Finns have negotiations with Russians in 1941, 1942 or 1943? Zelensky has tried negotiate with the Russians, several times. In fact, his campaign for the Ukrainian presidency started with trying to negotiate with the Russians, which he attempted before the Russian invasion. So your comment is very absurd, the typical Ukraine bashing we hear from you.
Correction, do note it's not the "Kremlins plan" what he says:
Which still is extremely delusional. Haven't heard anyone in the West purposing that Poland, even Romania, would take large parts of Ukraine. The only theoretical discussion has been about Moldova and Romania, which share a lot.
It just shows the thinking of the Kremlin of how borders can be so easily changed. Or simply the media tactic of confusing Russians themselves.
Quoting boethius
[quote=“boethius;888751”]It matters only for Western propaganda that first the Nazis in Ukraine are denied they even exist, and then once that's untenable to just wish-wash it away with "oh there's Nazis everywhere" and when that doesn't actually work because there simply aren't similar groups everywhere then ending finally with "well Russia also has extreme Nationalism too”.[/quote]
As far as the propaganda battle is concerned, I made my arguments already. For each propaganda there is a counter-propaganda. However the circumstances for playing pro-Russian vs pro-Western propaganda are asymmetric: 1) Western propaganda can not reach Russian audience as easily, deeply and widely as the Russian propaganda can reach the West. And politics shouldn’t adapt to propaganda needs but the other way around. To that extent, it’s not much the Western politicians that are “handing” easy propaganda exploits, but Western democracy as such. Unfortunately to counter attempts at exploiting the democratic system against itself by authoritarian regimes, Western politicians will be compelled to sacrifice democracy to preserve national stability (either in pro-Russian or anti-Russian vain), that’s the price to pay for supporting authoritarian regime’s propaganda in the West. 2) The neo-nazi component in the Ukrainian society doesn’t threaten Western interest as much as Russian imperialism does (indeed, the war started by Russian neo-nazi and imperialist militia), while the Ukrainian neo-nazis couldn’t reasonably be an actual or incumbent offensive threat to Russia (as the pro-Russian argument might go, if hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian combatants do not stand a chance to win the Russian war machine despite the Western support, that’s even more true for 20k neo-nazi combatants with even less Western support). Besides the Ukrainian neo-nazi fringe due to the war against Russia and their exposure to Westernisation (prospects of joining Europe and NATO) declined in political relevance, ideological influence, number of combatants within Ukraine. And if there is a risk for their resurgence, as your video suggests, this is due to Putin’s war against Ukraine and if Putin wins. This could be one more reason why the West may be compelled to not only support the Ukrainian resistance against Putin but also refuse to recognise Putin’s annexations.
Quoting boethius
Russia invaded Ukraine prior to any Western military support to Ukraine and independently from any neo-nazi narrative, since the Russian imperialist and neo-nazi militia wanted to take back Donbas and Crimea before the Westernisation of Ukraine could happen. After the end of the Cold War, the neo-nazi movements and network which raised everywhere in the US, Europe and Russia under the threat of liberal globalization and islamic jihadism, weren’t a specific issue of Ukraine, nor a specific problem for Russia (e.g. Ukrainian neo-nazis were against Ukrainian political corruption and jewish power everywhere, from West to East Ukraine, from North to South Ukraine). On the other side, Ukrainian anti-Russian nationalism has been always a problem for Russian imperialists, and it proceeded the competition between the US and Russia during and after the Cold War. The Euromaidan (in which pro-Russian far-right hooligans plaid a relevant role in the ignition of violent suppression https://khpg.org/1385933116) were the occasion for a split of the Ukrainian neo-nazi groups between pro-Russian (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavel_Gubarev) and anti-Russian (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andriy_Biletsky), and a convergence between historical Ukrainian anti-Russian nationalism and Ukrainian neo-nazi militia (BTW notice that “most of the unit's members are Russian speakers from Russian-speaking regions of Ukraine.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azov_Brigade).
In other words, we are talking about a phenomenon indigenous to Ukraine which pre-existed the Western support. And Western propaganda can’t do much to influence the Russian people because Putin is the one who runs the propaganda in Russia. So there is no point in prioritising the purging of a “tiny tiny tiny” group of Ukrainian neo-nazis over the fight against the Russians, also because they are good fighters (likely, they will be the first ones to die on the front) and exposition to Westernization could have been enough to domesticate them, as it arguably happened to some extent.
All I can concede is that the “denazification” narrative may have looked a smart propaganda move from Putin’s perspective to persuade his people about the “special military operation” to the extent his people were/are receptive to Russian propaganda because: 1) liberal Russians reject nazism for ideological reasons 2) non-Russian minorities in Russia hate neo-nazis because they are victim of their violence 3) the Russian old generation hates neo-nazis because they remind them of WW2 and the great patriotic war 4) Russian imperialists and neo-nazis are enemies Ukrainian neo-nazis because they resist Russian hegemony in Ukraine.
Talking about “denazification” could also be smartly exploited to appeal to Westerners harbouring anti-American feelings for whatever reason, because Ukrainian neo-nazis may serve American interest.
However, I wouldn’t overstate the importance of the denazification propaganda for the Russians either, for many reasons: 1. Putin and his circle seem to play the denazification narrative depending on the conflict evolution, like the nuclear threat, so the denazification narrative seems more a means than a goal 2. Russians at large are claimed to be more depoliticised wrt war than politically committed (https://russiapost.info/society/passive) 3. Russian private militia do not seem to rely on the neonazi narrative (see Girkin or Pregozhin) 4. Why should a Russian caucasian soldier give a shit about a genocide of ethnic Russians by a Ukrainian neo-nazis after all, since they were victims of RUSSIAN neo-nazis’ violence (https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/russian-neo-nazis-strike-again-right-wing-execution-video-under-investigation-a-500053.html)?
Quoting boethius
The West is compelled to support Ukraine, because Russia is fighting against the West, while Ukraine is fighting for Westernization. Besides, as I argued elsewhere while the war in Ukraine it’s a fight for hegemony for the US, for the Europeans it’s rather a fight for preserving functional democratic institutions and averting the risk of bringing the hegemonic fight inside Europe.
In addition to security concerns, there are some strategic commodities which Ukraine can bring to Europe (https://visitukraine.today/blog/1783/only-ukraine-has-this-the-uniqueness-of-our-land-and-its-importance-for-the-whole-world).
Quoting boethius
Well I asked something specific [1], you didn’t provide the source I asked yet. While the sources you provided so far support your views significantly less than you seem to realise. In any case, my conclusion is that your sources do not lend sufficient reason to your claims, as I argued after taking into account the wider historical and geopolitical context.
[1]
“such as nazi groups doing their best in the Donbas to trigger the current larger war, and explicitly explaining to Western journalists that's what they want: a grand purifying war and destruction of Russia ... and then Berlin!”
“Many of the factions supporting these provocative policies vis-a-vis Russia had no qualms of explicitly stating their main goal (to Western journalists on camera) is starting a war with Russia that will destroy said Russia.”
“The Nazi's are definitely there in Ukraine (I am happy to re-post all those Western journalist documenting it) and are definitely a problem (mainly for Ukraine). They are also a genuine security concern for Russia (as they have no hesitation to explicitly say their goal is a war with Russia and to destroy Russia”
Can you link your source?
No military (or related change/activity) in the vicinity, whether reactionary or not? I.e. lower defenses because they're offenses...?
Nothing toward democracy freedom humanitarianism all that, no pressure, no sanctions, no frozen assets — that's all propaganda, meddling, illegal, interference, provocation. Free reins (or "blindness") would presumably not provoke. (Though I'm not quite sure what Kim Jong Un would do with that.)
As to the Kremlin and Ukraine: no Ukrainian defense to speak of. Alternatively, capitulation.
As to North Korea, while not shy about nuclear tests and shooting missiles, it seems just about anything (sometimes nothing in particular) elicits an angry response.
What's the Kremlin circle been up to? Some strategic steps to undermine democracy and extend geographically, well-known to history:
• attain (political) power by intimidation (Pompey used military)
• manipulate popular support, achieve cult status (check Caesar)
• marginalize government bodies (Augustus sidelined the Senate)
• gain control of judiciary, fix courts (per Banno)
• seize and constrain communication (media), employ in service
? geopolitically divide et impera
? instigate conflicts and alter economy accordingly
How much of such like has the Kremlin circle accomplished? (Putin, Patrushev, Bortnikov, others.) A decades-long coup?
Yeah, I don't get it... It's...random... Like plucked out of the thin air...
This Kyiv florist captured a missile attack on CCTV (— Anastasiia Shulha · Reuters via CBC · Mar 21, 2024 · 42s)
... Busy traffic on the street in the background.
Reminds me a bit of some radio stations during the 2nd world war:
Reporters Without Borders launch satellite to reach Russian-speaking territories (— Euronews · Mar 22, 2024) | via RSF/RWB
Coverage: Russia, the Baltics, occupied territories of Ukraine. Will satellite dishes be banned by the Kremlin?
There have been several reports on this stuff by now:
Deportation and re-education: life in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine (— Shaun Walker, Pjotr Sauer · The Guardian · Mar 6, 2024)
UK Defence Intelligence: Russia may be preparing to deport residents of occupied territories of Ukraine (— European/Ukrainska Pravda · Mar 11, 2024)
After over two years of fighting, the Kremlin has finally come to the conclusion that it's actually fighting a war in Ukraine.
Naturally that this is the way the Cold War usually was fought in Vietnam, Afghanistan and other places hasn't yet naturally been officially recognized by the Kremlin.
Could also help take domestic minds off Putin having seized power seemingly indefinitely.
[sup](? straightforward and plausible anyway, conspiracy theorists might even say something like this was their plan all along)[/sup]
A Russian friend of a friend living in France, about two years back...
Quoting Anna Frid · Mar 15, 2022
... Kyiv/Zelenskyy being representative against the Gremlin I think.
Denying Russia’s Only Strategy for Success
[sup]— Nataliya Bugayova, Frederick W Kagan, Kateryna Stepanenko · ISW · Mar 27, 2024[/sup]
Using the term "the West" like so suggests a homogeneity that's not quite there as of typing, though — incidentally, perhaps due to reflexive control and all that in part. They conclude the article with some strategies against the Kremlin.
EDIT typo, minor updates
And this of course resonates to an audience that simply sums up everything that the US supports as "forever wars" that are basically destined to fail and enthusiastically devours Russian propaganda.
It’s frustrating that Russia will win this and seemingly get away with an illegal invasion. I feel for the Ukrainian people being caught up in this proxy war.
Two of the terrorists had visited Istanbul prior to the attack, and it seems Turkey may be looking to exonerate itself by cooperating with the Russian investigation.
Senior Turkish official Ömer Çelik stated the terror attack could have only been carried out with help of a foreign nation, by which he is clearly suggesting that a nation other than Turkey was involved, and well, there aren't many candidates to choose from.
If it turns out the US was involved in this attack, and I honestly find that quite plausible (even though it's far from certain what happened), we are looking at a new low in western foreign politics - an all-time low, perhaps - and it would be further evidence that the United States is looking to escalate the conflict.
I would stress that given Turkey's relatively neutral position between NATO and Russia, it would be very hard to imagine Turkey having been involved, or trying to falsely accuse its military allies. Therefore I think there is some weight to this statement by the senior Turkish official.
The problem with Ukraine in NATO is that Ukraine has not been let into NATO.
If you're point is Russia, being an empire, will seek dominate where it can (where it does being its "sphere of influence") its expand when it can: sure, obviously, but that's exactly my point that given Russia's propensity to expand, playing footsie with Ukraine and supporting the Nazis there is just inviting and providing the pretext Russia would need to sell to its own population and its partners and non-Western countries that's invasion is reasonable (which it has successfully done, and Western hypocrisy is excellent diplomatic leverage outside the West, because no one likes hypocrites).
Now, if you want to say "well maybe Ukraine did have a lot of Nazis, concerning amount anyways, and tolerated and armed those Nazis, and the West did too, and maybe they were waging war against Russian speakers in the Donbas, but still!! Innocent virgin that doesn't deserve to be invaded!!" again, even if that's true, just a damsel in distress (which definitely implies, to me anyways, not so much agency, but maybe you mean that argument in a more woke modern way than how I read it), we've provided excellent propaganda material to Russia that materially helps it execute on its expansionist ambitions, and, more importantly, have no means to deterring Russia from doing so.
Ok, "Russia bad" ... what exactly can we do about that?
A reasonable answer to that question is not "Russia bad!!"
Quoting ssu
Well I'm contradicting it. It could be true that Putin "lured NATO in" not so close that it's a "real problem" (the Baltics being small and unimportant countries with basically resources) but close enough to provide pretext to take what is practical to take. It's possible. There's just no evidence for it.
US also does all sorts of interference and invasions as a general rule of being an empire, but that doesn't establish they are therefore behind everything, as you've pointed out many times. You need more than just the "character of imperialism" as evidence Putin and other Russian elites had some sort of elaborate plan to always appear reacting to what NATO does, but actually NATO was dancing to their tune all along. It's a far fetched theory with zero evidence (requiring believing things like Nord Stream was built with the secret intention of being bait for the US to blow up, not as a basis for peaceful and mutually beneficial relations), but sure, could be true, in which case what does that establish? Just that Russians are far better strategists and NATO dances to the Russian tune and maybe NATO should stop doing that, as the corollary is that we're still playing into the Russian hand, still dancing that Russian jig on command.
Quoting ssu
He obviously does as business and economics is what funds wars.
Without the diplomatic leverage, such as NATO clearly trying to encroach to one of Russia's most massive and most vulnerable borders, it may not have been diplomatically possible to just randomly invade Ukraine, as other countries wouldn't "get it".
Quoting ssu
I don't have the time right now to transcribe all the relevant citations, but I'll try to do so in the next few days.
Actual historians very much disagree with your view.
Had Ukraine accepted the peace deal on offer at the start of the war, then there would be a parallel following Finland on the key points: accepting no way to win, accepting loss of territory, based on sober realism that it's the best outcome against a far superior opponent.
What Ukraine does is the complete opposite of the Finnish military and diplomatic strategy, and completely unrealistic.
Hum...
Paradoxically—at least for purveyors of Kremlin propaganda, which holds that Ukrainians have been oppressing ethnic Russians—most Azov members are in fact Russian speakers and disproportionally hail from the Russian-speaking regions of Ukraine
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/defenders-of-mariupol-azov
About Andriy Biletsky, founder of the Azov Battallion:
A native Russian speaker born in the predominantly Russian-speaking city of Kharkiv, Mr Biletsky refused to identify himself as a neo-Nazi instead preferring to call himself a Ukrainian nationalist - but some of his public statements speak for themselves.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/03/18/inside-azov-neo-nazi-brigade-killing-russian-generals-playing/
Quoting boethius
The West can’t reasonably troubleshoot everything the Russian can use as a pretext. They do not lack creativity and can literally spin anything in their media (as we have seen, the Isis-K terrorist attack is readily associated to Ukraine, and do you remember the "bioweapons labs" in Ukraine?), while the West can’t do much about it no matter what it does (https://thehill.com/policy/defense/380483-congress-bans-arms-to-controversial-ukrainian-militia-linked-to-neo-nazis/) nor Ukraine (https://www.voanews.com/a/ukraine-parliament-adopts-law-on-self-rule-for-eastern-region/2451232.html, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/azov-battalion-drops-neo-nazi-symbol-exploited-by-russian-propagandists-lpjnsp7qg).
Besides, if we’ve provided excellent propaganda material to Russia, you should most certainly agree that “Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West's Fault”, “How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline”, “The War in Ukraine Was Provoked” are also excellent propaganda material provided to Russia by the West.
Quoting Mikie
Well, it might be more "interesting" to blame someone else (like an exercise perhaps). And what the Ukrainians themselves wanted — apparently contrary to what the Kremlin wants for Russians — is hence "argumentatively" sidelined thereby:
Quoting Revolution of Dignity (Wikipedia)
Is that "the Ukrainian people being caught up in [s]this[/s] a proxy war"? Getting old. In this thread at least.
I'm not really seeing a whole lot of officials/politicians of the larger countries in the world — China, the US, India, Brazil, ... — whine ever on about this dire existential threat to them. I guess Putin's Russia must be special. Ironically, instead, Ukraine, a smaller country, has clear and present evidence towards that by Russia's hands. Maybe the southern US border thing can be amplified to that purpose?
Quoting Tzeentch
Of course. (Or are we talking the Deep State CIA Masons?) Looks like a poor assumption.
US secretly warned Iran before ISIS terror attack
[sup]— Natasha Bertrand · CNN · Jan 25, 2024[/sup]
US repeatedly warned Russia ahead of Moscow attack, White House says
[sup]— The Guardian · Mar 28, 2024[/sup]
For that matter ...
Exclusive: Iran alerted Russia to security threat before Moscow attack
[sup]— Parisa Hafezi, Nazarali Pirnazarov, Steve Holland, Jonathan Landay, Michael Georgy, Gareth Jones · Reuters · Apr 1, 2024[/sup]
Quoting boethius
Reiterating (again), Russian officials claim that Kyiv is a Nazi regime, and Ukraine is to be deNazified and demilitarized. That's one pillar of their justification, and it's nonsense lapped up by the gullible and susceptible to Kremlin story-telling.
It’s like you’re incapable of posting anything clear. Maybe spend less time playing with links.
It’s a proxy war between the US and Russia. Not hard to see that— been discussed plenty of times. You don’t see it — cool. I don’t care.
It's not really paradoxical that there's Russian speakers in Azov considering the Azov sea borders the Donbas and Russian speaking region, although you'd still need actual evidence to backup this claim. Do you have a list of Azov members and where they come from?
Probably a better indication of where support for these groups draws from is the Svoboda's election results.
Here's a map for 2019:
There is much more support for the "Ultra right" in the West of Ukraine than the East, but there's a bit of support there too.
Quoting neomac
Right, right, just no way to "troubleshoot" a whole bunch of Nazis in Ukraine.
What you mean to say is that the West can't do anything about the Nazis and things like bioweapons labs, insofar as the West wants to provoke a war with Russia then you need to back the most radical elements of society.
If you don't want the war, then it's quite easy to make support contingent on concrete reductions of Nazis, and if Ukraine doesn't achieve that, well then no support, no weapons, no hundreds of billions of dollars if you get attacked.
You're presuming the West owes Ukraine something come-what-may and so if Weapons find there way to Nazis despite trying to make that "illegal" then there's nothing that can be done, we all just have to throw our hands in the air and just accept the situation. That's not the case, we could send no weapons at all. The West doesn't owe Ukraine any weapons at all.
Simply because something is used in propaganda does not mean there's no truth to it. The best propaganda is generally based on true facts and exaggerated for effect.
For example, turns out Israel exaggerated what happened on October 7th, so based on your logic we could conclude that October 7th itself is nonsense, no attack took place at all, because Israel can't actually back up it's most extreme claims.
Obviously your rebuttal to that would be that we know October 7th happened as there's a bunch of video evidence of it.
Well, the Nazis in Ukraine have just as much video evidence.
Which I post every time the Ukraine partisan echo-chamber seeps in here and the issue is just denied with pats on the back to everyone who denies in.
Then, same thing every time, when I post a selection of Western journalist reports of the Nazis in Ukraine, there's zero contending with the evidence, but the goal posts move to there's not "enough" Nazis (without ever defining what "enough" Nazis would be), or then Russia has Nazis too, or then pointing to Russian statements that exaggerate how many Nazis there are, and so on.
And the Nazis are important to understand the war. Without the Nazis there may not be any war at all. Zelensky was elected promising to go to Moscow on his knees and beg Putin for peace, and it may very well be that the Nazis and other "extreme nationalists" frustrated that plan.
I gave you the evidence I have. Besides the founder of Azov Battalion is natively Russian-speaker (as Zelensky) and comes from Kharkiv. The same goes for other Azov Battalion commanders (some listed here https://www.aa.com.tr/en/world/5-azov-battalion-commanders-return-to-ukraine-in-prisoner-exchange/2940501) who come from Luhansk, Crimea, Kharkiv.
If that's not enough to you, that's your problem not mine.
Quoting boethius
I have no doubt that the West Ukraine is more anti-Russian that the East, and that can reflect also in the support for the neo-nazi movements. But, despite some links between the two, I don’t find your stats about the popularity of Svoboda more useful to draw conclusions about the Azov Battalion recruits, given their different regional roots: indeed, the founder of Svoboda is from West Ukraine and the founder of Azov Battalion that fought the pro-Russian separatists is from East Ukraine. Besides, the support to Svoboda doesn’t prove that neo-nazis are/were governing Ukraine as Hamas (an Islamic terrorist group massacring Israeli civilians in Israel proper) is governing Gaza. Indeed, Svoboda “played a role in the 2014 Ukrainian revolution and Euromaidan protests but its support dropped quickly following the 2014 elections. Since then, the party has been polling below the electoral threshold, and it currently has one seat in the Verkhovna Rada.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svoboda_(political_party)
So the Ukraine got rid of Svoboda prior to the war Putin started a “special military operation” to denazify Ukraine.
Quoting boethius
The logic of “provocation” which Russians refer to has NO base in international law. I doubt that it even makes military sense to the extent NATO military exercise/aid, neo-nazi militia, nuclear weapons deployment were far from constituting an imminent or existential military threat to Russia. It makes more sense if one reasons in terms of “spheres of influence” as an answer to prospective/hypothetical threats. But if we are reasoning in terms of “spheres of influence” we must also accept its competitive logic: 1. Defensive moves over anticipated threats can be perceived as offensive and if Russia feels threatened by possible future NATO expansion then also the West may feel threatened by possible future Russian imperialist and revanchist campaigns 2. As far as the West is concerned, it shouldn’t surprise that the US is not going to curb its hegemonic ambitions just because Russia wishes so, the US is and aspires to remain the dominant hegemon, yet the US wasn’t that confrontational toward Russia either (see economic and diplomatic ties of the West with Russia at the end of Cold War, NATO and Russia cooperation at least until the Orange Revolution, returning the post-Soviet nuclear arsenal from Ukraine to Russia, the common enemy of Islamism). On the other side, Western Europeans and Ukrainians have been enough conciliatory toward Russia: Germany and France refused to have Ukraine joining NATO, while Ukraine remained neutral until Russia invaded Crimea and it also acknowledged Donbas region’s independence before the special operation started 3. If Ukrainian political leaders pursue territorial sovereignty and integrity which Russia has repeatedly acknowledged (until it didn’t), Russia can’t reasonably expect that permanently violating Ukrainian sovereignty even without prior attack by Ukrainians against Russia proper, will be tolerated by Ukraine and its INTERESTED supporters due to hypothetical future threats of the Ukrainian Westernisation 4. Ukrainian far-right and anti-Russian fringes are less threatening to the West than Russian imperialism. And actually Westernisation was the Western way to also “denazify” Ukraine, while Russia has no problems to support neo-nazi militia if they are pro-Russian.
Quoting boethius
There are 2 questionable assumptions in your reasoning: the first one is that war started because of the Ukrainian anti-Russian neo-nazi. But I (and others in this thread, if I remember correctly) argued that’s the other way around: Russian neo-nazi and imperialist groups started the war, which in turn triggered the Ukrainian anti-Russian neo-nazi. Second, both Ukraine and the West made efforts to purge the neo-nazi elements exploited by the Russian propaganda (https://thehill.com/policy/defense/380483-congress-bans-arms-to-controversial-ukrainian-militia-linked-to-neo-nazis/, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/azov-battalion-drops-neo-nazi-symbol-exploited-by-russian-propagandists-lpjnsp7qg).
What you keep missing is that neither Ukrainians, nor the US, nor the West aim at reaching WHATEVER peace if that implies unilaterally appeasing WHATEVER Russian demands. On the other side, Russia is not just passively reacting to perceived (and questionable) threats or offences in retaliatory ways: Russians pro-actively and competitively aims at restoring a sphere of influence by any means (which is what also Western Europeans are increasingly fearing). If territorial annexations (plus nuclear blackmailing) do not prove this in the most unequivocal possible way, I don’t know what is. As far as I’m concerned, the problem is not the kind of hegemonic PROVOCATIONS which Russia is growling about since in geopolitics they are part of the game (China feels provoked in the Pacific too, go figure!) as much as the pro-Russian propaganda built around such provocations (even the Ur-Nazi Hitler was provoked to invade Poland, as the anti-Ukrainian-nazi Putin reminds the West, go figure!). The problem is the many perceived weaknesses of the US and the EU (including NATO disarmament and NATO disaffection, the embarrassing end of the US’s infamous war on terror, the domestic crisis in the US, the disunity among Europeans, the rising populism in the West, the Chinese threat in the Pacific, the dependency of Europe to Russian oil, the Western mild reaction to the annexation of Crimea, etc.) which offered to Putin a window of OPPORTUNITY to pursue Russian hegemonic ambitions after a military build-up which was fuelled by business ties under Western-led globalization. In short, OPPORTUNITY explains Russia’s hegemonic gamble over Ukraine better than PROVOCATION.
Quoting boethius
I never argued that the West owes anything to Ukraine. Or that the US is not pursuing hegemonic goals in a war where Europeans and especially Ukrainians are bearing the greatest costs. What I argued is that there are strong security, political and economic concerns that push the West (Europeans included) to support the Ukrainian Westernisation and the containment of Russia’s hegemonic ambitions over Ukraine.
Bulgaria and Romania join the Schengen area
[sup]— The EU · Mar, 30 2024[/sup]
, I'll try clarifying for you, let me bullet'ify some observations (repeats) ...
• Ukraine was the one being invaded — invaded by Russia at the Kremlin's orders, who wasn't invaded or attacked, tracing back to what the Ukrainians wanted, which likely would lead to Kremlin loss of control/influence — see "demilitarization", NATO or not
• Ukraine's supporters have been tiptoeing around Russia with resources, an observation that's been appropriated for a "drip feed hypothesis" — tiptoeing here also involved dis/agreeing discussing debating quarreling back-and-forth, domestically and internationally, bureaucracy, "many voices" to accommodate, contrary to how authoritarian regimes typically work — organized proxy warring ? rowing, okie that at least ain't it
• Ukraine has made it clear over and again, they want the Kremlin to leave them be, and are looking westward instead, to Putin's dismay — anyone can see that (even through the Kremlin-inspired fog)
• "the US is waging a proxy war against Russia that Ukraine is being caught up in" is about as misleading (or helpful/relevant) as "North Korea / Iran waging proxy war against Ukraine" — the Kremlin started the war against Ukraine whom are defending (including what they wanted) — so, misdirection or "blindness" or something
But, hey, if we're just talking materially supporting one team, then sure. Is that what you mean? (Right, as mentioned, it's come up before.)
Quoting boethius
Nah, please don't repost that stuff again (again), already been seen far and wide. (Presumably you know how to use links.) Problem is that once you water it down to any truth of the matter, then all become liable, including, if not especially, the Russia from where the accusations originate. It's been reiterated, but seemingly ignored (by you).
Quoting neomac
Fair, Ukraine aspires to join the EU, has shown willingness to reform.
It is a proxy war between the US and Russia. Easy to see why.
That's your response? Maybe give it some more thought. There's a war between Russia (invader with support) and Ukraine (defends with support). This part is not a narrative. Trivial. For most anyway.
Quoting Mar 31, 2024
Seen this elsewhere-blaming finger-pointing misleading Ukraine-sidelining distraction already.
They staged round-the-clock terror: what a dangerous bomb the Russians used in Sumy Oblast
[sup]— Victoria Grabovska · Channel 24 · Mar 28, 2024[/sup]
Footage of the arrival of ODAB-1500 at the location of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the border area of the Sumy region is shown
[sup]— ilyaros · Military Review · Mar 28, 2024[/sup]
Russia used the ODAB-1500 heavy aerial bomb in Ukraine for the first time.
[sup]— BILD · Mar 30, 2024[/sup]
Detonation levels an area of some 500 m[sup]2[/sup], diameter about 25 m, though you want to be further away when one goes off.
? ? ?
So if Russia you accept that Russia has this propensity to expand, how then view NATO enlargement is this US plot against Russia. More of a ploy of the neighboring countries to get under NATO security umbrella before they have a conflict with Russia.
Quoting boethius
Well I've studied history in my own country and I think I know the history, so please say just to whom you refer this idea.
Quoting boethius
Stop right here.
There was an attempt to make peace talks. I don't recall a written peace offer on the table from Putin. Perhaps unconditional surrender is for you a "peace offer".
Besides, this is irrelevant as Russia has formally annexed more territories (partly one that it doesn't even fully control) and hence this is quite meaningless.
I can also continue saying "If Putin had only had large exercises on the border and never attacked Ukraine!". Yeah, but that didn't happen, he did invade.
America gave some security promises to Ukraine years ago if they would give up their nukes. That undoubtedly plays a factor in things.
Then, as the Russians protested and drew their red lines, the Americans knew exactly what to do to get a violent reaction out of the Russians and bring instability closer.
The reason for this is simple: both Europe and Russia stand to gain when the US inevitably gets sucked into large-scale security competition with China. Furthermore, if Europe and Russia are in chaos, it deprives China of markets which will be critical once China's sea lines of communication get cut off during said security competition.
However, unfortunately for the Americans the Russians have been holding back in an effort not to escalate. They've essentially been trying to direct things back to the status quo since the first month of the war.
The Europeans are oblivious to anything and everything, but they don't have the stomach nor capability for war. European leaders who strongly support Ukraine probably have until the end of their terms until they'll be swept aside by some right-wing populists which are popping up all over Europe.
However, that is only the short-term picture.
The long-term picture is that Europe and Russia will lose their neutral buffer Ukraine, and both will likely become fully remilitarized, creating fertile soil for future conflict.
Czechia busts Russian propaganda network targeting European elections
[sup]— Martin Fornusek · The Kyiv Independent (Deník N, Der Spiegel, Le Monde) · Apr 1, 2024[/sup]
Seems serious enough; we'll see what comes of it, if anything. Those folk should have taken the €$, told security everything, donated €$/2 to the homeless — live life on the edge. ;)
, what UA wanted was a US plot?
Therefore it's clear the Americans desired instability.
It's just too obvious and simple to ignore. Occam's razor at work.
Quoting Apr 1, 2024
[sup](? part of the analysis)[/sup]
If your point is that the Ukrainians went into this voluntarily; yes, and so did for example the Vietnamese.
And, just like the Vietnamese, the Ukrainians were and are completely clueless about the fact they're being used as a pawn to further US interests.
We're now at a point where Ukraine has given away all its sovereignty, since the country runs completely on foreign aid.
Furthermore, Ukraine will be the ultimate patsy upon which everything can be pinned, because the country is in shambles and will never be held to account anyway.
That's what we saw with the Nord Stream bombing, for example - the US tried to pin it on Ukraine, because they know things can't get any worse for Ukraine anyway.
In a nutshell, the Ukrainians were naive enough to play along, and now they're essentially incapable of changing course because their country is in shambles and runs completely on foreign aid.
Expanding your empire to get closer to a rival empire is exactly a plot against that other empire.
Now I get it, you view US empire as good and Russian empire as bad. Therefore, the US is justified in moving its military hardware and system closer to Russia. My view is more complicated than this dichotomy.
However, even if I grant this premise that the US is good and Russia bad, the problem is we don't let Ukraine into NATO. We (the US, NATO, EU, the West generally speaking) do not actually go and fight for these values you are talking about.
The policy of simply supplying Ukraine with arms fuels a disastrous war for Ukraine and loss of more territory.
There are other policy option that cohere with caring about Ukraine ... but just not enough to go and fight to defend Ukraine. Those policy options are diplomatic and not a battlefield solution.
Cheering Ukraine on to fight and supplying weapons and just "#believingUkraine" will miraculously win, causes enormous amount of death of Ukrainians, loss of population as refugees (in particular young mothers and children) and is a really bad and predictable outcome of the policy of just propping up Ukraine just enough to tread water for a while against the Russians.
F16's haven't even arrived yet, in a situation where if we were actually serious of giving Ukraine "whatever it takes", F16's and all sorts of missiles would have been supplied day 1. To say nothing of tanks and artillery and longer range missiles and so on.
Why?
Because the policy is not to help Ukraine but to damage Russia, which there is little evidence that even that is being achieved.
But if it was, it would (in my view) be completely immoral and evil to sacrifice so many Ukrainians to damage the Russians in a war that has a terrible outcome for Ukraine.
If we're not even damaging Russia but actually making it stronger, then the police is immoral, evil and retarded.
Quoting ssu
I am referring to "A Frozen Hell" by William Trotter and also "Upheaval" by Jared Diamond.
There's really a lot of material in these two books I think both useful for the discussion as well as making the case Ukraine is in no way following the Finnish model.
To take just a few choice quotes from Upheaval, which is a book dedicated to the theme of how nations manage crisis:
Now, Ukraine has also postponed Presidential elections, but in the our Finnish case it was to appease the Soviet Union, not to create a wartime de facto dictatorship to ensure continued fighting without any potential political debate or change of leadership.
Both books emphasize realism, achievable goals and compromise. Before and during the war and after the war, it's the Finns trying to negotiate and find a compromise.
The Ukraine strategy of just making public ultimatums that Russia would obviously never accept and insisting on unrealistic military goals as a sort of purity test, is pretty much the opposite strategy.
The only thing that is a strict parallel between the Winter War and this war in Ukraine, is the West cynically making false promises to try to keep the war going for their own purposes.
I don't quite have time to transcribe all that I want, but I'll take time now for the citation concerning Finland's diplomatic efforts, in a chapter literally called "The Dance of the Diplomats: Round One"
I.e. Finland had a constant diplomatic effort as I claimed, talking to the Soviet Union, and it was Moscow, not Finland, refusing to negotiate only until compelled by facts on the ground (Moscow had created and recognized a puppet state in exile, so didn't even recognize the actual Finnish government as legitimate insofar as the belief was the war would be easy to win).
The military effort served this diplomatic strategy of achieving a peace through negotiations, offering severe concessions, including putting political wartime leaders on trial for an "illegal war" with the Soviet Union, to achieve peace.
Quoting ssu
We were discussing a few weeks ago this offer and Zelensky's rejection of it (which the Western media don't even view as controversial) when the head of the Ukrainian negotiation team comes out and tells us the main point was Ukraine giving up seeking NATO membership, accepting neutralisy, everything else just cosmetic, and that they rejected the offer because "the Russians can't be trusted".
However, let's put aside what the Russians offered, what's the Ukrainians offer?
What peace deal are the Ukrainians fighting in a realistic strategy to compel the Russians to accept?
Russians putting a clearly reasonable offer on the table is literally doing the Ukrainians diplomatic work for them. The Ukrainians should have reasonable offers at every stage of the conflict.
Again, in sharp contrast to we Finns do in WWII:
The Ukrainians could have done what we Finns did: defend in a way that optimizes for Russian costs and losses, pressuring Russia into accepting a peace deal (that is not anywhere close to what we Finns would have desired: retaining access to the Arctic sea, retaining Korelia, not prosecuting literal heroes of the war, not paying reparations, not accepting defeat).
The Ukrainians don't do this, but rather ignore all the lessons of WWII.
It's not just our Finnish gumption (aka. sisu) that allows us to remain independent whereas Poland, Belgium, Denmark, Norway, Netherlands, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, France, Austria, Czechoslovak, Albania, Free City of Danzig, Luxembourg, Luxembourg, Greece, Yugoslavia, Yugoslavia, Slovak Republic, Ukraine and Germany didn't remain independent but were conquered by either the Nazis or the Soviets, or one and then the other.
There were geographic and geopolitical elements that allowed Finland, along with a "can do attitude" to resist occupation of the Soviet Union.
First, Finland is not in a strategically critical location between any of the major powers fighting in WWII. You do not need to go through Finland for any of the major powers to attack each other. You can, it could be useful, that's why Stalin demanded defensive concessions and then attacked Finland, but it's not critical. Finland is far from being Belgium, a flat plain in between Germany and France.
Second, Finland was at no point the Soviet Union's main concern. The main concern of the Soviet Union in World War 2 was Nazi Germany. Therefore, if attacking Finland actually reduces Soviet security vis-a-vis Nazi Germany rather than increases it, the rational option is to cease attacking Finland and accept a peace deal.
Third, Finland has some natural defensive advantages in being mostly dense forest with the only flat plain being a choke point south of lake Ladoga. Dense forest being famously easier to defend than flat plains, and choke points being famously easier for a smaller force to hold off a larger force a la Thermopylae. Finally, just as the Germans encountered Russian winter in Russia, the Russians encountered Finnish winter in Finland. Every level of winter requires an additional set of skills and equipment.
It is not just a case of heroism and "making a stand" and all the above listed countries that didn't fight to the death just "didn't want it enough". The countries that surrendered in WWII did so because they were compelled to and further fighting was not realistically in the interest of their people.
Finland had a realistic strategy leveraging Finns willingness to fight (a death toll that would be proportionally comparable to 9 000 000 Americans dying in a war today, more American deaths than all American wars combined), geography as well as the Soviets having bigger fish to be worried about: first the Germans and then the Americans. Finland could leverage all these elements (along with things like territory and money and trade relations) to make peace the rational choice for the Soviet Union.
Ukraine has done nothing remotely similar except the willingness to fight and take extreme losses.
There's a lot to be critical about of US actions, but when it comes to Europe, here fortunately the US hasn't made it's biggest blunders. On the contrary, I would say.
And let's think about this.
Ask yourself, how many NATO countries have been invaded by the US or other NATO countries, when the US has thought the countries were out of line?
With the Warsaw Pact, it did this action basically twice. In Hungary and in Czechoslovakia. And at least general Jaruzelski insisted that he declared martial law in order to prevent a Russian invasion in 1981. This shows what the actual objective was for the Warsaw Pact for the Soviet Union.
So has now Russia changed so much from those times with it's Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO)?
How well did the alliance with Russia protect Armenia from Azeris? How much did Russia come to the help of Armenia?
But yes, it did come to help of the government of Kazakhstan to quell riots. And that actually fits quite well the previous Warsaw Pact mentality.
Quoting Mar 8, 2024
Quoting 2019 Ukrainian presidential election (Wikipedia)
OK, if we run with that (genuine), then we might ask about implications, including/especially for the Kremlin, or in the eyes of the Kremlin, and they don't look favorable according to their aspirations.
Quoting Mar 11, 2024
By and large fairly straightforward.
Looking at other Russian neighbors, who want to see Ukraine become like another Belarus? :down: Another Baltics? :up: (What about where to raise kids?) Pick your poison? The Ukrainians chose a path. Putin makes a point about Russians + Ukrainians, then, instead of setting up programs to foster relations, he sets out to bomb them into compliance.
Wait, you still claim having the scoop on the Nord Stream thing? :D
Ukraine was foolish enough to go along with it. How a nation could think it a good idea to ignore a neighboring great power talking about existential security concerns and red lines is beyond me. It was obvious from the get-go that it would lead to Ukraine's destruction and that the US had no intention of starting WW3 for Ukraine, ergo was always going to hang Ukraine out to dry.
But this is how the US has always operated. It has interests, and simply manipulates countries into believing their interests align with the US. Just like Vietnam, just like various countries in the Middle-East, etc.
And it always leaves behind the same result: a smoldering pile of rubble, thousands dead, chaos.
It's an all-too-familiar pattern in US foreign policy.
Also, under what rock are you living?
Quoting jorndoe
Biden's Blackout: How America & Norway Blew up the Nord Stream Pipelines
The worst thing is that you have morally upright American journalists trying to teach you what your rotten government gets up to, but you refuse to listen.
My inquiry was a different one, though.
You departed therefrom again once having mentioned the Vietnamese — a comment I took to mean that what UA wanted was real enough, as opposed to a US plot (I suppose we might have enquired into both possibilities, but no matter).
So, implications of what they wanted, what to do with that (by the Kremlin)?
[sup](? part of the analysis)[/sup]
On the Nord Stream thing, Sy + Rose = your (sole) source...? :brow:
Earlier on, the Swedish (+ Danish) investigators handed their material over to the German investigators, who have yet to release any findings; going by memory, further investigation fell within German jurisdiction/purview.
Also, going by memory again, some Asian ship apparently damaged something on the sea floor around the same time, perhaps by accident.
It's not settled.
In the world of international politics, and in life in general, one doesn't always get what they want, and blindly pursuing what one wants is a recipe for disaster.
The Ukrainians foolishly let themselves be seduced into thinking they wouldn't be sacrificed like a pawn by the US, which is of course exactly what is happening.
Quoting jorndoe
What about US officials, including Nuland and the US president himself? :rofl:
Quoting jorndoe
Maybe to those who have their head so far in the sand that they wouldn't recognize reality if it were to hit them smack in the face.
[sup](? still part of the analysis)[/sup]
, some cherry-picked suggestive single phrases by Rice (2014), Nuland (Jan 2022), Biden (Feb 2022), since denied by the way, to go with Sy + Rose...? And therefore the US + Norway sabotaged Nord Stream...? Nah, credulous/sought, doesn't make the cut. Pareidolic. With a bit of luck, German investigators find something though, perhaps something to substantiate your hypothesis.
Like A Glove: Nord Stream Pipeline Sabotage and American Foreign Policy
[sup]— Luis Tomas Orozco · The Yale Review Of International Studies · Apr 19, 2023[/sup]
Peripherally related:
New west-east route keeps Europe hooked on Russian gas
[sup]— America Hernandez, Marwa Rashad, Pietro Lombardi, Nerijus Adomaitis, Kate Abnett, Christoph Steitz, Vera Eckert, Julia Payne, Francesca Landini, Nora Buli, Andrius Sytas, Angeliki Koutanto, Sergio Goncalves, Dmitry Zhdannikov, Barbara Lewis · Reuters · Apr 3, 2024[/sup]
They told us Ukraine joining NATO was an existential security threat to them, and a red line, meaning they were prepared to enter into full-scale, perhaps even nuclear war over this issue.
That's the story they told us for some 15 years.
So obviously the Kremlin believed it was their business, and whether you agree with that or not, if you do not take warnings like these seriously, you're a fool, or you're the United States preparing to sacrifice a pawn.
The United States knew the Russian position, and desired instability and conflict in Eastern Europe. That's why it ignored these warnings. Ukraine was the pawn to be sacrificed, and Europe is next, if Uncle Sam gets his way.
Quoting jorndoe
You can stop now jorn.
No clear-minded person would doubt the US is the most-likely culprit in the Nord Stream bombing, and you're simply making yourself look like a brainwashed idiot.
Sorry to put it so bluntly.
Again with your piece of pro-Russian propaganda?
Ukraine couldn't join NATO because Russia had ENOUGH Western/NATO complacent parties and issues (corruption, border issues, far-right movements) to prevent that from happening. So much so that Ukraine didn't join NATO since the collapse of Soviet Union until now.
Besides the reasons to keep NATO alive and NATO military capacity were declining. See how slow and reluctant is the West to support Ukraine? Russia is counting on the West getting tired of supporting Ukraine. Isn't it? How does "existential threat" make any sense in such circumstances other than Russia saying so?
And Ukraine was neutral until Russia annexed Crimea (https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-parliament-abandons-neutrality/26758725.html) as much as Finland did, pushed by Russian aggression of Ukraine.
These are THE FACTS. Suck it up and move on.
BTW since Russia has won and all it wanted, it has now occupied and annexed, its black sea fleet is dominating all the black sea like a boss (right?), Ukraine is a disaster and depending on the West, can what remains of Ukraine join NATO? What is Putin saying?
And, why does the US need to damage the North Stream (which can always be repaired right?) instead of simply ordering the Germans to stop doing business with Russia. Germans are servile coward minions of the Great Satan so they would do anything to please the Great Satan, right?
, keeping it real: you've presented your Nord Stream hypothesis as plain fact, when it is plain speculation.
https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/222847.htm
https://tass.com/politics/1737915
Putin will be forced to use tactic nuclear bombs, now. European populists and men-of-honor save Europe with your indisputable all-knowing wisdom!
You're responding to a simple statement of fact.
Quoting Tzeentch
Is just a fact.
Quoting neomac
Is just repeating exactly as @Tzeentch just stated but just in the form of complaining about how NATO didn't let Ukraine in.
Russia gave clear warnings, Ukraine ignored those warning and got invaded.
The point @Tzeentch is making is that it's foolish to ignore those warnings whether you believe Russia is justified or not.
For example, if you pull a gun on me and warn me you'll shoot me if I take another step, I'd be a fool to ignore that warning whether I feel you'd be justified in shooting me or not. At the end of the day I don't want to be shot and I need to navigate the real world and not the world as I wish it was. I may wish you wouldn't shoot me despite your warning or then wish that someone would jump in front of me to take the bullet and so I don't suffer the consequences of my own actions, but if that's not what reality is like then I'm a fool to make decisions based on delusional wishes.
That the US would drop Ukraine like a hot potato the moment the war no longer serves US interests was as obvious at the start of the war as it is now.
You can complain about "complacency" all you want, but unless it's a surprise betrayal, which is not in this case, then that's not a basis for decision making.
People should do A, B, and C and therefore I will do D based on the assumption they will do what they should, is only valid if there's reason to believe people will actually do that.
The Ukrainians see the US abandon their "close allies" and "deal friends" in Afghanistan, watch Afghanis literally fall off the last airplanes, and then tell themselves: hmmm, I want me some of that.
Making decisions based on reality and not wishes or assuming what other people "should do" when they have no track record of dong it, is a principle of decision making so basic it even appears in Disney movies:
Which I've quoted before but clearly the lesson remains lost, but your philosophical compass should definitely point directly at this paragraph to see you through these conceptually rough seas.
You still don't get it.
As Ukraine loses the capacity to legitimately threaten Russia, NATO can therefore augment whatever doesn't change the outcome.
Once artillery, IFV's and tanks would no longer risk an actual Ukrainian breakthrough and routing the Russian in a significant way, cutting the land bridge for example, then, ok, sure, have some artillery, have some IFV's, go nuts in these tanks.
Why is Steadfast Defender, the largest NATO military exercise since WWII, happening now rather than last year ... or the year before that ... when it would have actually been a legitimate threat of intervention as well as legitimate threat of moving even more more equipment and weapons into Ukraine? A threat that would have genuinely applied a lot of pressure on the Russians.
Because Russia is no longer under pressure in Ukraine and so this additional NATO pressure is no longer all that meaningful.
They view Russia through a lens of unending cynicism (and I would argue that is reasonably appropriate), but fail to realise America functions in exactly the same way.
Anyone who points it out is then labeled as 'pro-Russian', which is some sad coping behavior not really worth taking seriously.
Well, there is one important difference in that the US is actually participating in a real genuine genocide right now, whereas it's only imagined that Putin is Hitler and Russia is carrying out a genocide.
So, the equivalence only goes so far.
More loaded than simple. The framing is suggesting a questionable alternative: either Westerners didn’t take the Russian warnings seriously or they were serving the evil US at the expense of the Ukrainians. Unfortunately neither Ukrainians were pawns (the image is used to stress that Ukrainians have no agency like mechanical puppets or are just gullible/corrupted) nor the Russian warnings have been disregarded (indeed, Russian warnings HAVE BEEN TAKEN SERIOUSLY, if that means act in accordance to Russia’s demand DO NOT LET UKRAINE JOIN NATO and Ukraine never joined NATO until now, also Ukraine remained neutral by constitution and popular support until the occupation of Crimea, and yet the EUROPEANS WERE RELUCTANT TO COUNTER RUSSIA, even then, that’s how seriously they took the Russian warnings [1]). The further questionable implicature is that the US is the evil mastermind exploiting Ukrainians to aggress Russia. Such assumption is questionable on geopolitical and common-sense grounds: if the geopolitical arena is inherently competitive and conflictual then ALL players (including minor actors like Ukraine or Hamas) are expected to do competitive and controversial things, especially when pursuing hegemonic goals (like Russia and the US). So claiming that the US is “provoking” Russia equates to claiming that the US is doing something competitive and controversial wrt Russian hegemonic ambitions, and therefore it is to be blameful and evil, it means you do not understand the game or you're spinning pro-Russian propaganda. Besides the West (including the US) wasn’t that confrontational with Russia, as I’ve argued: the Western-led globalization enabled and encouraged Putin’s aggression of Ukraine WAY MORE than whatever grievance Putin had. As far as common-sense goes: if you were to choose based on avg standards of life, where would you prefer for you and your beloved ones to live, under US hegemony or under Russian hegemony? This is not to say there are no third alternatives, but that if there weren’t I would still prefer to live under the US hegemony than under the Russian hegemony. To that extent I’m pro-US and reason accordingly. That’s the only “exceptionalism” I can readily accord to the US vis-à-vis Russia.
[1] Pro-Russian propaganda complains a lot about Western intelligence and military interference in Ukraine and then argues for Ukrainian neutrality, but it forgets Russia’s massive interference in political countries, especially in their neighborhood (including Ukraine), and the main military naval base in the Ukrainian territory. It's like Germany or Italy declaring to be neutral with an American military base in their territory.
Quoting boethius
First, as I said Russian warnings were taken seriously, but obviously neither the US nor Ukraine could accept whatever condition Russia would require for peace: the US is the hegemon (so submission to Russia’s demands aren’t expected, not even respect for its sphere of influence, China is complaining about the same), Ukraine was/is open to Westernisation precisely to get rid of Russian oppressive hegemony, and Europeans are arguably interested in Ukraine for the same compelling reasons Hitler was (“Ukraine is a God-endowed country. For centuries she has excited the envy of her neighbors because of her unique situation, her fertile soil, her abundance of raw materials, and her gentle climate” https://www.amazon.fr/Hitlers-Occupation-Ukraine-1941-1944-Totalitarian/dp/125802585X). So there was a convergence of interests at the expense of Russian imperialism.
Second, there are military miscalculations, divergence of political interest, divergence in political decision making and/or divergence in marketisation of political decisions among all major players. But the degree of resilience may vary significantly (e.g. I take Western democracies as more vulnerable, individually and collectively, than autocracies like Russia). The West was overconfident Russia wouldn’t attack, because NATO arguably wasn’t an incumbent military threat to Russia in any meaningful way and, even less so after the occupation of Crimea, which was tolerated by Western Europeans. Unfortunately this encouraged Russia to raise the stakes (and any future attempt to appease Russia can turn against the West in the same way). This is called: OPPORTUNITY. So we should stop talking about provocation and talk of OPPORTUNITY. Putin (with the blessing of his Chinese boy friend) took the OPPORTUNITY to aggress Ukraine because the West was/is perceived as WEAK and DECADENT. Then you have to explain to me how a weak and decadent West constitutes a serious threat to a strong and non-decadent Russia.
Quoting boethius
I’m not a decision maker and I do not pretend to know or to know better than political decisions makers. Besides I think no decision maker involved in this conflict is deciding without considering a pool of advisors more competent than anybody I hear in this forum in all relevant domains (economics, propaganda, military, etc.), secretive diplomatic channels and classified information (not available to the general public). So even when mistakes may look trivial, the reasons why such mistakes happen may not be as trivial.
For that reason I just limit myself to understand the ongoing events based on certain geopolitical and historical arguments because they are the kind of arguments actual political advisors (like Kissinger, Brzezinski, Wolfowitz) and their critics (like Mearsheimer or Walt) take to be relevant in foreign policy decision making, besides information from sources I perceive as reliable enough. I think this is the kind of critical examination should be welcomed in such a philosophy forum.
In accordance to what I said earlier, claiming “the US would drop Ukraine like a hot potato the moment the war no longer serves US interests was as obvious at the start of the war as it is now” doesn’t seem anything more than claiming “the US is doing something controversial during a hegemonic competition with Russia”. I find such claim rather USELESS to pin responsibility or evilness, since that’s the “anarchic” game being played (and I would argue it MUST be played also for moral reasons, despite the dangers, the tragedies and human fallibility) as if one sitting in the stands complained that that dude on the ring started punching the other dude in the face for no reason and that’s immoral, without realising he is watching a boxing match.
So if it gives the impression to be a good argument to pin responsibility or evilness , then either the game is not understood or it’s a case of pro-Russian propaganda.
Quoting boethius
Your conclusion holds if the analogy between Ukraine and Afghanistan holds. But to me it doesn’t because the conditions of the conflict are significantly different in the two cases: in the former, the US antagonist is primarily Russia and the concerned sphere of influence is Europe, in the latter it’s respectively Islamist terrorism (or more specifically Al-Qaeda and Talibans) and Middle-East. Islamist terrorism doesn’t arguably look as challenging to the US hegemony as Russia. Europe is an area which (still) is not as disputed as the Middle-East and its integrated institutional, social, economic assets can more readily serve American economy and politics (this aspect can likely develop further with a Westernised Ukraine) than what the US could find in the Middle East.
Quoting boethius
You argument would sound more compelling if one aimed at understanding politics through propaganda. But I understand propaganda as a tool of politics (not the other way around), and this implies two things: first, the standard is not necessarily accuracy but effectiveness and, second, propaganda is not the only tool or the most important tool for political decision making. So criticism of propaganda based on accuracy or relevance may remain questionable even when sounding plausible.
Besides my understanding of politics relies more on geopolitical and historical considerations than on propaganda highlights one can read in the news. I would like to understand political reasoning prior to communicative needs addressing national audience, and transversally or comparatively wrt ideologies and regimes. So such reasoning is definitely part of what politicians can and are arguably expected to take into account in their decision making.
Quoting boethius
I wouldn’t take the current snapshot of the conflict as definitive. The war isn’t over yet and its future consequences may take years, if not decades, to manifest. Westerners, Ukrainians and Russians are not just fighting for their present but also for their future which is something we do not see yet.
Quoting boethius
So you are claiming that even though Russia is complaining:
https://tass.com/politics/1740307
https://tass.com/politics/1743107
https://tass.com/defense/1756871
the West shouldn’t take Russia seriously?
Well, that's kind of odd, since you've repeatedly railed on just about the evil US, with
Quoting Tzeentch
being a rare exception. :D Countless comments have been repeated about others than invader and defender, shooting blame from the hip, presenting plain speculation as plain fact, finger-pointing, positing mala fides, what-have-you. (Actually, wasn't "Everyone bad" established long ago?)
I guess you (and certain others) leave it to others to pick up the slack, or the thread could go monotone, perhaps as far as going pro-Kremlin circle or indistinguishable therefrom.
But, hey, let's for a moment run with your "the same" then, and differentiate by other means:
Quoting Apr 2, 2024
Maybe I'll call failure to recognize such like ? "Kremlin-blindness". Unless they're too obvious to mention?
Resuming the analysis (sub-thread):
Quoting Apr 4, 2024
None of the things you named there, regrettable they may be, can hold a candle to the damage the United States has wreaked upon the world.
When I say Russia and the US operate on roughly the same principles I'm being generous to the US. One could easily make the point the US is way, way worse.
Need me to refresh your memory about US history?
Quoting Tzeentch
:grin:
... and part of the war and factors into decision-making.
Resume the analysis/sub-thread?
Quoting Apr 4, 2024
2014 Apr 11 · Russian authorities (Chaika) pass materials regarding Yarosh to Interpol
2014 Apr 12 · a full platoon under Girkin (Surkov) seizes Sloviansk in early Donbas war
2014 May 22 · CyberBerkut attacks and disables Ukrainian election system
2014 May 23 · Ukrainian election system restored
2014 May 25 · Ukrainian presidential election
2014 May 25 · Malware removed from election system that would have rendered Yarosh winner (37%) over Poroshenko (29%)
2014 May 25 · Russian Channel One declares Yarosh winner (37%)
2014 May 26 · CyberBerkut attacks Ukrainian election infrastructure, disrupting tally collections
2014 May 29 · Poroshenko wins Ukrainian presidential election (55%)
2014 Jul 25 · Interpol issues wanted notice for Yarosh at request of Russian authorities
2016 Jan 2 · Yarosh apparently no longer on Interpol's wanted list
Coincidences? ... Planned? ... Curious.
No one here is arguing that Russia is right in what it does.
This is what you can't seem to understand: my argument is not that we ought to look more favorably on Russia's actions, but that we ought to look more critically at the United States'
Obviously, the latter is something you seem chronically incapable of doing, and you, along with some others, are trying to project that bias onto me by framing me as "pro-Russian", "Kremlin-blind", etc.
Playing dumb ain't gonna help you, dude.
First I doubt you are intellectually honest in claiming that you are not arguing that "Russia is right in what it does" given claims such as [1]
Second, your complaint can be easily retorted: my argument is not that we ought to look more favorably on the US's actions, but that we ought to look more critically at Russia. And if that is what makes me pro-US, then the opposite argument, namely the exact argument you just made makes you pro-Russian. You take Russia to be a lesser evil than the US. I take the US to be a lesser evil than Russia. To call mine a bias and yours not a bias, you have give compelling arguments, so far you offered questionable arguments.
[1]
Quoting Tzeentch
[sup](2023Mar21, 2023Dec17 - no sainthood there, but no matter)[/sup]
Resume the analysis/sub-thread?
Quoting Apr 4, 2024
Since you appear to only have eyes on the US here — other things being "regrettable" :grin: — was E+D then thought :up: / :down: by the US, would/did they act on/against that? (I suppose, in general, it can differ among US administrations)
Actually, what would or did whatever different parties do with that, with what they wanted, and why? (though it can vary/change, especially in democracies)
[sup](? still part of the analysis)[/sup]
:100: :up:
Everything has to be put into context and scale. Ukraine didn't threaten Russia, Russia has made crystal clear it's imperialistic territorial ambitions in Ukraine and is still delusional in wanting purge Ukraine from the "neo-nazis", who it says control Ukraine. Now perhaps 70 000 Ukrainian soldiers 11 000 Ukrainian civilians and over 100 000 Russian soldiers have been killed, hence this isn't a minor issue.
What mistakes had been done by the West, it simply doesn't erase the fact that Putin decided to escalate a frozen conflict to a full scale conventional war with the objective of continuing the land grab it started over in 2014. Those are the facts and thus stating that somehow "Russia was forced to act" and the war is actually perpetrated by the US is simply false.
And then if we focus on what mistakes the West has done, that's actually an interesting question which doesn't go on the biased line propagated by the Kremlin, where everything was manipulated by the US and Ukraine and Ukrainians aren't actors in their own country. (As they are so artificial, anyway)
The real critique of the US could be the too little too late doctrine in supporting Ukraine, as the US didn't from the start think Ukraine would have a chance to defend itself so successfully. The assistance became a show in micromanagement of individual weapon system transfers...as if some units would be a silver bullet in a large scale war. The fear of (nuclear) escalation worked to cow the US from giving assistance when it could have been very effective, when Russia wasn't yet entrenched behind the Gerasimov line and was still claiming that this was only a "special military operation".
Somehow the Cold War era wars in Korea and Vietnam didn't come to mind here: at least the Superpowers did understand that assisting someone who is fighting the other Superpower isn't a direct act of war. But this seems to have been forgotten and the nuclear talk from Putin and Medvedev cowed the West.
Oh... How odd then that the Russians insisted for over fifteen years that it was an existential security threat and marked it as a red line.
And what a genius plan to ignore such warnings!
How strange that Ukraine ended up in the position that it did.
How very odd, indeed.
Quoting ssu
European leaders themselves have admitted they treated the Minsk accords as a temporary armistice during which Ukraine could be armed and prepared for war.
You're completely ignoring the West's provocative role in all of this.
Quoting ssu
The US doesn't care about Ukraine, or whether Ukraine is able to defend itself.
This isn't about Ukraine. This is about geopolitics.
Ukraine was simply a mechanism by which the US could sow instability in Eastern Europe, which is clearly the reason it sought to change Ukraine's neutral status - the key to stability between Russia and Europe - because it's the only reason the US would pursue such a policy in a geopolitically sensitive region.
So why criticise the US over a job well done?
They got exactly what they wanted, and the Europeans are utterly oblivious and lapping it all up.
The Americans have got you worried about the alligator next door, yet you're completely oblivious to the alligator you've gotten into bed with.
Do you even realize that if the Americans are successful in stirring up trouble between Europe and Russia, you're sitting in the front row to receive the blows?
What genius says things like the above.
There's nothing odd with that. Russian imperialists see Ukraine as the existential part of the to make them a great Power. This isn't any new news. Even others agreed with this:
Ukraine's fault was to think that Russian leaders would stay as reasonable as the (ex)-Soviet leaders that peacefully dismantled the Soviet Union. Ukraine's second error was to trust that by giving away it's nuclear deterrence and to trust the written promises given to it by Russia. And the third error was that many thought foolishly that the aspirations for Ukraine were just about NATO expansion. Well, Putin's bizarre historical ideas should have obviously shown that this isn't just about not, but really about Russia itself. As if Crimea didn't already show that.
(Many years earlier, far before the 2022 invasion, the objectives were there to be seen...)
In other words, you're saying the Russians lied to us for 15 years and their warnings should have been ignored, as they were?
Another question; suppose Finland is next on the chopping block. Would you also favor this strongman attitude of no negotiations or diplomacy with the Russians? Fight on till the last Finn, as it were?
Despite all the grievances Russia may have voiced out loud about NATO enlargement (but let’s not make a drama about it https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/1398379/Putin-lets-Nato-recruit-in-Baltic.html), Putin’s complaint would have made more sense if Ukraine had joined NATO. But that didn’t happen. Besides Putin was pretty sneaky about his war lord appetites (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/russia-ukraine-putin-invasion-after-denials-now-says-no-occupation-plan/). All the more reason to be skeptical about Putin’s honest dispositions toward peace settlements.
Quoting Tzeentch
That's another mischaracterization. Minsk accords were meant to solve a conflict between Russia and Ukraine peacefully. But neither the West nor Ukrainians trusted Russia given the outcome of the Budapest Memorandum and other agreements between Russia and Ukraine (like The Treaty on Friendship, Cooperation, and Partnership between Ukraine and the Russian Federation), the problematic nature of the Minsk agreements (especially for the Ukrainians https://ecfr.eu/article/ukraine-russia-and-the-minsk-agreements-a-post-mortem/), and its violations (especially by Russia https://cepa.org/article/dont-let-russia-fool-you-about-the-minsk-agreements/).
Quoting Tzeentch
You should completely ignore it too, for the reasons I already clarified. Besides we shouldn’t forget the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_reset happening in those 15 years you are blabbering about.
Quoting Tzeentch
This may be true to some extent. But again the framing is very much disputable.
First, as Mearsheimer would argue "the only reason the US would pursue such a policy in a geopolitically sensitive region" implied sacrificing an alliance with Russia to contain China. So the calculus implied significant strategic costs for the US too, actually a strategic blunder some might argue. At the same time keeping the EU down ain't going to help the US, so the US may be forced to empower Europe to counterbalance anti-US forces.
Second, the Europeans exposed themselves to Russia's hegemonic ambitions without much concern of their protector (the US), which ain't that smart either. Besides Russian political influence is dangerous for the European political stability since Russia is fomenting populist movements in the West to turn against Western institutions (NATO and EU) and Western democracy (https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2023/10/vladimir-putin-russia-ukraine-germany-far-right/675838/, http://pdc.ceu.hu/archive/00007035/01/PC_Russian-Connection_2014.pdf, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/russia-fsu/2014-03-25/putins-western-allies).
Third, Ukraine may very much bring its boon to the West, if it manages to join it. So that the loss of business ties with Russia wouldn't have come without some compensation for the EU and the Ukrainians.
They might be unhappy of NATO enlargement, but as you should notice that the enlargement of Sweden and Finland didn't actually get much if ANY response. The whole thing was a non-event. Why? Because it's a minor point, just like humanitarian issues and democracy is a minor issue to the US, but it still talks a lot about those issues in it's foreign policy discourse.
Hence to think that the reason to attack Ukraine was to avoid NATO enlargement is simply false. That (to deter Ukraine from becoming a NATO partner) was already done actually by the show of forces with large military exercises on the Ukrainian border. Besides, the whimsical idea here is to think that what countries the US Presidents says to become members would really become members de facto laughable. That it took two years for Sweden to get into NATO should tell that. No, the real reason to invade Ukraine was to gain territory, create that landbridge to Crimea, create that Novorossiya. This is not speculation, it's a fact: Russia has annexed more territories, some that it even doesn't have control. This, plus the russification efforts done in the occupied territories, should make this really clear.
What is now becoming very clear that Putin was lead to think that the invasion would be quick and similar to what happened with Crimea. And the West wouldn't be a problem... just as earlier in 2014 it hadn't been
Quoting Tzeentch
If Russia makes territorial claims then yes, absolutely, my attitude would be the same of my grandparents generation. If it comes to fighting, fight like they did.
It is absolutely delusional and outright deadly to go and accept the Russian demands and think that will give you peace. Just ask that from the Estonians, the Lithuanians or the Latvians how great it was to accept the Russian demands last time. What the Kremlin would want is would be the "Finlandized" Finland during Kekkonen's era. Or that at least for starters. Hence I'm glad that the social democrats took us to NATO, and we got Sweden there too!
But I guess it's something you cannot fathom as you think that Russians are so 'reasonable' in their demands. (Just like the denazification of Ukraine) :roll:
In other words, when a former, nuclear-armed great power talks about existential security threats and red lines for fifteen years, ignore them and assume they are lying.
Genius.
Quoting ssu
This conflict didn't start over territorial claims. It started over NATO membership for Ukraine.
Lets suppose Russia would have voiced security concerns over Finland entering NATO over the course of 15 years.
Ignore them and assume they are lying?
Do you have reading comprehension problems? Just as the US speaks of humanitarian rights and democratic freedoms all the time, so does Russia about NATO expansion. Are both lying? No, of course they care about their pet issues. But you have to look twice at the reason for starting wars. But seems that you are not willing to even to consider this. Somehow the World has to have these unitary reason.
And then just strawman about ignoring them and assume they are lying.
Besides, please give us the reference where Putin has said himself before 2022 that Ukraine itself poses a threat to Russia.
Genius.
In retrospect, what might have been different from early on?
Some factors ...
(It's worth noting that more or less all implemented measures have been met with criticism.)
? Crimea apparently took everyone by surprise. Hardly a fire was shot err hardly a shot was fired. In response, international supporters might have helped Ukraine with resources to counter the takeover (no secure Russia-Crimea land-bridge at the time). The Black Sea Fleet could have faced noticeable risk.
? The early insurgency might have seen international peacekeepers or more international involvement. Sufficient attention (and international presence), perhaps including mediation, could potentially have affected the course of events.
? In response to military buildup, international supporters might have quickly helped Ukraine with substantial defensive resources. Sufficient preparations·measures could have made a difference, including to the later grain and Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant situations.
? International military exercises (presumably not under a NATO umbrella) in Ukraine might have deterred the Kremlin from escalating aggression. NATO exercises in the neighborhood have been held with little response from the Kremlin.
? Perhaps more comprehensive upfront analysis·coverage·awareness of Kremlin and other story-telling from early on could have affected discussions·debates·back-and-forths·dis/agreements·re/actions etc. Ukrainian sovereignty, sentiments among non-NATO'ers (Moldova, Austria, Georgia, Ukraine, etc), NATO'ers to-be (Finland, Sweden), NATO'ers (Poland, the Baltics, Germany, etc) and NATO'ers no-longer-to-be (none as of typing), and other relevant topics could be included.
? Sustained, but specific, international propaganda·attention·exposé on Putin (say, at least after being named TIME Person of the Year in 2007), including directed at China, might have had some effect. Kremlin efforts (and their effects) have been seen.
Lessons learned? Not learned?
No idea why I would have to give a reference for that, since that is obviously not part of my argument. :chin:
Quoting ssu
This is not a strawman.
This is what you're proposing: that we assume Russia is lying about the security concerns it voiced for over 15 years, and that they can therefore safely be ignored and antagonized.
So, back to my question which you failed to answer: let's suppose Russia voiced security concerns over Finland for fifteen years, red lines and all. Just ignore it?
I guess the question isn't so easily answered in the affirmative when it is your own country that's cast into the abyss, hm?
This is laughable.
What security concerns made Russia to annex Crimea?
What security concerns made Russia to annex later Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia oblasts?
What security concerns made Russia to start Russification programs in the territories it occupies?
What security concerns made Putin talk over and over again how important Ukraine is to Russia, how they are historically together and how artificial an independent Ukraine is?
It would be totally similar if the US invaded Cuba because Cuba's close ties to Russia and then annexed the Island with the US president saying that Cuba is a natural part of the US as it had been earlier and the independence given to the Island in 1902 was a huge mistake from earlier administrations. And the US president would say again and again that Cuba was a natural part of the United States because of the historical ties. And not only Cubans would be given US citizenship, but also English would taught in schools in hope to replace Spanish. When all this would happen, a person with similar reasoning like you would blame Russia for this invasion, and say it's all because of Russian adventurism into the American continent and the US would have been forced to do so. The US had to react like this! Why didn't Russia listen???
How ridiculous would for this person to totally disregard the annexation part, the rhetoric of Cuba being a part of US, the actions taken in Cuba and to deny this being an act of literally classic imperialism? But but but...security concerns of possible Russian troops and missiles like in the 1960's! Nothing else matters!!!
And then when people would counter him and point out that the US annexed the Island, hence it's desires and objectives were far more than just keeping the Russians out, this guy would just insist that all this happened because of Russian policies and the US had to do what it did. And even if others would have nothing against the fact that Russian ties did play part here, it would naturally would look to be more of a fig leaf for the invasion than the primary cause, when you look at the actions taken.
That's how crazy your argumentation is.
The lesson that should be learnt is that Russia isn't a state that basically is happy with it's borders and has severe problems to be a nation state... because it isn't one. And the West cannot do anything about this.
Even if the Soviet Empire collapsed, Russia is still not a nation state. It's only 71% Russian and the 29% other minority groups. Russia has nearly two hundred minorities and 270 languages and dialects are spoken in the country. And these people aren't immigrants, but varies people that the Russian Empire subjugated, many surprisingly late in the 19th Century. Hence Russia truly fears "decolonization" and it breaking apart. This is the basis of Russian insecurity. The only reason we seem not to understand this is because it's a continuous landmass, not something separated by sea. Yet present day parts of Russia are as "normal" as would be a France with Algeria as it's intergral part (as we should remember that Algeria wasn't for the French a colony, but part of France).
The basic problem is that many in the West have thought, just like @Tzeentch and others like him here think, that everything that Russia does is an reaction to what the West does. This leaves to flawed thinking that if left alone, Russia would be peaceful and coexist peacefully.
This isn't the case, especially because of the leadership.
One has to understand Putin's point about the collapse of the Soviet Union being the worst thing that happened in the 20th Century. The collapse happened because Russia itself, under Yeltsin, didn't want to be part of the Soviet Union after the Putsch. This made it all so startling. This would be similar if England and the English would demand independence from the UK and say fuck to everything British. In that case, hardly the Welsh, the Scots or the Northern Irelanders would choose either to live in hollow United Kingdom. They would simply find themselves being independent countries. And likely afterwards some English politicians would start thinking that being British wasn't such a bad idea and thus try to regain that UK in some form. And likely they would view Whales, Scotland and Northern Ireland as "special case" with a lot jealosy if other countries made close relations with the former members of the UK.
This is the reason why Putin acts this way and how Russia sees it's "near abroad". This is also why for example the Baltic States and former Warsaw Pact members wanted right from the start to get under the cover of NATO. They had this brief "window of opportunity" to detach from Russia.
Yet the actual NATO members of the Cold War didn't see it this way. They saw the Cold War ending with the collapse of the Soviet Union and didn't assume the inevitable Russian rebound and thought that a new era had begun. Hence the biggest problem for NATO was to find a new mission, because the OG Cold War NATO was antiquated. Or so it was thought.
And afterwards many think, that it was the NATO enlargement that was the reason. But for Russia with it's imperial past, it's authoritarian system, it's fears of further collapse of "decolonization", it has other reasons to act as it has. And in Ukraine it really has shown it's true colors here.
Except that none of this is actually part of my argument.
I'm not making any arguments about whether Russia's security concerns are justified, which is what you are doing.
I'm making the argument that when Russia speaks about existential security concerns and red lines for a decade-and-a-half, one should take it seriously.
That's contrary to what you are proposing. What you are saying is that, since you are unable to understand why the Russians would see Ukraine entering NATO as a security threat, they must be lying and their warnings can safely be ignored.
Well, we have seen what comes of that: the destruction of Ukraine.
That's why I have asked you whether you would be similarly careless if it were Finland paying the price of war. You have yet to answer that question.
It's not about the justification, it's about what the real objectives here are. Does Russia have the right to annex territories is the justification part. But it has done so, hence this isn't about NATO enlargement.
Quoting Tzeentch
And Ukraine wouldn't have been a NATO member. Naturally NATO cannot go against it's own charter and basically add to it "countries hoping to be members have to have the permission from Russia to join". Hence Ukraine wasn't joining NATO. Period. Hence the motive for the invasion lies somewhere else.
Quoting Tzeentch
Wrong. I've answered it. My grandfathers fought the Russians and so would I, even if I'm quite old. Their generation lost a lot more killed than the this Ukrainian generation has seen. Finland lost in WW2 2,5% of the total population. 96 000 soldiers died from 3,8 million people. Civilian losses were surprisingly small.
Now ask yourself: has yet 2,5% from the Ukrainian people (or basically 5% of the men) yet been killed?
And I think you don't understand Finnish mentality on the subject. They have made consistently polls about the attitudes towards the defense of the country by asking the same question again and again for decades: "Would you defend your country in war, even if the outcome would be questionable". Hence the question is if would you defend your country, even if there's a real possibility of losing the war. The vast majority of Finns have said yes, they would. Still do. I would also.
And if Russia nukes all the cities in Finland and ethnically cleanses out the rest surviving Finns, then take as many of them out with you and good luck with that barren nuclear wasteland then. And when likely it wouldn't come to that, defend your country to get then a better deal... like staying independent. But you get that only when the other side sees a negotiated settlement better that the continuation of the war.
Quoting ssu
Exactly. You believe the Russians were lying about their security concerns. That's precisely my point.
This is how you invite war to your doorstep.
Quoting ssu
At least you are consistent insofar as you would happily cast your own country into the same abyss.
Well, Finland is sitting on the front row. You might just get exactly what you wish for.
The nonchalance with which you speak about turning your own country into a nuclear wasteland to deny it to the Russians, one would think you were a Ukrainian rather than a Finn. It's downright uncanny how eager you already appear to be for war.
You understand this is exactly the type of sentiment an actor like the US will use to put you infront of its wagon?
Looks like the Finns are in similar spirits. :lol:
One would think the Americans eventually run out of sacrificial lambs to throw on the pyre, but alas.
Again no. They are not lying!
Does the US lie when it talks about democracy and humanitarian rights? No. The simple fact is that sometimes realpolitik goes over these issues, like when it comes to certain allies, yet it doesn't mean that the US would be lying about democracy and humanitarians rights. So I don't know where you get this strange idea to assume there lying. Besides, Russian imperialism has always been defined by defense of the realm, just as Catherine the Great said:
.
Similarly situation with Russia and NATO expansion. Even in the Russian military doctrine published years ago before 2014 NATO expansion was defined as threat number 1. So surely they are not lying what they see as their security concerns. Yet what I commented to @jorndoe, is that to think that NATO expansion this is the only objective, even the prime objective, is wrong. If NATO wouldn't have expanded, then taking Ukraine would have been far more easy to Russia.
Quoting Tzeentch
Well, seems you don't have any idea what deterrence is about. Deterrence has to be credible and deterrence is to keep the peace. And luckily that deterrence was reinforced by joining NATO. And also Sweden joining NATO.
The nonchalance with which you speak of accepting Russian demands as a solution to get "peace" shows how naive your thinking is.
Quoting Tzeentch
You understand that Finland not being in NATO would put Finland in a far more precarious situation than now? Obviously not. And as I've said many times, it's unlikely that Russia will use military action against Finland, but there are 1001 other ways to pressure our country. It would be far more worse if a) we wouldn't be in the EU and b) we wouldn't be in NATO.
And I think Finns have a far more realpolitik view of allies. The last so-called ally was Hitler's Germany, which we had to fight immediately once we made armstice with Russia. Proper Dolchstoss, I would say.
When have I ever mentioned accepting Russian demands?
This is another example of how skewed your view is.
In your eyes, proposing to negotiate for a diplomatic solution is "accepting Russian demands", "appeasement", etc.
To you, the only option seems to be war.
History teaches us that such a stance does not protect one from conflict, but instead brings conflict closer.
Also, you speak of realpolitik, but as far as I'm concerned there's nothing realistic about volunteering as cannon fodder for team America. There is only one power in the West that is conducting realpolitik, and that's the US.
Five months ago here. It's the typical idea that Russia would have (somehow) accepted a negotiated peace... but it was the West that fumbled it by "standing firm".
But let's just look at the text of the Istanbul Communiqué:
We didn't get a Russian proposal, but the proposal had this line:
That leaves the territories quite open. And this is the proposal for the Russians. And lastly, what is there for Russia to wait a few years and then continue the annexations? There already were the Minsk agreements. Just think for a moment about this...
First there was the Minsk Protocol...
...and that ended when Russian forces took Donetsk INTL.
Then there was Minsk II in 2015...
...but that didn't end the fighting. The frozen conflict continued, until 2022 it was "Denazification time"!
Quoting Tzeentch
Real peace or armstice happens only when both parties are incapable of military victory and understand it. Now Russia doesn't see it this way. It simply hopes that the US gets bored and that it can still get a military victory. So there really is no incentive for Russia to seek a negotiated peace.
Both times Finland was negotiating with Russia, notice what was on stake for Russia. In the Winter War in 1940, there was the genuine possibility that Soviet Union might face both French and British troops. Soviet Union didn't want this to happen. During the Continuation War in 1944 the assault on Finland had stalled, Finns had even made counterattacks and putting more troops to the Finnish front would be away from the major theater and hinder the effort in taking Berlin. And Finland still had behind the frontline it's Salpa defensive line. Stalin was worried that the Western allies might get there first if he continued the fight with Finland.
In both cases the option for a negotiated settlement was better for the Russian side.
You fight to win until you make a settlement if/when you can't. You don't do it like the Americans in Afghanistan: fight, but declare simultaneously a deadline for your departure.
We have various neutral sources telling us that. Even the Ukrainians themselves have come forward with this, because they are starting to understand the degree to which they're being used by the Americans.
What's your grounds for simply ignoring these accounts?
It's like every bit of reality that doesn't fit your preconceived notions is conveniently voided out.
It didn't happen, hence this is crying over spilled milk. Remember that years have gone from this.
And especially after Putin annexed more Oblasts, Ukraine lost interest. Annexation of parts that Russia even doesn't all control tells quite something else than a desire or willingness for a negotiated peace.
Are you serious?
If standing up to them is "the abyss" (as in "not to be done"), then think about what you've forfeit. ssu mentioned deterrence having gone out the window, and it goes further than so, as history indeed tells us.
People can figure such stuff out on their own, without somehow having been tricked by the US.
By the way, I don't think the Kremlin needs an invitation in particular, they're quite capable of coming up with their own.
(As an aside, while sympathetic to pacifism, there's more to it. If a nefarious aggressor (warmonger) invades, and a third demands capitulation ("peacemongers"), and the rest demands to fight back ("warmongers"), then the "peacemongers" still stand to benefit in case the warmonger is repelled. That's fine by me (personally) I suppose, but might not be considered so in general.)
Yes, I'm serious. There were negotiations that didn't go anywhere. They failed. Not even a moments cease-fire.
So you are whining over about spilled milk.
But this is very typical. To uphold the pro-Russian stance here and in order to try to make the US culpable of everything, a very selective and illogical narrative has to be used along with "what-if" type hypotheticals like this. It becomes the mantra to be repeated over and over again.
Quoting jorndoe
Why this is so hard to fathom is curious to me as this should be evident. A belligerent wants a peace deal only if a) the belligerent has gained it's objectives (won the war) or b) if the objectives cannot be reached AND continuing the war leads to a worse situation.
Option b) is what people refer to a true negotiated peace or cease-fire while option a) is just the victor seeking legalization of the victory and normalization of the situation.
This idea of "a negotiated peace should be reached because people are dying" is a view that a third party can have, but it's not how the belligerent sees it. Yes, wars shouldn't be fought. Anti-war sentiment can have an effect especially in democracies. Yet when the aggressor is authoritarian state, puts into jail people who oppose the war, the ways that in a democracy people can oppose a war and thus influence their governments actions isn't going to work. Also when the aggressor is transforming it's economy to a wartime economy, it isn't interested in international relations and thus sanctions don't work... especially if it can feed it's people and has the natural resources and an weapons industry to continue the war.
"Whining", haha.
The problem for you is that unless you want to deny the goings-on surrounding the negotiations, they directly contradict pretty much your entire narrative.
Russia proposed to give back all the territory they conquered during the invasion in exchange for Ukrainian neutrality. It's the West who blocked that deal. The Ukrainian delegation put its signature under it, whether you like it or not.
The "Russian territorial greed" narrative is swept off the table, and so is the narrative that the West is preoccupied in any way with the well-being of Ukraine.
I can still remember how people tried to deny the peace talks ever took place, and that we only had "unreliable" accounts like those of Sachs. Now that those sad refuges have been taken away, you're left pleading that these events were insignificant, which clearly they weren't.
Your narrative made some sense on February 24th of 2022, and stopped making sense literally a month into the war. You're living several years in the past.
If my narrative is that negotiations for a ceasefire have failed, how much does that contradict my entire narrative? :roll:
You are just building your own strawmen here.
An overall rough trend was down-slope until about 2014, then up.
[sup]— TASS · Apr 6, 2024[/sup]
Quoting Kuznetsov
Seems to me that "lost its independence in [...]" is a wee bit exaggerated, albeit part of the story-telling. Say, Finland's border thing came from the Finns, not Washington/US or Brussels/EU. The Finns can likewise choose and decide other defense-related things themselves. Besides, Finland is free to leave NATO, though not free to not have Putin's Russia as a neighbor.
Quoting TASS
Right, the Finns and the Kremlin, not the US or the EU. Is "almost completely dismantling" (again) exaggerated?
Quoting Kuznetsov
... seems like the Kremlin dismantling? Speaking of "aggressive", leaving Ukraine be, would go a long way to solving the Kremlin's grievances, it's kind of the central thing here, without which Finland and Sweden likely wouldn't have sought NATO membership.
Quoting Kuznetsov
Going by actions·statements·rhetoric·regress·posturing·Russification and whatever efforts (of which some have heard enough), the Kremlin is the larger threat compared to NATO, at the moment, by a long shot. Had NATO demanded (or even suggested) that Finland prepare to invade/attack Russia, then I doubt the Finns would have been so keen on seeking membership, though they might have sought other strong alliances, which the Kremlin could label "aggressive" "major provocation" just the same.
Quoting Apr 8, 2024
Going by prior NATO nuclear weaponry placements, I wouldn't really expect much in Finland. Belarus, bordering Latvia·Lithuania·Poland·Ukraine·Russia, on the other hand, has reportedly received nuclear weaponry from Russia. Then there's Russia's own placements (and posturing).
Anyway, not much new here. The Kremlin has visions; too bad for the Ukrainians that they got in the way of that.
This can be intrepeted many ways, but I think the new entities refers to the Oblasts annexed.
And naturally Russia disses any peace negotiations that Ukraine has proposed, I guess in Switzerland in June:
Wee! :grin:
When the Finnish Parliament voted at 188 to 8 to apply for NATO membership, some might think that nearly like in North Korea. But there weren't US troops in the Parliament when deciding this, unlike as there were when Estonian Parliament decided to join the Soviet Union. :smirk:
(Estonian Parliament making the unanimous vote to join the Soviet Union in 1940. )
That would be my guess, though based in part on the words being used: Reuters · Dec 13, 2022
:cough: pseudo-legalized land grab
:up:
I heard Mitt Romney say that if Putin isn’t stopped he’ll attack NATO counties and try to conquer all of Eastern Europe. :lol:
It’s just silly at this point. Ukraine will lose this proxy war, but hopefully not many more lives will have to be sacrificed.
I don't recall hearing this. But please give an actual reference on it. And what happened to the "denazification"?
Besides, this isn't on the anymore.
It's not a proxy war to them. But who cares, it seems.
This is claimed to be part of the 10 points of Instambul Communque:
Proposal 1: Ukraine proclaims itself a neutral state, promising to remain nonaligned with any blocs and refrain from developing nuclear weapons — in exchange for international legal guarantees. Possible guarantor states include Russia, Great Britain, China, the United States, France, Turkey, Germany, Canada, Italy, Poland, and Israel, and other states would also be welcome to join the treaty.
https://faridaily.substack.com/p/ukraines-10-point-plan
Then confirmed by Bennett and Arestovych among others (https://www.intellinews.com/top-ukrainian-politician-oleksiy-arestovych-gives-seventh-confirmation-of-russia-ukraine-peace-deal-agreed-in-march-2022-302876/)
This is what happened, and everybody who cares about the truth more than cheerleading for team America has acknowledged it.
From neutral observers, to direct participants, to members of the Zelensky government itself - all sources which could impossibly be argued to be lying in favor of Russia - all have confirmed it.
I’m sure the Greek communists didn’t think so either. Or the Vietnamese. So what?
Quoting Mikie
Quoting Mikie
Quoting Mikie
Quoting Mikie
That's it? What the Ukrainians wanted has nothing to do with it? Irredentism and Putinian Russification have nothing to do with it? Democracy versus (regressive, proliferative) authoritarianism has nothing to do with it? Fears aired (repeatedly) by the Baltics, Moldova, the UN, whoever, are irrelevant? Regularly issuing threats to, and railing against, two or three or so largely democratic continents, while cozying up with North Korea, China, Iran, is irrelevant? Concessions, appeasement, setting precedence for others to make note of, is of no consequence? Ultimately confirming the Kremlin's rhetoric·shamming·stories·propaganda·aggression·whatever, in appearance and action, is of no consequence? Land grab? ...?
Well, that's a remarkable (and regrettable) example of tunnel vision — incidentally, the sort of thing readily conducive to bias. :D
Putin mocks planned Ukraine conference and says Russia won’t accept any enforced peace plans
[sup]— AP · Apr 11, 2024[/sup]
Maybe cold war music like Allman is an earworm of Putin's. :)
EDIT: forgot a couple links
Ukraine wouldn’t have lasted a month without US involvement.
If you seriously doubt this is a proxy war, you really don’t have a clue about what’s happening.
Of course what Ukrainians want is important. What the Sudanese want is important. I just don’t see the US caring much about the latter.
Quoting Mikie
by reducing the war to your mantra, certainly not what the Kremlin is for, against, and about. Say, take the one bit you did mention in your response, maybe you could expand a bit on who's for and who's against instead, and to what end? (try, you can do it, clue in about it, references abound :grin:) And the other bits, there are a few after all?
Neomac, notice what @Tzeentch argued:
Quoting Tzeentch
Where is this kind of argument was my question. Please read what I say.
If there would be NO assistance, perhaps an arms embargo on Ukraine ...for some reason, then I guess
the only response would have been an insurgency.
But do notice that Europe combined has actually given more than the US. And apart of Hungary etc. there isn't this whimping out from supporting Ukraine like in the GOP in the US.
Yes, this is more of the European's war and not an American war. So just thinking this is a "proxy war for the US military-industrial complex" not only disses European agency, but actually the reality, political and military, on the ground.
Because their agency matters. It's not just the US fighting a war through it's proxy. It's really about the proxy itself. The biggest mistake is that Americans don't care a shit about what their proxies are fighting for. They are interested to fight "the Cold War". Or fight the "War on Terrorism". They have little or no interest on what the actual people are fighting for.
Just compare these so-called "proxies" of the US. How did the former Afghan proxy compare to let's say the Israeli Defence Forces?
The Taliban took the country in quite a similar way the US had taken the country back in 2001-2002. By negotiation and bribes. You can see this even from the documentaries done during the collapse: first the Afghan special forces were fighting the Taleban in some provincial city. Then the next night word has passed and they all gather to the local airbase and try to get into the last planes going to Kabul. And during the collapse of Kabul the Taleban sought out the Afghani President, who accepted to leave quickly with hundreds of millions of loot to a Gulf State.
Now is the IDF a similar proxy? No.
But for some reason, the Kremlin propaganda has been so successful in making Ukrainians to be somehow this kind of lost cause, which Israel isn't, which has gotten far more military support for decades and face far tinier foes that Ukraine does.
So Ukraine should be doing just fine without American weaponry. Even discounting training and the fact that NATO is essentially run by the US.
Come on— let’s at least admit that without US support, Ukraine wouldn’t have lasted too long. That doesn’t prove my contention about the causes of the war— just seems a basic fact.
I didn’t say “Just” meaning ONLY. That’s the big picture. On the ground, it seems much different— it’s Ukrainians fighting for their country against an illegal invasion. No one doubts that.
Well, we aren't giving enough support.
In fact my country has given very little, because we feel we haven't enough material for ourselves even.
Quoting Mikie
That's easy to admit!
Without your support South Korea wouldn't have lasted. It would all be one communist Korea.
Without your support likely Israel wouldn't have lasted either. Or would be smaller than now.
So what's your point?
AFAIK, there are no official documents about the negotiation proposal (which was not an agreement, of course, and far from being one) just reports, like this:
Russia would withdraw to its position on February 23, when it controlled part of the Donbas region and all of Crimea, and in exchange, Ukraine would promise not to seek NATO membership and instead receive security guarantees from a number of countries.
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/russian-federation/world-putin-wants-fiona-hill-angela-stent
And they have here the agency. We are just giving them support. What's so wrong with that.
They can call it quits and there's nothing that the West can do about it, if that happens. The fact is that Russia simply isn't just going to cede back all the territory if Ukraine will be neutral.
OK! Thank you. :up:
The real question, which I do think is important, is how much Ukraine could trust Putin after Minsk I-III? Would Putin simply enlarge his army more, improve it, and then go later to deal with Ukraine? If Ukraine wouldn't get any help from anybody, what would be the reason not to continue some further time.
Remember that this is actually the reason why the Finnish leadership decided to join NATO. Once Putin came with this request that it should be consulted if Finland would join NATO or not (and the answer would be not), then it was the canary in the coal mine dying even before the February 23rd 2022 invasion. And once you had the invasion, there was the popular support needed by the people as to have only an "option to join NATO if necessary" wasn't anymore credible.
Just like asking foreign soldiers to inspect your military sites, to say that you have to change your constitution is something that countries can indeed oppose and to go to war about.
That is the point: without US support, Ukraine, Korea, Vietnam, the Iraqi government, Israel, etc., wouldn’t have lasted too long. US support is crucial. Okay, then we ask: so what? Given this fact, the further question is: Why Korea and Ukraine and Israel or Nicaragua, but not Sudan or East Timor or Nigeria or Haiti?
Because it’s somehow in the interest of the United States to intervene or militarily support some countries and not others.
Therefore determining exactly what those interests are is what’s essential. And when we look into that a little bit, it’s not pretty.
Nothing wrong with supporting people against aggression. The question is: why these people and not others?
So what?
What do you have against K-Pop? Of having South Korean electronic gadgets and cars? Of them being wealthy and not on the verge of famine?
Is someone invading Haiti? I think the Dominican Republic doesn't have intentions for taking the whole island to themselves (Haiti had earlier that kind of agenda).
All of these are individual cases. It's useless to make a generalization when you have such different situations and countries at hand.
In Ukraine there's a the clear cut case of international law. The clear cut case that US allies share similar objectives of keeping Ukraine independent. And the clear cut case that Ukrainians are indeed willing to defend their country.
And I would ask: what's the reason for intentionally eroding the credibility of NATO? You think NATO's useless for the US?
Is this a joke or are you really just incapable of understanding the fairly simple idea?
We gave assurances to Ukraine when they gave up their nukes. Weakening Russia is in our strategic interest. We have close ties to Europe. We feel for the little guy putting up a heroic defense against the evil aggressor.
None of that applies to Haiti, for example. Plus, America is still pretty racist. There's no broad support for intervening in African affairs.
Exactly.
We've discussed this probably dozens of times.
The moral issue is giving support based on false assurances and propaganda.
The analogy would be "informed consent" for a risky medical procedure. If the doctor lies about the risk and the benefits, then it's not informed consent and completely immoral.
There's not only the direct lies such as "as long as it takes" and "whatever it takes" and so on, but the CIA crafted a propaganda campaign both with Ukrainian intelligence and media as well as Western media and other governments. The main goal of the propaganda campaign was to make everyone believe the Russians were weak and could be not only defeated but easily so, based on completely made up missions, anecdotes and numbers.
Now all sorts of Western officials are saying that was an "oopsie" and we underestimated the Russians. Again just more lies, it was an obvious truth that the Ukrainians were completely outmatched militarily by the Russians.
Then there's all the manipulations that led up to the war, and the fact that Ukraine is extremely corrupt (meaning people with power do bad things against the interests of the population) and that just sending billions of dollars to Ukraine structured in the form of a slush fund (US officials literally stated they have no way of accounting for the money or the arms once they enter Ukraine) is a de facto bribe to the Ukrainian elite to continue the war as long as the spice flows.
All this and more (such as getting rid of opposition parties and media) is called manipulation.
Now that the war turns out to be a total disaster for Ukraine and not a rational plan, hiding behind "Ukrainian agency" to justify Western policy (we are still responsible for what we do, and the extreme costs of Ukraine for likely failure is written right in the RAND corporation report on "unbalancing Russia"; which, notably, does not mean defeating Russian in any meaningful way) is equally morally vacuous.
Quoting ssu
We can actually do plenty to pressure Ukraine into continuing the war, such as continuing with the above policies.
I'd say a Ukraine that's not Russia is in most but the Kremlin's interest, including, if not especially, Ukraine's. Been covered already.
Quoting boethius
Tell us more. Say, do you have some (good/solid) examples?
All those interventions, including the theoretical ones aren't fairly simple.
All are quite unique. And so are the "interventions". Giving just weapons to a country fighting a war or invading it are two totally different things with different consequences. Secondly, it's not a world where first the US acts and then everybody else responds. The US is just one player among others, even if it is a big player. And other countries do have agency. Also the domestic groups inside a country have agency. This all is simply ignored with an American narrative, either "the US fighting the Cold War against Soviet Union", "the US fighting the Global War on Terror" or the favorite Chomskyite "US being a bully to everybody else".
With all the above narratives the world looks simple and the US central. Not so if you start from the viewpoint from others.
That’s not the idea I’m referring to.
Quoting ssu
You really have no idea how the world works, in that case.
Yeah, it’s nice to pretend to have special knowledge about international affairs, that everybody is being too “simplistic” and you alone see the true complexity — but leaving stupid bullshit aside for a moment: the United States is by far the world’s superpower and has been for decades, beginning only now to be rivaled by China. Their influence militarily, economically, and politically (in the UN and otherwise) is enormous. Any scholar worth a damn will know this.
So yes, the US is one player, and a major one, shaping world affairs. That’s not being “US-centric,” it’s being realistic. Moreover, nearly any country in the world — including Russia and China — know this to be true, and their leaders have said so.
Is the US a “bully”? If this fails under “a narrative” in your mind, then you can be easily ignored.
Then educate me. :confused:
Quoting Mikie
So?
Hence when it's only Superpower and so superior in everything, why was it then defeated by the Taleban, the same Taleban George Bush vowed to do away with?
If it's so powerful, why does it feel that Israel is calling the shots and the US simply follows?
Quoting Mikie
And that's simply my point. US one actor, the largest, and Russia is another, China another and the local countries are also. If you don't take this account, then it might seem to you quite arbitrary just why someplace the US prevails and somewhere it doesn't.
Quoting Mikie
No, it's not in my mind. If you do read my posts.
I think the US had done a lot of good and it has gained it's position with very skillful foreign policy, especially in Europe. Sometimes it hasn't been so good. Yet many indeed think it's very bad, like Noam Chomsky.But that's what he think he ought to do. And that the case with many want to be critical about the US. I think here below Chomsky tells it quite clearly why this criticism against the US.
And btw I don't agree with this: you don't have to be a dissident, you can support your country when it does something good.
You know very well why that is: the Israeli lobby and Israel’s strategic position in the Middle East.
Who is saying that the US is “all powerful”? Why must every statement be caricatured?
Quoting ssu
They’re of differing power and influence. So “ one actor” is true, but not “Just” one actor.
Quoting ssu
Often very bad, yes.
Quoting ssu
Do you really think being a dissent means never supporting something your country does that’s good?
What is going on with you? What’s with these odd strawmen?
- the US is the world’s superpower and that is a major player in shaping world affairs, yet at the same time they keep reminding all foreign failures: Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Ukraine, Palestine, etc.
- the US is the evil mastermind conspiring against states and people around the world through lies and bribes (which everybody non-brainwashed is aware of), and yet systematically failing to achieve strategic goals other than the self-defeating ones by wasting resources and reputation in failed (proxy) wars
- the US is driven by hypocritical and greedy people supported by a gullible majority (still?), lacking basic humanity principles, and which the entire world has to condemn (especially if Westerner) and to hold as the number one responsible for everything wrong there is in this world (including climate change)
I find it rather perplexing:
1. He claims that credit is given to those who criticize their own government's foreign policies not other people's government foreign policies: so how about Palestinians criticizing Israel? Ukrainians criticizing Russia? The Rest's grievances against the West?
2. He claims at min 1:13 "to an extent I can do something about it especially in a pretty free country like this one now we understand" so despite all duping propaganda, no matter how massive, CIA conspiring, hypocritical, etc. but without considering any links between freedom and power. If authoritarian countries are insulated from internal criticism, people can't do much to change it so it will remain authoritarian. So an overwhelming foreign power is needed to contain hegemonic authoritarian regimes. While free countries are NOT insulated from internal criticism, so people can do something to change it which also includes the possibility of turning the free regime into an authoritarian regime. Besides, the free world can be infiltrated and intoxicated by foreign propaganda of authoritarian regimes to weaken the overwhelming foreign power that contains them .
It is perplexing. Yet the name of the first political book of the linguist, The Responsibility of Intellectuals, tells it all. Chomsky and others see as their role to criticize the US while to critique other countries "isn't their role". Yet when you just criticize one actor and be totally silent on everything else, people can draw conclusions.
Quoting neomac
Or simple be ignorant of how authoritarian they are.
Quoting neomac
The smartest propaganda doesn't outright lie. It just picks part of the story and forgets the part that would talk against the agenda at.
And people want simple straightforward stories. Not a story like "Country does a bad stuff X, yet it has done good things like Y and supported very good proposals Z". You have to be for or against!!!
Nope. Not what was said.
It’s very simple: criticize countries all you like. Iran citizens can criticize Israel, etc. But that’s not what we admire dissents for— we admire them for speaking truth to power in their own country, where they can have an impact. Did you even watch the video?
That such a simple point is confusing just shows how clouded one’s judgement must be with projection. At least try hearing what’s being said first and THEN find a way to distort it.
Quoting ssu
:lol:
Yeah, that definitely describes Noam Chomsky. Totally silent about “everything else” for the last 70 years. A world renowned genius like you — some internet dude — is surely the man for the job of setting him straight.
But yes, keep portraying yourself as the one person who truly “gets it” about international relations in its true complexity.
What a stupid way of characterizing things. It’s like being in middle school. Embarrassing.
Noam Chomsky, a leading American intellectual highly critical of Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians, meets Hezbollah mentor Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah in Beirut, in 2010 (credit: REUTERS)
Fault-finding in this area (politics social people history whatever) is easy, hence picking the right battles is also important.
[sup](I thought this stuff was fairly trivial, but maybe not?)[/sup]
That's exactly what he says.
Listen carefully, at (1:00):
"I'm here, I have a shared responsibility what the US government does...and to an extent, I can do something about it".
And later, when talking about Iranian dissidents (at 1:30):
"Nobody asks them, is there something good about Iranian foreign policy, it's not their job to say what is good in Iranian foreign policy["
And later states that if Iranian dissidents say something about Israel, we don't "respect them for that", but for being Iranian dissidents. So it's obvious that the "role" is to criticize your own country for Chomsky.
That's exactly my point here. And actually, since I am not more informed than others (as you portray me to think of myself here), for example @jorndoe says eloquently the obvious outcome that this can lead:
Quoting jorndoe
Undersea ‘hybrid warfare’ threatens security of 1bn, Nato commander warns
[sup]— Miranda Bryant · The Guardian · Apr 16, 2024[/sup]
an old report came to mind
Quoting Feb 20, 2023
Quoting Jan Swillens
Is a defense posture warranted?
Well, just look at the discussion of some here in PF about a) The Isreali Palestinians conflict or heck, even about the US Elections / Trump / Biden.
How many come out and say Trump did something good and bad. People would be confused on which side you are on. That's important for Americans.
Indeed.
At least academic professors in the West can act like "dissidents" because they have a tenure and there is an Overton window for free speech.
Unfortunately for media people, there isn't that free lunch. And for some of them, if the doors have been closed in their own country, have no other place than to get the support from rival countries.
Quoting ssu
No, it isn’t:
Quoting Mikie
Dissidents, almost by definition, criticize their country’s actions. We praise others for it, but they’re not treated well in their countries. Chomsky often uses the prophets or Socrates as examples.
Critiquing other countries is something Chomsky often does. There’s plenty to criticize all over. He’s been a fairly staunch critic of Israel, Brazil, Indonesia, etc. Despite your bogus suggestion, he’s done so for decades.
When speaking specifically about dissidents — those critical of their own countries — it’s kind of silly to ask “is there anything good about the US foreign policy?” The response, “All the countries we haven’t invaded — I like that,” and his explanation of why it’s silly is pretty obvious. In that context, it’s “not the job” of a dissident to discuss things he likes is clear.
“Their task is to condemn the crimes of their state.” (Referring to Iranian dissidents.)
You somehow get out of this that Chomsky “sees his role” as not criticizing other countries, which in fact he’s done for decades. The emphasis should be, however, on where you have the most impact. “The reason I’m particularly interested in the US [apart from being a superpower] is because I’m here.” Which is exactly right.
So this:
Quoting ssu
is complete bullshit. Another ridiculous misrepresentation.
Worry less about critics and more about the “tunnel vision” of brain-dead jingoists.
If that's the task of a dissident, then he can still be very misleading (because a balanced view should consider pros and cons of one country's policies and regime among existing alternatives) and exploitable by hostile and authoritarian foreign powers. But I guess it's not the job of a dissident to warn you about it, right?
Evidently, shedding the shackles of the dominating neighbor is no small task; they're trying though, and have shown willingness to reform in the middle of bombs exploding. The Kremlin wouldn't afford them much chance; some others apparently hardly would either.
Quoting Mikie
Chomsky aside, this sort of thing sure is represented around here. :D
There were some rumors on the street that Russia is accruing much debt to China. Details are scarce, though. Anyone?
Drones + missiles one way, planes + missiles the other:
Exclusive: Iran sends Russia hundreds of ballistic missiles
[sup]— Parisa Hafezi, John Irish, Tom Balmforth, Jonathan Landay, Steve Holland, Phil Stewart, Daniel Flynn · Reuters · Feb 21, 2024[/sup]
Russia Uses Iranian Drones In Intense Air Campaign Against Ukraine
[sup]— Iran International · Mar 30, 2024[/sup]
Russian weapons help Iran harden defenses against Israeli airstrike
[sup]— Joby Warrick · The Washington Post · Apr 15, 2024[/sup]
Russia's arms pact with Iran: Moscow pledges fighter jets and air defenses to Tehran including advanced missiles capable of shooting down US and Israeli stealth planes
[sup]— Will Potter · Daily Mail Online · Apr 16, 2024[/sup]
And some weapons "rerouted":
U.S. Government Transfers Captured [Iranian] Weapons [to Ukraine]
[sup]— U.S. Central Command · Apr 9, 2024[/sup]
So, anyway, the war seems to roughly have drawn up ...
? Russia, Belarus, North Korea, Iran, China
—versus—
? Ukraine, Europe, North America, South Korea, Australasia, Japan
... or something along those lines. So far at least. Much like certain someones' idea of a bipolar :smile: world. Whatever happens, might then see future changes accordingly. As of typing, North Korea seems a bit like a loose cannon or wildcard. Could they trigger something?
Yeah, maybe. But not by me, and certainly not by Chomsky (of which there’s 70 years of printed evidence).
https://www.aol.com/news/luxury-yachts-other-myths-republican-090000423.html
Yeah. Though I think it's been known for some time. (*cough* this thread has examples)
Then again, there's an elected official that believes planet Earth, and the universe, is a few thousand years old, incidentally a colleague of Vance mentioned in the article. Real life beats dramatized comedy.
Quoting Mar 8, 2024
? Tedious. Linvill, Warren and team has done some, as mentioned in the article.
I admit he's been a critique of Israel. But he mainly focuses on US actions because of the reasons he has given. That's simply a fact.
He says it all there in the video, so no reason you denying what the facts. And anyway, this is quite fruitless when you deny what Chomsky is literally saying in the video. Moving on...
Don't forget the unlikely battlefield of the Sudanese civil war:
He’s been a staunch critic of Israel…and Brazil (especially under Bolsonaro but even beforehand with the treatment of Lula— in fact visited Lula while in prison), Indonesia (the Suharto regime, etc), the Philippines, China (“hardly saintly by any means”), the USSR (“a dungeon”)/ Russia, Germany, the UK, Canada (especially the policies regarding tar sands), and so on.
Yes, his particular interest is on the US, because not only is it a superpower, it’s also here he lives. That’s very different from “the only job is criticizing the US and never criticizing other countries,” or any such nonsense even implying that.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/apr/20/us-house-approves-61bn-aid-ukraine
Fuck the GOP (Gimps Of Putin)!
[sup]— AP · Apr 18, 2024[/sup]
Unexpected? (Maybe it can help with the Falkland debacle?)
Aid to Kiev to make US richer, Ukraine more bankrupt — Kremlin spokesman
[sup]— TASS · Apr 20, 2024[/sup]
Quoting Peskov
:D Same old crap. ? crayons ?
https://www.yahoo.com/news/russian-spies-infiltrated-romania-disguised-230100892.html
https://apnews.com/article/poland-espinonage-ukraine-russia-zelenskyy-plot-a7e3f5944ba165dd30b271840ffa9f95
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-68843541
[sup]— Peter Neumann · ZEIT ONLINE · Apr 23, 2024[/sup]
Concerning Scholz's speech, I would highlight the following claim:
“We all want peace for our time. But peace at any price – that wouldn’t be any at all.”
(https://globalhappenings.com/politics/496848.html)
which is pretty much in line with what I repeatedly said:
Quoting neomac
Quoting Tacitus (56 — 120)
https://newrepublic.com/article/180630/russia-corruption-network-europe-buying-politicians-america
[sup]— TASS · Apr 25, 2024[/sup]
Belarus says it thwarted attack on capital by drones launched from Lithuania
[sup]— Emelia Sithole-Matarise · Reuters · Apr 25, 2024[/sup]
This I don't find plausible. Fairly serious allegation. Doesn't really make much sense. (If anything at all, wouldn't they make a move on Kaliningrad?)
:grin:
Yeah, the UK might remember the Argies from that one.
Of course he isn't talking about NATO membership, so the proposal isn't ludicrouse. There is already Columbia as one. Just for those who don't know what a "global partner" of NATO is, here's from NATO's own website:
Which actually is hilarious that they still have a reference to Afghanistan (in 2024!) there with an asterisk 1, that then says the following:
The "security environment" perhaps referring to the fact that Afghanistan is now an Emirate that made the US to withdraw and hence fought off also NATO. :snicker:
Which Countries Meet NATO’s Spending Target? (Visual Capitalist)
Map shows how much Nato members spend on defence after UK’s £75,000,000,000 boost (Metro)
Some years ago, I think it was @BC asking why the heck Denmark needed a bunch of new upgraded F-16s anyway, something like that, a natural question at the time. Military expenditures (and conscription) had overall decreased over the years, but the (current) Kremlin's efforts changed that. The links above show what countries appear most concerned, by and large those in Russia's vicinity, or those seeking the opposite of being (re)enrolled under the Kremlin, or shedding the shackles of Russian dominance.
Russia vetoes a UN resolution calling for the prevention of a dangerous nuclear arms race in space
[sup]— Edith M Lederer · AP · Apr 24, 2024[/sup]
Hm
Lukashenka Says Dozens Of Russian Nukes Deployed in Belarus
[sup]— RFE/RL · Apr 25, 2024[/sup]
? ... I was still looking at the Belarusian allegations against Lithuania. Also:
Belarus reveals alleged plot to attack Minsk from EU
[sup]— RT · Apr 25, 2024[/sup]
Something's off here. But, either way, the allegations are serious enough to require substantiation.
[sup]I'm vaguely reminded of the weird Havana syndrome thing. Some investigators pointed at Russian operations, yet official statements from intelligence agencies explicitly said they couldn't support that hypothesis. The allegation is serious, requiring proportional/relevant substantiation, which wasn't available, hence no such allegation. :up:[/sup]
The Belarusian allegations require substantiation, and, if that doesn't materialize, then another explanation of the allegations. I've been unable to find anything anyway.
Some years ago it seemed like Ukraine could not withstand a sustained Russian attack. It's not clear whether--over the long run--they can, without a significant and reliable increase in military assistance. How likely that is... The EU and NATO are not unitary bodies, but are made up of individual countries with varying perspectives on all sorts of topics. How long the EU, NATO, and the US can maintain unity isn't entirely clear.
Conversely, if supporters went by "give them what they want if they stay democratic (and reasonable)" (just an amendable example), then the invaders would likely eventually get pushed out.
Somewhere in between, who knows?
In (and between) democracies, decisions like that aren't particularly typical, decisions aren't dictated by one/few, there are many voices, which is an advantage for autocracies here.
Best to listen to someone who’s been right for the last 30 years.
Geneva Conventions » Protocol I » Article 1 - General principles and scope of application:
Geneva Conventions » Protocol I » Article 52 - General protection of civilian objects:
Geneva Conventions » Protocol I » Article 57 - Precautions in attack:
[*](b) an attack shall be cancelled or suspended if it becomes apparent that the objective is not a military one or is subject to special protection or that the attack may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated;
[*](c) effective advance warning shall be given of attacks which may affect the civilian population, unless circumstances do not permit.
[/list]
[*]3. When a choice is possible between several military objectives for obtaining a similar military advantage, the objective to be selected shall be that the attack on which may be expected to cause the least danger to civilian lives and to civilian objects.
[*]4. In the conduct of military operations at sea or in the air, each Party to the conflict shall, in conformity with its rights and duties under the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict, take all reasonable precautions to avoid losses of civilian lives and damage to civilian objects.
[*]5. No provision of this Article may be construed as authorizing any attacks against the civilian population, civilians or civilian objects.
[/list]
After all, prior violation can be used as an excuse, civilian targets can be declared military targets, the words can be made to override the intent, ...
When it comes to the EU, one simply has to understand that the bickering is simply structural when you have so many sovereign states trying to form a consensus. In short, the EU always looks as if it would collapse. It still doesn't.
If it was believed by many to be an attack initiated by Lithuania or Latvia (perhaps sufficiently well-staged with accompanying propaganda), and Belarus mounted a counterattack, then what would NATO's role be?
10-minute interview with Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya ...
Everybody opposing the regime automatically declared extremist: Exiled Belarusian opposition leader
[sup]— Mercedes Stephenson · Global News · Apr 28, 2024[/sup]
Russia will sink Britain under nuclear tide with Satan 2 missiles if NATO intervenes in Ukraine, vows top Putin stooge
[sup]— Sayan Bose, Will Stewart · The Irish Sun · Apr 29, 2024[/sup]
Quoting Kiselyov
Without any such troop having set foot in Russia, or any such country having attacked Russia?
Cuban mercenaries fighting for Russia eliminate their commander: report
[sup]— TV Poland World · Apr 28, 2024[/sup]
Earlier ...
Putin signs decree to ease getting Russian citizenship for foreigners in armed forces
[sup]— TASS · Sep 30, 2022[/sup]
Cuba arrests 17 for trafficking men to fight for Russia in Ukraine
[sup]— Al Jazeera · Sep 8, 2023[/sup]
Special Report: How Cubans were recruited to fight for Russia
[sup]— Dave Sherwood, Alexandre Meneghini, Mario Fuentes, Carlos Carrillo, Matt Spetalnick, Tom Balmforth, Filipp Lebedev, Felix Light, Pravin Char · Reuters · Oct 3, 2023[/sup]
Putin speeds up a citizenship path for foreigners who enlist in the Russian military
[sup]— Dasha Litvinova · AP · Jan 4, 2024[/sup]
Don't come, it's a trap: Cuban mercenary fighting in the Russian army issues chilling warning to fellow countrymen
[sup]— Germania Rodriguez Poleo · Daily Mail Online · Apr 23, 2024[/sup]
I suppose they're convenient cannon fodder (when they don't kill their peer invaders).
GPS jamming traced to Russia after flights over Europe suspended
[sup]— Jeremy Hsu · New Scientist · May 1, 2024[/sup]
Statement by the North Atlantic Council on recent Russian hybrid activities
[sup]— NATO · May 2, 2024[/sup]
GPS jamming is a ‘side effect’ of Russian military activity, Finnish transport agency says
[sup]— Tommaso Lecca · POLITICO · May 3, 2024[/sup]
German foreign minister says Russia will face consequences for monthslong cyber espionage
[sup]— Frank Bajak, Karel Janicek, Stephen Graham, Samuel Petrequin, Foster Klug · AP · May 3, 2024[/sup]
Fancy Bear
[sup]— Wikipedia[/sup]
I doubt the Kremlin cares much about condemnation of those cyber activities (for the time being anyway). When state-backed, they tend to just go on about their business.
Not quite ;)
There's not that many facts in the video you posted, mostly just discussing the impact of the war on the Russian economy and citizenry.
It's mostly hyperbole such as describing low unemployment of 3.5% as catastrophic. It's not some neo-classical "optimum" level of unemployment (to make the rich class richer) but it's far from a "catastrophe".
To labour point, the idea that low unemployment is "bad" is from the capitalist class perspective as they need to compete for workers if unemployment is too low and therefore pay them more, and in a Western economy the capitalist class would rather a crisis to bring wages lower than raise wages (so it tends to be a self fulfilling prophecy, if not engineered). The exception to this pattern is in a war (such as WWI and WWII) in which capitalist interests cannot dominate government policy and unemployment drops precipitously in order to fight the war, and yet this does not cause an economic crisis but rather an economic boom (such as the roaring 20s and then later WWII credited with ending the Great Depression). These counter examples of the faith in high unemployment should not only be pause for thought in itself (it's clearly not some sort of economic "law of nature") but Russia is too in a large war so we should prima facie group Russia into the category of low unemployment being an economic good thing such as WWII America. The theory that unemployment is bad of course isn't necessarily bad from the perspective of said workers being paid more. The neo-classical ultimate retort to that is that sure you can pay workers more but that causes inflation, so it doesn't matter, but for that process to happen workers still need more money and more buying power to go around bidding up the price of goods (a process in which they accumulate wealth for inflation to happen).
Point being, it's highly debatable whether low unemployment is some harbinger of economic doom. There's also so much possibility to outsource these days that the situation may simply be very different today anyways, even if this was an actual problem in the past in some conditions.
All of this being very pedantic economic forecasting into the future and little to do with the war at hand. To find fault in a wartime economy in it having too low unemployment
The v-blogger is against the war and finds it a tragic loss of life both on the Russian and Ukrainians side, which is a reasonable position to take, but it is extreme hyperbole to say Russians will disappear, if that's what you're crying about.
Of course, removing the hyperbole, the cost of the war on Russian society is significant, but to make any analytical headway in understanding the war, where is it likely to go and most importantly how it can be ended sooner rather than later, any weakness of Russia needs contrasting with how things are going in Ukraine.
The Ukrainian economy isn't "doing great" and the Ukrainian population pyramid was in collapse before the war started and that has simply been accelerated with a large part of the Ukrainian youth and women of child bearing age leaving Ukraine unlikely to ever return.
Quoting jorndoe
The thread is quieter these days because the "consider reality" side of the debate are currently looking at the reality of Ukrainian lines disintegrating.
It's a bit superfluous to come here and argue that the Western policy in Ukraine of propping up a severely under-matched (in every category of war fighting) war of attrition will result (with very, very high probability) of the larger side breaking the smaller side's line.
As has been pointed out for nearly 2 years, a war of attrition is not a "stalemate" and eventually one side is exhausted and breaks.
Western media ironically quickly made the right analogy with WWI as soon as trench warfare emerged ... but then bizarrely concluded that therefore the war can go on for ever, as if that was the result of WWI.
The Russian strategy since the first phase of the war has been to attrit the Ukrainians, focusing first in attritting Ukrainian / the entire West in air defence—although Ukraine severely attritted themselves on the ground during this phase anyways in both foolish defence of lost positions as well as foolish offensives against well defended positions—now, air supremacy being achieved over the front, Russia can rapidly attrit the remainder of the Ukrainian ground force.
The Ukrainian military is essentially disintegrating in every respect.
Ukrainian reserves, large maneuver capability, air defence being essentially exhausted, Russia can now blitzkrieg deep into the Ukrainian rear forming long salients without fear of a counter offensive cutting off those salients.
Not only can Russia now start a phase of maneuver warfare in what we refer to as "the front" in South-Easter Ukraine (to conquer the entirety of the annexed territories), but Russia can also "big arrow maneuver" at any point on the actual front that includes the entire Ukrainian-Russian border and entire Ukrainian-Belarusian border.
Not only has Russia now:
1. Pacified the territories already conquered
2. Built up a force capable of pacifying far more territory
The two essential elements for more conquest, but the Israeli genocide has also completely changed the optics of what is doable in a war. Before the Israeli genocide, a child merely being injured in Ukraine would be front page news in the West; this standard of outrage will be hard to maintain when the West has participated in outright murdering and maiming tens of thousands of children in Gaza while starving them all.
Of course, optics in Western media isn't everything, but the Kremlin does have to take it into account, there being diplomatic costs of causing too much humanitarian harm, as we see in the case of Israel that they certainly can prosecute the genocide to their hearts content but there is clearly a diplomatic cost to doing so. Russia's policy has been to make similar territorial conquests (but also very different in that conquered people become Russian citizens and there's no apartheid state nor genocide or ethnic cleansing for that matter) while maintaining as good a diplomatic position as possible. The Israeli genocide significantly reduces the diplomatic costs to Russia causing more humanitarian suffering to achieve military objectives.
At the start of the war, US ex-military and ex-intelligence analysts talking heads were so confused and befuddled as to why the Russians didn't use shock-and-awe strategy of completely shutting down the entire civilian infrastructure that they concluded that Russia is either incompetent, incapable or both.
What we can now clearly see is that Russia could shock-and-awe but chose not to ... maybe precisely because the result of the US using shock-and-awe strategy, at the end of the day, is massive diplomatic costs in the long run. The consequence of US "gun-hoism" of basing military decisions simply on the primal desire to see more and larger explosions, resulted in US going from undisputed moral leader of the world at the end of the Cold War ... to ... being full partner in a genocide and the delusional hypocritical gaslighting of their diplomats laughably dismissed as the ravings of mad persons by most of the global diplomatic community.
All this to say, there's neither a Ukrainian military nor diplomatic pressure that can do much about further Russian territorial conquests.
Ukraine military capacity being depleted, there is now very little to negotiate with unfortunately.
At the same time, Russia does not have the capacity nor the desire to conquer all of Ukraine.
The likely outcome therefore is Russia will simply take all the territory it actually wants and create a buffer zone.
Quoting boethius
:snicker:
The victorious Russian Army simply goes onward from triumph to triumph!
But seriously, Russia does have this year a window of opportunity, but the present aid package will likely get Ukraine well into next year. There's still a lot of unknowns after that. But we can be assured that @boethius will give the most positive view of the Russian situation as he has done for two years plus now...
(Flowery future for these two wonderful persons?)
That's literally what's been happening, and the insistence on the delusion of the opposite is mostly what has prevented a diplomatic solution to the war (both before and after it started).
Quoting ssu
By positive you mean predictions that have come true.
I predicted small arms and shoulder launch missiles would not be sufficient to do any sort of offensive at the very start of the war when memes like "saint javelin" was a thing. Hear of the miracle of javelins recently?
I predicted the policy is to drip feed weapons systems to Ukraine so that there's no actual threat to Russia; just enough to prop them up, not enough to legitimately threaten Russian forces in Ukraine.
Where are those F16s again? Even Ukrainian generals are saying they are too late to make any difference.
I predicted a WWI war of attrition would result in the weaker side being attrited first, and now "attrition, attrition, attrition" is the mot du jour even in Western media.
I predicted sanctions would not collapse the Russian economy, which they didn't.
I predicted "low morale" would not result in soldiers fleeing from the battle field and topple the Russian government, which it didn't.
I predicted the incredibly hyped Ukrainian counter offensive would make essentially no gains (while some here not only predicted Ukraine would cut the land bridge to Crimea ... but that would be an easy "step 1").
None of these predictions are "the most positive view", just what is essentially common sense if you know even a cursory overview of the subject matter.
The most positive military view would be that Russia would conquer all of Ukraine in a few days or then certainly by now, which I predicted would not happen because Russia does not have the forces to occupy all of Ukraine anyways and Ukraine had the capacity to resist for some time.
Of course, Ukraine's ability to resist is easily predictable: Ukraine is huge and the population is large (just not nearly as large as Russias) and can be supplied with arms, training, intelligence by the West.
As easily predictable that Ukraine can resist a good while as it is that Ukraine cannot prevail in a war of attrition, as man power eventually depletes and Russia can outproduce the entire West in key munitions it seems anyways (the West's support does not actually translate into an advantage in any weapon systems category).
This analysis is just common sense and nearly every single point has started to be integrated in both Western and even Ukrainian discourse. Even the money laundering and arms laundering, which I've also talked a lot about (indeed, my prediction arms to Ukraine would be used in terrorism also came true), is mentioned in Western media as "the way things are" basically.
Quoting ssu
Russia is not prosecuting a genocide and has kept the large majority of world public opinion on its side.
Whereas Israel is prosecuting a genocide and is likely sowing the seeds of its future destruction.
6 million Jews will not be able to prevail against the combined disproval of a billion muslims without US backing as the top superpower. The moment that backing or that power goes away Israel can be destroyed by its neighbours. Of course nuclear weapons will be a deterrent but what I predict is an anti-israel force will emerge that is simply not deterred by nuclear weapons. Israel has no strategic depth and using nuclear weapons on its own territory is hardly a good solution and nuking Arab cities is also not a good solution facing an irregular force (who will likely want that to happen).
The animosity towards a Jewish state in Israel is a 1000 years sort of thing, and prosecuting this genocide is the exact opposite thing you'd want to do if you wanted your unwelcome state to survive in these conditions.
Things change and Israel has no capacity to survive by itself, as soon as sufficient external backing goes away Israel will be as much at the mercy of its Arab neighbours as Palestinians are at Israeli mercy today.
Russian policy, you may not like and I don't like it "as such" (just I also view the war as much more a consequence of Western policy), but it's not a genocide and it's also not stupid.
Russia is currently solidifying global diplomatic backing, leading the creation of a parallel global economy, while building and refining the greatest war fighting machine and arms production capital base (of the arms that actually matter in a contemporary high-intensity warfare) in existence today.
Russia can now credibly say to its partners and client states that it knows how to defeat Western weapons, training and intelligence.
This is the situation.
Oh @boethius, just like you two years ago wrote:
Quoting boethius
Well, two years have gone from that remark from you and uh..., oh well.
I think we know you and for whom you rally after all these years.
Well I'm not sure, but I understood that to be a translation snarl. If one put it in the negative - as 96.5% employment, it would be catastrophic, because the old, the infirm, the sick, the insane, and children would be working in huge numbers. And that would be the result of the "disappearance" of men of working age either abroad or into the army/casualty lists.
A few key events:
Given the above, from Russia's perspective, NATO's expansion eastward, including discussions about Ukraine's potential membership, posed a direct security threat to Russia's interests (regardless of whether we agree; that's their view as the capability's of NATO can also be used aggressively). Russia views NATO enlargement as encroaching on its traditional sphere of influence and potentially undermining its security by bringing the alliance closer to its borders. The prospect of Ukraine joining NATO was particularly sensitive for Russia due to Ukraine's historical, cultural, and strategic significance.
Russia's actions in Ukraine can be seen in the context of its previous intervention in Georgia in 2008. Following Georgia's aspirations to join NATO and escalating tensions in the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, Russia intervened militarily, leading to a brief war with Georgia. Russia's actions in Georgia demonstrated its willingness to use military force to prevent former Soviet republics from aligning with NATO and assert its influence in the region.
The annexation of Crimea occurred against the backdrop of discussions about Ukraine's potential membership in NATO. While NATO had not made a formal commitment to Ukraine's membership, discussions and signals of support from some NATO members may have heightened Russia's concerns and contributed to its decision to annex Crimea as a preemptive measure to prevent Ukraine from moving closer to the alliance. Such support was again expressed prior to the war even via official NATO statements.
The lack of a significant reaction from Russia to Finland and Sweden joining NATO can be attributed to several factors. Finland and Sweden are not former Soviet republics, so their potential membership in NATO does not carry the same historical and geopolitical significance for Russia as Ukraine's membership. Additionally, Finland and Sweden joining is not a sudden shift in geopolitical dynamics but entrenches what we basically already knew: they are part of the Western/US-led sphere of influence.
I continue to find the storyline about "imperialist" ambitions weak and too much relying on over-interpretation of facts. The only facts supporting that interpretation are the following:
But an interpretation of these actions as "imperialist" isn't necessary where Russian security interests suffice to explain their actions.
DISCLAIMER: I had ChatGPT provide me with a list of geopolitical events relevant to Ukraine.
You have to clarify what you take others to mean by "imperialist" before making objections to them.
We can quibble also over Israel committing a "genocide" if security concerns is enough to justify their actions against an actual aggression from Hamas. Russia has no equivalent justification, because there was no aggression from NATO or Ukraine against Russia proper. Besides Russia has plenty of lands where to relocate what he claims to be persecuted Russians in Ukraine.
Besides it doesn't matter how you want to call it. If Russia's security threat and sphere of influence must be taken into account in a strategic calculus, the same goes for Russia. Russia must take into account security threat and sphere of influence of all interested players. And if such concerns are inherently competitive, players will find competitive ways to settle it.
If you take seriously perceived security concerns, you MUST do the same for the US, Europe, Ukraine, Israel, not only for Russia and Palestinians. Unless you side with them, and then pretend to be impartial.
It is very odd that ChatGPT makes no mention of the 2008 NATO Bucharest Summit (that preceded the Georgia war) and the 2014 coup d'etat (that preceded the annexation of Crimea).
Smells like its algorithms are being tampered with.
And nowhere have I given justification, only explanation. I think most countries largely act immoral, driven by real politik considerations. I condemn Western's needless fanning of the flames in Ukraine, increasing their own "security concerns" as a result, raising Russia's security concerns in return. But I note that the facts I raised do not concern Western security at all. Only Ukraine could be affected by the "near abroad" doctrine and we can hardly complain about economic integration. So we can wonder in what sense Western security concerns were protected by expanding eastwards.
Those considerations can only be of a geopolitical nature and not a direct military threat for which NATO is in principle the answer. For existing NATO members there never was a reason to expand NATO after the cold war when the threat had actually largely dissipated. And yet we did it any way. Attempts at de-escalation repeatedly failed and that's not just the Russian's faults.
My main problem with "real politik" views towards geopolitics is that they a) ignore the international legal framework (but of course it will be whipped out when it supports an argument) and b) a predisposition towards conflict that must be won if it materialises, instead of fundamentally aiming at avoiding conflict. But the West (particularly US) will pursue conflict if it furthers their geopolitical agenda even if facts don't support their position (Afghanistan, Iraq, etc.).
If then historically we've seen the most successful roads to peace have been extensive integration and co-operation then these decisions are consequences of us-them divisions, maintaining status quos (to stay top dog, you have to kick down the competition) and projection of power. So to me, the very methodology of framing international relations in real politik terms is an important driving force towards conflict, instead of avoiding it.
And yes security concerns can justify some action. Not all and certainly not war crimes. But again, I think that mixes geopolitical theory and international law. I think I've said before in this thread:
1. from a geopolitical/international relations point of view both Russia and the West are equally to blame for the war in Ukraine
2. from an international law perspective Russia is an aggressor
But since 2 is in any case an optional argument (pace every "humanitarian" intervention ever and western-led wars) it should be ignored in favour of 1 - as much as that goes against the grain of what I studied and worked for for decades as a human rights trained lawyer. 2 is more about how the world should be and could've been if international law hadn't been applied in such a double standard way.
Quoting ssu
Yes, Russia was winning the war 2 years ago, and is still winning the war.
And the whole comment is definitely worth citing:
Quoting boethius
At no point has Russia not been winning the conflict.
It conquered about 20% of Ukrainian territory and secured the land bridge to Crimea in the first days of the war, which it still has.
True, I did predict Russian "winning harder" at the start of the war, but that conclusion what based on the assumption that the West would not supply armour, only hand held "defensive weapons"; which, if you remember, the West insisted pretty hard on at the time, and portrayed supplying armour as basically unthinkable.
A few comments later than what you cite above, I explained that obviously armour would be a game changer:
Quoting boethius
With armour the Ukrainians could go on offensives and have some reasonable chance of "winning".
And Ukraine did go on offensives, but only after the supply of a lot of armour to do so.
My analysis from the start was not and has never been that Ukraine had zero chance of winning, just that to have a chance would require far more weapons systems and ammunition.
Something the West could have done, but chose not to because if Russian forces were actually at risk of being routed they could resort to nuclear weapons.
Now, Ukraine eventually got a bit of armour, and then a bit of more armour, then Western armour, and some missiles and so on, and once this process started I updated my analysis to "drip-feed theory", which has been my core thesis here since a pretty long time (I'll check, but if I remember correctly I formulated this thesis shortly after the Russians pulled back from Kiev and the Russian offer was rejected).
Drip Feed Theory (DFT) being that Western policy is to prop Ukraine up just enough to resist the Russian but not enough to actually threaten the Russians, so each weapon system is added only after previous weapons systems fail and the new weapon system can at best keep pace, resulting in a war of attrition that Ukraine will lose.
Unemployment statistics only count people able and looking for work.
Which is of course a somewhat vague concept so it's pretty easy to manipulate these figures by changing how things are counted. Of course, good statisticians can pick a way of measuring and track that competently and changes to that number as a proxy to whatever the "real unemployment" is will give insight into what is happening.
I only elaborate on the issue because "people wanting and able to work having work" being a bad thing, is a neo-classical dogma that is highly suspect.
It makes perfect natural sense from a capitalist class point of view, as when you employ people into your business you ideally want them unemployed so that you have the bargaining power. However, that is a capitalist class desire and not some necessary condition for labour movement; it is perfectly logically possible that you hire someone who is already employed by giving them a better offer than their current work (and indeed, upper-middle-class professionals assume this is how their career will go without any logical problems or believing they are contributing to some economic catastrophe).
Of course, if businesses lose employees and go bust, well they go bust, which (only in this context for neo-classical theory) is a bad thing and not "creative destruction" (which is perfectly acceptable if there's "creative destruction" in ways that transfer wealth from the poor to the rich).
This is maybe not the thread to go further into detail, but I hope I've provided enough information that pointing to Russian near-full employment as some harbinger of doom is highly debatable.
Otherwise, the v-blogger you posted is against the war on moral grounds and is sad by all the death and destruction, so an entirely reasonable position to take, but his points that Russians are literally disappearing and the economy will collapse any-day are essentially just fear-mongering and not serious analysis.
Is that international law, or a law of Nature, or a local convention? I know how the unemployment figures are manipulated and function in the West, and I well remember being told that 3,000,000 unemployed was "a price well worth paying" to get the economy functioning: thanks for the little lecture though. But in a State Capitalist system, things might be different, and measures might be different too. My reason for thinking this might be the case is the context of the figure in the video, and also things like this:
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2023/12/04/everything-for-the-front-how-war-is-changing-russias-labor-market-a83311
Again, I have not fact-checked, but there is also this:
https://www.businessinsider.com/kremlin-ally-boasts-of-low-unemployment-which-is-really-fueled-by-ukraine-losses-2023-5
Statistics are made by statisticians. It is a convention how unemployment is defined; who exactly fits this definition at any given time would be fact that can be observed but statisticians generally use proxies to the data they seek such as survey data, tax data, unemployment payment schemes, and whatever else may seem relevant to them.
Again, if these workers aren't forced then it maybe a good thing that teenagers and old people can work if they want to or the pay is attractive enough to them. Presumably the prison labour is forced and conditions in Russian prisons aren't great anyways, so definitely lamentable.
However, the point of my little lecture about the unemployment statistics is that if you need to resort to the argument that low unemployment is some "great tragedy" that has befallen the Russian people then that's pretty much scraping the bottom of the barrel of available gripes.
The fact of the matter is, neither the sanctions nor propping up Ukraine have fulfilled their original promise of doing great harm to Russia (people, institutions, power projection etc.).
Which is what I predicted at the start of the conflict: sanctions are unlikely to work (because they never work), and the war is likely to make Russian significantly more powerful in military terms (as that's what conventional wars generally result in, often for both participants).
Which was the original purpose of my analysis 2 years ago, that rejecting Russias offer would likely result in a stronger Russia, not weaker one (with a chance to result in total collapse of the Russian government: why they would offer and accept a peace deal on favourable terms, as it isn't rational to risk even a tiny chance of total collapse if there is an acceptable alternative). Whereas accepting the offer could easily be presented as a Ukrainian (and Western ) victory and it would debated for a long time who came out on top, but definitely Ukraine and the West could easily tell the story that courageous Ukrainians "stood up to Putin" and Russia was forced to give back the Donbas due to this fierce resistance with Western support. Of course, Russia would have gotten recognition of Crimea in such a deal so it would have gained territory overall from the events put in motion in 2014, but the main takeaway (for Western talking heads) would be the mighty Russian army tried and failed to conquer all of Ukraine in 3 days and the valiant Ukrainians led by the intrepid and daring Zelensky put a stop to their machinations.
Why I was so concerned about the likely result of continuing the war resulting in a stronger Russia is because (despite being continuously accused of being pro-Russian and even a Russian intelligence operative on occasion) I don't actually want a stronger Russia, and worse a stronger China.
I don't like authoritarianism, and although Russia is a democracy and Putin has legitimate broad democratic support, it's still far more authoritarian system than to my nordic liking. However, China and its Orwellian social credit system and mass surveillance systems (that make our own mass surveillance systems look like actual freedom in comparison) is far more concerning. Pushing Russia and China together into an alliance makes China far stronger on the world stage and enables export of its totalitarian technology to any authoritarian of whatever flavour anywhere. The war also significantly weakens Europe that is an actual democratizing force in its institutional international relations (despite many, many flaws).
Western policy has been self defeating in this conflict, mostly due to corruption.
Pointing out Russia is winning and very, very, very likely to win (as @ssu reminds us I predicted 2 years ago) is not pro-Russian, but pro-reality, and if we want to navigate to a better world the starting point must be how the world actually is today, which is one in which Russia can easily win a war on its border, nuclear weapons prevents any "bold action" to change that (aka. starting another World War), and propping up Ukraine is high likelihood of making Russia stronger and sanctions creates a parallel world economy and weakens Western leverage globally, and Europe is severely weakened further eroding Western leverage.
In other words, stupidity in the name of what sounds good, is just dumb. Feeling morally superior by doing something self defeating in service of a buzzword is actually evil when you look at is closely. In a gist, this is the essence of my analysis across these soon 600 hundred pages of discourse.
Maybe it is a good thing! Maybe it's a good thing if the Russian economy is collapsing.
Quoting boethius
Well the point of your little lecture looks a little weak. I have now given three sources indicating a bit of a labour shortage to a critical labour shortage. I haven't mentioned the floods, that were not very well coped with, or the refinery repairs and defences that are happening very slowly, and I haven't gone into the details of population statistics that exacerbate the dual effects of war casualties and emigration of workers.
The real difficulty that I see is that the population is not enthusiastic about the war. There's no doubt there's some 'dig to survive' around, but not much 'dig for victory'.
I challenge you to make explicit the “interpretation” of imperialism you think @“ssu” is forwarding, because maybe you are misunderstanding his claims.
Here a definition of imperialism:
Imperialism is the practice, theory or attitude of maintaining or extending power over foreign nations, particularly through expansionism, employing both hard power (military and economic power) and soft power (diplomatic power and cultural imperialism). Imperialism focuses on establishing or maintaining hegemony and a more or less formal empire. While related to the concepts of colonialism, imperialism is a distinct concept that can apply to other forms of expansion and many forms of government.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperialism
According to such definition, would you consider Putin decision to invade Ukraine and annex part of its territories, imperialist or not?
If you do not like that definition, you can propose yours.
Quoting Benkei
Well, I understand “most countries largely act immoral” as equivalent to “most countries largely act in a morally unjustified way” so it’s like your explanation however includes an assessment about justification on both sides, right?
Anyways, if you explain and not justify, under what circumstances can one then switch from explanation to justification? From description to condemnation?
Quoting Benkei
If one includes the US and Europeans as part of “the West”, Ukraine is “the near abroad” of the West too, If Russia feels threatened by the expansion of the West in Ukraine, the West can feel threatened by Russia wanting to expand in Ukraine.
Besides if Ukraine wants to join the West through the EU and NATO, and the West would welcome Ukrainian westernisation. Russia has initiated a war in the West near abroad and hindered the Western hegemonic interest to westernise Ukraine which was reciprocated by the Ukrainians.
Russia committed two questionable moves in terms of security in this hegemonic struggles: discounted Ukrainians will despite having acknowledged its sovereignty and started an actual violent expansion in Ukraine which violates the Ukrainian territorial sovereignty.
Do you agree with such explanation?
Quoting Benkei
If Europe is part of the West and Europe ends in Eastern European countries, then Russia is DEFINITELY WITHOUT ANY REASONABLE DOUBT a direct military threat to the West: it has motivations (hegemonic ambitions and revanchism after the fall of Soviet Union) and it has means (including nuclear arsenal). The threat kept growing under Putin given the military build-up and the centralization of power. And since the war with Georgia, Russia has actually proven its aggressive dispositions toward neighbouring countries (and not only).
Even if, back at the end of Soviet Union, security concerns were more about anticipated than imminent military threats (which is what real politik strategic thinking in the domain of security and defence is all about), NATO was repurposed to expand the democratic and economic European institutions and Western collective in line with the US hegemonic ambitions. Also because Islamic extremism seemed the most urgent threat to deal with.
Do you agree with such explanation?
Quoting Benkei
How do you explain the fact that "real politik" views ignore the international legal framework? And the “real politik" predisposition towards conflict, instead of fundamentally aiming at avoiding conflict?
Quoting Benkei
Would you say the same for Russia, China, Iran?
Quoting Benkei
Yet, realpolitik theorists such as Mearsheimer and Walt are arguing that the idealist pursuit of “extensive integration and co-operation” and not what political realism would dictate is mistakenly driving the Western (particularly the US) in conflicts which are against the US interest (like the conflict in Ukraine and in Israel).
BTW, do you think Russia, China, and Iran are framing international relations in terms of real politik or in idealist terms ? Are they pursuing power projection, and leaning towards conflict, unlike the US? Do you think the US is the Great Satan, namely the most evil/oppressive geopolitical entity on earth or history so that the entire world (including other Western countries) wishes (or should wish) to support Russian, Chinese, and Iranian hegemonic ambitions than the US’s in lack of better alternatives?
Quoting Benkei
This mixing is precisely what’s most worth to philosophically investigate, as far as I’m concerned, especially what allows one to switch from explanation to justification.
Quoting Benkei
“Ignore” in the sense that “international law” and “humanitarian intervention” do not play any explanatory role?
“could've been if” in the sense that “international law” is sort of wishful thinking? If not, what’s the difference?
[sup]— Jakub Kalenský, Laura Galante, Maksym Eristavi, John E Herbst, Geysha González · The Ukraine Election Task Force · May 15, 2019[/sup]
Elmar Brok made some statements in 2016, that remain pertinent.
Regarding straightforward threats to Russia (topics emphasized):
? As far as I can tell, democratization (transparency, freedom, human rights, independent election monitors, bona fide indicators, the usual) would not pose a threat to the common Russian, though it could pose a threat to certain others (not many) in Russian society. Overall, I'm guessing this would bring prosperity (and safety/security) to more Russians over time and would go some way to increase trust.
? Also as far as I can tell, in general, there's no particular threat to the common Russian, except perhaps from the Kremlin, which is internal to Russia. There's a chance that some Russians abroad have faced discrimination/threats, which is unreasonable for merely being Russian.
? Sanctions/embargoes pose a threat. Surely the likes of free (but legal) trade would be quite beneficial to Russian society, whereas more isolation (or imposed economic starvation) is more deleterious. Presumably then, not doing what caused the sanctions, is perceived as bad/worse (or threats in plural) by the sanctioned. So, we have to ask what caused the sanctions, and what consequences there might be of not doing what caused them, which involves sifting through whatever material.
• International sanctions during the Russo-Ukrainian War 2014-
• International sanctions during the Russian invasion of Ukraine 2022-
• Sanctions against Russia
? If Russia were to accrue significant debt, then that could be a threat of sorts. Maybe not a high threat as such, might depend on creditors.
? An invasion of Russia pose a straightforward, head-on threat. We then have to ask if anyone is lined up to invade Russia, or has threatened credibly to invade. Say, is anyone in a position to grab Russian land, and interested in trying to do so? Somewhat similarly, anyone motivated and geared up to outright level Russia (not setting foot therein), without much danger to themselves, could pose a threat.
? Internal strife in Russia possibly pose a threat, depending. If the strifers wanted something similar to what the Ukrainians wanted/want (Euromaidan + Dignity), then it's possible that a threat would only be to some or few Russians (internally). External parties could have an interest in trying to sow division within Russia; surely Ukraine is motivated to try undermining the present Kremlin's power (as a countermeasure to the invasion).
? Imposed, concerted (effective, Russophobic) anti-Russification/other-fication efforts in Russia, would be a cultural/identity genocide, though the largest country in the world already has a few ethnocultural groups. So there's a threat. This is the type of threat the Kremlin has enacted on occupied Ukraine (and some other places). As of typing, there's no indication/evidence that Russia is struggling with such a threat. Homosexuality isn't that, despite the Kremlin's efforts and legislation.
I'm sure I've missed some. Please feel free to fill in the blanks. For a more complete round-up, factors or possible moves in the other direction, to benefit Russian society should be added/compared.
FYI, in terms of population numbers, here are some comparisons (increasing order):
Germany + Poland < Russia < Germany + France < Russia + Belarus < Germany + France + Finland < Germany + Poland + Ukraine
Well, I'll hope this will be such an astounding victory like the Winter War was for Russia. And I'm sure to have found people like you saying so then. After all, they won a lot of territory (even if the Finnish proletariat wasn't liberated from the evil capitalists, but who cares about that), so let's hope for a similar decisive and outstanding Russian victory!
Again, there's really big difference between this current war and the Winter War.
First, notice that in the photo you just posted there's a lot of snow and a lot of trees, which were significant defensive advantages.
As important as the geographical advantages, the Winter War occurred in the context of WWII and the Soviets could not fully focus on defeating we Finns, so there was also an advantage in terms of the geopolitical context.
Therefore, Finland, while not being in a position to "win" on the battlefield, was in a position to impose a cost great enough to compel the Soviets to settle the conflict.
The Finnish military defence was not "for the sake of it" or as some "quaint gesture" to posterity but was a military strategy imbedded in a larger diplomatic strategy to achieve the political objective of retaining as much independence as possible.
In compelling the Soviets to negotiate, the Finns were realistic and made offers the Stalin maybe willing to accept and ultimately did accept; a realistic strategy involving compromise (some land can be given up, some political humiliation can be accepted, some reparations can be paid, in order to secure 80% of the territory and 100% of the Finns, who did not die in the war). A strategy of compromise that persisted after the war in order to avoid being re-invaded or otherwise absorbed by the Soviet Union; a diplomatic strategy referred to as "Finlandization", which did not involve just telling the Soviets to fuck off at every possible opportunity (but pretty much the contrary).
I do not take issue with Ukraine having a military and fighting the war.
What I take issue with most of all is having no diplomatic strategy.
Ukraine has never proposed any resolution to the war that would be remotely acceptable to the Russians; they simply make maximalist demands.
Which brings up another key difference with Finland in that Finland was more-or-less competently managed by honest politicians during the Winter War, whereas Ukraine is pervasively corrupt. You cannot say a corrupt government "represents the people". When the US first announced Ukraine would join NATO, over 2/3rds of Ukrainians were against NATO expansion into Ukraine; did "Ukrainian agency" or "the will of the people" matter then. Likewise, the poll that was continuously toted to show "Ukrainians want to fight!" was a false dichotomy between complete capitulation and "fighting to a better result", which obviously presumes there's a better result to fight for and by definition if it's better than that's good and we should try to do that.
The West (as in people with power) have no problem outright stating that it's a good thing for Ukraine to make unrealistic demands and just keep fighting without a diplomatic strategy because this imposes a cost on the Russians and Russia should pay a cost for invading another country. The logic is never that Ukraine will militarily achieve its objectives but just that Ukraine is the West's disciplinary rod with which to strike Putin's outstretched hand.
The problem with all this is that there's no "minimization of harm" principle. The policy is to essentially maximize harm to Ukraine as that also harms Russia (maybe).
The money we send to Ukraine is a de facto bribe to Ukrainian elites to do what we want. It's not some free spirited gift but entirely coercive to dictate to Ukraine what it can and can't do. As Borel recently noted, Ukraine would collapse in 2 weeks and the War would end if the West stopped support.
Because the policy is not to seek an end best for Ukrainians, but simply have Ukraine fight the Russians so "we don't have to at home" (even when that's a absolutely moronic statement), the West would just say "it's up to Ukrainians to negotiate with Russia". Why is this the policy? So that there's no Western leverage at play to seek a resolution to the conflict. It's presented as "we're so magnanimous that we won't 'interfere' with Ukrainian's negotiation" but what it is in reality is that the West will not positively contribute to any peaceful resolution, in fact we'll just go ahead and blow up some leverage the West has that could compel a resolution to the war on better terms for Ukraine. Blowing up the pipeline locks in more war, more Ukrainian deaths and less coercive power over Russia to settle on better terms for Ukraine.
We're basically in a frightening Alice in Vunderland version of diplomacy where we seek the maximum destruction and harm to Ukraine while presenting those policies as noble and honourable and in the best interest of Ukraine, which we've redefined as a country that simply nobly and honourably self sacrifices for no practical purpose. We've developed an idealized version of the heroic Ukrainian soldier that self sacrifices on the battlefield by his or her very nature and there need not be a reasonable purpose to it. Our leaders have zero problem lecturing Ukrainians that have dodged the draft or left the country that they need to "fight for their country" and of course must all be sent to the front and we'll help round them up and send them over, even if there's no "strategy for victory" (which the White House never produced in negotiating with the congress), all while simultaneously claiming that the War is Ukrainian business and represents "Ukrainian agency".
It's all very, very dark.
Very far from the white snows of Finland you're nostalgic for.
Winter is coming though, naturally.
Definitely.
The war has gone extremely well for the Kremlin, from what I can tell.
Russia is attritting NATO weapons (not all weapons, but critical weapons such as artillery shells and air defence) in close to ideal circumstances where those weapons do not coherently and cohesively integrate together in rational military plans.
Russia has created a parallel global economy due to Western sanctions; i.e. created another pond in which it is the big fish.
Best of all, the war is accelerating the decline of the US empire.
From what I can tell, Putin and all the Kremlin and military hardliners didn't like so much the collapse of the Soviet Union and the West "winning" the Cold War. They of course recognize it was entirely self inflicted so I do not think there was any desire or even consideration of achieving some sort of revenge against the USA after the Soviet fall. 90s and early 00s Russia was very much about just minding its own business and trying deal with its new position in the world, mostly focused on not falling apart even more.
However, when the US started directly attack Russian interests, not only do Russian elites "need" to respond to that (in the sense of being stuck in the international system and a slave to its dynamic) but I think it kindled within Russian elites a vision of helping accelerate a process within the US (a process of imperial overreach in parallel to deepening dysfunctional corruption and ideological collapse at home) that they saw unfold in the Soviet Union. I don't think it's ideologically motivated on the Russian elites part, but rather I think it's more personal in that Western officials insult them (such as taking advantage of their good will, such as help in logistics for the war on terror, and also in approving the Libyan no-fly-zone, that "bombing everything" is not the definition of a no-fly-zone, as well as bad faith with regard to Minsk and claiming missile bases in Eastern Europe are about Iran and the like) and take them for fools, so the reaction of Putin and the Russian intelligence and military elite around him is "you want to play, let's play; we know this game".
That's my sense of it anyways.
Quoting boethius
Are you referring to the May 2014 gradual switch, observed in polls?
Quoting boethius
You keep repeating this (and the like) just as if having pre-settled the matter (to yourself).
The Ukrainians have been looking to the EU for some time, despite Putin's warnings. They've shown willingness to reform, have independent election observers (+ generally, foreign press and whatever), ditch officials having been found corrupt, work with the EU to develop a fair democracy, ..., during invasion + bombing. More or less the opposite of Putin's Russia — that dominating neighbor they want to wrestle free from. In short, they're trying, whereas your comments has a faint whiff of racism occasionally seen elsewhere and fatalism (peppered with a bit of conspiracy), while portraying Putin's Russia as impregnable, faithfully echoing Putin's words. (Heck, "trying was always futile, Ukraine is Russian", right?)
Putin signs decree setting Russia’s development goals for 2030
[sup]— TASS · May 7, 2024[/sup]
Russia to join ranks of top four global economies — presidential decree
[sup]— TASS · May 7, 2024[/sup]
I'm sure a good chunk of Ukraine under the Kremlin would help with that. :)
Aren't security interests in foreign countries inherently imperialistic?
Quoting Benkei
But since NATO has no doctrine for expanding into Russia, the same can be said of Russian security interests. The idea of security interests presupposes the sides inherently have imperial objectives, or at least that such objectives are always significantly likely.
Quoting Benkei
This is a bit of a catch 22 in geopolitical terms though. Expanding into areas not under threat is bad because it increases tensions for no immediate gain. Expanding into areas under threat is bad because it can lead to a direct confrontation. So never expand at all? But then all security concerns are meaningless.
Quoting Benkei
What does it mean to say that someone is "to blame" from an explicitly amoral geopolitical point of view?
That's what Ukraine hopes to do also. Holding a victory march in the Red Square isn't the objective.
Quoting boethius
And what's the difference here?
Quoting boethius
We were talking about the [i]Winter War[/]. There was the Continuation War, you know... which actually was exactly that "telling the Soviets to fuck off at every possible opportunity".
Quoting boethius
Look, Finland didn't either have "a diplomatic strategy" publicly until made the deal. Both in the Winter War and in the war of Continuation.
What is different with the modern world is that negotiations are done all the time. Yet the commitment of Ukraine and Russia is just the same as it was during the wars between Finland and the Soviet Union: both sides are staunchly committed to the war... until they aren't. It is only the US which has this extremely illogical way of fighting a war and while doing it, declaring that it will withdraw. Thus wasn't hard for the Taleban to understand that the US would do exactly what it did to South Vietnam, betray it's former ally and walk away (as the US did under Trump and Biden).
But Ukraine will be committed to fight the war and Russia to "exterminate the fascist ruling Ukraine" until a solution is found.
Quoting boethius
Nope. France and the UK were willing to join the war on the Finnish side. This was a real fear for Stalin, as his natural fear was that the West would attack him. Stalin didn't have nuclear deterrence as Putin has. So he gave up on his objectives. The Finns, well, the Finnish military didn't have high hopes before the war and likely was surprised that Finland could fight off the Soviets for a hundred days or so.
Quoting boethius
Directly attack Russian interests?
Lol, again with the Putinist propaganda, tovarich! :grin:
The only direct attacks have happened from Putin's Russia, FYI.
I don't think so. Only when those security interests are expressed through policy action that extends power over foreign countries. But just investing in defensive capabilities, for instance, would not be imperialistic.
Quoting Echarmion
I think you're correct in identifying that most analyses presuppose such (potential) objectives - as I mentioned later with my gripe about typical real politik analysis. Russia has always argued that the potential capabilities of NATO lead to its security concerns. The same is NATO's reason for expansion; the potential capabilities of Russia to invade Europe. I think those capabilities and the Soviet political framework supported that assessment during the Cold War; they found the invasion plans in Eastern Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall after all. But after the disintegration of the USSR, I don't think this was realistic for a long time and there certainly was no reasonable fear to justify expansion for the existing members at the time. That was driven by a policy of containment, which in turn fed Russia's fear of NATO capabilities.
I don't see that expansion as fundamentally different from Russia placing ballistic missiles in Cuba.
Quoting Echarmion
Expansion is inherently aggressive (and imperialistic) yes. So there's no catch-22 in my view. In the absence of an actual threat, expanding so-called "defensive" alliances is an aggressive geopolitical move. NATO's "expansion" into space is an aggressive move as well.
Quoting Echarmion
I would think the goal of geopolitical policy is to avoid costly wars so you'd expect parties to manoeuvre away from them, instead of towards them.
But "unfortunately" NATO has a charter and there is this article, number 10:
And there were enough Eastern European countries feeling threatened by Russia, and, as we have now seen, rightly so. The Baltic States understood quite well their vulnerability and the fact the Russia hadn't shed it's imperialist ways. Yet somehow this active role these countries played here is forgotten by the Putinist crowd (naturally). These self-designated "realists" simply ignore these countries as actual actors here.
And then came the actions that Russia took, which forced even Finland and Sweden to change their course. You had to do a lot to change the stance these two countries had, actually.
Quoting Echarmion
Quoting Benkei
Some could uphold the figleaf of the other's sovereignty, yet blatantly intervene in all aspects of internal politics of a country. That would be the modern way of (neo)imperialism. Yet in this case when Russians talk of other countries being "artificial", that the countries should be part Russia and do annex territories and start with forced assimilation, that should tell people that this is classic imperialism.
Being part of NATO isn't the same thing, however some seem to want to make it.
Washington worked very hard for it. And they got what they wanted: a new set of lambs to sacrifice on the altar of American geopolitics.
So no obligation to do it but let's do it any way. As far as the threat to former Eastern European states was concerned. NATO was doing fine when it was all Warsaw Pact. So there's no sensible reason to expand other than containment.
Quoting ssu
Yes, you like to ignore twenty years of warning in favour of a single instance and then focus on one speech by Putin in which he claimed Ukraine was artificial. So one country and not countries. And my definition of imperialism doesn't relate to figleafs at all. The imperialist ambitions of Russia are limited if they existed at all since the dissolution of the USSR.
Quoting ssu
Of course it is. Just because you're on the right side of that alliance doesn't change this. The assumption also that NATO, or any group of countries, is (or indeed will be) a force for good forever is ridiculous. It's planning for immediate threats instead of the long run where I'd like a world without war, not one where the West can continue to cajole the rest of the world into doing its bidding and applying double standards all the time. Combined with the swift deteroriation of democratic principles in almost every Western democracy and we'll have a nice fascist alliance in a few decades. Just in time to start wars to deal with collapsing biodomes, food shortages and energy crises.
Either you lead by example and build a rule based order, or you do what has been happening in the past 3 decades and fuck up the UN.
Yes, I also think my statement was too general. But it might highlight an important notion: That there is no hard dividing line between a security interest and an imperialist ambition without introducing a value judgement.
Fundamentally, purely defensive capabilities don't exist, since even a bunker technically frees up capacity for operations elsewhere. So in a geopolitical context the goals are critical.
Quoting Benkei
It does seem to have a familiar rhyme to it: the fear of "encirclement", the resentment of having lost a contest of strength, the lack of an adequate re-integration of the former enemy into the international community.
Yet it also needs to be said that nothing about Russia's approach to the changes in the geopolitical landscape after 1990 was preordained. It was the Putin government that explicitly undertook to integrate Russia's imperial past and it's claim to great power status into it's mandate.
Quoting Benkei
But the context certainly is different. The Cuban missile crisis was deliberate brinkmanship by Khrushchev with the aim of recalibrating US-Soviet relations on a more favourable basis. The NATO expansion did not treat Russia as a threat to be dealt with but as a non-factor.
With the Cuban nuclear missiles, the SU really did mean to threaten the US militarily. NATO didn't expand eastwards to threaten Russia militarily.
Quoting Benkei
I guess this leads us back to my initial point: from an amoral geopolitical perspective, aggression and defense are fluid and relative. What matters is goals and capabilities.
Russia's reaction to NATO expansion isn't based on whether that expansion is "aggressive" or not. It's based on Russia's goals and capabilities, and the goals and capabilities they ascribe to NATO.
NATO expansion was against Russia's goal of maintaining it's influence, but it lacked the capability to do anything about it. When the capability was available, it was used.
This view avoids treating Russia as an automaton that merely reacts to aggression.
Quoting Benkei
So, whoever has the more costly war loses? Because from this perspective, it's not really clear whether the Ukraine war isn't a net benefit to NATO, even if Ukraine ends up losing a bunch of territory.
Quoting Benkei
Well regardless of whether we want to class Russia's goals as "imperialist", they clearly judged that their goals required a war and the annexation of territory. This decision was not forced on Russia by external circumstances.
Quoting Benkei
I think the argument that the West mortally undermined it's own standing and thus created a world where the invasion of Ukraine no longer seemed out of the question is a much better one than the argument that NATO expansion specifically drove Russian foreign policy.
Incidentally, who do you think is eagerly trying to help that along? :D Thus sort of making full circle, well, in part at least?
[sup]? Virtual Hatred: How Russia Tried to Start a Race War in the United States (— William J Aceves · California Western School of Law · 2019)
? The Corruption of the American Mind: How Foreign Funding in U.S. Higher Education by Authoritarian Regimes, Widely Undisclosed, Predicts Erosion of Democratic Norms and Antisemitic Incidents on Campus (— NCRI · Nov 6, 2023 · 53 pages)
? Vladimir Putin’s plan to ‘tear the US apart’ during 2024 election exposed (— Charlie Bradley · Express · Dec 23, 2023)
? Russia’s War on Woke (— Mikhail Zygar · Foreign Affairs · Jan 2, 2024)
? Doppelganger operation (— EU DisinfoLab · Feb 2, 2024)
? President Grills Ivanishvili and GD in Final Address to Parliament, Offers to Mediate United Opposition Platform (— Civil Georgia · Feb 6, 2024)
? It may be too late to stop the great election disinformation campaigns of 2024 but we have to at least try (— Tom Felle · The Conversation · Feb 9, 2024)
? The Threat from Russia’s Unconventional Warfare Beyond Ukraine, 2022–24 (— Jack Watling, Oleksandr V Danylyuk, Nick Reynolds · RUSI · Feb 20, 2024)
? Denying Russia’s Only Strategy for Success (also see Reflexive control) (— Nataliya Bugayova, Frederick W Kagan, Kateryna Stepanenko · ISW · Mar 27, 2024)
? Czechia busts Russian propaganda network targeting European elections (— Martin Fornusek · The Kyiv Independent (Deník N, Der Spiegel, Le Monde) · Apr 1, 2024)
? Tracing the rise of Russian state media on TikTok (— Valerie Wirtschafter · Brookings · May 2, 2024)
(? there are more reports, that's one state actor among others)[/sup]
And if NATO doesn't become some "nice fascist alliance in a few decades"? We already have hungry nice fascist/authoritarian powerhouses (that would like to see the sentiment above grow to action). This sort of anti-NATO rhetoric is indeed naïve, short-sighted, and
Quoting Benkei
Unless...there's a suitable replacement in place?
NATO was formed because of the actions of the Soviet Union. Hence that misses the point as obviously East Europe at that time didn't have the ability to choose their sides.
Quoting Benkei
Just one speech? How about the actual annexations and Russification now acted in Ukraine? How do you forget that? It's not one speech, it's a multitude of actions that Russia has done.
And on the contrary, it's twenty years of Russia showing that it doesn't care a god damn shit about the sovereignty of other smaller states and does want to be an imperialist. It is an Empire and is really frightened that it will collapse to be something like Austria as it is totally incapable of being something like the UK (keeping the country together without violence and accepting separatist movements as being part of democracy). Somehow in the delusional pro-Putinist camp (who consider them "realists") this is something that Russia has a given right to and OMG, if the smaller states don't surrender to Russia and seek refuge from an International defence pact, it's all the fault of the US.
Just ask yourself why these countries were so worried about Russia in the first place. The obvious reason is that the Warsaw Pact was actually for keeping the countries in the Soviet sphere, secondary role was to fight NATO. And in this role Warsaw Pact was very successfully. The Soviet military operations (wars) of occupying Hungary and Czechoslovakia were actually so successful, that Russia tried to mimic similar strategy in the first Chechen war and in Ukraine in 2022. And even today Russia's CSTO clearly shows it has nothing to do with defense of the individual members (as Armenia has found out the hard way) and everything to be an instrument of Russian control.
If you think NATO is similar, then what NATO members have been attacked by other NATO members when they went against US lines? The difficulty of Sweden joining just shows that NATO is really an international organization and you have to have then all the countries agreeing on the policies. Otherwise the US has just to pick an alliance of the willing and not bother NATO. And hence the US is on occasion so disappointed with the organization because it's an international organization and not a tool of control as the Warsaw pact was.
And if you're in the camp of "might makes right", then don't bitch about what Israel does to the Palestinians in Gaza or what the US did (does?) under it's War-on-Terror response to the 9/11 attacks.
Quoting Benkei
Well, it's not a tool of internal suppression as Hungary and Czechoslovakia found out of the Warsaw Pact.
Are countries bad? Yes, we can agree on that everything that Netherlands has done has been always bad, yet the present leadership of the Netherlands doesn't have ideas of conquering back Belgium and then starting a harsh "Dutchification" program of the Belgians, because Belgium is an artificial state and should be naturally part of the Netherlands. And those who oppose this are just hostile towards the Netherlands, because obviously the Netherlands is a great power and is forced to do this and thus we have to be realists, Great powers do what they do! So you have that difference with Russia, even if you are otherwise so immoral and evil like us Finns and everything you do is bad, like we do.
Small group of pre-war buddies, now paratroopers, with journalists, enter a battle zone. Metal in the air. 14 hours documented in 26 minutes. It's about sending the invaders packing, and that's it. Started with the Kremlin's ownership/entitlement attitudes and "vision". Probably not what you want in your neighborhood.
Surrounded by the Russians. UA Paratroopers & United24 Journalists under RU Assault. Kayfariki & BSDG (— UNITED24 · May 4, 2024 · 26m:48s)
I'm a bit surprised how little anti-drone weaponry has been developed. Maybe a drone-capturing drone? Not trivial, but much tech is available.
Quoting Tzeentch
Ukraine has its own "red lines" otherwise known as borders. So does Belgium, Finland, Japan and others.
Kennan Cable No. 82: Putin’s Home War: Imperialism vs. Economy
[sup]— Marsha McGraw Olive · Wilson Center · May 2023 · 9 pages (pdf)[/sup]
Short article with some historical background:
Why the USSR Collapsed Economically
[sup]— Matthew Johnston, Michael J Boyle, Katrina Munichiello · Investopedia · Jun 24, 2021[/sup]
Might be of interest to some.
5. Donbas and Crimea to become free transparent independent democracies, under UN supervision (Europol might take a role) until such a time that their developments are deemed sufficiently safe free independent recovered (with borders) for the UN to take leave
7. Investigation of all alleged war crimes, and prosecution where found (e.g. ICJ, ICC)
Seems reasonable enough, as well as technically possible. Or something along those lines. The UN is large enough to handle the load. I'm guessing Kyiv would consider and the Kremlin would deny (pure conjectures on my part). But this could well mean bona fide peace.
Could it be done?
My interest in a revised peace plan such as the above, would be Kyiv's and the Kremlin's responses, but I can only guess.
There's no mention of reparations (potentially apart from 3 or 8 if taken further), which is rather costly, hence a significant burden.
Perhaps this could be another revision:
9. Guarantees against future aggression
I'm guessing something along those lines could be acceptable to a majority of countries. After all, it would mean peace (to the extent that refugees could feel safe going home), and a victory in that respect.
Aleksander S?adkow reports from the trenches (May 22, 2024 · 2m:8s)
[tweet]https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1793198943561478298[/tweet]
Where are you even getting this from, following your own link:
Number 5 is:
Quoting Ukraine's Peace Formula
And 7 is:
Quoting Ukraine's Peace Formula
Ukraine is in the process of collapse and no longer has any leverage to use in a negotiation.
You can post as much propaganda as you want, but doesn't change the facts on the ground.
Ukraine is running out of people and whether the recent alleged coup attempt (involving Ukrainian colonels) was real or was the fabrication of paranoid delusions, either way it is not a good sign.
The US is just trying to prop Ukraine up until the US election.
@Isaac and I explained how negotiations work, how compromise works, how leverage works, and Ukraine's interest in negotiating while it still had leverage, over 2 years ago.
Repeating these ideas (that you poorly understand) now is just more copium in your copium pipeline of inane propaganda that does not inform the discussion.
Ukraine can no longer credibly threaten (even at low probability), if not defeating, severely embarrassing Russia on the battlefield (such as routing the Russians in Donbas of even just cutting the land bridge and managing to hold it), so that leverage is gone.
Russia has survived and adapted to sanctions, so that leverage is gone.
The Nord Stream pipeline was blown up, so that leverage is gone too.
The US is backing a literal genocide in Palestine right now so whatever "moral high ground" leverage the US had in terms of non-Western nations, that leverage is gone too.
Negotiations happen with leverage in the real world, not pretending there's still leverage when you try and fail to do things the hard way, is just escaping to delusion instead of facing the reality of having made terrible mistakes which, in this case, have killed hundreds of thousands of people.
That's the reality now: that Ukraine spent its leverage and can't go back to the Russian's offer two years ago, or anywhere close.
There is now essentially nothing Ukraine can do, nor the West can do, that can compel Russia to accept anything remotely close to what you're suggesting here.
Ukraine could probably still negotiate:
1. Giving up even more territory
2. Committing to neutrality and restrictions on its armed forces going forward
Of course Zelensky doesn't want to do that because he's now escaped into some sort of delusional religious zealotry (hence a colonel lead coup was pretty likely and likely to happen again, until it succeeds).
However, Russia doesn't need such a deal either as it can just take more territory by force as is currently happening.
It was an attempt to converge acceptability, not a recitation of an old proposal, but to revise bits, hypothesize, and derive whatever therefrom. :D
Quoting boethius
Huh? Where do you see that? As mentioned, it was an attempt to revise an old proposal slightly towards more acceptability, and take it (onwards) from there. (Would you like me to reformulate, maybe in Klingon...?)
Alert: Trump's GOP busted for embracing Putin's 'dictator plot': Comedian Klepper x Melber
[sup]— Jordan Klepper, Ari Melber, Molly Jong-Fast · MSNBC · May 22, 2024 · 6m:57s[/sup]
Quoting Ron Johnson
MAGA'ers and @boethius echoing the Kremlin circle — "We're invincible" — in words or spirit.
Of course the invaders can be sent home (reportedly a large number already has + o / w). Not via those fatalists though.
By the way, the Kremlin has kicked off another round of their nuclear rattling (rerunning exercises, threatening the UK, France, whoever), I wonder what they're afraid of.
Well two years ago when Ukraine still had leverage, talking independence of some kind (such as Russia's offer of more autonomy for the Donbas but remaining in Ukraine) made a lot of sense; I explained at considerable length why it was foolish advocating and lauding Zelensky's no-compromise position; I don't want to go out on a limb and say you were among those advocates as your posts rarely take any actual position but mostly don't say anything and just link to propaganda.
Quoting jorndoe
Your posts are mostly links to propaganda generally speaking, the. The "old proposal" you're talking about was just a propaganda move due to even the Western press starting to question Ukraine's no-diplomacy strategy.
Quoting boethius
Now, if you wanted to stop linking to propaganda, the statement remains true.
Quoting jorndoe
Russia is not invincible, the whole substance of Drip Feed Theory, may main contention over the course of this dialogue, is that NATO could cause significant problems for Russia if it wanted too, but it doesn't.
NATO could have provided all the advanced weapons Ukraine could possibly make use of day 1 of the war, likewise ramped up ammunition production with a state program. The idea that the entire West simply can't match Russia in ammunition production is just dumb, it could if it was a priority, but it's not a priority.
Likewise, NATO could have sent troops into Ukraine from day 1 of the conflict.
Russia is not invincible, but is winning because that's NATO policy for Russia to win.
Undersupplied, outmatched in every category of weapons, a smaller population and terrible demographic situation, Ukraine simply has very little chance of holding lines, much less "winning" on the battlefield.
Why is the NATO policy to allow Russia to slowly win.
The nuclear weapons.
The reason NATO doesn't escalate to causing Russia a genuine problem in Ukraine is due to nuclear deterrence.
Sabre "rattling" only makes sense as an expression when there is no war and everyone agrees there's essentially no prospect of war, then alluding to or brandishing weapons is a weak diplomatic move. When there's a hot war, however, where everyone agrees could escalate further then force demonstrations are not sabre rattling but both demonstrations and preparations for escalation.
So NATO is winning too now? Or is NATO policy to slowly lose to Russia?
What about Russian security threats from NATO enlargement?
Did Russia get rid of such security threats? Is NATO now more likely unable to threaten the Black Sea fleet or make military drills on Russian borders or put nuclear missiles on Russian borders or to have Ukraine fall within Western sphere of influence or give Ukraine a second chance to attack Crimea, Donbas, and land bridge in ten years or so? Did Russia get its wunderbuffer to contain Western imminent invasion of Russia and genocide of Russians? Are Western provocations finally over?
Personally, I think Ukraine would be crazy not to at least take a seat at the table. But I know better.
I think we ought to read this latest offer by the Kremlin as a "last chance" type deal, before they will ramp up the pressure on Ukraine another time and this time probably with the intention to definitively cripple it until they can impose their desired conditions unilaterally.
And "Tovarich Trump" will likely disappoint Putin again.
Try this (for a change): Entertain a thought experiment or hypothetical to think about what changes and what doesn't in the scenario. (Hence putting it out there as a question (that you instead call propaganda).) Common practice.
FYI, here's a piece of lightweight propaganda, maybe you can tell the difference:
US to blame for Iranian president’s death – Belarus (— RT · May 24, 2024)
[sup]— Ann-Dorit Boy · DER SPIEGEL · May 7, 2024[/sup]
Centrally organized land grab, a contemporary Kremlin version of lebensraum, neo-imperialism.
There's been some further reports of these efforts.
(I suppose we can speculate that refugees may not have a home to return to, in the future, unless they buy it back from Moscow (and obtain Russian passports).)
Whatever comes out of the Kremlin, that's part of what they're doing.
Trump is a corrupt idiot who will disappoint everyone if he's elected.
Biden is a corrupt formerly-clever-but-now-has-dementia with a disturbing tendency to be seen sniffing and touching children inappropriately, who will also continue to disappoint everyone except maybe literally satan.
That Russia has an overwhelming advantage in a war with Ukraine is simply fact.
That the West can't really do anything about that short of nuclear war which apparently even satan doesn't actually want (it is perhaps more optimum amount of suffering to drag this shit show out a bit longer when you think about it), is again simply factual.
Therefore, based on these facts, my policy recommendation is to use diplomacy to try to avoid further warfare. This would involve compromise and recognizing Russia does have some legitimate concerns that would need accommodating to arrive at a peace.
My pointing out obvious facts and the only thing we can do (other than nuclear war) is painted as pro-Putin.
Now I am pro-Putin to the extent that I am anti-being-nuked and Putin hasn't nuked me yet, so he does have that going in his favour as far as I'm concerned.
When I point out Putin can in fact extort us using nuclear weapons, that is not some commendation of extortion, just pointing out the obvious fact. Saying "bah!!! Putin [i]shouldn't extort us with nuclear weapons[/I], bad Putin!!" may very well be true. We can of course debate whether one man's extortion is another man's deterrence, but doesn't change the fact that either way it reasonable limits our scope of action if we want to avoid being nuked.
Therefore, it does not take much analysis to conclude that Russia can defeat Ukraine and anything the West might do to stop that from happening (including arming Ukraine soon enough and "badass" enough, to use US policy makers technical lingo) will very likely result in a nuclear war that the West also cannot win.
It takes little additional analysis that dragging the war out does not actually harm the Russian state but makes it stronger while the consequences to Ukraine are several orders magnitude greater than whatever this assumed harm to Russia even is.
From here it is then quite easy to see that not only is it completely immoral to prop Ukraine up as essentially a punching bag (just real people die with every punch), but it is disastrous also to the West's policy makers stated aim of domination and subjugation of the rest of the world, not to mention the welfare of the West's own citizens, not that polite society takes that into consideration, but still.
As for Russia itself, certainly plenty to criticize if I moved there and had both the knowledge and sense of responsibility to improve the place, but from my own vantage point and actual responsibilities right now there are simply plenty of states that seem a lot worse than Russia that the West doesn't hesitate to ally itself with in the name of "money". So, that being the case, suddenly moralizing about Russia and what happens in Russia from some puritanical point of view is about the same level of intellectual credibility as farting into a bucket of rocks: it looks stupid and it smells bad.
I do not want Ukrainians to die for the vanity of Western power brokers, which makes me pro-Ukraine.
If the pro-Ukrainiains-dying side of the debate could actually overcome criticism to war aims and the diplomatic and warfare strategy, then I would have done the service to Ukrainian soldiers and civilians of bothering to check if people are dying for some sensible purpose.
Unfortunately, criticism cannot be overcome, the conduct of the war by Ukrainian and Western puppets (of war profiteers) does not standup to scrutiny.
The weapons are drip fed into Ukraine to ensure a Russian victory, plenty of money to defence contractors and destroying Europe as a viable competitor to the United States. The money poured into Ukraine is first and foremost a bribe to Ukrainian elite to do what the US wants.
Europe has been eliminated as a geopolitical threat (to the United States), amazingly, to the cheers of Europeans. It is absolutely stupendous how little Europeans have questioned the policies leading to war and then ensuring more war. The only thing European leaders seem to know how to do is oil themselves up to get into their gimp suit. Their economic advisers are like "that's called reducing friction" and they're all like "ah, ok".
This is sad, but it is pro-actual-Ukrainians to recognize.
The offer seems to be "based on current lines" so if Istanbul drafts are a basis then it's for things other than territory.
Putin has also stated that Zelensky is no longer a legitimate leader of Ukraine and it would important for them to sign any peace deal with a legitimate representative in order for there not to be any doubts about the deal.
However, no one in the Kremlin believes Zelensky would start any serious negotiations anyways, so this is more just taking jabs at Zelensky because it's easy to do.
The reason for the offer is because it's an easy diplomatic win that makes Russia look reasonable and also makes the "peace talks" in Switzerland without Russia look even more ridiculous than it already is.
So, yes, I completely agree with you that Ukraine should take essentially whatever offer, and would certainly be crazy to reject anything remotely resembling the offer in 2022, but currently the Zelensky regime have literally talked themselves out of negotiation, having made so many uncompromising declarations.
The only pathway to a peace deal is a coup in Kiev. To the extent the "feelers" are for the purposes of actual negotiation at all, it is a message (perhaps also some encouragement) to whoever wins the coup.
Not to say a coup is guaranteed, just that it's a necessary condition for peace talks.
The US strategy is to keep Zelensky in power by paying off everyone else.
For, even with an essentially broken Ukrainian military it's nevertheless unlikely that Russia can conquer all of Ukraine, so the US can simply live with more and more territory losses, even major losses, since as long as Zelensky is in power they can just spin things as "could be worse" and that "they continue to stand by Ukraine".
Of course, as more and more people, in particular the military chain of command, realizes this strategy of just sacrificing more Ukrainian soldiers and Ukrainian territory and more suffering of Ukrainian civil society, the less stable this setup becomes. Keep in mind a coup does not need to be an assassination or otherwise taking power by high ranking officers but can also be an essentially organic process bubbling up from the rank and file and literally leaving the front and marching on the capital.
So we'll see how it plays out but I would suggest understanding any peace terms being thrown around by Russia as messages to current and would-be coup plotters and participants.
Hence why floating these ideas are made public.
The other reason is that the West spins any Russia talk of peace as Russian weakness and Western media and policy makers really take any such signal to heart, which reduces their sense of urgency to send more weapons.
For example, when Russia stopped launching so many missiles, the Western establishment analysis community took that as basically Ukraine had already won the war. People within the policy making community have even noticed this pattern and "we've underestimated the Russians" has become essentially a meme at this point, but the pattern still holds: the recent Russian breakthroughs have been essentially emergency level events right up until this talk of Russian peace terms > Russia must therefore be weak > all is well.
Your peace suggestions are propaganda because they are completely unrealistic:
Quoting jorndoe
Is so unrealistic it's not worth even entertaining for the sake of argument.
Saying "I suggest a totally unrealistic peace deal that the Russians would never accept" is simply stating you want more war but you have come up with some propaganda cover for your desire for more war.
If you would just listen to yourself, you would notice how crazy your specifications for being pro-something are. :smirk:
You do realize how many Ukrainians have died in the war, how many maimed, how much the country has been depopulated (of mostly younger people in what is already demographic collapse), how much territory it has lost with no chance of recovering it?
I look at the result of not-peace is, entirely predictable from the beginning if Ukraine rejected peace terms based on neutrality (ideally before the war even started), and the result of our policy choices is absolutely terrible for Ukrainians as well as "Ukraine" as a nation-concept apart from its people, if that matters to you.
Cheering on Ukraine to fight in extremely adverse conditions with a sort of "Rocky underdog" mythical wishful thinking basis that simply ignores reality, does not help Ukrainians.
It sounds good to the Western ear conditioned by Hollywood movies, but it doesn't help Ukrainians to buildup a fantasy based view of the world and make decisions on that basis.
My position that Ukraine should accept neutrality, negotiate on that basis, take the Russian offer (ideally before the war started) but definitely the offer in 2022, is 100% pro-Ukraine as doing that would have saved so much Ukrainian lives and Ukrainian territory; the best outcome for Ukraine achievable considering the Wests' unwillingness to have skin in the game.
Encouraging (aka. bribing) and propping up Ukraine to go toe-to-toe with the Russian military is anti-Ukrainians-living.
Engaging in magical thinking about Ukraine's war prospects is delusional at best and just cynicism at worst (to have Ukrainians die to achieve US objectives for example).
They commit fully to the military option, even though there is no chance of victory.
Meanwhile, they categorically refuse dialogue and diplomatic negotiations, while Russia keeps signaling it wants a diplomatic settlement.
Why would the West insist on fighting a war it is clearly losing?
Victory was never the goal.
And if victory was never the goal, then what is?
My two cents: the US is using this war in an effort to decouple Europe from Russia, and to remilitarize Europe.
Why? Because both Europe and Russia will be crucial to China in the upcoming power struggle between it and the US, and both Europe and Russia stand to profit from said power struggle.
But not if the US manages to embroil the two in a war with each other.
I think this has always been the reason, ever since the US started pushing in Ukraine since 2008, when it was already clear its actions would lead to war.
Ok let's stick to your reasoning, despite the manipulative framing. Here is my question: by signaling willingness to a diplomatic settlement with the US since 2008 until now AND yet persisting in a conflict with Ukraine where European puppets are cheerfully embroiled into, isn't Putin (along with European political leaders), who all know to be unsurprisingly dumber and/or uneducated than Tzeench on economics, military strategy, politics, finance, propaganda etc. (so much so that he can solve anything in politics with 2 cents anonymous comments on the internet) playing by the US book and failing strategically EVEN IF he is "winning" the war ?
• Russian losses in world war 2 aren't the first thing you hear about around the world (cf the Holocaust)
• Russia didn't "win" the cold war (like "the West")
• Russia hasn't comparatively seen marked development (cf Japan)
• Russia/Moscow lost some control/influence internationally
• Russia isn't really a top-tier economy on the world stage (like the US)
• Russian Rubles aren't common in the international market/trade (like US$s, which came to Moscow)
• Russian isn't commonly spoken internationally (like English, which instead invaded Moscow)
• Russia hasn't been sort of inconspicuously "growing" (e.g. Ukraine and others going West instead)
• Russia isn't really a top influence(r) and power for all to (respectfully) listen or turn to
But
• Russia is the largest country in the world (and powerful)
• Russia can (does) produce impressive amounts of artillery
• Russia does have lots of educated/smart people
• Russia does have lots of resources, including some scientific/technological capacity
• Russia does have the largest nuclear weapons arsenal around
Frustrating for the present old-school autocratic Kremlin. Well, they can do something about that, one indignant way or another. Enemies identified, plans in motion. This stuff has (in part) set the stage for their (current) goings-and-doings.
[sup]By the way
• the Kremlin (circle) has a background in spycraft and up-scale manipulation
• the Kremlin has anxiety about Russia breaking up into different independent nations
• the Kremlin has seized impressive domestic control[/sup]
Russian Ministry (May 6, 2024) threatens the UK
Putin (May 29, 2024) threatens "the West"
Ryabkov (Jun 3, 2024) threatens the US
Sivkov (Jun 3, 2024) threatens Poland
Putin (Jun 5, 2024) threatens Germany
Lavrov (Jun 5, 2024) threatens French
Putin (Jun 5, 2024) threatens "the West"
The Kremlin (Jun 5, 2024) threatens (provokes) the US
Putin (Jun 5, 2024) threatens "the West"
Gurulyov (Jun 5, 2024) threatens the Netherlands
Putin (Jun 6, 2024) threatens the UK
I guess the response has always been: leave Ukraine be.
Toth and Sweet opines:
Russian spies, lies and sabotage are coming to America
[sup]— Mark Toth, Jonathan Sweet · The Hill · Jun 8, 2024[/sup]
Well, the article aligns with:
Russia’s Threat Puts Security at Forefront of European Elections (4m:35s interview)
[sup]— Konrad Krasuski, Piotr Skolimowski, Natalia Ojewska · Bloomberg · Jun 4, 2024[/sup]
Why Russia Is Happy at War
[sup]— Anastasia Edel · The Atlantic · Jun 9, 2024[/sup]
Incidentally reminded me of some earlier comments, e.g.:
Quoting ssu
Quoting ssu
Quoting ssu
Quoting ssu
For example, just how long has the inevitable collapse of the Eurozone and more generally, the EU, been predicted? Starting from that, it's easy to construct a vision where the aid to Ukraine is faltering and in deep trouble.
Both sides underestimate each other.
Matviyenko interviewed by Skabeyeva posted by Natalka on Jun 8, 2024 and Gerashchenko on Jun 10, 2024:
Quoting Valentina Matviyenko · Jun 2024
[tweet]https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1800248518940270787[/tweet]
I suppose they could head south and take a look.
Quoting boethius
Your "drip feed" theory presumes cohesive organized "feeders" with that (hidden) agenda.
Haven't really heard anyone pushing/discussing that (supposed) agenda, more like the usual debates quarrels dis/agreements bureaucracy.
Sorry to break up the circle jerk again, but the issues of contention here are:
1. Regardless of what you think about Russia, countries in our system have a right, and rationally do anyways, act in preemptive self defence. What's been referred to as legitimate security concerns. A nuclear power creating missile bases nearer and nearer to you is one such obvious security concern.
2. Regardless of what you think about point one above, it is just dumb to provoke a war, then actually fight a war, on the principle of denying Russia has legitimate security concerns that would lead a rational actor in the international system to wage preemptive war ... when apparently we all now agree that Ukraine would never join NATO anyways, but also not really we'll just go ahead and claim that's going to happen someday from time to time. Fighting for something you can never actually have is dumb.
3. Regardless of what you think about how smart it is to fight for a right to have something the relevant parties never give you (which, if they did, the whole point would be to then avoid a disastrous war such as what is happening right now). Fighting a disastrous war to (maybe, hopefully, wishfully) get something to protect from fighting disastrous wars, is completely moronic.
4. Regardless of what you think about fighting a disastrous war to (maybe) get something that would offer protection (maybe) from disastrous wars, it still only makes sense to do if you can actually win.
For example @ssu's argument at the start was that while agreeing with me that he saw no way Ukraine could win, well maybe Ukrainian general have something or know something we don't and will pull off a brilliant victory. Turns out Ukrainian generals had no such thing and exactly what was predictable given the available information is what happened. The corollary of @ssu's position is that if Ukraine had no surprise then their war effort is a disastrous mistake, immoral, got many people killed for nothing, and definitely they should have taken the Russian's offer at the start of the war (or before the war). But these positions are just conveniently swept under the rug of "Ukrainian agency".
5. Regardless of what you think about fighting a war you can't win, the West's policy has clearly been to make sure of this result by drip feeding in weapons systems. Now that the drip feed of weapons systems has run its course, the West has turned to drip feeding "maybe we will, maybe we won't" send in ground troops to turn the tide, to maintain the policy of having Ukraine fight, giving them hope (such as the next wonder weapon or wonder intervention; something we've already seen at the start with all the hullaballoo about a "no fly zone" which was critical in encouraging Ukrainians to fight while the weapons drip feed system was put into place: as that takes logistics).
As I've argued, this is my main problem with Western policy. We are clearly not even trying to help Ukrainians, but just propping them up to take an absolute beating in order to accomplish other things, all harmful to Europe.
6. Regardless of what you think of the drip feed theory, if there was some genuine intent to use the leverage of clearly being willing to drip feed weapons into Ukraine to seek a diplomatic solution that is favourable to Ukraine, the Western leaders would put on their big boy pants and go and try to negotiate that happening and using their leverage (such as the sanctions and so on; whole point of sanctions being to serve as leverage to compel compliance, if the goal to effect Russian decision making and not just have a big giant war for the sake of all the sweet, sweet profiteering).
Furthermore, sending money to a pervasively corrupt polity is a de facto bribe to the elites of that polity. That the West puts zero controls or supervision on the money nor the weapons sent into Ukraine is making explicit there's not even pretence that this money is not a de facto bribe. That the West recognizes a lot of that money and weapons "disappears" but has not found one single Euro of laundered money or laundered weapons outside Ukraine, is explicitly participating in the money laundering scheme.
And I can go on with even more moral and strategic problems from a "benefit Ukrainian" perspective.
However, I'll stop here for now to point out that even if all this was true:
Quoting jorndoe
Clearly Ukraine is not teaching Russia this lesson they are supposed to be learning.
Therefore, the policy of propping up Ukraine is to have it destroyed, have hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians killed and maimed and traumatized, depopulate the younger generations making the existing demographic collapse that much more catastrophic, simply for the gesture of "our hearts being in the right place" of wanting Russia to lose a war and "learn a lesson".
Notice also, no where in these positions by @ssu is there any concern for Ukrainian welfare.
The war is not existential for the Ukrainian people, Russia has no way of conquering all of Ukraine anyways and clearly doesn't want that headache if they could, the Russian speaking regions have pretty solid evidence they (a lot, perhaps even a very solid majority) happy being in Russia (considering the real repression they experience by Ukrainian speakers).
Therefore, if the war is not existential, there must be some reasonable cost to waging it to accomplish the objectives.
This is the core question, which no one on the self described "pro-Ukrainian" side has even attempted to answer: no matter what you think of "justice" there must be some limit to the cost to Ukrainians in their war. Likewise, regardless of what you think of Ukrainian just cause, it is not good for this so called just cause nor moral in and of itself for the West to continuously manipulate Ukraine with false promises and false assurances.
The policy maximizes damage to Ukraine and damages Russia as a side effect.
Maximizing damage to Russia would be just flooding in all the systems Ukraine could possibly use from day 1. And why even accept the overtone window of Javelins to F-16, why not pour in F-35s and all those fancy drones and so on. Of course, maximizing damage to Russia would likely result in Russia resorting to Nuclear weapons, hence the point of Drip Feed is to make it clear to the Russians that there is no credible attempt to actually cause them much trouble.
As you just posted, Kremlin is happy at war, so the Drip Feed is a favour to the Russian authoritarian power elite (which a large majority of them).
Quoting jorndoe
You haven't heard people openly discussing a hidden agenda?
Hmm, I wonder why that could be.
The policy only requires the United States as the other Ukraine supporters don't have anywhere close the capacity of the United States nor would they escalate beyond what the United States is doing anyways as they know their place: they have neither the means nor the motivation. Germany will supply tanks if the US supplies tanks.
Now, we know there is a hidden agenda because we know we are lied to about the rational behind weapons shipments.
The US spokespeople, including the president, will just take it as essentially common sense that "of course we can't supply Western artillery, of course we can't supply IFV's, of course we can't supply tanks, of course we can't supply short range missile, of course we can't supply long range missiles, of course we can't supply F-16s! we don't want to start WWIII man!!" and then when they change that policy they just ignore what they previously stated.
So, any rational observer can conclude that the reasons behind not only not-supplying the weapon systems in question but stating that it can't possibly be done, and then just going ahead and doing it, is because the criteria of what to supply when is clearly not stated.
The stated reasons for decisions just arbitrarily change without explanation, hence the actual reasons for decisions are hidden from us.
Furthermore, the timing of the escalation to the next weapon system is always in response to Russia getting the upper hand and the new weapons systems trying to restore balance. If you actually wanted to win you'd optimize all your weapons systems at the start; you wouldn't do things like have Ukraine go on an offensive with no air power to support the front nor any no long range missiles to disrupt the Russian rear.
But introducing all the useful systems from the beginning is really absolutely critical as you want Ukraine to not only get experience on those systems that they'd inevitably need to transition to (i.e. have some units using Western equipment as soon as possible so they gain experience and work out doctrine and then can train other Ukrainians in their language with actual battle experience when the transition needs to be scaled up later, when all the soviet equipment has been destroyed), but you'd want to do things like see if sprinkling in more sophisticated Western equipment with soviet systems is a force multiplier. For example, having one or a few Western MBT with better sensors, electronic warfare capabilities, and battlefield awareness with drone and other intelligence connectivity leading a company of soviet tanks and IFV's that are easier to maintain, Ukrainians already know how to use and have ammunition for, are smaller targets and so on, would be something you would want to try out in order to force multiply all the soviet equipment.
Most of all, if you actually wanted to help the Ukrainians, you'd conclude attacking the Russians is really dumb and you wouldn't do that, instead focusing on defence and making Russian progress as costly as possible and holding the card of a credible threat of a major offensive in response to Russian over commitment to their own offensives.
This is what the Finns did in the Winter war; they didn't embark on some suicidal offensive against the Soviets.
The reason this obvious strategy is not employed is because it would then give the game away that the only termination possible to the war is negotiation: we are making Russian progress costly in order to compel them to negotiate.
However, if you admit the only end to the war in negotiation and Ukraine isn't going to achieve any political goal through military conquest, then that obviously begs the question "well what negotiation? why not then go and negotiate an end to the war? avoid more people from dying? why are you here talking to me, go negotiate. I don't get it". Now, since the Russians are happy to negotiate if it was recognized in the West that negotiation was the only termination of the war feasible for the Ukrainians, and the sooner the better (most Ukrainian refugees would have returned if the war ended soonish after beginning, but by now they's largely made entirely new lives), then enthusiasm for the war would have dissipated and focus would have shifted to negotiation and that would have put enormous pressure on political leaders, in the West and Ukraine, to negotiate: sure, maintain the lines, but then use that leverage in a negotiation.
The US didn't want that, therefore negotiations need to be repudiated, the only rational basis to do that in a conflict is because you can achieve your goals by force, if Ukraine can achieve it's goals by force it should definitely go and do that, sooner the better as the Russians are increasing in strength, hence a disastrous offensive into heavily fortified Russian lines without air cover nor long range munitions and plenty of both on the Russian side. Once the offensive starts it's important that it doesn't end quickly as that would again give the game away that Ukraine has no hope of "winning" so it needs to be dragged out to be able to pretend that the offensive lasted so long and accomplished so much (or just people simply forget about their previous anticipation of evaluating Ukrainians offensive capabilities and the implication of that), and before you know it you've burned through your reserves and can no longer even keep up a defensive posture.
It's all very cynical and manipulative and none of this is designed for Ukrainian welfare.
That is my issue here.
The latest step in this process is the basing of F-16s in Poland and Romania, which makes the bases in these countries legitimate military targets.
This is of course what the US is hoping to provoke - a Russian attack on NATO soil, after which it can invoke NATO Art. 5 and forcefully drag Europe into the conflict.
That the bases are legitimate military targets doesn't mean Russia will strike them.
Russia clearly wants to avoid a war with NATO (otherwise they could have easily started on or then made sure "accidents" happen such as actual Russian missile "misses" that hit Poland), as Russia would have a lot to lose in a war with all of NATO even if it didn't go nuclear (and obviously Russia has also been avoiding nuclear war as they can start one of those any time).
It's simply not strategically sensible for Russia to get into a war with NATO as the US is still far away and very protected; taking a bunch of Europe "down too" isn't such a good participation trophy.
Well I agree that the US wants more escalation and triggering some messy bigger Eastern European war with Russia if Ukraine front line completely collapses I think would be their preference.
I'm just not sure how motivated Poland is to get into an actual war with Russia.
My reading of the Poles is that they very much like Russia and Ukraine fighting, but that's mainly because they don't like either Russians nor Ukrainians, and they view Ukrainians as corrupt and stupid to get into a war.
It's only in Western Europe and the US (and Finland apparently) that the entire reality can just be denied, but I don't think that's the position of the Poles.
Then there's the problem of Nuclear weapons.
I think you're completely correct that the US power brokers would love nothing more than a bigger conventional war in Eastern Europe with French and English troops streaming to the Polish front, with the US raining down conventional missiles and picking apart Russian air defence.
US can hang back on their Island, commit mostly standoff munitions and not real any troops and Europe has to deal with it. Of course, the West wouldn't defeat Russia, as there's too much strategic depth, but it would be devastating economically for both Russia and Europe (and Uncle Sam likey-like).
However, it seems to me the first thing that would happen is the Russians will immediately respond with Nuclear weapons and we'd enter a cycle of nuclear escalation management where conventional fighting essentially stops.
Furthermore, the Europeans seem utterly politically clueless, so I highly doubt Europe as a block will be able to push back on the United States' desire for chaos.
There's virtually zero risk of blowback for the Americans, as long as they can mislead the Europeans into doing the dirty work for them (in effect keeping the US out of the (nuclear) crosshairs).
What all of this tells us is that the Americans will push for chaos in Europe, because they have no reason not to. The Russians will at some point likely feel forced to react by striking NATO bases, and that will provide fuel for further escalation.
I see no reason why this should change, unless the US comes under serious threat. Until then it can simply keep pushing forward its pawns as it pleases. The only thing it needs to avoid is a general nuclear war.
PS: As I wrote this post, news hit about the Russians carrying out missile drills off the coast of Cuba. This is a clear signal that they are trying to change the situation in which there is no risk for the United States.
Agreed, no qualms from me here.
Quoting Tzeentch
This is why I focus on Poland. To expand the war you need willing front line participants and the only real candidate for that would be Poland. My understanding of the Poles is that they view themselves as clever enough to have Ukrainians (who they don't like) fight Russians (who they don't like) while also being clever enough to not fight Russians themselves and destroy their country for US interests as the Ukrainians are doing.
Maybe a Pole would contradict me, but my understanding is that Poles view Ukrainians as useful idiots, and they don't view the war as something they want to start fighting on their own territory.
The Baltics don't really matter as they don't actually threaten Russia, they are simply too small so if shit going to start on NATO territory it has to be Poland, and the Poles would have to be willing participants to both let the escalation happen as well as trigger Article 5.
Haven't they, just like the Romanians, mentioned Art. 5 when supposed missile debris landed in their borders?
Now both of these countries are planning to base Ukrainian F-16s within their borders, which makes them legitimate targets. This would in effect make them direct participants in the war.
If they had no intention of getting directly involved, the US seems to have been successful in dragging them ever closer.
The thing I am increasingly worried about, is for the US to do something extreme - something that will create a crisis that takes all these nations that have positioned themselves close to the precipice and plunges them in.
I think they are, that's my argument here.
Quoting Tzeentch
Well they still want to deter the Russians from actually attacking them. Them mentioning Art. 5 does not really indicate they want to escalate and get into a war with the Russians, but more they want to deter both the Russians (and everyone else) "starting shit" due to Art. 5.
Quoting Tzeentch
This is obviously a dangerous move, but the delay after delay after delay on the F16s would indicate what these NATO parties are actually trying to do is maintain the status quo, not escalate.
The armour repair facilities are legitimate targets too but Russia doesn't strike those. Why? Because they don't need to, so the F16s as "scary" as they sound can easily be introduced in theatre as more of the same: not worth striking outside Ukraine.
If the F16 do longer represent a real threat (as there is no longer any ground forces of significance to support), one could bet the Russians then wouldn't escalate the matter further.
There's also American influence to consider. The White House is desperate to prop up Ukraine until the election as no one likes a "loser" and all the false promises being clearly demonstrated to be false promises.
Therefore, dangling the prospect of F16s to the Ukrainians is critical in motivating them to keep fighting in hopes this "wonder weapon" changes things, and then if things get too bad may actually be necessary to introduce the F16s to try to stabilize the situation.
Poland may not want F16s on its territory but US officials may both pressure to do it anyways while assuring them they have some way of avoiding escalation (the F16s won't do much, the Ukrainians are functionally defeated already).
Quoting Tzeentch
As mentioned above, obviously US has a lot of influence over what Poland does.
Furthermore, as with Macron, countries still want to threaten to do things as "deterrence" and for "me feel strong" vibes. Behind the scenes things could be very far from any actual escalation.
Quoting Tzeentch
This is certainly something to worry about, but it's possible they already did it.
Blowing up Nord Stream was pretty extreme. If the concert terrorist attack was Whitehouse / CIA, that was pretty extreme too. Likewise plenty other attacks inside Russia, on the bridge, oil refineries etc. seem only possible with CIA and their lapdogs in SAS.
Sanctions was an extreme option too (at least in US policy makers perception as they kept calling it the "Nuclear Option" on their onscreen mutual masterbation sessions).
So lot's of extreme things have happened already.
The problem with escalating to a bigger regional conflict is that there are few ways to do that without front line country participants.
Anything you do to escalate inside Ukraine just results in Russia striking Ukraine harder.
If you did exceed what the Russians are willing to tolerate, then Russia has the option of simply escalating to nuclear weapons inside Ukraine.
The problem in this scenario is that (precisely because Ukraine isn't in NATO and it makes no sense to fight a war simply based on the wish to be in NATO) there's simply no logic in retaliating against Russia with nuclear weapons.
For example, Russia nukes a Ukrainian base, so US nukes a Russian base ... well this will just result in Russia nuking an European NATO base.
Ok, now US has to respond to that, but the Russian response to another nuke will be something like nuking every single NATO base in Europe and then saying the next step is generalized strategic launch if they see even one more missile in the air.
Well what do you do then? This threat will for sure be credible at this stage of escalation.
Obviously you back down. So since this is the result the whole process makes no sense.
Therefore, to avoid a nuclear game you can't win, you respond to Russia nuclear strike in Ukraine with conventional weapons.
However, Russia can just keep nuking Ukraine.
That is the key problem here.
Responding to a Russian nuke with conventional weapons in Ukraine to avoid European bases being hit with nuclear weapons (the likely response to actually nuking a Russian base), simply results in Russia nuking Ukraine into submission and winning that way.
Therefore, escalating within Ukraine to a bigger war can certainly work, but just results in a bigger war in Ukraine involving Russia nuking Ukraine. That is the rational response for Russia in response to anything conventional that does anger them enough or then actually threatens them enough with military defeat.
So, the only other way to broaden the conflict is to get another front line country involved.
The only candidate is Poland as far as I can see.
There's not only the issue of getting the poles involved (as they need to go through several rounds of escalation and need to formally invite NATO to the party), and at some point even corrupt politicians with binders full of compromat may not be willing to start a war on their own territory (only Ukrainians are corrupt enough to do that).
Then there's the problem of Belarus and that Poland doesn't actually border Russia. There's way to manage that problem but it's still an annoying obstacle to escalating WWIII.
Conclusion, although I agree that the White House wants a bigger war (make a bigger problem that kills a lot more people to solve your current problems that are currently killing less people, is the Neocon religion), there are real obstacles to achieving that.
Now, do I share your concern that "life finds a way" and it turns out the frogs are gay, or however that was supposed to work, yes I do, but my difference with your position is that I'm of the opinion that the obstacles are too great and so I'm predicting this escalation won't happen. Could happen. A lot of powerful people want it to happen. Definitely black swans go for cheap nowadays. But still, seems too tall a task even for the rambunctious and wily blackest of black-ops agents at the CIA to pull off.
Sometimes there's just a war too far.
Lets hope so.
The way I am reading Washington's behavior is that they are "shaping the battlefield" - the current Ukraine crisis isn't the grand finale. It was a tool to decouple Russia from Europe, remilitarize the region, and sow adversarial sentiment.
This creates fertile soil for conflict in the future.
With how dim-witted the Europeans are, I sense that we are one crisis away from war. Is it within the United States' power to initiate or even stage such a crisis when it suits its agenda? I believe so.
This is certainly true, but I think for now the US has as much as it can handle.
There's also Biden's cognitive decline, could he handle an actual crisis? Not just sending weapons to Ukraine and talking a big (but extremely slow) game?
Just doesn't seem doable. To handle a nuclear escalation cycle you need a leader pretty quick on the draw (for a lot of reasons).
Me feeling considering everything, for what it's worth, is that the US has achieved exactly what it set out to achieve with the Ukraine war:
Quoting Tzeentch
How the US establishment then handles the fact it can't win the war that achieved so much profits already, is to just let if fester, then just walk away one day, start a new war somewhere else, we just "move on" and anyone who's like "what the fuck did we just do in [insert last country to be destroyed]" is a ridiculous anachronistic busybody, a dinosaur from a bygone age, and polite society does not pay attention to such folk and their vapid noises.
1. Russia and Europe are in prime position to benefit from a war between the US and China.
2. Russia and Europe will both fill a critical role for China in said war, since China will need markets it can reach over land when its sea routes are blocked. Note that conflict in Iran and Eastern Europe would seal Europe off from China entirely.
3. European populism threatens to slip Europe from Washington's grasp, turning it from a vassal into a potential rival. (In terms of potential, Europe even surpasses the US and China)
So, being the United States, what do you do?
NATO will be useless in a conflict with China, especially if the Europeans start thinking for themselves.
You look for a way to leave NATO while simultaneously getting your two rivals (Europe and Russia) to fight each other.
A hypothetical scenario (not necessarily the most likely, but just to show how easily one can imagine this escalating):
Trump becomes president, and leaves NATO. With the US ditching Europe, European war paranoia will spike - keep in mind the Ukraine war may still be going on. This creates opportunities for trickery. A false flag attack on a base or ship, an assassination of some high-profile political figure, etc.
Wars have been started over less, and it wouldn't be the first time the US fabricates a casus belli.
Of course the US doesn't intend to be involved in this conflict at all. It will be its parting gift to Europe.
This is true, but Europe and Russia would also anyways benefit from mutual peace.
And if there was no US-China war then Europe, Russia and China would benefit from the peace.
So either way US relative power would decrease.
With the war that doesn't happen but also Europe becomes a vassal province so Europes power is simply absorbed fully into American power.
So even if Russia benefits from the war (something US planners would certainly have thought possible considering their own RAND analysis told them that) and also there is no war with China, having a China-Russia power block and then a US block with Europe as a side kick is a much better prospect to manage US power decline than simply letting the world get on more-or-less peacefully.
Without the war, the Euro could have just quietly overtaken the USD and that would be that.
So you also get the benefits of your point 3:
Quoting Tzeentch
Even without a war with China.
The US strategy may not be to get into a war with China, just containment and slowing China down as much as possible while the US consolidates imperial domination where it can.
The current process can be as easily interpreted as US, Russia and China working out the lines on the "spheres of influence" map as it can be an actual conflict between them.
Eternal foes usually become your frenemies, as you must inevitably learn to live together.
There is no available strategy for the US to go out and, through conflict, actually dominate either Russia or China.
There does, however, exist a strategy for the US to go out and, through conflict, dominate Europe.
Now, it could be the US is trying to do something it can't actually do and this second strategy is a byproduct.
Or, it could be the US is trying to do what it can actually do.
Indeed. And Russia understands this, which is why they are trying to get a diplomatic solution to the crisis. The problem is, Europe does not.
Europe's naivety is the real risk factor here. Zero geopolitical awareness makes them irrational and a willing pawn.
Quoting boethius
Quoting boethius
Personally, I don't think the eventual war can be avoided, because the US has pressed itself right against China's doorstep where it poses an existential threat by threatening to cut off all Chinese sea trade. (Quite comparable to the situation it created vis-á-vis Russia)
So basically it has created a completely unacceptable situation for the Chinese, and any attempt by the Chinese to resolve it will result in war.
And I think you're right that if there is no war, China would surpass the United States naturally.
This is why I disagree with your view that we may be looking at the multipoles working out their new respective spheres of influence in a somewhat civilized fashion. The United States doesn't show any signs that it will respect a sphere of influence of the challenging powers.
The status quo favors the challenging powers, which is all the more reason for the former hegemon to seek to bring things to a head before it is surpassed.
Well, real risk to Europeans that's for sure.
It's unfortunate to see, being European myself, and will likely result in the right wing making things even worse. To summarize the process, the "centre" neo-liberals do corruption to benefit the US Empire (and themselves personally) whereas the right wing want to do corruption to benefit the local rich in their countries, resulting in a double dose of state asset pilfering and other foul deeds.
Quoting Tzeentch
The problem with the US-China war is there seems to me no way for the US to win. There's also far more costs in a war with China than with Russia due to the global supply chains.
And, of note, the US has not blockaded or otherwise physically interfered with Russia's ability to trade, so that they'd be willing to cross that line with China seems far fetched to me. It's not just the US that depends on Chinese goods but most of the world so that itself does not seem manageable.
Then there's maintaining the blockade itself. China will be "the victim" of this clear act of war and would sink US vessels and down US planes. Even if somehow has a strong advantage to start, China has enormous industrial capacity to build more drones, more missiles, and figure things out.
I just don't see how the US could maintain such a blockade of any extended period of time.
Invading Chinese mainland obviously isn't possible, and the only other option would be to nuke China. China also has nuclear weapons.
So I just don't see a viable endgame for the US to go to war with China.
Now, certainly situation is tense and there could be "events" as tensions rise, essentially border skirmishes of one sort or another, but I don't see either side having any rational to start some sort of actual war which would quickly transition to simply the US blockading China, which seems to me the only conventional "war" move on the table.
Quoting Tzeentch
They're obviously accepting it so far.
They don't like it, obviously, but the Chinese have been clearly playing the long game of economics since decades. The "remote Islands game" has no actual strategic impact and is purely symbolic; no one is actually obstructing any shipping from these various islands.
The big issue is of course Taiwan but the Chinese have clearly been able to live with that for many decades and with enough economic ascendency and with the decline of the US Empire it should be possible to simply re-absorb Taiwan eventually.
In other words, the current dynamic favours China as the US is decreasing in relative power as the Chinese increase their own. So why start a war to formally control Taiwan when that's not a critical strategic issue? Taiwan does remain an island at the end of the day that does not threaten mainland China (in comparison to Ukraine that has a 2000 km border with Russia).
An alternative model for the Us-China conflict is the US-Iran conflict. Many powerful people in the US, really, really, really wanted to go to war with Iran, but it's simply not practical to do.
Truly?
I'm convinced the second conflict breaks out, all of China's sea trade will be cut off and that this is their main strategic challenge. This threat is what prompted them to launch the Belt & Road Initiative - to create overland alternatives to US-dominated sea lanes.
The threat is strategic in nature. That is to say, during peace-time all is well, but during war all of these trump cards would be played. And if you're China or Russia, and you see the US quietly collecting trump cards against you, they perceive that as a threat. It's essentially a knife aimed at their throat.
When the conflict finally happens it will be framed in such a way that China is the bad guy, and 'the West' will unquestioningly accept the American narrative as truth, as we saw in the Ukraine crisis.
Quoting boethius
Note that cutting off sea trade is different from a total blockade. The US and its Pacific allies don't need a total blockade, because they control several rings of islands and straits that would make it extremely easy to monitor and target Chinese sea traffic.
Crippling Chinese trade would be a walk in the park for the US. The Chinese know this, and it's also the reason why the Chinese are very careful to avoid armed conflict.
Personally, I think the US is gearing up to create a situation like this before the Chinese fully surpass the US. The problem for the US is that its pivot to Asia is taking time, due to unfinished business in Europe and the Middle-East. However, this is also looking a lot like "shaping the battlefield" - ensuring all pieces are in place before the grand finale starts.
Note that if there is chaos in Eastern Europe and Iran, China would be effectively cut off from Europe, the Middle-East and Africa over land.
These things aren't coincidental.
Quoting boethius
There are many speculations about Raisi's death having been an assassination. If that's the case, it follows a familiar pattern of the US sowing chaos in the Middle-East.
Iran just so happens to be a crucial link in Chinese overland access to the rest of the world.
Ukraine-Russia Peace Is as Elusive as Ever. But in 2022 They Were Talking.
[sup]— Anton Troianovski, Adam Entous, Michael Schwirtz, Andrew E Kramer, Julian E Barnes, Maria Varenikova, Gray Beltran, Rumsey Taylor · New York Times · Jun 15, 2024[/sup]
The sticking points that kept Russia and Ukraine apart
[sup]— Anton Troianovski, Michael Schwirtz · New York Times via Japan Times · Jun 16, 2024[/sup]
NYT publishes alleged draft of failed Russia-Ukraine peace deal (note, this is Russian state media)
[sup]— RT · Jun 15, 2024[/sup]
From security guarantees to territorial control, these differences led to failure of Ukraine-Russia peace talks
[sup]— Firstpost · Jun 16, 2024[/sup]
Someone summarized ...
• Russia withdrew previous objections to Ukraine's full membership of EU
• Ukraine proposed never to join NATO
• Russia wanted Ukraine to make Russian an official language
• Russia wanted Ukraine and all other signatories of treaties to lift 2014+ sanctions and publicly call on others to follow suit
• Ukraine was to give up Donbas and recognize Crimea as part of Russia
• Ukraine did not recognize Russian sovereignty over occupied territory (independence being a separate topic)
• Russia's ceasefire proposal stated that Ukraine withdraw all troops
• Ukraine wanted allies to be bound by a treaty to intervene if attacked again
• For Ukrainians, binding security guarantees were the basis of a potential peace agreement signed by several countries
• The Kremlin required Russia to be among guarantor states, all of who must approve response in case of attack on Ukraine
• Ukraine to be permanently neutral (with limited militarization)
More recently ...
Ukraine Peace Summit: Putin demands more Ukrainian land to end war; Kyiv rejects 'ultimatum'
[sup]— WION · Jun 15, 2024 · 5m:26s[/sup]
Ukraine conference joint communiqué: full text
[sup]— Thomas Escritt · Reuters · Jun 15, 2024[/sup]
80 Countries Back Ukraine's 'Territorial Integrity' At Swiss Peace Summit
[sup]— RFE/RL · Jun 16, 2024[/sup]
Ukraine summit strives for consensus, way forward uncertain
[sup]— Dave Graham, Sabine Siebold, Steve Holland, Thomas Escritt, Dan Peleschuk, Alvise Armellini, Matthias Williams, Mark Potter, Hugh Lawson · Reuters · Jun 16, 2024[/sup]
Swiss summit backs Ukraine’s ‘territorial integrity’, calls for peace talks with Russia
[sup]— France 24 · Jun 16, 2024 · 6m:59s[/sup]
Not really much new.
Isn't this a non-starter from Ukraine's perspective, esp. in 2022?
Seemed like they focussed more on peace guarantees (future).
I think they also differentiate Donbas becoming part of Russia and an entirely independent Donbas.
If you're asking my own opinion, then I tend to start out simpler. The Kremlin rolling in and grabbing what they see fit isn't acceptable. EOS. Extending and imposing the regress of Putin's Russia onto another country makes it worse, both for Ukraine and others.
But it's up to the Ukrainians. Ukraine isn't a kindergarten.
[tweet]https://x.com/NatalkaKyiv/status/1802052146843529469[/tweet]
Also reported by Agentstvo (Jun 15, 2024).
Hard to tell what the impact is, but there's more where that came from.
War does things to people. Hopefully The Hague also does something.
Russia says Finland's NATO accession is dangerous historic mistake (— Andrew Osborn, Jake Cordell, Mark Heinrich · Reuters · Apr 4, 2023)
Quoting Peskov
Finland joins NATO in historic shift, Russia threatens 'counter-measures' (— Anne Kauranen, Andrew Gray, Tom Little, Essi Lehto, Kate Abnett, Jan Strupczewski, Sabine Siebold, Angus MacSwan, Mark Heinrich, Patricia Zengerle, Nick Macfie, Richard Chang, Rosalba O'Brien · Reuters · Apr 4, 2023)
Finland: Almost all the ground forces in Russia's immediate area are now in Ukraine (— Mika Mäkeläinen, Eva Sarlin, Päivi Koskinen · Yle · Jun 19, 2024)
Security, though?
I think it starts form when you treat your own soldiers as cannon fodder, expendable, that has a psychological effect on them as they know (and naturally do notice) that they are viewed as so. When you cannot oppose this, but you can do whatever towards the enemy and the civilian population, you can then take out your frustrations on these.
It's actually surprising how the Russian army has now when mobilized turned in many ways into the Red Army of WW2.
Yet if are reminded that you can be court-martialed for killing, torturing or raping civilians, then that limits these kinds of actions.
Unprecedented GPS jamming attack affects 1600 aircraft over Europe
[sup]— Jeremy Hsu · New Scientist · Mar 29, 2024[/sup]
GPS jamming traced to Russia after flights over Europe suspended
[sup]— Jeremy Hsu · New Scientist · May 1, 2024[/sup]
Innovation: Recent GPS jamming in regions of geopolitical conflict
[sup]— Dong L Wu · GPS World · May 24, 2024[/sup]
Newest NATO Member Sweden Says Russia Disrupting Its Satellite Networks
[sup]— Hugo Miller, Jonas Ekblom, Greg Sullivan, Alessandro Speciale · Bloomberg · Jun 20, 2024[/sup]
Nordic satellites targeted by Russia after Sweden’s NATO accession
[sup]— Ryan Daws · Telecoms Tech News · Jun 21, 2024[/sup]
According to Hugo Miller, the Kremlin is testing the EU and NATO.
What (if any) would an appropriate response be?
As an aside, as long as Hungary has ongoing deals with Rosatom (Paks II) they aren't likely to accept nuclear energy sanctions against Russia. I suppose that is to be expected. Would it be (too) awkward for them to participate in other sanctions?
Turbin Arseny (— Memorial · Jun 20, 2024)
Not normal.
The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Shoigu and Gerasimov (Jun 25, 2024) for civilian harm and crimes against humanity.
It's unlikely that there will be a trial in the foreseeable future.
The European Court of Human Rights concluded the CASE OF UKRAINE v. RUSSIA (RE CRIMEA) (Jun 25, 2024) listing whatever Russian offenses/crimes from before they were expelled from the Council of Europe (Mar 16, 2022).
The legalities cover Feb 27, 2014 through Mar 16, 2022.
The regress of Putin's Russia has been evident for some time.
'Cultural Expropriation': Russia Steps Up Seizures Of Artifacts In Occupied Ukraine
[sup]— Nikolai Berg, Robert Coalson · RFE/RL · Oct 28, 2023[/sup]
Russians destroyed the ancient site of Chersonesus and erected a new building in its place
[sup]— Odessa Journal · Jun 27, 2024[/sup]
According to UNESCO, it's part of wider ruinage, whether accidental due to the war or intentional efforts (land grab, Russification, re-enculturation, old playbook). [sup](2001, 2015, 2022Oct21, 2022Nov8, 2023Aug9)[/sup]
ENTRETIEN. Guerre en Ukraine : "Vladimir ne négocie jamais, sa proposition est un cessez-le-feu Potemkine" (en)
[sup]— Martin Planques · La Dépêche · Jun 14, 2024[/sup]
Your mileage may vary, though some of her claims have come up in the thread before, consistent with observations.
Russian embassies overflowing with requests to relocate to country — MFA
[sup]— TASS · Jun 27, 2024[/sup]
Quoting Zakharova
Dear followers, have you noticed any floods of people wishing to move to Russia from the "oppression of liberal democracies?"
[sup]— Gerashchenko · Jun 28, 2024[/sup]
[tweet]https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1806611266703700114[/tweet]
A most egregious abuse of grammar. Requests cannot ''literally'' flood ...unless they are somehow presented in liquid form. :chin:
I was kind of wondering if they counted people in occupied territories.
···
The invasion more or less slammed the brakes on Ukraine's efforts. Lawless and Soboliev (known from the 2014 commotion in Ukraine):
Takeaways from AP’s report on Ukraine’s battle to defend its democracy in wartime
[sup]— Jill Lawless · AP · Jun 28, 2024[/sup]
Organized efforts:
The role of psychological warfare in the battle for Ukraine
[sup]— Zara Abrams · APA · Jun 1, 2022[/sup]
Putin and the Third Rome
[sup]— Niels Drost, Beatrice de Graaf · Brill · Dec 12, 2022[/sup]
Inside Putin's push to rewrite Russian history in favor of his war in Ukraine
[sup]— Yuliya Talmazan, Artem Grudinin · NBC · Sep 3, 2023[/sup]
From playgrounds to parade grounds: Russian schools are becoming increasingly militarized
[sup]— Tim Lister, Katharina Krebs · CNN · Sep 25, 2023[/sup]
To what end? (remains a pertinent question)
Titles might have been part of AI prompts, they appear to be the main message to be conveyed.
Note, "euromore·eu" can be traced back to the Kremlin, and may become unavailable at any time.
Presumably referring to Larry C Johnson (title resonating with this post above):
Quoting Larry K. Johnson (CIA): Americans are leaving for Russia for freedom · 20.05.2024
Supposedly referring to a Margarita Waldman:
Quoting Anti-war media are being squeezed out of Europe. Preparing for World War III? · 26.06.2024
Presumably referring to Steffen Kotré:
Quoting German MP Cotre called the facts of US involvement in the bombing of SP-2 undeniable · 30.06.2024
Formatting (and embedded links) not included, just the text.
Various other examples can be found, fuel price problems due to sanctions, posts impersonating Ukrainians, nefarious Ukrainians selling given weapons, heck 5G causing maladies.
Russia’s heaviest bombardment of Kyiv in 4 months kills at least 31 and hits a children’s hospital (footage 54s) (— Hanna Arhirova, Illia Novikov, Samya Kullab · AP · Jul 8, 2024)
Russian missile attacks kill at least 41, hit children's hospital, Ukraine says (— Olena Harmash, Max Hunder, Anastasiia Malenko, Yuliia Dysa, Oleksander Kozhukhar, Kanishka Singh, Emma Farge, Tom Balmforth, Ron Popeski, Cynthia Osterman, Christopher Cushing · Reuters · Jul 8, 2024)
Kabelmysteriene (original Norwegian)
The cable mysteries (English translation via google)
[sup]— Benjamin Fredriksen, Beth M Pettersen, Gyda K Hesla, Inghild Eriksen, Håvard Gulldahl · NRK · Jun 26, 2022[/sup]
Hybrid CoE Paper 18: The Arctic after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: The increased risk of conflict and hybrid threats
[sup]— Andreas Østhagen · Hybrid CoE · May 10, 2023[/sup]
Whatever the case, Canada and others have made various parallel observations. [sup](2021Apr4, 2021Apr5, 2021Apr12, 2022Mar28, 2022Nov16, 2022Nov22, 2022Nov25, 2023Feb20, 2023Apr20, 2023May2, 2024Jun20)[/sup]
Venturing a guess, in some cases, the Kremlin machine is running basic empirical procedures: test, watch, learn.
? not all directly related to Ukraine, but to try catching contours of wider endeavors
The Putin System | Putin – 20 years
[sup]— Fabian Burkhardt (translation by Robert Orttung) · ?ekoder · Mar 18, 2020[/sup]
From $7 graffiti to arson and a bomb plot: How Russia’s ‘shadow war’ on NATO members has evolved
[sup]— Nick Paton Walsh, Sarah Dean, Karolina Jeznach, Clayton Nagel · CNN · Jul 10, 2024[/sup]
Russian assassination plots against those supporting Ukraine uncovered in Europe, official says
[sup]— Aamer Madhani, Geir Moulson, Ellen Knickmeyer, Rebecca Santana · AP · Jul 12, 2024[/sup]
They're close to committing acts of war against a bunch of countries. I guess it's consistent with their ramblings about 2 or 3 continents.
The Shahed entered Belarus at 3 a.m. and flew over 350 km (— Belarusian Hajun project · Jul 13, 2024)
The Shahed entered Belarus at 3 a.m. and flew more than 350 km (— Belarusian Gayun | Belarusian Hajun project · Jul 13, 2024)
[tweet]https://twitter.com/Hajun_BY/status/1812062523182440689[/tweet]
Four enemy UAVs were shot down by units of mobile fire groups of the Defense Forces in the Donetsk and Kharkiv regions. The fifth - left the airspace of Ukraine in the direction of the Gomel region of Belarus. (— Air Force Commander Mykola Oleschuk · Jul 13, 2024)
Russian drone incursion prompts Belarusian military response (— TWA · essanews · Jul 13, 2024)
As far as I know, just about the only response to Kremlinian nuclear rattling, was Washington saying that there would be severe consequences. Maybe something more was said behind closed doors.
A different response could be for NATO to publically declare a reciprocal return. Say, if Russia uses a nuclear bomb, then they'll get one in return, and so on. That would then be more proactive/direct — nothing preemptive, but as a "mechanistic" reaction, sort of "set in stone", seemingly predictable.
Are there strategies here, in terms of public perception versus deterrence? Outright nuclear war, however unlikely, would be bad for all, fear thereof can be useful. Then there's the North Korean wildcard.
End result, Trump will make his grandiose attempt for a peace deal, which very likely it will fail. Trump angrily will want to cut all support to Ukraine, but Pentagon and the Republic Party won't accept this, and Trump will end up cutting the aid to Ukraine. For the Russians this war isn't a sideshow from where to "pivot" somewhere else as for the Americans, hence if they aren't fought to a standstill, they'll continue the war. Russia will halt the war only if continuing the war leads to a far more worse outcome. This should be understood from the Russians.
Europe should understand that for at least 4 years with Trump the US will be a very unpredictable ally and they have to put money on defense and support Ukraine themselves (hopefully increase the aid).
The biggest obstacle is Ukraine itself, which got royally fucked by the US and cronies, and is now refusing to be forced into a shitty deal by the same people that encouraged it to fight on. I'd say that's somewhat understandable from the Ukrainian side, but it's a bitter pill they will eventually be forced to swallow.
The reason the royal fucking hasn't come full circle is because Ukraine probably holds some serious leverage over the Biden administration.
Once Trump enters office that will be off the table, and he will likely be free to force Ukraine to sign an uncomfortable peace deal with the Russians or withdraw support.
After that, the Russians will in all likelihood seek a return to the pre-2014 status quo, restoring economic ties with Europe. They have no reason to involve themselves into large-scale conflict with Europe when the US and China are on the cusp of war, and with Europe and Russia standing to profit greatly from that conflict.
With denazification and all that? Lol.
Quoting Tzeentch
That's what I was writing about. Trump makes absolutely shitty peace deals. The peace deal with the Taleban was really surrender, which then Biden gladly accepted (and hence there's absolutely no discussion of this defeat as both parties are culprits to the lost war). I bet that Kim Il Sung would have gladly accepted a similar peace terms, and if South Korea would have been left to face North Korea and China alone, I'm sure that there would be unified Korea, just as there's a Vietnam today.
Quoting Tzeentch
Good luck with that. Only when Putin is dead and buried perhaps something like that can happen.
Quoting Tzeentch
Russia wants Finlandization of all Europe. And if the US "pivot people" get their way and US really "pivots" to Asia (what that means I don't know as the US is already in Asia) and doesn't care Europe anymore and the EU doesn't hold together, then Russia can pick every European country one-by-one. Russia is far more powerful than any European nation on it's own. Hence it's no surprise that Russia wants to break the Atlantic tie.
Europe doesn't profit from a US China war. Russia does. Anything that's worse for the US is good for Putin's Russia.
The point is to enter negotiations and make a deal that's acceptable for both sides. This already happened in March/April 2022, so it's clearly possible.
Quoting ssu
Well, a shitty peace deal is all the Ukrainians will be getting and they have the US and cronies to thank for it.
Quoting ssu
The most important factor in whether this can happen is whether the US pivots and stops fueling Russophobia in Europe.
Once the European leaders start thinking for themselves again, they will seek normalization too.
Quoting ssu
Russia has a fraction of Europe's GDP and population. Russia is hardly a threat if the Europeans would just get their heads out of their asses. There's no basis for this type of fearmongering nonsense.
Quoting ssu
Europe would profit immensely from a US-China war, because it would become a critical market for both the US and China if it stays on the sideline. Russia will do the same thing.
Furthermore, while the US and China beat each other to a pulp, Europe and Russia would remain intact and grow in relative power.
Why do you think the US is trying so hard to embroil Europe and Russia in a war with each other? It's trying to prevent either of them from becoming the laughing third.
It's easy to understand why the Russians are so keen on a diplomatic settlement when you understand this context.
The only people who don't seem to understand anything are the Europeans.
Worrisome? Well, something similar is likely going on elsewhere. Seems unlikely it'll have much impact for the time being.
Adding to other reports (schools, language, museums) ... land grab, Russification ...
[sup]• Ukrainians say they were pressured to register babies as Russian during occupation (— Reuters · Mar 3, 2023)
• Russia Threatens Ukrainians Who Refuse Russian Citizenship (— HRW · May 16, 2023)
• Russia forces Ukrainians in occupied territories to take its passports – and fight in its army (— AP · Mar 15, 2024)
• The enemy does not register pregnant women without a Russian passport (— UA Gov · Jul 7, 2024)
• Russia’s Occupiers Steal Homes, Hearts, and Minds (— CEPA · Jul 10, 2024)
• Enemy threats to seize cars from Ukrainians who do not receive a Russian passport starting in 2025 (— UA Gov · Jul 18, 2024)[/sup]
External responses have been fairly consistent ... Leave Moldova be[sup](radiochisinau, rferl)[/sup], leave Ukraine be[sup](nato)[/sup] ...
Quoting Anthony Albanese (via The Guardian · Jul 13, 2024)
Official bullshits to everyone's faces (again), maybe that's become the norm:
Quoting Sergey Lavrov · via The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs · Jul 17, 2024
Maybe Ukraine should go for "an eye for an eye"?
Trump and NATO: Global Perspectives on the 2024 NATO Summit and America (— Liana Fix (US), Alessandro Marrone (Italy), Wojciech Lorenz (Poland), Fyodor Lukyanov (Russia) · CFR · Jul 17, 2024)
While glancing through these memos, I get a recurring sense of missed perspective - to what end?
Without any help from the West Russia would have likely obtained it's objectives. Which would have been even more shitty for the country. Likely they would have lost the coast to the Black Sea.
This is pure "what if" arguments, which are unprobable and now .
As noted far earlier in this thread, there were aspirations for annexing Crimea right from the start when the Soviet Union collapsed. Then there's all the talk, all the aspirations for getting Novorossiya and hence carving up Ukraine... as now has happened.
But this is totally futile debate as we simple here disagree. You insist that everything happened because of NATO enlargement and the West.
We have been over this, so no reason to go again in rounds.
Not really consistent with prior statements, and not consistent with his present VP pick, but who knows.
, do you think the demilitarization deNazification irredentism stuff (pertaining just to Ukraine) was blather for the gallery? (I'm guessing yes, except when in service of neo-colonialism.)
The point is, you're projecting aims and goals onto the Russians for which there is no basis.
Russian rhetoric and behavior has been surprisingly consistent over the course of more than a decade when it comes to this issue.
They bent over backwards to try to preserve peace in face of NATO expansion - that's how much they valued stable relations and trade ties with the West.
Ukraine was a bridge too far, and that too they tried to resolve diplomatically, even though they were consistently ignored by NATO. Even the Minsk accords were agreed upon by NATO in bad faith, showing that it's NATO and not Russia that has rejected diplomatic solutions.
After the war broke out, the Russians have been signaling for a diplomatic solution since day 1, which again was refused by the West.
Where is this imperialist Russia that wants to "Finlandize Europe"?
They repeatedly give NATO chances for dialogue, and NATO repeatedly ignores them.
As long as you provide a decent argument I agree there's no point in restating what has already been said, but these depictions of Russia as "the big bad" are just baseless caricatures used to fearmonger by parties who want war, not peace.
Quoting jorndoe
No, they mean it.
NATO used militarization and fanatical anti-Russian elements in Ukraine to create a fait accompli with regards to its NATO membership. The Russians are looking for guarantees that that won't happen again.
I find it really confusing that you're ok with that.
This is just the reality Ukraine has to deal with.
Was denazification on the table in 2014? But I agree, Russia has been quite consistent in attempting to annex Ukrainian territory irrelevant of NATO. As it was an "artificial" country.
Quoting Tzeentch
Have you ever noticed what kind of dialogue that was? It was that Russia should have a say if a country could join or not NATO. That naturally goes against NATO's charter. At least for Finland that was the second to last straw to break (the last straw being the full invasion of Ukraine).
And of course, what you always forget, is that simply putting the troops on the border made immediately NATO countries like Germany vow that Ukraine wouldn't be accepted to be in NATO. But naturally that wasn't the goal, just as Saddam's mobilization of Iraqi troops to the Kuwaiti border wasn't done in order that Kuwait would follow OPEC guidelines on oil production.
Quoting Tzeentch
Here's Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, from the official Russian Foreign ministry website :
https://mid.ru/en/foreign_policy/en/foreign_policy/un/1959636/
That's the delusional way that official Russia thinks about Finlandization.
In fact, the Soviet Union hoped the Finlandization would catch on. It's simply how it wants to influence other countries. The best way is to "influence" the actions of other countries without having an open conflict. The worst thing for this idea (and the present Russia) is European countries forming an union and the Atlanticism that NATO creates.
They've stuck to their red line for over a decade. They told us exactly what the problem was, and they told us exactly what the consequences would be.
We chose to ignore them, and they stuck to their word.
Quoting ssu
Ukraine's neutral status is the key to a stable Eastern Europe.
So yes, obviously Russia's position should be taken into account and not simply ignored if a stable Eastern Europe is the goal.
It's worrying how your rhetoric turns any dialogue with the Russians into something negative.
Just like the way you use the term 'Finlandization' to describe any kind of positive relations with the Russians.
It bears every hallmark of war propaganda, which is designed to make war the only outcome. The same trick was used in Ukraine to make it fling itself willingly into the abyss.
The question you should ask yourself is whether you will be the beneficiary of such a war, or whether that will be some unnamed country across the pond.
You don’t seem to follow through your own reasoning here. Indeed, what is true for Russia, it is true for the US and Ukraine too: regardless of what you think about the US and Ukraine, “countries in our system have a right, and rationally do anyways, act in preemptive self defence. What's been referred to as legitimate security concerns.” A re-arming nuclear power with hegemonic ambitions over the US own sphere influence (e.g. Europe) and elsewhere (like in Africa and Middle East), engaging in Russia’s direct/conventional threats or asymmetric/unconventional threats, programmatically hostile to the US-led Western hegemony and pledging a strategic allegiance with other hostile authoritarian regimes like China, Iran and North Korea is a legitimate security concern for the US-led allegiance. Actually, the security dilemmas you think explain or justify Russia’s imperialist war are very much the same that led the US to become world hegemon, build-up a Western alliance and turn into some Great Satan to people like you. Russian elites imperialist's ideology and military build-up, supporting Western enemies and projecting military power in Africa and Middle east at the expense of Western interests, are all provocations from Russia against the US and its allies in their backyard. That’s why your argument looks so self-defeating to me.
Concerning the idea that a “nuclear power creating missile bases nearer and nearer to you is one such obvious security concern”, that’s currently the case of Russia at the expense of the US allies (see Kaliningrad). States can live with it. And also the Cuban missile crisis shows another way in which hostile hegemonic powers dealt with their security concerns, without engaging into a war with territorial annexations. If Russia wishes to be treated as the US in terms of security concerns, but the US and its allies don’t acknowledge the right of Russia to be treated as the US in terms of security concerns, then Russia has to impose its will against the US and its allies like enemies do. Western DO NOT need to feel rationally compelled by Russia’s claims of legitimacy about its security concerns, other than for the threats the go along with it. Russia and the US are not the same, do not play the same role in the Western world so they do not have to enjoy the same status AT ALL. Europeans have American bases in Europe, and yet they can live with it despite they may be seen as a national security threat. Switzerland borders with countries with US military bases, and yet they can live with it despite this may be national security concerns. So Europeans have to take position wrt Russia’s hegemonic ambitions in Europe and all its implications in terms of security, political stability, and economic opportunities.
Quoting boethius
There are several issues with such claims. The idea that the war was provoked PRESUPPOSES the idea that Russia has hegemonic ambitions over Ukraine either for very limited security concerns (e.g. by creating a “neutral” buffer state between Russia and Nato which doesn’t exist yet, right?) or for wider imperialist ambitions and power projection, because 1. Nobody attacked Russia proper, as Hamas attacked Israel proper (this is where I would talk about provocation but I guess Israeli has no “legitimate” security concerns even in this case, right?) 2. No NATO missile bases have been installed in Ukraine yet. But this war started by Russia made this undesirable outcome for Russia more compelling for Westerners (as in a self-defeating prophecy). 3. There was no arm race against Russia (“NATO is brain dead”, Trump’s willingness to have Russia on the US side against China). That’s also why Westerners have great difficulty to military supply Ukraine. BTW it was Mearsheimer himself who suggested Ukraine shouldn’t have returned the nuclear arsenal to (a however much weaker than today’s) Russia at the end of Soviet Union, for Ukrainian preemptive security concerns, especially given their historical beefs. But the logic of appeasement of Russia prevailed in the US back then, not provocation.
I put “neutrality” under quotes because the very existence of the Russian Black Sea Fleat in Ukraine shows that a “neutral” Ukraine is nothing more than a base for Russian power projection led by corrupt politicians bribed by Russians with a pretence of autonomy as Russians understand it.
You are playing with the word “legitimate” in “legitimate security concerns“. To me security concerns are “legitimate” because acknowledged according to relevant politically commitments. Westerners could acknowledge Russia’s security concerns based on international laws and treaties, or based on a strategic logic like that of strategic allegiance in response to security concerns and hegemonic ambitions. Neither case holds for Russia. Russia is not a Western ally nor there are treaties that commit the West to comply with Russia’s security concerns at their own expense.
So according to such an understanding of “legitimate”, Russia has NO “LEGITIMATE” SECURITY CONCERNS to justify this war. Russia is an enemy to the West and should be treated accordingly. At this point, talking about Russia’s “legitimate” security concerns is like talking about mafia’s, terrorists’ and nazis’s “legitimate” security concerns. The enemy has no “legitimate” security concerns. The enemy has just “illegitimate” security concerns.
The problem for the West is to understand Russia “illegitimate” security concerns to better weaken Russia not to acknowledge them, as much as the law enforcement would need to understand mafia “illegitimate” security concerns to better weaken mafia.
Ukraine doesn’t need to be inside NATO as long as circumstances are not amenable to such an outcome. The point is that NATO is taken to be a military alliance which challenges Russia’s hegemonic ambitions in Europe. Other forms of wide military allegiance comprising Ukraine but not Russia could be a problem as well for Russia. Ukraine not turning into a buffer state and neutralising the threats coming from the Black Sea Fleet would help against Russia’s hegemonic ambitions as well. WHATEVER security system that involves Ukraine and Western countries, BUT EXCLUDES Russia may be perceived as a security threat by Russia. And it’s even worse for Russia if Europe manages to become a competing power that could engage in an arm race, build its own security system of alliance, with its own nuclear weapons, and power projection in Africa and Middle East (historically Russia got invaded from Europeans not from the US). Russia needs a weak, defenceless and submissive or divided Europe to counter balance China, even in the case where the US has completely withdrawn from Europe.
So containing and deterring Russia is an imperative ALSO for Europeans, including Ukraine, not only for the US, if Russia can not (or should not) be significantly defeated. There is a balance to be found of course, given the emergence of other hegemonic powers in the international arena (e.g. China) that could profit from Russia’s defeat, the growing challenges coming from the rest of the World with all their aspirations or grievances against the West (which are in good part nurtured by Westerners themselves, including random nobodies like you), the growing discredit and lack of unity suffered by political elites in the Western world. Not easy task I guess but there is nothing inherently dumb in struggling for this goal, that’s part of the game with all its hazards. Once we agree that Russia and its sidekicks are definitely the enemy then we can discuss how, how long it takes, at what cost. And uncertainty remains no matter what path one follows.
That’s not all, talking about “provocation” has little explanatory power wrt the timing of Russias’ gambit. Actually it hides the OPPORTUNISTIC motives which led Russia to aggress the West in a time where the US looks much weaker than it looked after the end of the Cold War while Europeans look extremely vulnerable to economic and security shocks. Pro-Russians underestimate the Ukrainian and the European agency as much as they underestimate the Russian agency. There is only one agent morally and politically responsible for every evil: the Great Satan. All the others are mechanically reacting to the US abuses. So the perceived weakness of the West is the relevant motivational factor for this war NOT provocation. And so the West has to take more seriously its weaknesses as perceived by self-assertive anti-Western authoritarian regimes. The msg here is not: “they wronged me so this is the pay back” or “they made me do it”. But “the US is weak, now it’s time to challenge him, turn its coward allies against him, stab the boss in the back”.
Anyways, I’m looking forward to hearing you whining about China’s security concerns threatened by the US and Western provocations in China’s own backyard.
Quoting boethius
You can conclude it’s all moronic if you present things as moronic in all your premises. It’s tautological. But I do not share your questionable assumptions so the conclusion has no appeal to me.
There is not metaphysical necessity in saying “fight for a right to have something the relevant parties never give you”, right? It’s matter of choice, so one has to make an effort to understand the reasoning behind such choices. I find moronic to consider “moronic” certain political moves just because some random dude thinks politicians are playing or should play in the way he suggests, as much as I find moronic to consider “moronic” certain game moves just because some random dude thinks people are playing or should play the ball as in soccer, whiteout considering that maybe people are playing basketball and fine with it.
To me, the reasoning behind such political choices transcend HOW THINGS ARE PRESENTED TO PEOPLE, so beyond pro-Russian and pro-Western propaganda (in the press, on TV, in the social media, etc.), and it is grounded on my understanding of how politicians are compelled to reason in a highly competitive and uncertain political struggle, constrained by all sorts of conflicting interests and limited resources. Besides, the conflict we are discussing has long term and worldwide consequences that most likely will survive us, so I would refrain from putting too much credit on drawing lessons limited to how things look now.
Concerning your onanistic propaganda criticism you so tirelessly and self-conceitedly indulge on, my argument is that if people are dumb to engage in a war because NATO will save them from future wars with Russia, they would still be dumb to not engage in a war because their economic welfare, social freedoms and political autonomy would be safer under Russia.
Dumb people will believe things based on dumb arguments no matter what they are, even when arguments are based on whatever propaganda one wishes to denounce. So politicians are compelled to ensure that dumb people would believe their own propaganda not that of their rivals or, even worse, enemies. Surely, also propaganda war can be played badly, but that’s not necessarily an argument against propaganda in general (no matter how misleading, false and dishonest), just against the efficacy of specific propaganda moves vs others. In that sense, I have no problem to acknowledge that Western propaganda wasn’t as effective as desirable and that Russian propaganda was more effective than desirable, no matter how false.
But, besides the fact that propaganda is only one aspect of the problem, there is also a legitimate security concern about propaganda wars, which you keep ignoring with your populist rhetoric: assuming that there are dumb people believing in propaganda in the West, Ukraine, Russia, China and Iran, the problem is that Western propaganda can be easily infiltrated and instrumentalized by hostile foreign powers while the West can’t do the same against them if they are authoritarian (see Russia, China and Iran). Russia can exploit useful idiots (or honorable men as you wish) in the West but the West can to the same as easily, so Russia has an advantage over the West in terms of propaganda war, which is multiplied by the network of anti-Western authoritarian regimes supporting Russia.
Try to address the points I’m making (wording and phrasing included), not the ones you wished I made.
I won’t argue for SSU’s claims, he can do it by himself. I can argue for my claims.
And I think here again you are playing with words, like “victory”.
I’m less concerned with a military notion of “victory” and more with a strategic notion of “victory”. I doubt that a military notion of “victory” automatically translates to a strategic victory.
The problem from the West and the US perspective is the political, economic, and military threats posed by authoritarian regimes growingly powerful, ambitious and hostile to the West and the US. That means that there is a serious risk for the West its elites and its people to lose all the economic, political, security privileges they could enjoy in a Western led world order.
If enemies can/should not be military defeated in a significant way, then enemies need to be contained or deterred. Ukraine is an important piece to counter-balance hostile powers like Russia which aspires to lead the revolt against the West by the Rest of the World.
Ukraine has decided so far to side with the West and now pays the consequences for its choice, as much as Palestinians decided to side with Iran and now they pay the consequences for their choice. Was this worth it? I’d let the Ukrainians (and Palestinians) decide. This is why I’m talking about “Ukrainian agency".
And I don’t think that “their war effort is a disastrous mistake, immoral, got many people killed for nothing, and definitely they should have taken the Russian's offer at the start of the war (or before the war)” at all. So far, Ukraine managed to keep its political independence, to control its most important cities (including Odessa), and to control a good part of economic resources against a much stronger enemy. As long as Russia will keep fighting, Ukraine will be out of NATO and EU and wear out its capacities, but this also ensures that there is no buffer state between Russia and NATO, and that Europeans have more time to properly regroup against Russia. I wish the West could do more and better for Ukraine, but they seem unable/unwilling to do it. So I don’t need to exclude that, for the Ukrainians, this war can turn to be as endless as the Israeli-Palestinian war is, and as disastrous to Ukrainians as the Israeli-Palestinian war is disastrous to Palestinians. But I wouldn’t say it’s immoral and people died for nothing in either case just because they were disastrously defeated. BTW, how strange it is to read such an objection from a self-proclaimed man of honour: aren’t men-of-honour those ready to sacrifice life, wellbeing of themselves and people they are responsible for to save their honour? There are people who kill themselves and their children with their own hands to save their honour.
Concerning the Russians’ offer which Ukrainians should have accepted, the problem remains: both were requiring Western security guarantees with no benefits for Western alliance, only for Russia. So Ukraine could have accepted the deal with Russia without the Western assistance. But they preferred not to. You can speculate it wasn’t good for Ukrainians, but I do not give a shit about your speculation, you are not Ukrainian, right? And even if you were, it doesn’t seem to reflect the views of Ukrainians at large.
Quoting boethius
Western policies look pretty disappointing to me as well. But while I’m more sure about the underlying strategic reasoning for the West to support Ukraine, I’m very much less sure about what the West could actually do, especially because the West harbours its own internal conflict of interests and nasty devisions, even in the face of such dramatic and epochal historical events. On the other side these constraining factors are expected since we live in countries with democratic institutions (i.e. more exposed to people’s mood and opposing political views) and a system of allegiance which grants greater political autonomy wrt the hegemonic power (i.e. less submissive to hegemonic power pressure, see Hungary). It could have been very much different for Russia if European countries had authoritarian regimes like Belarus and responded to USA’s demands like Belarus responds to Russia’s. This leads me to believe that your effort to discredit the drip-feeding approach of the West is DEFINITELY not only a pro-Russia argument, but a pro-authoritarian regime argument.
Your critic of the drip-feeding approach would be more compelling if you could actually argue for MORE EFFECTIVE Western policies to counter anti-Western authoritarian regimes’ political/economic/military challenges in general or Russia’s hegemonic ambitions in particular, in a democratic and peaceful way. But you didn’t offer any so far. Also because if you really could do such a thing, I do wonder: why aren’t you leading the Western world instead of wasting your time on the internet as an ordinary nobody like me?
The drip-feeding approach is arguably also the result of conflicting interests: the US wants to contain Russia but also wants to reduce its engagement in the European defence. The US wants Russia to lose but not too much to favour the collapse of the Russian Federation which may also benefit China. Leading EU countries want to contain Russia’s hegemonic ambitions, but they do not want to sacrifice their economic ties with Russia and China, or worse risk a nuclear war in Europe. Leading EU countries need the US protection for their national security, but they do not want to contribute to it significantly nor want to align with the US foreign policies in the face of anti-Western challenges. So what you are framing as “we are clearly not even trying to help Ukrainians, but just propping them up to take an absolute beating in order to accomplish other things, all harmful to Europe” is questionable. There is no single Western head taking decision wrt Ukraine as in Russia. And the Ukrainians without Western help would have not lasted 2 years war against Russia as they did which is still very far from being disastrous or absolute beating as you claim. The Palestinian aspiration to their nation state is what looks to me disastrous and an absolute beating so far. And yet Palestinians are still fighting, foreign powers support their fight materially as much as people like you support their fight politically. And once you accept that the Palestinians misery, destruction and alleged genocide is worth if done in the name of their nation-state (that’s Hamas argument) and support for anti-US forces (like Iran) how credible are your objections against the Western support of Ukraine, really?
On the other side Russia has neither made Ukraine a pro-Russian buffer state (actually it achieved the opposite) nor strengthened its international status and regional control (like in Azerbaijan-Armenian conflict and on Kazakhstan) nor secured its Black Sea backyard to support its power projection.
Quoting boethius
Surely sanctions are not a magic wand to fix international conflicts, they are a double edged swards since they can damage the economy of the sanctioning countries, not only the sanctioned one. But also excessive fever can kill people, still fever can be effective in killing parasitic bacteria. And even though sanctions may not be effective in inducing compliance, still they can increase costs and constrain power projection opportunities, so they have an attritional force. If sanctions were utterly pointless there was no need to strengthen them against Iran (as Trump did) and for China to refrain from openly doing business with Russia and Iran, and avoid sanctions. It’s a power struggle so also economic sanctions can be a valid defensive mechanism within a wider and long-term strategy. What the impact of sanctions against Russia or Iran shows is that Russia can count on a network of strategic alliance, which needs to be countered by a network of strategic alliance not by a single actor, no matter if it as powerful as the US.
Concerning the bribing argument, assuming it’s broadly or decisively true or just plausible what you claim (but what are your evidences to support it, really?), I would counter as easily that Russia too is bribing Ukrainian politicians (oh… and Western politicians too!). So if Ukrainian politicians are there to be bribed, better to be bribed in support of pro-Western objectives than pro-Russian. A similar argument to that one about dumb people who believe in propaganda, better they believe pro-Western propaganda than pro-Russian propaganda. The point is not propaganda or bribery but efficacy in advancing pro-Western objectives with whatever leverage currently available. Politicians do not operate in a world starting from ideal conditions, effective and efficient tools, universal good will and patience, to fix a cosmetic local issue but from any shitty predicament humanity ended up with at certain time in history where one problem is connected to every other problem, and conflicting interests press in all directions from all directions. So they are compelled to use whatever they can afford to gain relative advantage wrt competitors. And this reflects in the policies of the countries they lead as well as in the off the record measures they take to advance national interest (if we are lucky).
Moreover it is naive to expect that a country struggling for hegemony or national aspirations would spare itself from using a questionable but effective measure (be it bribing, torturing, exploiting terrorists, committing war crimes, using weapons of mass destruction, concentration camps, provoke famines, killing civilians, etc.) if the enemy doesn’t do the same, unless its power to impose its will with other means (including a valid network of allies) on its enemy is overwhelming. There is also some karma here: the more unfairly demanding our expectations about our politicians versus foreign politicians are, the more easily we will get disappointed.
Quoting boethius
…unless you are projecting on the West the martyrdom rhetoric of Hamas (which btw you support, right?). One could also argue that Iran is propping up Palestinians to have them destroyed, have hundreds of thousands of Palestinians killed and maimed, traumatized or cleansed, depopulate the younger generations making the existing demographic collapse that much more catastrophic, simply for the gesture of "our hearts being in the right place" of wanting Israel to lose a war and "learn a lesson”. And this is perfectly in line with what was declared by the Palestinian political leaders governing Gaza.
My counter argument is that you may be confusing reasons and consequences: precisely because "our hearts being in the right place" are not wanting Russia to lose a war and "learn a lesson” that Ukraine may be utterly destroyed, have hundreds of thousands of people killed and maimed and traumatized, and trigger a demographic collapse. Indeed, it’s people like you underestimating the Russian threat and pointing at the US as the Great Satan, among the reasons of why many Western politicians can afford at best a drip-feed strategy policy. You are pointing at a problem rooted in people more persuaded by pro-Russian arguments like yours than by pro-US ones, but simply too scared to irritate the US. And, my objection sounds even more plausible to me after reading your defamatory argument: indeed, your argument shows how you cornered yourself into a position where whatever Russia does against Ukraine and the West, this will be nothing compared to what the US has done and is responsible for (that’s actually one of your major claims, you argued a while back if I remember correctly). So the more perverse you can depict Western intentions in Ukraine the more self-rewarding your feel it is your piece of propaganda against the Great Satan. As far as I’m concerned I find such arguments more speculative than evidence-based, more rhetorically appealing than analytically appealing. Yours is just populist porn. Intellectual misery at its finest.
Quoting boethius
I disagree. The Ukrainian war is existential in that it has to do with the very existence of an independent nation state with its territorial integrity. In order to do that Russia is ready to destroy Ukraine, massacre Ukrainians, reject Ukrainian national identity and commit war crimes at convenience . So yes Russia is an existential threat to the Ukrainian people too.
On the other side, even Russian security concerns which Putin is waving at to justify his war in Ukraine are not existential for the Russian people, since Ukraine (or the US, for that matter) has no way of conquering all of Russia anyways and clearly doesn't want that headache if they could. So if Russia has security concerns, Ukrainians too has.
This raises another issue: not only the claims that the war in Ukraine is not existential for Ukrainians and that Russian security concerns are legitimate are questionable, each one in its own merit, but why are you using different criteria?! Why are you assessing Russia’s case in terms of its legitimate security concerns but not Ukraine, while Ukrainian’s case in terms of existential war?! And if legitimate security concerns and existential wars are related then why Russia’s aggression of Ukraine can be explained/justified in terms of security concerns but Ukrainian self-defence can not be explained/justified in terms of existential war?!
Concerning the UKRAINIAN MINORITY happy of being part of Russia against the Ukrainian majority, either they could pursue a war of independence (no matter if the autonomy of related Ukrainian regions was already acknowledged prior to this war) but that wasn’t their choice. The alleged civil war was imported from Russia, actually by Russia private imperialist and neo-nazi militias (with the blessing of Russian politicians), plotting with a few local likeminded (or bribed?) politicians, as far as I can tell. Or they could migrate to Russia to avoid persecution, as Jews fled to Israel to avoid persecution. I’ve heard Russia is plenty of unpopulated lands where they could host their fellow pro-Russian Ukrainians. I’ve also heard Russia is also impressively effective in forced migration of non-Russian people and Ukrainian children, so I let you imagine how effective they could be in supporting wilful migration of fellow pro-Russian Ukrainians eager to be enrolled in military armies in the pursuit of imperialist goals, right? But if a minority of Ukrainians want to keep Ukrainian land while rejecting the Ukrainian rule and replace it with a Russian rule, why on earth should the majority of Ukrainians let them do it? Russians too repressed Chechen independence movement for the same reasons with two (civil?) wars. So, under the questionable assumption that there were all the premises for an indigenous civil war, also Ukraine should be allowed to repress independence movements within its territory in blood, and Russia’s military siding with the independence movement should be deemed as an illegitimate interference.
Quoting boethius
I’ve attempted to answer your and your sidekicks’ analogous “core” questions sooooo many times that I was really looking forward to doing it again, of course. The answer that best fits your “core question” to me is that your “core” question is dumb, so I’m not surprised if other representatives of the “pro-Ukrainian" side didn’t answer. People can't take seriously answer so grossly misleading questions. It's like asking people how many grey-looking hair has the current king of France on his head. If the question is flawed, then it should be denounced as such.
Indeed, you are asking people who do not put their skin in this war to answer for those who put their skin in this war, based once again in non-shared assumption surreptitiously taken to be shared (that the war in Ukraine is not existential for Ukrainians?! But Russian security concerns are legitimate?! Are you crazy?!). The “reasonable” costs of fighting for a Ukrainian Westernisation are decided by Ukrainians as much as the “reasonable” costs of fighting for a Palestinian nation state are decided by the Palestinians. Ukrainians have agency as much as Palestinians. And Ukrainians are arguably better equipped in terms of military support and strategic allies than the Palestinians. These people do not fight because they are brainwashed by Western or Iranian propaganda into fighting, they are struggling for their nation-state and they rely on the support of INTERESTED strategic allies accordingly. Palestinians strategically allied with Soviet Union and then with Iraq before allying with Iran to oppose Israel, while Ukrainians allied with Habsburg and then with the German Nazis, before allying with the West to oppose Russia’s hegemonic ambitions.
Besides when people are driven by identitarian motives there are uneconomical sinking costs which explain why nations are built into blood, genocides and cleansing over generations, and their wars can be ENDLESS (see the Afghans and the Kurds).
So I gave you two reasons why your “core” question looks preposterous to me: first reason, national interest is by definition identitarian, and costs and benefits are shaped by identitarian national interests. This is why you should not ask me what is worth fighting against Russia for Ukrainians, I’m not Ukrainian. In the end, it’s their motivations that guides their choice of fighting Russians not Western motivations for Ukrainians to fight the Russians. Second reason, identitarian aspirations are grounded on uneconomical sinking costs, such uneconomical sinking costs of human life and welfare are very much essential, intrinsic, inherent part of nation building processes. And such aspirations can go as far as the logic of martyrdom by Hamas (which you support, right?) goes. I don’t think it’s the case of the Ukrainians though.
Your one-sided moral blackmailing is a goofy way to dispense Russian leaders from the moral burden of starting and prosecuting this war until Ukrainians surrender to all their demands. And if you dispense the Russians, I’ll dispense the Westerners.
All I can concede is that the West will more easily succumb to its enemies if Westerners are not ready to fight against its enemies as much as Ukrainians are ready to fight against Russia, when the time has come. So Ukraine, far from being a dumb puppet of the US proxy war, is giving the West a bitter but decisive moral lesson and precious time to regroup against the common enemy.
Try to address the points I’m making (wording and phrasing included), not the ones you wished I made.
On another note, I considered doing a poll: Is NATO more of an existential threat to Russia, than Russia is to Ukraine? Since there's no proof, it would be a matter of honest assessment. Seems reasonably clear what assessments have come out of Finland and Sweden.
Everybody even Ukraine would have been totally happy with Ukraine being neutral... assuming that Russia wouldn't have intension of annexing large parts of Ukraine into itself, as it has done. And this simply is the reason for all of this. I think you have a problem in understanding just how a big deal is it to other sovereign states for a state to attack another one (which it has earlier recognized) and then to annex parts of it.
And this is the reason why Russia itself creates the situation where other countries want to join NATO.
Just stop and think it yourself for a moment: why would Sweden with a leftist government want to shed it's over 200 year neutrality and Finland, that earlier enjoyed the fruits of having good relations with Soviet Union and later Russia, suddenly join NATO? You think it was an American plan?
Quoting Tzeentch
The majority of Putin's rhetoric is negative. Not all.
Quoting Tzeentch
WTF are you talking about? We had good relations with Russia. Finlandization has a negative definition, which as a Finn I clearly understand.
But your stance is that if a country attacks another and starts annexing parts of that country (and actually has done this to two of it's neighbors), then other countries should continue to have perfectly normal relations with this country. And if countries oppose the aggression by severing ties and sanctions, that's bad. Oh, that's so bad!
Quoting Tzeentch
Blaming the victim is so nice. :vomit:
Quoting Tzeentch
I'm a great supporter of deterrence: with good deterrence, you can avoid blackmail and war. Without any deterrence, Great Powers will do as they want with you. Russia is and has been this kind of Great Power that if it see's an opportunity it will use it, especially in it's former "colonies", even if we don't talk as colonies. Well, my grandparents were born in a Grand Dutchy of Russia. That was basically something similar to France in Algeria. And Russia views it's "near abroad" as similar as other Great Power viewed their colonies. With Putin at the helm, Russia hasn't moved on from it's imperial past and simply continues similar policies as earlier and views it's near abroad as it's own. Unfortunately, it isn't as benign as the US is to it's neighbors (at least after it had it's wars with Mexicon and the British Empire). And this is why other countries like mine that were for a long time non-aligned have chosen NATO. Annexing territories is the real key here.
I would be really happy if Russia would be a normal country and respected the borders of it's neighbors. I have nothing against Russians, I have known many, I have been in Russia and love it's food and culture. But it is a dictatorship that lost in it's gamble and is mired in a war.
Your the one talking about enlarging the war, not me.
* * *
And from an earlier response, I'd like to add:
Quoting Tzeentch
You simply don't even read what I write: Russia with it's large armed forces and with it's huge stockpile of nuclear weapons is more than a match against any EU country vis-a-vis. And with the US out of the equation, the military balance is quite on the side of Russia even if you group up European countries. And then there's just all the hybrid operations that Russia has done, which you dismiss, of course.
Quoting ssu
Quoting Tzeentch
Quoting jorndoe
Quoting Tzeentch
Quoting Tzeentch
Quoting Tzeentch
Quoting jorndoe
By the way, which do you think is the larger threat there (if any/comparable)?
The move to change Ukraine's neutral status predates Russian military actions by some 6 years at least. Worse still, the Americans were aware that this was seen as a red line by the entire Russian elite even before the Bucharest Summit of 2008 took place; they knew exactly what they were doing.
Quoting ssu
I think what plays a large role is that, despite all the historical evidence, Europe seems chronically incapable to view the United States as a ruthless great power which follows realist logic. And I think US propaganda plays a large role in that.
It's understandable. They fell for the propaganda storm and made a spur of the moment decision.
So Finland and Sweden gave up their neutral status and put themselves in the crosshairs of a future conflict to 'protect' against a power that was trying to return to stability to begin with. The power who is trying to avoid a return to stability is the one they chose to jump in bed with.
Geopolitical ineptitude is a problem that plagues all of Europe, and this is another indication of it.
Quoting ssu
We haven't had any real dialogue with the Russians because we refused to talk to them.
Quoting ssu
Yes, so everything that looks like normal relations with Russia you will call 'Finlandization', just like you referred to 'Finlandization of Europe'. Normal relations are, apparently, seen as something negative by you.
Is everything that makes war with "the enemy" less likely undesirable?
Quoting ssu
That's not my stance.
Again, your pro-war bias is starting to shine through when you can only caricature any opinion that doesn't call for total war.
US propaganda has got you right where it wants you: begging for a war that will lead to your own destruction. I've even noticed over the course of our conversations that you repeatedly invoke World War 2.
One thing that propaganda does, is it makes you emotionally attached. When people are emotionally attached, they can no longer think rationally.
You clearly have a problem with the idea that things can return to normal after this war, even though it would likely be the best scenario for all parties involved (except the US). Why?
Because you want to see Russia punished. And that's somewhat understandable. But, guess what - that isn't going to happen in the way you envision it, and the price for clinging to this fantasy is costing thousands of Ukrainian lives per week.
Further, this effect has been amplified by US propaganda spreading insane war goals like "taking back Crimea" and "breaking apart Russia" and nonsense like that. Maximalist wargoals make people more emotional, because if one fails to reach the maximalist goals it will feel like defeat, leading to anger. It's designed to make and keep you emotional, and to make peace impossible.
Emotional actors are easy to take advantage of. This was known and written down as far back as Sun Tzu (circa 500 BC).
Quoting ssu
I actually agree with this, but this is arguing after the fact.
Was changing Ukraine's neutral status a part of that deterrence? No, clearly it was provocative, and we knew the Russians perceived it as such.
Deterrence is good, but intentionally seeking to flip neutral buffers to our side, refusing dialogue, militarizing and combining it with openly hostile rhetoric is not deterrence - it's warmongering. The US then sells this to Europe because they're naive enough to believe everything Uncle Sam tells them.
Geopolitics is a delicate art that Europe understands literally nothing about, which is extremely dangerous for Europeans themselves. We know what happens to naive geopolitical actors: South Vietnam, various parties in the Middle-East, Ukraine - they get taken advantage of.
Quoting ssu
Do explain.
Quoting ssu
That's why I said "if the Europeans would just get their heads out of their asses".
We caused that military build-up by refusing a diplomatic solution to the Ukraine problem and subsequently feeding Ukraine all the weapons we have.
So not only did we let our militaries atrophy over the course of decades, we also sold what's left of them to a lost battle in Ukraine, forcing the Russians to mobilize in the process.
And now we moan about 'the Russian threat'. Please. The Americans are laughing all the way to the bank about how we let ourselves get played.
If Russia was so threatening, why aren't we at least talking with them? Talking costs nothing.
We both know the answer: talking brings with it the risk of peace.
So what should Ukraine have done to diffuse the tension? Declare they're no longer interested in joining NATO? Pass a law that affirms their neutrality?
Or is it all just about what Russia thinks the US intends?
Related to this:
Quoting Tzeentch
This talks about Ukraine in the passive, i.e. their neutral status is altered by third parties.
Opening any kind of dialogue with the Russians would have been a sensible start.
Quoting Echarmion
When the former hegemon gets involved, I see little point in ascribing much agency to Ukraine. The United States has a track record of leading countries down the path of their own destruction. Ukraine is no exception.
You mean like electing a president with good relations to Russia who proceeded to declare an end to further NATO ambitions? Because that is what happened in 2010.
Quoting Tzeentch
So what really are we talking about? If noone but the great powers really has any agency, then your entire argument seems kind of hollow. The only choice anyone has is which hegemon to court.
Dialogue can and should happen regardless of who is president. It costs nothing.
Obviously, presidents or politicians who have some rapport with the Russians are useful. But once the US starts backing coups in Ukraine, it's over.
If that's the world we live in, why on earth would Europe follow an independent foreign policy or seek rapprochement with Russia? It'd just be one US backed coup away from war, whereas in the US sphere of influence, Europe is fine.
And Ukraine assumed it wasn't Georgia, and look where it got them.
This shows how you really don't understand Europe. You think that US and Russia act and behave in Europe similarly, because they are Great Powers.
I assume that you come to this conclusion with thinking about how the US has treated let's say Guatemala (and how the US has acted in it's backyard). Well. in the long run the US policy towards Guatemala has been more like the United Fruit Company's policy towards the country. The US doesn't behave similarly towards France, Sweden or Finland (as Russia doesn't behave similarly towards Brazil and India as it does towards Georgia, Moldavia or Ukraine).
And the simply fact is that you simply don't seem to understand European integration and NATO at all. NATO isn't like Warsaw Pact, which primary function was seen in Hungary in 1956 and in Czechoslovakia in 1968. NATO isn't just a puppet for the American President, which has been shown quite many times (for example from how much Trump despises the organization this should be evident). You insist Ukraine would have been invited to NATO, because American presidents wanted so, even if it was obvious that many NATO countries opposed this. Yet NATO could never give formally an outside member. And the de facto assurances didn't matter for Russia, because it has territorial interests in Ukraine. Just like EU hasn't officially stated that Turkey cannot be never an EU member, this is de facto real. It's an international defense pact that sovereign states have willingly put their defense into, just as EU countries are committed to European integration.
The simple fact is that even if for Yemenis or Palestinians and many Latin Americans, the US seems to be a ruthless Superpower, but that isn't the case for Sweden, Finland or East European countries. Just as Russia wouldn't never dare to do any hybrid attacks towards India and try to involve itself in Indian politics. I'm sure Russia behaves quite cordially towards it's BRICS partners. It doesn't act the same way in it's "near abroad" thanks to being and seeing itself something else than a nation-state, but a great power. This is something you have to understand, but you just ignore it.
Quoting Tzeentch
I do value your opinions, Tzeentch, but this is ignorant bullshit.
Especially Finland has been in the crosshairs of a conflict with the Soviet Union starting from the armstice in 1944. It was in the crosshairs and continued to be in the crosshairs especially after Putin has wanted to make Russia a Superpower again. Russia did it's hybrid attacks by organizing refugee flows into Northern Finland in 2015-2016. It has GRU sleeper cells in the country ready to do sabotage and to assassinate important people as the way of it's "deterrance" in Finland, if war breaks out. It has breached consistently Finnish aerospace with military aircraft, has jammed GPS signals and kept up belligerent rhetoric all this time prior to 2022, hence Finland has all the time been in it's crosshairs. What you are saying is simply ludicrous.
You simply don't understand that there wouldn't have been any end to this if Finland would have stayed neutral, likely the hybrid attacks would have continued even more to push Finland back into a weaker spot. There would be no "normal relations", there would be only Finlandization, where the Finnish President would get his international speeches from the FSB chief in the Russian embassy. That's the fucking "normal relations" that Putin wants. That we would talk the "lithurgy" as in the Soviet times.
And wtf stability are you talking about? Russia's military has always been multiple times larger than Finland's or Sweden's? Do you think annexing territory from Georgia and Ukraine is a way of Russia attempting "stability"?
It's simply imperialist revanchism, an attempt to fix what Putin sees as the greatest tragedy of the 21st Century (collapse of the Soviet Union). Nothing else.
Quoting Tzeentch
I don't.
The war ends when the two sides come to some conclusion, either a peace deal or a cold armstice (as with the Koreas). And it's the job of Ukraine and Russia in the end. And I don't want to hear your arguments of Ukrainians being pawns with no ideas of their own in this game.
The thing we've learned from history is that Russia has to be forced someway to a peace agreement: if continuing the war looks to be a better option, the Russia will continue the war. Plain and simple.
And likely relations are tried to be improved after Putin dies of naturally causes or is replaced. Remember that the war isn't hurting Europe so much, so this can go on for years, even a decade.
Goodie, then you also know about the
Quoting Jul 22, 2024
yet keep skirting how to fit it all into your story/theory, hence the question.
Quoting Tzeentch
Quoting Tzeentch
Quoting Tzeentch
And,
Quoting Jul 22, 2024
anyway.
So ... fit into your story?
Ah yes, an evil covert coup by the CIA :D
Quoting Euromaidan
Been over this, @Tzeentch
What you're describing are US-European relations during the Cold War. During this time, Europe was a key US ally against the Soviet Union.
What I am saying is that this relationship has been fundamentally changing since the end of the Cold War, and especially since China has emerged as the new threat to US power.
We are no longer a key ally to the United States, since we are nowhere near the Pacific and likely to stay on the sideline if large-scale conflict were to break out there. In fact, we will profit from a war in the Pacific, directly and indirectly. That now makes us a threat and a potential rival to the US.
Since the Ukraine war, it has become increasingly clear that US and European interests divert in a way that is dangerous for Europe. The US is using European naivety in this regard to have us hamstring ourselves.
Note for example, how the sanction packages and freezing and seizing of Russian assets barely scratched the Russian economy while it was done serious damage to ours, and has seriously tanked our international credibility as trading partners.
Supposedly we were going to feed Ukraine weapons to hurt the Russian military so they couldn't pull another stunt like Ukraine, yet it's the European militaries which are completely stripped and the Russians who now have an army several times the size of their peace-time standing army.
We are now no longer "friends," but temporary assets to the US, and the US is already preparing the ground for when Europe finally slips its orbit.
Naive countries that do not realize they have gone from friend to temporary asset are in grave danger, and will likely end up in ruin like Vietnam, Ukraine, etc.
Quoting ssu
There's no point in talking about the Soviet Union. Russia today has nowhere close to the power of the former Soviet Union. It's a completely different country.
But Finland has been working with NATO for a long time, and has been a member of the European Union almost since the start.
Obviously once tensions start rising as they did post-2008, Finland is going to be in the crosshairs. That's where it put itself when it aligned to a bloc that became hostile towards Russia.
This is not odd. Neutrality has a price, but so does joining a faction. This is simply the real world of great power politics. Believing that becoming a de facto US vassal is not going to bear a cost is similarly foolish.
Quoting ssu
Ok, so what is your view of the US and UK blocking the peace deal the Ukrainians and Russians had struck in Istanbul?
Quoting ssu
You are quite selective with the lessons you learn from history, I've noticed.
Do we learn nothing from Vietnam, the Middle-East, etc. when it comes to US involvement in fragile states?
Quoting ssu
This war has been a disaster for Europe. The German economy is on its ass. Funny that - "keeping the Germans down" is one of the primary reasons the US is in NATO.
But I'm sure that's just a coincidence.
https://www.euractiv.com/section/global-europe/news/poll-says-32-of-ukrainians-open-to-territorial-concessions-for-quick-peace/
In Europe, especially countries like Poland, Sweden, Finland and the Baltic States see the situation as the continuation of Cold War. Hence they usually are flabbergasted when (and especially after 2022) when some idiot starts talking about the present as totally different from the Cold War.
The idea of a fundamental change is nonsense. It was the nonsense when it was eagerly talked in the 1990's, when the membership of Russia in NATO was on the table. Then it was the "New Threats" and things like conscription were "ancient relics of a bygone era". Not anymore. If you wouldn't have ex-KGB officers at helm in Russia, yes, Russia could have been totally different.
What has changed is that Germany is unified and now has a bulwark of Poland between it and Russia. For Poland the situation is far more perilous than it was in the late 1990's (and thus it's vast rearmament program).
Quoting Tzeentch
I have no idea what you are talking about here. European and US interests are quite the same: the totally reckless territory annexing Russia threatening with nuclear weapons is a threat. You seem to be in your own echo-chamber.
Quoting Tzeentch
That's why Europe simply needs to rearm. The assistance it has given to Ukraine has in now way been a real burden.
Quoting Tzeentch
Bullshit again.
NATO countries don't want the US to go. And the idea that Americans want to be just like Canadians isn't true. But that's the reality if the US wants to go out of "foreign entanglements" like NATO and Atlanticism: then the US is just a large Canada. People don't know (or care) in Europe what the Canadian government wants. But naturally everybody has quite good relations with Canada.
And why this thinking that the countries want to severe good ties? That's the thing in your anti-American hostility you forget.
Quoting Tzeentch
Again wrong. Russia has a very large armed forces and a nuclear deterrent, while European armies have fallen in size dramatically from the Cold War era. And present day Russia is as aggressive if not more aggressive than the Soviet Union.
Quoting Tzeentch
Assuming that the EU started at 1993 is wrongful, the treaty of Rome in 1957 would be far more correct. Naturally Finland has tried to have as much of ties with the West, earlier there was naturally the obstacle of "Finlandization".
Quoting Tzeentch
You really don't get it, do you.
There's no other option. There's no option of "Let's be friends with Russia" that would have a better outcome for Finland: Russia would just increase it's efforts to dominate Finnish policy, if it would be let to do it. With Russia as a neighbor there's no "normal" relations let's say Canada and Switerland can have. Just look at how great being the member of CSTO has been to Armenia. Russia didn't give a fuck when Azeris supported by Turkey annexed Nagorno-Karabakh. That's the kind of "ally" Russia is. CSTO, just like the Warsaw Pact is primary a form of control.
I think in your naivety you think that if only Ukraine given up on everything and done as Russia wanted, everything would be fine. It wouldn't. Just read what Putin wants. Ukraine was an artificial construction and the country's should be together. That's it. All those annexations show that this isn't just about NATO and Americans, it's about a lot else that you simply refuse to take into account.
Quoting Tzeentch
At least I refer to the peace agreements and the wars the Russia / Soviet Union has fought, unlike you.
Quoting Tzeentch
Fragile states like North-Vietnam or Israel? Hmm...
Or you really think that Ukraine or Finland, Sweden, is similar to South-Vietnam or Pro-Western Afghan government?
Just because no-one has challenged this false claim yet: Europe's militaries are not "stripped". Most frontline equipment that has been handed over has been old models from storage.
E.g. Germany handed over just 18 modern tanks out of a total of about 300. France has 400 modern MBTs. The UK has about 200, and handed over 14.
Obviously the European air forces, arguably the most important deterrent factor given NATO doctrine, are entirely intact.
Where Europe is "stripped" is in terms of ground based artillery (especially tube artillery) and ground based air defenses. This is a side effect of NATO doctrine and the threats western militaries have expected to face in the early 2000s. This will likely change as a result of the Ukraine war though.
Quoting Mikie
What you don't care about the russian lives it would safe?
Then don't vote for Trump?
The most relevant difference between the Soviet Union and Russia is obviously its power.
Russia has a population of 144 million, and a GDP of 2.2 trillion.
It's tiny. Germany alone doubles Russia's GDP.
In other words, there is no reason Europe should treat Russia as the big threat. The only point Russia becomes a threat is if we A. constantly play our cards wrong, and B. let mercurial powers like the US whisper into our ears.
This is why I keep emphasizing that Europe needs to get its head out of its ass.
Quoting ssu
War with the Russians is in European interests?
The fact that you're saying this is why I keep emphasizing you're war-hungry to the point of absurdity, and you don't even seem to notice it yourself.
Quoting ssu
Sure. But it needs to do so without pointlessly antagonizing Russia, otherwise rearmament is going to lead to mutual tensions and militarization (which we are already in the process of), which will not achieve security, but the exact opposite: war - which is of course exactly what Uncle Sam is trying to achieve in Eastern Europe.
Conducting geopolitics is a fine line, and Europeans are treading it in the most amateurish way possible. It's a lost art in Europe, and it's going to cost us a lot of lives in the near-future.
Quoting ssu
As though US geopolitical strategy is going to be guided in any way by what NATO countries want, as oppossed to what necessity dictates.
Quoting ssu
Russia did not have a large armed force prior to the invasion. Some 200,000 troops for a country as large as Russia is not "very large" - it's tiny.
It only started to expand its armed forces when the Ukraine war was well underway, when the West boycotted diplomatic negotiations and made further diplomacy impossible - even going so far as getting Zelensky to write down in the Ukrainian constitution that diplomatic negotiations could not take place.
So Europeans complaining about Russia's armed forces are either being deliberately misleading or utterly naive about the consequences of their own actions.
Also, Europe has a nuclear deterrent as well.
Quoting ssu
You don't think the US dominates European politics? Or Ukraine? Hello?!
I'm not going to sit here and say Russia is better than the US in this regard, but again you're showcasing the fact you have no sense of balance in this matter.
You recognize you're neighboring a crocodile, but simultaneously fail to recognize you voluntarily jumped into bed with one.
Quoting ssu
Are you aware of this knee-jerk reaction you seem to have, where every attempt at diplomacy is caricatured as "giving up on everything and doing as Russia wants"?
"Diplomacy is capitulation" I hear you saying, like you're the minister of propaganda in a George Orwell novel.
Quoting ssu
Sure. All are countries that jumped into bed with a crocodile to protect themselves from the crocodile across the border. Predictably, they will get eaten.
Tzeench’s claims are plagued by rhetorical inconsistencies which betray his pro-Russian propaganda.
On one side he’s dismissing the European military capacity in the face of Russia’s army and on the other side he’s all about dismissing the Russian military threat as well: “Russia has a fraction of Europe's GDP and population. Russia is hardly a threat if the Europeans would just get their heads out of their asses.” (notice the hypothetical)
On one side he wants the Europeans to take their “heads out of their asses” in matter of security and military readiness and yet he’s all about dismissing “this type of fearmongering nonsense” from our side against Russia. But if Europeans wouldn't get their heads out of their ass out of fear for the Russian military threat, then what else would make them do that?
On one side he wants Europeans and Russia to strategically ally (so see themselves more as partners than enemies) because “while the US and China beat each other to a pulp, Europe and Russia would remain intact and grow in relative power. Why do you think the US is trying so hard to embroil Europe and Russia in a war with each other? It's trying to prevent either of them from becoming the laughing third. It's easy to understand why the Russians are so keen on a diplomatic settlement when you understand this context. The only people who don't seem to understand anything are the Europeans.” On the other if Russia is no threat to Europeans because it seeks an economic partnership, and China and the US are beating each other to pulp, against whose threats would European be compelled to unite and rearm?
On one side NATO is a legitimate security threat for Russia, and on the other side apparently Russia would be just fine with letting Europe be united and rearmed as a geopolitical nuclear power right at its side in name of an economic partnership.
On one side he is all about populist views “European populism threatens to slip Europe from Washington's grasp, turning it from a vassal into a potential rival.”, but on the other side European populism is against EU and pro-nationalist (and also at Putin's pocket) so arguably against political-economic-military integration which might be necessary pre-condition to talk about security threats and economic interests for Europeans COLLECTIVELY (BTW lack of unity and moral are also reasons why Europeans have been and still are so hesitant toward Russia in the current conflict).
@Tzeench do yourself a favour, take your head out of Putin’s ass, and put it back in yours.
Indeed, it’s funny to see this dude completely overlooking another hypothetical scenario which his guru Mearshaimer would likely support, and even Trump (his beloved American President) would arguably welcome: the scenario where the US reconciles with Russia to better contain China using Ukraine as a bargaining chip.
Now let’s consider a scenario where Russia:
- can be flattered by 2 great powers like China and the US,
- can experience a boost in its fuel and wheat exports (nurturing its power projection in all contended areas, including in Europe), even more so if Ukraine will completely surrender to Russia (something which is welcome because apparently Ukrainian lives matter to Trump voters! And it’s totally risk free and harmless for Europe because if Russia could blackmail EU for its fuel supply when Ukraine was NOT under its control, how could Russia blackmail EU for its fuel supply AND wheat supply when Ukraine is completely under its control ?)
- can enjoy free pass for expanding in North Africa and the Mediterranean (namely, ENCIRCLING EUROPE)
- can have UK+East Europeans locked in an anti-Russian stance due to their historical fear of Russian imperialism conveniently boosted by the US of course (Trump didn’t like North Stream 2, right? nor the German or European economy outperforming the American one, right?) and the rest of European countries with self-conceited anti-US/pro-Russian lackeys (replacing the pro-US lackeys’) as political oppositions or leaders
In this scenario, who doesn't give a fuck about Europeans to put their heads out of their ass more than Russia?
Not only Europe won’t get completely rid of the US but it would completely get split in smaller regional spheres of influence between the US and Russia (however not with the same antagonism as in the Cold War, at least as long as China remains the greatest security threat to both), and with no prospect of boosting their economy or army other than as a function of their hegemon’s interest (BTW I let you imagine how fantabulous is the prospect of experiencing an economic boost under far-right populist political elites when Russia is your hegemon, it’s enough to see the envious example of the ex-Soviet Union republics).
In a wonderful multipolar world, market/industry/technology inputs and outputs and commercial routes are under the political/military control of regional hegemonic powers, negotiating on trading conditions or imposing them for everybody else.
In short, in this hypothetical scenario, there is no way that Europeans simply chum up with Russia and economically profit from the conflict between China and the US, living in happiness, peace and bliss ever after.
I think a lot of it is the allure of the grand narrative, in this case the grand narrative about the "pivot to Asia".
It simplifies international relations into a zero sum power play, with nations essentially as blank slates. That can be a useful tool of course, but it ignores stuff like economic structure, history and culture.
Crucially, the idea that Russia and Europe are natural partners in a kind of "third block" only makes sense if you not only ignore the nature of the Russian state as it now exists, but also the lack of much economic synergy. Russia can replace neither the US nor China as an economic partner to Europe. All it can offer is cheap raw materials. It's neither a big market nor a big manufacturer. If China and the US go onto a direct collision course, Russia is in no position to materially soften the blow for Europe.
Nor is a security partnership plausible given the military capacities and the way the Russian elite justifies it's rule (as a bulwark against westernisation).
But these are all details. Economic reality demands that the US pivots to Asia and thus it demands Russia and Europe forming a block. If that doesn't happen it must be the result of some manipulation.
All the other contradictions just follow from the premise that the theory trumps the details. How can the following statements be reconciled?
Quoting Tzeentch
Quoting Tzeentch
Ordinarily we would suppose that war is a threat. But the war here is supposed to be the result of an unnatural manipulation by the US and thus not actually a threat by Russia.
Indeed, and there are plenty of western scholars who share that sentiment. Jeffrey Sachs, Noam Chomsky, John Mearsheimer, etc. - all Americans by the way.
Such theories come with a risk though, a kind of epistemological moral hazard. Once you've started ascribing some events to an unnatural manipulation, there's nothing stopping you from doing so every time events fail to adhere to the theory.
These people have been making accurate predictions about where this war would lead since Day 1.
Mearsheimer understood it as far back as 2015.
When one side issues conditions (declarations/demands/ultimatums masquerading as proposals, which have to already be accepted) — conditions that go against international law and recognized land and borders, instead of demonstrating wanting to come to the talking table to negotiate — then there's no negotiation on the horizon, there's a "Yes" or "No" to those conditions.
Quoting Oct 25, 2022
Quoting Sergey Lavrov · Sep 23, 2023
Quoting Dec 19, 2023
A naïve attitude towards Putin's regressive Russia is, well, not particularly smart, or is a particularly kind of blindness, or whatever. Not going to repeat all evidence already posted. (Besides, you ignore requests to account for whatever observations with your theory.)
Both Europe and Russia are demonstrably acting against the interests the theory prescribes for them. The only explanation given for this is that the US is somehow engineering all of it.
Quoting Tzeentch
What predictions? Be specific please.
Since you ignore requests to actually state your points clearly. :yawn:
Quoting jorndoe
This is normal for negotiations, actually, and it was no problem when negotiations took place in March/April 2022. When those threatened to succeed at producing peace, the West blocked it and made subsequent talks impossible. Zelensky even put it in Ukraine's constitution.
Quoting jorndoe
The only blind ones are you oompaloompas I keep wasting my time on. :lol:
And this is how it always goes with you. When pressed on the specifics you invoke your interlocutors ignorance and run away.
In fact it's because I'm aware of their arguments (and the fact that they contain no predictions for the war we could yet test) that I'm asking you for a justification.
But no matter. The core point remains that the mere fact that there's a Ukraine war at all is a fatal flaw in the theory that Europe and Russia are natural allies.
Cute. You can accuse me of many things, but running away isn't one of them. If there is anyone who has laid out their arguments in painstaking detail it is me.
Your problem is laziness and entitlement.
Quoting Echarmion
what :lol:
One thing I wouldn’t discount about Russia is that Russia has its military-industry complex to supply other countries and also offer security as a service (as with Wagnerites in African countries), and that means its influence over markets, commodity supplies and migration fluxes can extend well beyond Russia.
Quoting Echarmion
Tzeench may still try to claim that, in addition to their economic partnership with Russia, Europeans can still try to turn themselves into some greater supplier for the US/Chinese market (also for military supply?).
Anyways such an hypothetical future scenario seems grounded on the preposterous assumption the Europeans can coordinate their efforts in a way to maximise their benefits apparently at low/no cost/risk with the support of Russia while the rest of the World (including the US) is distracted by a war between the US and China. A “ruthless great power which follows realist logic” (not Russia of course, which is known to be a merciful great power which follows Peace&Love logic, but the US, the Great Satan) which masterminded a proxy war against Russia but now it is evidently doomed to fight China while Europe will economically exploit them and eat pop corns with Russia. How genius is that painstakingly detailed plan?!
Quoting Echarmion
Unless Russia manages to de-Westernise Europe by propping far-right authoritarian lackeys and populists which do not like super-national governance/market, civil freedoms, democratic regimes, immigration, women rights, secularism, etc. I bet Orban might be happy to rely on Russia for its security.
Quoting Echarmion
But Tzeench ignores the theory of his guru Mearsheimer [1], so also its ambiguities (if not implicit contradictions), and limits. Russia is a security threat to European countries because it has offensive military capacity to wreck European countries, it aspires to a regional hegemony if we are lucky (under the assumption that regional hegemony concerns at most all the Eastern European countries which Western Europeans, or just Tzeench, do not give a shit about) and beyond regional hegemony if we aren’t lucky. In any case we are uncertain of either. The theory however suggests a maximalist trend for all great powers (including Russia with its imperialist ideology, very popular among political elites, one may dare to add). And notice the total irrelevance of talking about provocation within such offensive realist views because any aggressive move is justifiable in defensive terms (be the US against Russia, be Russia against Ukraine, etc.). Actually if one takes into account the geographic proximity of Russia or the US wrt Europe, Russia is a GREATER threat than the US or China.
Hence the need for Europeans to ally and re-arm to balance PRIMARILY against Russia, with or without American manipulation.
Concerning Tzeench’s painstakingly detailed pro-Russian propaganda, I would say:
- Any re-arming, military alliance, military activity, military industry which Russia can’t veto or contain or influence is a threat for Russia too. Especially if we are talking about countries geographically close to Russia. So there is no way that Russia will be just fine by letting Europe turn into a regional power with deterring military capacity (see how Macron, the one who tried to appease Russia and bypass NATO, was re-paid by Putin) . So here is the Russian deal which Tzeench is advertising here: as long as Russia can preserve the military capacity to overwhelm Europe and impose its will around European countries (or just the ones Tzeench’s sponsors), then Russia is not a threat to them. This argument sounds as smart as saying: the weaker you appear to your potential enemy the less likely your potential enemy is a threat to you.
- If the US can manipulate weaker states, so can Russia. That’s perfectly in line with Mearsheimer’s theory. And Mearsheimer’s theory offers enough reasons to claim that Russia is a threat to Europe, INDEPENDENTLY FROM THE US and its alleged manipulation or ear whispering. In other words, as far as propaganda is concerned, it's the offensive realist logic that explains the propaganda of "provocation" and "Great Satan" not the other way around.
[1]
The theory of his guru is called OFFENSIVE REALISM and these are the major tenets:
[I]
1. Great powers are the main actors in world politics and the international system is anarchical
2. All states possess some offensive military capability
3. States can never be certain of the intentions of other states
4. States have survival as their primary goal
5. States are rational actors, capable of coming up with sound strategies that maximize their prospects for survival
[/I]
[I]
Mainly, it diverges from defensive neorealism in regards to the accumulation of power a state needs to possess to ensure its security and the issuing of strategy states pursue to meet this satisfactory level of security. Ultimately, Mearsheimer's offensive neorealism draws a much more pessimistic picture of international politics characterised by dangerous inter-state security competition likely leading to conflict and war
As Mearsheimer puts it: "they look for opportunities to alter the balance of power by acquiring additional increments of power at the expense of potential rivals",[24] since "the greater the military advantage one state has over other states, the more secure it is".[25] States seek to increase their military strength to the detriment of other states within the system with hegemony—being the only great power in the state system—as their ultimate goal.[26]
John Mearsheimer summed up this view as follows: "great powers recognize that the best way to ensure their security is to achieve hegemony now, thus eliminating any possibility of a challenge by another great power. Only a misguided state would pass up an opportunity to be the hegemon in the system because it thought it already had sufficient power to survive.[27]" Accordingly, offensive neorealists such as Mearsheimer believe that a state's best strategy to increase its relative power to the point of achieving hegemony is to rely on offensive tactics. Provided that it is rational for them to act aggressively, great powers will likely pursue expansionist policies, which will bring them closer to hegemony.[28][29]
Since global hegemony is nearly impossible to attain due to the constraints of power projection across oceans and retaliation forces, the best end game status states can hope to reach is that of a regional hegemon dominating its own geographical area.[28][29] This relentless quest for power inherently generates a state of "constant security competition, with the possibility of war always in the background".[30] Only once regional hegemony is attained do great powers become status quo states.
[/I]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offensive_realism
Say, how does your story account for the ...
Quoting Jul 22, 2024
Quoting Jul 22, 2024
Quoting Euromaidan
...? How does your story stack up against whatever else?
Apple bows to Russian VPN crackdown: What it means for internet freedom (Karah Rucker · Straight Arrow News · Jul 10, 2024 · 2m:31s)
Some of this stuff stretches back, including the 1[sup]st[/sup] world war.
Part of the task is to separate true and false statements, im/plausible statements, figure out contexts, "To what end?", (freedom to) point out propaganda, etc.
Looks to me like some of the above apply to whatever party here.
More importantly, what say you?
Doesn't matter when Germany has a tiny army that could be swept away. Just look at the difficulties that Germany has had in increasing it's defense spending. Bureaucratic Germany with it's people not threatened with Russia isn't going to budge easily.
Quoting Tzeentch
You have to have deterrence to keep the peace.
Now creating that deterrence will simply get some people to think that your war-hungry. Well, I'm not.
But the cold fact is the deterrence is to prepare for war. What else would it be? You shouldn't forget that.
Quoting Tzeentch
First of all, the globalized World won't profit from something far more devastating than a trade war. The disruption to the global trade routes and supply chains would be far more bigger than anything experienced during the Covid pandemic.
And your forgetting that the US has nothing like NATO in Far East. Don't you remember how SEATO simply collapsed? What are the goddam allies of the US? How close are South Korea and Japan to make some joint effort here? What are US allies there in the Pacific? Australia, and [b]the UK[/B]! Not much of an alliance that AUKUS.
This is the peril when you have only nation-to-nation defense agreements, but not a treaty organization with collective defense. What countries would (or could) assist the US, if China went for Taiwan? The Japanese? How much? The South Koreans? They have to deal with North Korea. Likely Japan could give a few destroyers and subs, but likely it would hold it's resources back. And in truth the US is lousy in creating new workable alliances, because it doesn't want to.
In truth, the more the US gives the middle finger to Europe and NATO, the more it plays to the hands of the Russians and the Chinese. Just like forcing Ukraine to give up will just play into the hands of Putin and Xi Jingping. And the more likely it will want then for assistance from NATO, if there is an actual conflict in Taiwan.
Quoting Tzeentch
Pointlessly antagonizing Russia?
Look, Putin has all the time wanted to portray Western Europe as a threat Russia. That Russia is under threat is the reason he can claim to have to have dictatorial powers. Every opposition to his regime is a CIA backed attempt to break up Russia in his view. Fear of the West is the essential oxygen that the Kremlin breathes. I think that you simply don't understand this and all the incredible bullshit the Kremlin is really creating about the West. Just like this one, just to give one example:
(See here)
This is the kind of bullshit rhetoric coming out from the Kremlin to it's own people. And then you think creating deterrence is antagonizing Russia too much?
Quoting Tzeentch
Actually it is guided. Biden was all in favour of the "pivot" to Asia and his administration full of the "pivot people", just like Obama's. But he cannot and couldn't. That's the power of Atlanticism.
For Superpower USA, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is the jewel in it's crown. But if American want to let their hubris go rampant and think their stature in the World doesn't need NATO or any allies (except Israel), I think they are mistaken. If the US really leaves NATO, then Europe will have to reorganize itself. But it's not something where the US wins.
Believe it or not, but I don't think that especially those Americans wanting to "make America great again" don't want the country to be the bigger Canada. Yeah, isolationism sounds great at first, but then when other countries really don't give a fuck, then comes the anger back when people find that isolationism is not a cure-all, just as Brexit wasn't for the Brits.
The simple fact is that the West is stronger together. Something that some people hate.
Something along those lines has come up before.
Quoting Apr 8, 2024
Quoting Jul 25, 2024
Quoting Tzeentch
:shrug:
Like I said: I agree completely with you on the need for deterrence.
When I say Europe must get its head out of its ass I mean, among other things, that it must spend a minimal amount on maintaining their militaries.
There's no reason Europe shouldn't have a credible deterrent against Russia considering Europe's vastly larger GDP. We actually outspend Russia on defense by something like tenfold.
But, in geopolitics there is something called the security dilemma - you might be aware of this.
In a nutshell, a nation building their military, even as deterrence, can be seen as a threat to neighboring nations.
This is why I emphasize the foolishness of combining the build up of a deterrent (presumably to avoid war) with economic decoupling, refusal of diplomatic talks and maximalist war rhetoric, etc.
It's a guarantee that in today's context Russia views a European military build-up as a threat, and it will actually bring war closer, instead of deterring it.
That is the fine line Europeans are completely missing, and the geopolitical amateurism I spoke of.
The solution is extremely simple: combine the creation of a deterrent with de-escalating rhetoric and with dialogue with Russia.
What I have just laid out is in fact so obvious that I can only conclude that whoever is making these decisions on the side of the West (predominantly the United States) is not pursuing long-term peace and stability. I have made that point several times before, with detailed explanations as to why.
Quoting ssu
It would do a number on the world economy of course, but absolute power and wealth matter very little in geopolitics. What matters is relative power and wealth.
Any great power would happily see global GDP shrink by 10% if it meant they would ascend to a dominant position in the world.
Quoting ssu
That all of these nations will join in a coalition against China is all but a certainty.
They may not have mutual defense agreements, but their geopolitical goals naturally align in that they all want to contain China. South-Korea, Japan, the entire Anglosphere (the 'Five-Eyes' alliance), perhaps some other nations like Indonesia - they are all nations that exist in the periphery of the world island and therefore share a main strategic challenge. These are far more natural allies to the US than for example Europe is.
Taiwan is essentially the tripwire. If China manages to achieve reunification, it has definitively superceded the US as the dominant global power and every country in the Pacific region realizes the far-reaching consequences of that for themselves.
Quoting ssu
Well, haven't the Europeans parroted US-fed rhetoric about wanting to cripple Russia, enact regime change, and break it apart in multiple republics, etc., while simultaneously refusing any dialogue and maintaing a no-compromise position of Ukraine joining NATO?
Honestly, what did the Europeans expect?
It's quite clear from Russia's actions that even after the invasion they had good faith the Europeans would come to their senses and sit down for talks.
Yet, we now know that the Europeans were acting in bad faith as far back as the Minsk Accords.
And I actually agree with the Russians on this. While Europe is on Uncle Sam's leash they're a danger to themselves and others.
A modus vivendi was easily achievable. Even as far forward as March/April 2022 there was still a sensible deal that could have been made. Knowingly or unknowingly, we did everything in our power to make it impossible. Though in the case of the US, it is quite clear they knew exactly what they were doing.
Quoting ssu
The fundamental power struggle of our time is going to take place in the Pacific.
The US cannot maintain its dominant position in both the Pacific and Europe, hence the need to pivot. But the US establishment realizes the consequences for its position in Europe, which is why it is currently trying to "shape the battlefield" and mitigate the damage done to US interests when it is forced to pivot away from Europe.
Europe in terms of its economic, intellectual and human potential is way too big for US to maintain its artificial status as suzerain. which is why Europe will simply break free from the US orbit once the US is forced to divert its attention elsewhere. It will be good for Europe in the long-term, because we will be able to pursue an independent geopolitical strategy that actually benefits us.
What the US or Europe want is hardly a factor in this. These are geopolitical realities - forces of nature, almost - that they cannot ignore (though admittedly, Europe has been a king at ignoring geopolitical realities).
If the US fails to pivot, it loses the Pacific. Once China breaks out of the island chains, the US no longer holds the trump card of being able to cut off China's sea trade, and it will be curtains for the peripheral nations as two thirds of the world island will be united under a Sino-Russian alliance.
Security and deterrence are not just granted by military capacity and readiness, but also by efficient and consistent decision making about security-deterrence and hegemonic conflicts. What Western democracies and system of alliance have shown also during the current conflict is that authoritarian regimes have a comparative advantage over democracies in taking decisions about deterrence and security that are more efficient and consistent over time: indeed, Russia can count on a more hierarchical decision process (so no obstacles from the parliament or the judicial system), repression of political opposition and popular dissent (no obstacles from media and political representatives, INCLUDING those corrupted/infiltrated by the enemy), and consistently pursue strategic goals over decades (because the political leadership remains the same over decades). For democratic countries (including the US) is the opposite.
Exporting democracy, however poorly implemented or questionable in principle, still is/was not just matter of empowering foreign people in defending their rights against foreign authoritarian regimes for humanitarian purposes. It’s also about Western own political vulnerability AND SECURITY.
As many other things and issues. Over and over again in this thread.
Really? Military build-up is what Russia was doing for decades (especially under Putin) while Europeans were doing the opposite for decades and did business with Russia. So you are saying that Europeans were wrong in ignoring the RUSSIAN THREAT coming back after the collapse of Soviet-Union, since doing business with Russia wasn’t a credible enough deterrent against Russia's hegemonic ambitions, right?
The logic of doing business and pursuing deterrence is what Russia, China and Iran COULD do in the pursuit of their regional hegemony when the West bet on globalization. Why they could and Europeans couldn't?
To me the main difference is that Russia, China and Iran are authoritarian regimes with revanchist aspirations, while European people are governed by democratic regimes focusing on economic issues more than on security issues. But that’s FAR from being all European political and economic elites' fault, indeed they were at least pursuing some form of economic and monetary integration, as a step toward greater political integration, however questionable. While the rest of the political debate was dominated by self-deprecating peace&love anti-EU anti-US populists and make our nation great again far-right nationalist/populist anti-EU, anti-US and anti-immigration (also financed by Russia). And they were far away from perceiving the Russian threat and support policies to boost deterrence AGAINST Russia.
Your pathetically naive assumption (not the only one) is that anti-EU and anti-US populism are best fit to do business with Russia AND build a credible deterrence against Russia, than the pro-EU and pro-US political elites.
You mean like the Minsk accords? But then:
Quoting Tzeentch
Damn Europeans can get anything right. Of course all Russia had to do to ensure somewhat cordial relations with the West was to not overtly escalate the conflict and keep it's bargaining chips in eastern Ukraine.
Luckily:
Quoting Tzeentch
So there's no way Russia would blow up the status quo by doing something as silly as launching a full ground invasion of it's neighbor. That would keep the US attached to Europe, force Russia to deepen it's ties to China and ensure that every European politician who argued for deterrence and cooperation with Russia is instantly discredited.
I'm so glad we live in a world where the forces of nature obtain and not some bizarre and unpredictable place where domestic politics and even the mindset of individual powerful people can shape major world events.
Ukraine is more important to Russia than maintaining the status quo. That's exactly what they told us over the course of some fifteen years.
Striking such a sarcistic tone while losing sight of the most basic elements to this conflict is why I can't take you seriously.
What I find bizarre is that you keep switching between different premises.
On the one hand, the geopolitical realities are supposed to be impersonal and irresistible forces. But when you have to explain why events don't conform to these forces, you suddenly invoke very personal and contingent reasons. European diplomats are incapable of even basic solutions. Unspecified actors are influenced by the US in unspecified ways. Europeans are "acting in bad faith" or are "ignoring realities".
Meanwhile while the russian side supposedly has an interest in working relations with Europe due to the inevitable US-China conflict, "Ukraine is more important". But this just seems to beg the question: How could it be more important than the "fundamental power struggle of our time"?
From my perspective you're building a complicated scaffold to prop up a theory which has a giant hole in the middle: namely that the invasion of Ukraine defies traditional "geopolitical reason", including the version championed by Mearsheimer.
It doesn't. Ukraine and especially Crimea are of great geopolitical and historical importance to Russia and always have been. They've fought several wars over them.
No realist should have been surprised that the Russians after over a decade of warnings chose to use force to secure what they believed to be their vital strategic interests.
In fact, Mearsheimer predicted it almost ten years in advance.
And Mearsheimer based his predictions about Russia on history as well, not only on abstract security dilemmas (which are extrapolated from history anyways). Here:
[I]Second, there is the danger of hypernationalism, the belief that other nations or nation states are both inferior and threatening and must therefore be dealt with harshly. Expressions of Russian and
Ukrainian nationalism have been largely benign since the Soviet collapse, and there have been few manifestations of communal hatred on either side. Nevertheless, the Russians and the Ukrainians neither like nor trust each other. The grim history that has passed between these two peoples provides explosive material that could ignite conflict between them.
Russia has dominated an unwilling and angry Ukraine for more than two centuries, and has attempted to crush Ukraine's sense of self-identity. Recent history witnessed the greatest horrors in this relationship: Stalins government murdered an astounding 12million Ukrainians during the 1930s. Though Stalin was a Georgian, and the Soviet Union was not a formally "Russian' government, Russia had predominant power within the Soviet Union, and much of the killing was done by Russians. Therefore, [b]the Ukrainians are bound to lay heavy blame on the Russians for their vast suffering under
Bolshevism. Against this explosive psychological backdrop, small disputes could trigger an outbreak of hypernationalism on either side[/b].[/i]
https://www.mearsheimer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Mearsheimer-Case-for-Ukrainian-Nuclear-Deterrent.pdf
And Putin himself made a historical point (however questionable) in rejecting Ukrainian as an independent nation to justify his war:
In essence, Ukraine's ruling circles decided to justify their country's independence through the denial of its past, however, except for border issues. They began to mythologize and rewrite history, edit out everything that united us, and refer to the period when Ukraine was part of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union as an occupation. The common tragedy of collectivization and famine of the early 1930s was portrayed as the genocide of the Ukrainian people.
https://www.prlib.ru/en/article-vladimir-putin-historical-unity-russians-and-ukrainians
What Mearsheimer did NOT predict is the window of OPPORTUNITY that Putin chose to aggress Ukraine.
That is not really the point though. The point is that Russia had no particular reason to invade in 2022.
Quoting Tzeentch
And yet everyone was surprised. Easy to retroactively claim that it was all predictable, but no-one did predict it.
Quoting Tzeentch
He didn't. What he predicted was that Russia would use political, economic and military pressure to either force Ukraine back into it's orbit or "wreck" it. That is indeed what happened between 2014 and 2022.
These moves were already highly aggressive but, as Mearsheimer has argued, can still be put into a geopolitical framework, namely his offensive realism. Hence prior to 2022 you could still somewhat plausibly claim that Putin is a masterful geopolitical strategist.
The invasion in 2022 in contrast is a massive gamble with no clear political endgame. It's the kind of open-ended unpredictable warfare rational players avoid.
To use a historical example, after the Munich conference you could plausibly claim that Hitler was a master strategist, skillfully wringing the maximum out of his opponents for minimal cost. The subsequent annexation of the rest of Czechoslovakia was already a high risk gamble, but could still be justified as an acceptable risk. Once Hitler invaded Poland though it became clear that rather than a master strategist, he was actually a compulsive gambler.
I did add the word "particular", as in nothing had dramatically changed for Russia's position in Ukraine.
Whether or not Putin is a mad man is immaterial to the argument that the decision defies conventional wisdom (even the unconventional conventional wisdom of Mearsheimer).
This is another version of the "no reason" comment. The Russians clearly believed and told us otherwise, and the idea that a great power goes to war for "no reason" is just not a serious argument.
It's quite easy to see from the Russian point of view what was changing in Ukraine: Ukraine was in the process of being trained and armed by NATO to a point where Russia's standing army would no longer be able to intervene. During the initial invasion Ukrainian forces outnumbered the Russians (est. 200,000+ vs. 100,000 - 190,000 respectively).
Coupled with NATO rhetoric of incorporating Ukraine, it was clear from their point of view they were expecting NATO to create a fait accompli.
You're constantly arguing that European politicians are stupid and / or incompetent, but entertaining the possibility that the russian leadership made a stupid or incompetent decision is "not serious". Why not?
Quoting Tzeentch
What kind of fait accompli could NATO create?
It is entirely plausible that Russia saw the window for military intervention in Ukraine closing. That was the prelude for many a military adventure through history. But that alone doesn't explain the decision for a military escalation in the first place.
Prior to the invasion, plenty of people believed Russia would be using their military for another round of gunboat diplomacy, which was a reasonable assumption. Russia of course also had the option to offer to abandon the Donbas separatists in exchange for a commitment to a neutral Ukraine with some kind of economic deal thrown in. In view of the pivot to Asia, the latter choice seems especially appealing.
You're both mischaracterizing your own position (you're arguing there was "no reason" to invade Ukraine - obviously not a serious argument) and mine (I never argued the Russian leadership was unable to make mistakes).
Cheap rhetorical tricks won't help you with being taken seriously here.
Quoting Echarmion
I already explained.
Quoting Echarmion
First-hand accounts from Merkel and Hollande tell us that NATO entered the Minsk Accords in bad faith, and used it to buy time to arm Ukraine. NATO was fully committed to flipping Ukraine.
The idea that if only the Russians stopped backing the separatists NATO would agree to Ukrainian neutrality is probably one of the most far-fetched things I've heard so far. I hesitate to say: not a serious argument.
I'm not arguing there was literally no reason.
Quoting Tzeentch
Assuming this is true, how is this "bad faith"? The entire premise of your argument is that international relations are anarchic and guided by impersonal geopolitical forces. Are you now saying that Russia did not try to use the Minsk agreements to advance their goals? Doesn't Mearsheimer argue that nations will not sit back and wait but instead aggressively seek advantages?
Quoting Tzeentch
So on the one hand you're telling us that Europe's diplomats ought to scale back the rhetoric and couple deterrence with de-escalation. But also de-escalation is not even a serious argument because NATO will by default make unacceptable demands.
You're asking me how it is bad faith to enter a peace agreement in order to double down on what caused the war in the first place?
Quoting Echarmion
There's nothing within the realist framework that says cooperation cannot happen when it is rational to cooperate.
Quoting Echarmion
Again, you're just pulling this out of your ass. I never argued this.
I get the impression you are deliberately trying to waste my time with this nonsense. Let me know when you have something substantial to add to the discussion.
No, I'm asking you what is bad faith about arming Ukraine in parallel to the Minsk agreements.
The agreements contain no clause to this effect, so you're asking NATO to unilaterally de-escalate. Did Russia unilateraly take steps to reduce the threat posed by the separatists?
Quoting Tzeentch
Great, I agree. So why was it impossible for Russia and NATO to cooperate in February 2022, and why would it have then been possible in April 2022 or now?
Edit: Or, in case you reject my framing of the question, if it was possible to cooperate in February 2022, why didn't Russia choose this path given the many advantages of cooperation with Europe.
I'm not asking NATO anything.
NATO leaders admitted to signing a peace agreement not with the intention of maintaing peace, but with the intention to arm for war.
Your suggestion that Russia could withdraw support for the Donbas separatists and in turn NATO would agree to a neutral Ukraine is therefore laughable.
Quoting Echarmion
This question has been answered a million times already. I'm not going to answer it again.
That's an entirely new claim you're making. Previously it was arming Ukraine, now it's "prepare for war".
You earlier stated you agree with the principle of deterrence. Why is this not covered by deterrence?
Quoting Tzeentch
"Therefore"? What exactly is the premise this is referring to? Because to me it reads like you saying that NATO was bent on war this entire time.
Quoting Tzeentch
Ah yes, the classic kindergarten trick.
Because deterrence is supposed to make war less likely, instead of provoke it.
Quoting Echarmion
Yep. That's something I've repeatedly argued in this thread: NATO, the US in particular, was purposefully seeking conflict in Ukraine from 2008 onward.
Quoting Echarmion
Just being selective with what I spend my time on.
If you think you're entitled to me regurgitating topics that have been covered here dozens of times, you are sadly mistaken.
That's just rephrasing the claim. What distinguishes deterrence from aggressive armament?
Quoting Tzeentch
Which just seems to strengthen my argument that Russia made a bad move by choosing to continually escalate in Ukraine.
As I have argued before, the different threads of your argument are contradictory. If the theory about the pivot to Asia is correct, then Russia's security interests demand cordial relations with Europe and it should seek to expand it's soft power, avoiding open conflict with Europe while positioning itself to take over from the US. In this scenario short-term control of Ukraine is a secondary concern, as Russia can wait out the US and then push it's advantage later once the US is embroiled with China.
But given the fact that Russian actions demonstrably run counter this strategy, you're reverting to an entirely different security environment where you ignore the pivot to Asia and argue as if Russia faces eventual destruction by a war-hungry NATO unless it preemptively creates a buffer.
You're constantly accusing Europe of ignoring the obvious signs on the wall yet Russia plays exactly to the US playbook and you have nothing to say about that?
Quoting Tzeentch
Oh I'm not entitled to anything. It's just interesting to see how you're strenuously avoiding to answer uncomfortable questions.
Of course not. The Russians believe NATO membership for Ukraine to be a threat to their vital strategic interests. They simply couldn't ignore it. That's what a red line means. They spent 15 years trying to avert this outcome.
Quoting Echarmion
This ties into the fact that Ukraine represents Russian key strategic interests, and therefore NATO seeking to flip NATO couldn't be ignored. But it's widely accepted that Putin expected Europe to be more amendable to peace, and thus miscalculated in that regard.
On the topic of the Europeans - their ability for geopolitics has simply atrophied since the end of the Cold War, and they are now basically Uncle Sam's poodles.
Quoting Echarmion
So far your questions have been little more than disingenuous, cheap attempts at "gotchas", which have achieved little other than betray your less-than-surface-level understanding of this conflict.
They spend 15 years trying to avoid it only to turn it into a virtual certainty by invading. What is the political endgame of Russia here?
At no point since 1990 was Ukraine closer to NATO than now. At any point prior to 2014, Ukraine would have looked at a process of several years before eventually joining. Between 2014 and 2022, it was absolutely impossible for Ukraine to join NATO. Russia has not only gained nothing in this regard, it made it's strategic situation strictly worse.
Quoting Tzeentch
Why did Putin need Europe to be amenable to peace in the first place? NATO tanks weren't about to roll into Russia in 2014 or in 2022. Even if NATO "flipped" Ukraine, what does this matter to Russia if the US is going to pivot to Asia and this kills NATO? Literally all Russia has to do in this situation is not start a war. They did the opposite. Three times.
Because at that point they believed war to be unavoidable. I'm not sure what's so hard to understand about that.
NATO was clearly propping up Ukraine militarily with the intention of creating a fait accompli. Russia sought to stop them before that became a reality.
Quoting Echarmion
Because there's no way the US would have provoked this conflict unless the Europeans were willing participants. Putin probably banked on the Europeans pursuing a sensible strategy. They didn't.
Quoting Echarmion
As I said, the US is seeking to prepare its pivot to Asia by leaving long-lasting conflict as its parting gift to Europe.
It's hard to understand because it makes no sense. Why would war be unavoidable?
Quoting Tzeentch
But Russia wouldn't face any immediate consequences from that. This is the classic encirclement argument and it's not more convincing now than it was in 1914.
Quoting Tzeentch
Why didn't Russia pursue a sensible strategy? Europeans were clearly happy buying russian gas. They also softballed their reaction to Georgia, and then offered diplomacy. What exactly does Russia demand from the Europeans here?
Quoting Tzeentch
And Russia is playing right along. You still haven't answered why. "But Ukraine is so important" - yeah but why is it important now. Just wait until the US is gone, where is the problem?
Because NATO insisted on threatening what the Russians believed were their vital strategic interests.
Quoting Echarmion
Even when the US pivots, it doesn't mean the US 'is gone', and you're suggesting handing the US the biggest trump card it could hope for? Haha, what a 'sensible' strategy.
That's not what inevitable means. Threatening a vital interest is just that. You can choose not to respond with a military escalation.
Quoting Tzeentch
Like handing the US a war that according to you they desperately wanted? Yeah what could possibly be better.
The war in Ukraine is just the appetizer - not the actual goal. War between Europe and Russia is the American dream scenario here, and the conduct of Russia in this war so far clearly shows they are trying to avoid giving the suicidal Europeans enough reason to fall for Washington's warmongering.
They can't get the war between Europe and Russia without the war in Ukraine though.
Or are you supposing there'd be NATO tanks rolling into Russia?
They had hoped the Russians would more aggressively push Ukraine, which would have given NATO an opportunity to punish Russia via a guerilla war and which would have fueled Russophobia and the propaganda machines. (In a cruel twist of irony, it would be Israel that fell for such a trap in Gaza)
The Russians showed restraint though, giving NATO ample opportunity to back out of escalation and sit down for talks, which is why US warmongering is only finding limited success.
The situation is still dangerous, though. Economic decoupling, the spreading of war sentiment and a measure of militarization has been achieved, so there is fertile soil for another conflict down the line.
The US has proven it is willing to bomb its allies' infrastructure to further its agenda, so it's entirely thinkable the US may do something extreme to create the proverbial spark in the powder keg and thus we may be closer to the threshold for full-scale conflict between Europe and Russia than we think.
So how does this look? What's the war aim? Recapture Kaliningrad for Germany?
Quoting Tzeentch
This theory is nothing short of amazing. So the Russians, knowing the US wants war, are unfortunately forced (by reasons which are apparently unknowable) to oblige the US and repeatedly invade their neighbour.
But, in a stroke of genius, after eventually invading with their entire maneuver forces, they cleverly avoid winning the war. Thus depriving the US of the desired guerilla warfare. They instead engage in a total war of attrition. This, apparently, is somehow safer because, and I'm guessing here, if the war is already total, it cannot get worse.
Foiling the US by snatching defeat from the jaws of victory is truly 4D chess.
Quoting Tzeentch
After all, you never know when Russia will again be forced by circumstance to invade another neighbour.
Quoting Tzeentch
Luckily Russia has so far safer us from being bombed by the US by selflessly taking on the duty of starting the wars.
Who knows, whatever the US could lure the ignorant Europeans into accepting.
Quoting Echarmion
Thanks. :up:
I wouldn't expect someone who seems still to be stuck in "unprovoked invasion" territory to really get it, but still, thanks.
That's what it boils down to. "You just don't get it". You either accept the metaphysical premise that all events must trace back to the "Great Satan", in this case the USA, or you don't.
Why does Ukraine seek western integration? The US engineered it.
Why don't Europeans act according to their geopolitical interests? They're in thrall to the US.
Why did Russia invade Ukraine? The US forced them too.
This is just another world conspiracy. Replace the USA with your favourite villain, the Illuminati, Hollywood billionaires, etc. the story remains the same.
That's right. There are plenty of western scholars who voice these ideas, and it fits neatly in the historic behavioral pattern we see from the United States.
Where I diverge from these scholars is that they believe this to be a result of US incompetence, whereas I believe there is no way the US would pursue and double down on these policies for as long as they did, if they weren't getting exactly what they wanted.
An American accusing me of Hollywood bias is quite rich, though. There's not a nation on earth that has wreaked as much destruction on the world as the United States. It doesn't deserve anyone's benefit of the doubt. The only proper way to view its actions is through a lens of utter cynicism, which comes natural to a realist anyway.
I'm not american, but this is a neat encapsulation of your reasoning. You're emotionally committed to seeing the Great Satan at work, the facts come second.
I think you're lying.
Naturally.
What causes people to disagree with me on a public forum? Must be US agents doing it.
Tzeench: “deterrence is supposed to make war less likely, instead of provoke it.”
What a dumb rebuttal. Sure, [I]“deterrence is supposed to make war less likely, instead of provoke it”[/I] once you [I]“have a credible deterrent against Russia”[/I]. Not yet if one wants to build it up to catch up with his neighbour’s deterrence build-up, especially if your neighbour wants to subdue you.
Tzeench: “NATO leaders admitted to signing a peace agreement not with the intention of maintaing peace, but with the intention to arm for war”.
“First-hand accounts from Merkel and Hollande tell us that NATO entered the Minsk Accords in bad faith, and used it to buy time to arm Ukraine.”.
What is he even talking about? Any evidence of this admission?
If he refers to Merkel’s statement from the Zeit interview: [I]”The 2014 Minsk Agreement was an attempt to give Ukraine time. It also used this time to become stronger, as you can see today.”[/I] The expression “not with the intention of maintaing peace” is not there, nor it can be LOGICALLY inferred from that statement, arguably NOT EVEN SUGGESTED. Indeed, you must have heard the Latin adage "si vis pacm, para bellum" (= "if you want peace, prepare for war") therefore admitting that Minsk Agreements bought time for Ukraine's military build-up is no sufficient evidence that peace agreements were made "not with the intention of maintaing peace" AT ALL. So the alleged admission is just your manipulative and defamatory interpolation based on your implicit and highly questionable understanding of the situation. This is evidence of your intellectual misery.
The same goes with Holland’s claims: [I]"Yes, Angela Merkel is right on this point," he told the Kiev Independent media outlet, while commenting on Merkel’s remark that the Minsk agreements allowed Kiev to gain time, but by no means prevented further hostilities in the Donbass. "Since 2014, Ukraine has strengthened its military posture. Indeed, the Ukrainian army was completely different from that of 2014. It was better trained and equipped. It is the merit of the Minsk agreements to have given the Ukrainian army this opportunity."[/i] https://tass.com/world/1558075
And notice how Holland complements his claims: [I]“for a dialogue to be fruitful, it must be based on a balance of power.”[/I], but how does one state pursue balance of power on matter of security? Russia’s own behaviour shows it: military build-up and economic dependence, he himself suggested it.
The following Tzeench's claim is more foolish than the foolishness he attributes to Westerners:
[I]”This is why I emphasize the foolishness of combining the build up of a deterrent (presumably to avoid war) with economic decoupling, refusal of diplomatic talks and maximalist war rhetoric, etc.[/I])”.
Indeed prior to 2014, the West (including the US) and Russia was NOT decoupled, there was no refusal of diplomatic talks no maximalist war rhetoric, there was not even build-up a deterrent (NATO was brain dead, expenditures for NATO was declining, NATO membership for Ukraine always postponed). Actually it was doing business with Russia that FINANCED Russia’s military build-up and it was security cooperation in the Middle East that proved Russia’s power projection wasn’t at risk. The US-led West was dominated by a logic of APPEASEMENT of Russia (despite voices contrary to it within the US, INCLUDING Mearsheimer's) not provocation/humiliation, hence the push for Ukraine to return the nuclear arsenal to Russia in exchange for a promise of respecting the Ukrainian territorial integrity and national self-determination (while the warmongerer Mearsheimer was against this! now tell me if NOT returning the nuclear arsenal to Russia was a provocation from the US and Ukraine!).
And yet having discussions of Ukraine inside NATO and EU was perceived as an unbearable provocation and security threat worth a conventional war against Ukraine and its Western allies?! WTF?! What the fuck can Russia sensibly expect from the US which just beat Russia in a world hegemony competition and while Russia was at its lowest also economically and politically (remember the August Coup by revanchist hardliners?!).
AND THAT's NOT ALL, IF Tzeench CLAIMS EUROPEANS ARE THE US's LACKEYS THEN IT MUST FOLLOW FROM HIS OWN LOGIC THAT THE US WANTED THE WEST TO DO BUSINESS WITH RUSSIA AND TO DE-ESCALATE WITH A MILITARY BUILD-DOWN AND TO POSTPONE UKRAINE ACCESS TO NATO IN ~20 YEARS OF GLOBALIZATION PRIOR TO 2014. SO IF THE US AND ITS EUROPEAN LACKEYS WERE SO COOPERATIVE TOWARD RUSSIA SINCE THE COLLAPSE OF SOVIET UNION, IT IS THE US AND ITS EUROPEAN LACKEYS WHICH WERE BETRAYED AND PROVOKED INTO WAR BY RUSSIA FIRST WITH A GROWINGLY HOSTILE RHETORIC AND THEN WITH AN ACTUAL ACT OF WAR AGAINST UKRAINE AND, INDIRECTLY, ITS WESTERN ALLIES (BTW SHELL WE MAKE A COMPARISON WITH PUTIN’s MAXIMALIST WARMONGERING RHETORIC AND NUCLEAR THREATS AGAINST THE WEST, REALLY?), NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND.
And, notice, even these reasons wouldn't suffice to me. I just would find them honestly compelling for Europeans (for sure, to many Europeans). And I can't dismiss this fact.
But, really, all this talking about provocations, broken promises, bad faith agreements, 15 years warnings about vital strategic interests, refused peace offers, Western warmongering bullshits (allegedly grounded on historical analysis and geopolitical realism) with such self-conceited moral indignation and intellectual self-entitlement is intellectually disgusting. I feel shame for you, really.
I agree with this objection but it’s nothing new: Mearsheimer too can be easily accused of such bipolar attitude. On one side he claims to describe “geopolitical realities” when he talks about Russia’s behaviour, on the other he is all about condemning “geopolitical choices” which do not seem to match his “geopolitical theory” when he talks about US’s behaviour.
Tzeench's double standard reflects on his rhetorically conflicting claims such as:
A - “What the US or Europe want is hardly a factor in this. These are geopolitical realities - forces of nature, almost - that they cannot ignore (though admittedly, Europe has been a king at ignoring geopolitical realities).
B - “Where I diverge from these scholars is that they believe this to be a result of US incompetence, whereas I believe there is no way the US would pursue and double down on these policies for as long as they did, if they weren't getting exactly what they wanted”.
“there's no way the US would have provoked this conflict unless the Europeans were willing participants”.
A - [I]“Europe in terms of its economic, intellectual and human potential is way too big for US to maintain its artificial status as suzerain. which is why Europe will simply break free from the US orbit once the US is forced to divert its attention elsewhere”.[/I]
[I]“the US is seeking to prepare its pivot to Asia by leaving long-lasting conflict as its parting gift to Europe.”[/I]
B - “Even when the US pivots, it doesn't mean the US 'is gone’, and you're suggesting handing the US the biggest trump card it could hope for? Haha, what a 'sensible' strategy”.[/I]
The will and ignorance of the West is contrasted to the Russian geopolitical realities and forces of nature (…almost). The US is doomed to leave Europe, but not really.
Unfortunately, he himself can’t help but talking about the Putin’s “sensible” choices and intellectual failures in light of perceived “vital strategic interests”.
[I]“the Russians after over a decade of warnings chose to use force to secure what they believed to be their vital strategic interests”[/I]
[I]“Putin probably banked on the Europeans pursuing a sensible strategy. They didn’t”.[/I]
Double standard is still at play when Tzeench is lecturing people about history and propaganda.
While from the US history ([I]”There are plenty of western scholars who voice these ideas, and it fits neatly in the historic behavioral pattern we see from the United States”[/I]) it should follow that “despite all the historical evidence, Europe seems chronically incapable to view the United States as a ruthless great power which follows realist logic” or “The only proper way to view its actions is through a lens of utter cynicism, which comes natural to a realist anyway”. An yet from [I]“Ukraine and especially Crimea are of great geopolitical and historical importance to Russia and always have been”. [/I] doesn’t follow any claim about Russian cynicism or ruthless behaviour according to realist logic.
While Europeans are under the pernicious spell of the US propaganda machine, apparently Russian-spun propaganda in the West has no pernicious impact on the West worth mentioning. Putin’s claims are cherrypicked to support a defensive, minimalist, unequivocal, and self-contained understanding of Russian posture and war goals (what about Ukrainian denazification? What about demilitarising Ukraine? What about the denial of Ukrainian national identity as opposed to Russia? What about nuclear threats and escalatory rhetoric made him and his lackeys like Lavrov and Medvedev?), while European claims get shamelessly misreported to make them look as confessing their warmongering oompah loompahs proclivity.
Notice also how much his arguments need to rely on painstakingly mystificatory and question-begging expressions like “geopolitical realities”, “forces of nature, almost”, “vital strategic interests”, “the realist framework that says cooperation cannot happen when it is rational to cooperate” which he is rather reluctant to elaborate, especially on how they would apply to all relevant actors beyond Russia, including the US, Ukraine, European countries.
Take the example of the role played by the Black Sea Fleet as part of Russia’s “vital strategic interests”.
First of all the Black Sea Fleat is gone from Crimea despite the annexation (https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/russias-retreat-from-crimea-makes-a-mockery-of-the-wests-escalation-fears/). So there is no vital link between Black Sea Fleat and Crimea, and so far this is an unquestionable success by the totally disastrously Ukrainian losers. This was in defence of Ukrainian vital strategic interests as the Ukrainian economy still heavily relies on its wheat exports (https://www.cfr.org/article/how-ukraine-overcame-russias-grain-blockade).
Second, what is the purpose of the Black Sea Fleat really? Sure it CAN be used to DEFEND Russia proper from NATO hostile activities (if there are any), absolutely true. What however is also absolutely true is that the Black Sea Fleat is ACTUALLY AND OVERWHELMINGLY used for hegemonic power projection i.e. to undermine Ukraine’s exports, to keep control over the Caucasus regions, to support friend-countries in the Middle East, to expand presence and control over North African countries or in the Balkans, and sea routes in the Mediterranean. These are the kind of “geopolitical realities” has to take into account when reasoning over the alleged “vital strategic interests” of Russia, and margins of economic cooperation with Russia.
I don't recall any posts here that are illegal in the Kremlin's assumed adversary countries (but it is 2 or 3 or so continents). German laws against Nazism came to mind, which might be the closest, but not applicable here. Ukraine is in a precarious situation at the moment, which works as a temporary excuse.
That at least should give some indication of what's going on (plus bits and pieces of related past).
[sup]• United Nations General Assembly Resolution 68/262 (2014)
• Legality of the Russian invasion of Ukraine
[/sup]
What I find interesting is that the Russian invasion of Ukraine was such an unusual event that even Mearsheimer's take on geopolitics - which due to being offensive should have been better able to account for it - struggles with the consequences.
Maybe that's an argument to be sceptical about such grand narratives in general, but then again I already am sceptical about them so this might just be confirmation bias on my part.
Anyways I find it pretty interesting that Mearsheimer now claims that the invasion was essentially fake, in that it's main objective was to somehow induce a negotiation rather than a military victory. I think this idea is pretty obviously wrong for a number of reasons, but I still find it interesting to speculate why Mearsheimer is proposing it in the first place.
I have an intuition that it's an attempt to somehow create a plausible motivation for the invasion that fits the notion of "abstract geopolitical forces". While plenty can be said about Russia's strategic interests in Ukraine, it's much harder to explain how these interests are supposedly served by the invasion. About the only clear advantage would be direct control of land and natural resources, but that doesn't seem like a good motivation given the extremely high risks. So we're forced to either conclude that Russia's geopolitical interests alone do not explain the decision (which is my view) or we must invent reinterpret the decision as something other than a committment to full scale total war.
Which planet are you living on? History is filled with invasions.
The only thing that's unusual in terms of the last few decades it's not the US and co. doing the invading.
So already you start with complete delusion.
Then you go deeper into your delusional fantasy that Mearsheimer somehow struggles to account for the invasion. Russia invading Ukraine is what Mearsheimer has been predicting since the fall of the Soviet Union (going so far as to argue Ukraine should not give up its nuclear weapons) and especially in response to NATO expansion.
That a state will attack another state on its border forming alliances with hostile other states is exactly what you'd expect in the offensive realism point of view.
Quoting Echarmion
More total delusions.
Nearly all wars end in a negotiated settlement. It's pretty rare for people to fight to the last person.
The idea Russia attempted and failed to conquer all of Ukraine in 3 days was a Western talking point, made up first by propagandists and then promulgated by delusional sycophants such as yourself, in order to portray Ukrainian losing 20% of its territory in about a week as some sort of victory.
In normal military terms, losing 20% of your territory in a week is called a major defeat.
The reality was that the start of the war was a big debacle for Ukraine. Ukraine offered zero resistance to Russian troops crossing a series of bridges from Crimea to the mainland and could not strike a 70km convey sitting on a highway with anything.
However, in order to sell both Ukrainians and the West on repudiating any negotiations to end the war, it was necessary to portray losing as somehow winning and that Ukraine could simply continue to fight until victory.
If the reality was acknowledged that Ukraine had just lost 20% of its territory in a week and had essentially no chance of recovering that territory with force (having a significant disadvantage in artillery, armour, air power and electronic warfare), then trying to negotiate an end to the conflict makes a lot more sense than the prospect of near total economic collapse, losing hundreds of thousands of soldiers, and causing a mass emigration which would reverse less and less the more the war drags on.
The narrative that Russia tried and failed to conquer and occupy all of Ukraine was invented simply to make some sort of standard by which Russia conquering and occupying a further 20% of Ukraine was somehow a failure.
That Russia committed roughly 200 000 troops instead of the +2 000 000 troops that would be needed to occupy and pacify all of Ukraine, is Mearsheimer (and plenty other analysts) main evidence that Russia was not trying to conquer all of Ukraine.
Quoting Echarmion
Well, your intuition is stupid.
The motivation of Russia to invade a state trying to form deeper and deeper military cooperation with states hostile to Russia, literally publishing giant tomes with titles like "Overextending and Unbalancing Russia", referring to Russians as "rivals" when being polite and simply enemies when "straight talking", labelling the Russian leader as literally Hitler, and so on, is a pretty obvious and common sense motivation.
In addition, there was the civil war in the Donbas where Russian speakers were being shelled by literal Nazis, which created significant domestic pressure to intervene to defend those populations.
Not only common sense motivations, but motivations that the US uses all the time to justify its own military actions: we need to bomb so-and-so because they are part of the "the axis of Evil" at worst or some sort of domino of bad at best, and / or we need to bomb so-and-so as a humanitarian mission to protect civilians.
Quoting Echarmion
We are in no way forced to accept your two options.
Just like the US responded aggressively to the Soviet Union deepening military cooperation with Cuba beyond a tolerable threshold, it is completely adequate an explanation that Russia likewise would and has responded aggressively to the US deepening military cooperation beyond some tolerable threshold in Ukraine (in addition to the killing of Russian speakers in the Donbas for years).
As far as I know, Mearsheimer never made any definite prediction that Russia would invade Ukraine. Notably he has not made any prediction on the 2022 invasion before it happened.
Quoting boethius
What you'd expect is that a state exploits the weakness of neighbours to gain (local) hegemony. Arguably Russia's 2014 invasion of Ukraine fits that bill. The problem with the 2022 invasion is that there was a huge and obvious risk it would weaken Russia's position instead.
Quoting boethius
By which metric (except access to resources in eastern Ukraine, which I have mentioned) has Russia's geopolitical position improved as a result of the 2022 invasion?
Quoting boethius
Except that the US reaction did not in fact lead to a war. A comparable decision would be the US directly invading Cuba, but that is not what happened. Instead the US responded with an aggressive but calculated move that forced the ball back to the Soviet leadership who would then have been forced to escalate the conflict into open warfare.
It's exactly that difference between a calculated move to foil an opponent and a commitment to a total war without a clear exit strategy that makes Russia's 2022 invasion unusual.
This is in no way the case.
The US has no legitimate security concerns in Ukraine. You cannot invade the US from Ukraine.
If Russia went and built up forces hostile to the US in Mexico, obviously the US would respond to that.
As for Ukraine, when you are a weaker nation beside a much stronger nation, your security is not served by forming military cooperation with another major power thousands of kilometres away that (precisely because you are of no relevance to their actual security) is not going to actually send any armies to come defend you if you get invaded due to becoming hostile to your more powerful neighbor.
For example, Mexico's security is not served by becoming a vassal to Russia to get a supply of arms to then lose a war to the United States.
A smaller state's security is served through a combination of defensive deterrence and diplomacy, without being a threat. Canada and Mexico coexist with the far more powerful United States because they don't threaten the US.
What is obvious common sense when applied to US neighbours does not change in the slightest when applied to Russian neighbours.
When you're a smaller state your legitimate security concern is to avoid being invaded by more powerful states.
As I've explained numerous times, rights are insufficient to determine justification.
Russia has both a right and can actually justify preemptive military action against a smaller state: because it is likely to win. A smaller state has the same right to preemptive military action but is much harder to form a justification if it is unlikely to win.
That "Ukraine has a right to join NATO" is not a justification for trying to do so if the likely result is being invaded, losing large amount of territory, massive economic destruction, mass exodus less likely to return the the more the war drags on, and most importantly hundreds of thousands of maimed and dead Ukrainians.
If Ukraine's "rights" actually were sufficient justification, then the West would have all their militaries in Ukraine right now, but they don't because tying rights to justifications is a fallacy. What are the consequences of doing this or that also matter in forming a justification for actions. The West doesn't like the consequences of actually sending our armies to defend "Ukrainian rights" so we don't consider it justified on that account, and so we don't do it.
A logic that, super ironically, the US just used to try to argue that Iran shouldn't retaliate against Israel for assassinating a foreign leader hosted (and thus under the protection) of Iran because, sure Iran has a right retaliate and any Western nation would do the same without hesitation ... but ... consequences, consequences!!
A logic that is sound and equally applicable to Ukraine, just isn't because Ukrainians serving US administration interests to die to harm Russia is fine by the US administration.
In the case of Iran, we'll see soon enough if the logic is not only sound but also actually true that Iran cannot retaliate against Israel without unacceptable consequences.
In the case of Ukraine we have already seen what the consequences are to evaluate whether it was "worth it" to pursue a particular right.
Mearsheimer literally wrote an article titled "The Case for a Ukrainian Nuclear Deterrent" in 1993 and has predicted since Eastward NATO expansion started that continuing to do so will result in Russia invading Ukraine, which has happened.
Mearsheimer did not predict the exact timing which is not what we expect from a theory of international relations, same way we don't expect an economic theory, much less the economists who develop such theories, to predict exact days bubbles burst.
You are trying to argue that somehow the Russian invasion of Ukraine cannot be accounted for in Mearsheimer's world view of offensive realism, "struggles with the consequences" is the words you use, which is simply a laughably stupid point to make.
To move the goalposts to Mearsheimer did not predict the exact timing of exactly when Russia would invade Ukraine is simply a weak and deluded mind defending its very much unreal view of the world.
Quoting Echarmion
First, Mearsheimer puts significant effort in his theorizing to account for miscalculations. Indeed, it is a central theme of offensive realism that the distrust between states easily induces paranoia and miscommunication easily leading to miscalculation. So, even if what you said was true, that Russia is weakened by the invasion of Ukraine, that isn't unusual in the slightest in an offensive realism analysis. It can, and often is, argued that US was to be weakened by its invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq and those invasions and / or subsequent management of the occupations was a miscalculation. Likewise, it can and has been argued that the Israeli genocide in Gaza ultimately weakens its position and is a miscalculation. Offensive realism is first mostly a theory of the prevailing criteria and motivations of state actors in making decisions, i.e. what states tend to try to accomplish (self preservation), and second a theory about how those decisions processes succeed or fail (in seeking regional hegemony, Sadam may have miscalculated for example), and third a theory of the inherent instability of the nation state system (as, by definition, a system of violent competition has winners and losers).
Second, it is very much debatable whether Russia has been weakened or strengthened by the war in military, economic and political terms.
Obviously Russia has paid a cost, but paying a cost for something does not somehow inherently reduce one's position. Obviously, in order to evaluate things both the costs and benefits must be taken into account.
For example, if Ukraine was on an inevitable pathway of a military conflict with Russia, then even if the war is costly it is presumably less costly than a later war with a more powerful Ukraine. Sometimes costs cannot be avoided in which case paying the least price is best option.
Even if Russia has been weakened by the war, it's entirely possible that the end result is a far weaker Ukraine and therefore Russia vastly increasing its relative power to Ukraine. Obviously if we fight and I break my hand, I'm weaker, but if in the process you become entirely paralyzed I have increased my relative strength over you. This maybe nevertheless a mistake on my part if I have other foes to fight and can't prevail with a broken hand, but in the case of Russia there are only a limited list of candidates for further conflict.
So, even if we accept the premise Russia is weaker that is not sufficient to conclude it is weaker in relative terms over the parties that matter.
Then there is the argument that Russia has increased its power by increasing and refining its war machine, creating an essentially independent economic system (i.e. an alternative to dealing with the West), and, in the eyes of much of the world, it is Russia that is "standing up" to US Imperialism and Ukraine a hapless vassal state, and not Ukraine standing up to Russian imperialism.
Quoting Echarmion
As mentioned above, there is increasing in relative power vis-a-vis Ukraine, increasing and refining its war machine, creating an economic system independent of the West and "standing up" to the US.
The narrative fed by Western states it that Russia didn't "win hard enough" and therefore is somehow losing, but the reality is that Russia has defeated Western intelligence and weapons systems as well as defeated Western sanctions. Russia has essentially created both a model, example and system of breaking with the West: intelligence that can deal with Western intelligence, weapons that deal with Western weapons, and an economic system that can deal without Western integration.
In terms of great power conflict with the US, this is the most significant end result of the war.
Quoting Echarmion
A blockade is an act of war. Had the Soviets repudiated negotiations because "Cuban rights" then both Cuba and the Soviet Union would be entirely within their right in international law to break the US blockade with force. Fortunately, Soviets viewed the likely end result of defending "Cuban rights" as a nuclear war and so preferred a settlement.
The US blockade was just as much an act of war as Russia invading Ukraine by land, only difference is that the nature of the sea is that a blockade can first result in a standoff.
And, obviously, the US did try to invade Cuba in the Bay of Pigs fiasco precisely to avoid a situation where the Soviets are bringing in nuclear weapons to Cuba in response to US placing nuclear weapons in Turkey.
The point is, obviously you easily understand why the Russians would get aggressive in response to Ukraine trying to form a close military alliance with a hostile great power, and you're argument is simply that the Russians miscalculated in their choice of aggressive action. Had Russia only blockaded Ukrainians ports, it seems you'd be in total support of that.
Now, whether the war is ultimately good or bad for Russia as a regional hegemon in conflict with the United States is very much debatable, but what betrays your role as a propagandist in this discussion is that you have zero concern whatsoever for Ukrainian wellbeing. Your only concern is with arguing US good and strong and Russia bad and weak, you not arguing that somehow Ukraine is better off by the war. You console yourself that Russia must be slightly worse off vis-a-vis great power competition with the United States, while completely ignoring that Ukraine is getting completely wrecked in this war.
If the war is a mistake for Russia because it's not gaining in international power ... well what is Ukraine gaining in the war? Has Ukraine's power and wealth increased?
You're welcome to provide this prediction but again so far as I know Mearsheimer has never said anything as specific as "if NATO keeps expanding eastward Russia will eventually invade Ukraine". What he has said is that Russia would react, potentially with military force.
Quoting boethius
Nothing in this contradicts anything I said.
Quoting boethius
And this failed, which is an argument against this being a good strategy.
Quoting boethius
I would consider that move a lot more strategically sound, yes.
Quoting boethius
If the war is a mistake for Russia then we at least agree that it's not sufficiently explained by Russia's strategic interests in Ukraine.
Use it as a mined buffer zone to keep the barbarians at bay? Give Donbas independence? Make it into a new iron curtain?
Well, no, they're trying to gobble Donbas up, switch flags entirely, call it their own, expand Russia, and have employed shamming (and :fire: more) to do so.
And, as explained a few times, that does nothing to fix their supposed NATO-phobia.
They already had a border, call it Ukraine's "red line".
So, do you think they did/didn't (do/don't) know that? (I'll just start out with the simplest coherent explanation.)