So, because Russia has nukes we should let them do whatever they want?
With that logic we should let them takeover the entire Europe, continuing their genocide until the Holocaust seemed like a small-scale event. Then you can give yourself a pat on the back for a job well done.
> Woodward writes that Biden's national security team at one point believed there was a real threat, a 50 per cent chance, that Putin would use nuclear weapons in Ukraine.
Hopefully they are exaggerating for effect. A strategy of actively probing for Russia's breaking point is ruinously stupid; when you find it the odds are pretty good that it will be because they are at the point where they are willing to go nuclear. They might try some sort of escalate-to-de-escalate strike on NATO but there must be a pretty decent chance that would just escalate and the Russian command would be aware of that.
Not lobbing missiles in to Russia is an entirely reasonable red line. We got all the way through the Afghan war and the Iraq war without anyone launching missiles into the US and that restraint didn't seem to cause any long term problems. Extending similar courtesies to Russia is appropriate.
FWIW the US is also 100% aware of this. See the Proud Prophet wargames. [1] It was one of the most extensive, largescale, and 'realistic' wargames ever executed. It was essentially working out a variety of military strategies to try to gain an edge over the USSR - demonstrative nuclear strikes, limited-scale nuclear war, decapitation strikes against leadership, and so on.
The outcome of literally every single scenario was essentially the end of the world with billions dead and the Northern Hemisphere rendered largely inhospitable. This wargame was carried out in 1983. Its conclusion lead the US military and leadership to change course from the previous pattern of escalation as a means of victory, to de-escalation and collaboration. By 1991 the Soviet Union would collapse with their leaders holding hands with American leaders.
By 1991 ... yes, I remember, it was an exciting time, The Scorpions wrote a song, everybody was very positive. This lasted about eight years.
They've apparently changed the lyrics now. The opening lines are changed to "Now listen to my heart / It says Ukrainia, waiting for the wind to change." Meine stated, "It's not the time with this terrible war in Ukraine raging on, it's not the time to romanticize Russia."
I'm pretty sure the military industrial complex has had those leaders replaced with ones of the "let's hit them, they're bluffing" variety. The fact they're even testing the limits they've already broken through seems like a case study in strategic incompetence. AFAIK there is literally nothing in this for the US apart from an opportunity to set China up for greater success. Which, while a noble move, is probably not intentional.
Bear? It is more like a stray dog that keeps shitting on your living room carpet. You don’t need to hate the dog, you just keep it on the outside where it can run around and have a great time on it’s own.
This obviously isn't their goal anymore than the Russians are running out of missiles, the ruble is rubble, this 'game-changer' will imminently end the war (instead of obv just escalating it), and so on endlessly. Russia started negotiations to end the war 4 days (!!!) after the war began when, at that point, it wasn't even a war, but little more than some performative demonstrations!
And the main thing they wanted is what they've said all along - Ukraine agreeing not to join NATO or host foreign military bases. Everything else was negotiable - they were even willing to compromise on the exact status of Crimea! Then we got good ole Boris Johnson telling Zelensky to 'just fight'. One brilliant leader offering wisdom to another, with the outcome anybody could expect when such minds come together.
Notably Putin has also somewhat uncharacteristically shared the details of conversations he was having with Biden shortly prior to the war. And it was again all about Ukraine's NATO status. Biden refused to budge beyond agreeing to delay Ukraine's entry by 10-15 years (which was probably a defacto sort of 'we'll wait until you die' offer). Russian began amassing forces relatively shortly after that conversation.
This Russian agitprop always invites the question: why does Russia care if Ukraine is in NATO or not, if it actually respects its independence and territorial integrity? Russian claims all boil down to the notion that NATO wants to "move its forces to the borders" so as to ultimately invade and occupy Russia proper. If you don't believe that this is the purpose of NATO, then the entire construction makes zero sense. The reason why Ukraine wants to be in NATO is not because they like the logo, it's because they want to be safe from being invaded by Russia - and the same goes for every single country in Eastern Europe that has joined since USSR fell.
Imagine if China managed to convince Mexico to join a military alliance and then moved to deploy troops, military bases, and likely nuclear weapons right on the border. I assume you obviously agree that even in this scenario China is not planning to literally invade the US, yet the US would obviously never in a million years allow this - and if China did not back down there would, with 100% certainty, be a war over it.
Come to think of it, this isn't even much of a hypothetical as this is essentially exactly what the Cuban Missile Crisis [1] was about, but the US was freaking out about weapons that were not even on a shared border, merely 'too close', bringing the world to the brink of nuclear war over it.
If Mexico was constantly threatened with an invasion from US, I would expect them to try really hard to join some kind of military alliance that could counter that, and if US were to respond to that the way Russia did, it would absolutely have been in the wrong. But this hypothetical, while amusing to consider, is not what we're dealing with, and ignoring this whole part about historical occupation and forced assimilation that ended recently enough that many people alive in Ukraine today still remember it, is extremely misleading as analogies go.
And yes, this whole bullshit about "they're not a real nation" etc was very much a thing in Russia before 2022, and before 2014 even. I should know; I grew up there. I remember reading "Эпоха мертворожденных" in 2008, and that's pretty much what Russia actually did in 2014 (except of course the whole "NATO occupation" of the non-separatist parts turned out to be imaginary). But I remember hearing similar sentiments in the 90s as a kid, as well. And since Ukrainians are well within the Russian cultural orbit, they were aware of those trends, too - and took appropriate precautions. This notion that invasion wouldn't have happened if they didn't seek NATO membership is wrong.
Haha, you might want to look at the history of US-Mexico relations. If you're going to speak of historical things it's relevant that the relations there have an oddly large amount in common. Texas was a part of Mexico! A reasonable wiki page to start the crawl would probably be Mexican Texas. [1] You've got all the good stuff: ethnic conflict, weaponized migrations, separatist movements supported by a foreign government, brutal wars, annexation referendums, and so on. And Cuba indeed - one of the compromises at the end of the nuclear stand-off is that the US would stop trying to invade Cuba!
Reading Plato and other great philosophers is interesting (The Republic in particular is an amazing read) because they can often sound like prophets - predicting the future with such extreme accuracy at a time that ostensibly had basically nothing in common with ours. But I think their 'secret' is simply that they were great objective observers of the behavior of humanity. Because history is not especially creative, it keeps repeating itself endlessly, because humanity doesn't change except as a product of technology changing.
I'm well aware of the history of US-Mexico relations, but no, it's not an equivalent. For one thing, there is not a multi-century history of attempts by US to fully occupy and annex Mexico (there were people advocating for this back during the Mexican-American War, but they were a minority even then, which is why it didn't happen). For another, Mexico is itself a colonizer state in all the territories which US took away from it. But, most importantly, last time there was an armed conflict between the two states was over century ago.
Well there's not a multi century history, because the US hadn't existed for multiple centuries, or even a century before it started going to war with everybody around it! We even went to war with Canada! Literally every single nation which has ever had power is a "colonizer state". Friggin Sweden and Norway used to be sprawling empires! You have "colonizer states" and you have "vassal states."
And this reality of the world remains true to this day. It's just that the means change. Alexander the Great wisely stabilized his massive empire largely by letting areas under his control maintain an exceptional degree of sovereignty, minimizing overt resistance to his control. The US took this to the next step by not even directly claiming nations, but instead simply remotely controlling the governments of these nations, and simply overthrowing/replacing them when they became uncontrollable - and repeating the process. Made even easier with democracy, which has a paradoxical tendency to elevate unpopular people on the take, rather than popular ideologues, to power.
Whenever there's any need - we can easily compel the various defacto vassal states under our control to act, even when directly against their own self interest. See: Germany for the most overt illustration of this. Extracting wealth from vassals became somewhat less relevant with the introduction of fiat currency. So long as we force the world to use our money, we can simply print money as needed, export the inflation to other countries, and it effectively functions as real growth - at least until the whole system inevitably collapses in on itself in a debt filled void.
Imagine if China managed to convince Mexico to join a military alliance and then moved to deploy troops, military bases, and likely nuclear weapons right on the border.
You can imagine all you want, but that's not what happened in regard to Ukraine.
What did happen is that Ukraine formally renounced its NATO aspirations in 2010, but Putin invaded anyway in 2014.
In 2014 Ukraine overthrew their (democratically elected) pro-Russian president with extensive support from the US, leading numerous regions that are heavily ethnic Russian, including Crimea, to declare their independence. Western efforts to try to show the Crimean referendum was faked ended up doing the exact opposite [1] - and confirming that it was indeed reflective of the will of the overwhelming majority of people.
In 2019 Ukraine added joining NATO as a goal to their constitution, and the US was obviously rapidly moving in that direction with them. It was widely predicted that doing this would lead to war, and well here we are!
> In 2014 Ukraine overthrew their (democratically elected) pro-Russian president with extensive support from the US
Wrong. The Ukrainian parliament voted 328-vs-0 to hold early elections after the sitting president got over hundred protesters killed and ran away from the country fearing criminal prosecution.
> leading numerous regions that are heavily ethnic Russian, including Crimea, to declare their independence.
Wrong again. The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that it was an operation by Russian military and security services. They could not find any evidence of an actual separatist movement.
> In 2019 Ukraine added joining NATO as a goal to their constitution
... which is 5 years after Russia invaded Ukraine.
> the US was obviously rapidly moving in that direction with them
Again, obviously wrong. Three years later, by the time Russia launched the full-scale invasion, Ukraine was still nowhere near joining the NATO. We saw rapid timeline with Sweden and Finland. Informal negotiations started early 2022, formal invitation issued June 2022, all ratifications complete by national parliaments by April 2023 (Finland) and March 2024 (Sweden). To this day, Ukraine has not even been invited to start talks. The process hasn't even begun yet.
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What's the point of posting obvious lies and excuses? These are not even valid arguments, but clear factually incorrect statements.
Leading numerous regions that are heavily ethnic Russian, including Crimea, to declare their independence.
I have three questions for you:
(1) Can you name one of the regions Putin is attempting to annex, aside from Crimea, that was "heavily ethnic Russian?"
(2) Can you explain the circumstances which caused that particular region to have a majority Russian-identified population? (In just a sentence or two, please).
(3) Something else happened in 2014, in between the two events that you claim happened. Why is this missing from your chronology?
(1) Donbas - though Russia was not initially attempting to annex this area. The negotiations scrapped by the West would have left these regions as something like special administrative regions under Ukraine, akin to what Russia had already been trying to relatively peacefully achieve for a decade with the Minsk accords.
(2) Coal + industrialization + peasants seeking a better life.
(3) Actually quite a lot happened, but I assume you're referencing the fact that a small number of Russian forces were deployed to Crimea. A practical issue when territory "peacefully" changes hands is deterring the former "owners" from simply coming in and trying to kill everybody to immediately reclaim it. The important issue is whether those forces drove coercion or otherwise manipulated the outcome of the referendum in a way outside the will of the people. This is what the West tried to prove, but they instead ended up proving the exact opposite! Incidentally, a comparable referendum held in Donbas was likely outside the will of the people, and consequently - Russia did not recognize it.
#1 is not accurate. Here [1] is a visual map of the last census showing the percent in each region where Russian is the native language, which is a reasonable proxy for Russian ethnicity. This [2] shows Ukrainian ethnicity by region. That census is also from 2001. It's unclear what happened in the 13 years to 2014, though after 2014 it's safe to say it became majority ethnic Russian due to the constant conflict going on. That area in the East/Northeast is Donbas of course.
Crimea is far easier on #2. Crimea has never been majority (or plurality) Ukrainian. Prior to the Russians it was Tatars, but they were exiled after WW2 by Stalin for collaboration with the Nazis. The reason Crimea ended up under Ukrainian control is because in 1954 Khrushchev 'gifted' it to Ukraine to celebrate the 300th anniversary of the Pereiaslav Agreement. That agreement is when the Cossacks that lived in 'the ukraine' (Ukraine translates to something like at the borderlands/frontier) signed a treaty swearing allegiance to Russia. At the time of the gift it was mostly just a token gesture, because Ukraine was just another normal part of the USSR and so basically nothing changed.
And the main thing they wanted is what they've said all along - Ukraine agreeing not to join NATO or host foreign military bases. Everything else was negotiable - they were even willing to compromise on the exact status of Crimea!
That wasn't what Putin said in his December 2021 ultimatum.
My comment is based on what was happening during the negotiations before the west tanked them.
But more generally when skilled leaders want "X" they generally instead say they want "X, Y and Z." The goal is so that you can then 'compromise' by withdrawing your desire for Y and Z. And in the best case, you may even get at least some of Y and Z.
You're leaving out the part where the "skilled leader" says "We want X, Y, Z, W, and the kitchen sink. And if you don't give it to us, we're going to blow your pretty little head clean off, motherfucker."
