Politics_Observer wrote:There were plenty of times where we tried to reset relations with the Russia on friendly terms and the Russians rejected it.
With the mindset of an enlisted guy, you won't understand the Russian military mindset until you read something like
Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Explain Everything About the World. I finished it a month or so ago. FWIW, I also finished Revenge of Georgraphy recently too.
Robert D. Kaplan wrote:“As Napoleon said, to know a nation's geography is to know its foreign policy”
Basically, Russia's geography invites invasion. It has no territorial barriers to prevent invasion from the West. It was Russian winters and the inability to sustain very long supply lines that saved Russia from Napolean, Enver Pasha and Hitler. The Russian military leadership is paranoid of invasion, and if you look at their geography and their history, you would understand that readily.
ingliz wrote:The Russians have no interest in taking Ukraine.
A good part of the Soviet military industrial complex was in Eastern Ukraine.
Potemkin wrote:This is a quarrel between Russia and Ukraine, two nations which are thousands of miles away from the USA, on a completely different continent. Why do you feel you have the right to intervene on one side or the other?
They feel they have the right for the same reason that the French and British--longstanding rivals--decided to join forces and fight against the Russians in Crimea. The Ukrainian flag is basically yellow wheat fields and blue sky. It was the bread basket of the Soviet Union, and an important part of the Soviet military industrial complex. US geostrategy would be about undermining the rise of a peer competitor. Hence, it would seek Ukraine to be independent of Russia.
Politics_Observer wrote:You seriously don't believe that the Russians hacked our elections?
I don't think Biden won legitimately, but I don't think the Russians had anything to do with it.
Politics_Observer wrote:They helped an idiot like Trump get into power here in the US and wreck havoc on our democracy.
They didn't turn a single vote to Trump according to the bureaucracy. Additionally, Russian oligarchs had significant ties to the Clintons.
Politics_Observer wrote:We are lucky that Trump, with the help of the Russians, didn't destroy our democracy and become a dictator.
Our so-called democracy is being destroyed by governors usurping emergency powers with respect to covid. Trump scarcely used emergency powers until covid, and when he did it was to accelerate vaccine development--which he was told would take four years.
Politics_Observer wrote:We have every reason to help the Ukrainians and we would be foolish not to help the Ukrainians in light of Russia's actions against the U.S. and the very serious threat they have demonstrated with their actions that they pose to our democracy by interfering in our elections and nearly helping Trump to destroy our democracy and make him dictator. Ohh no, we need to help the Ukrainians.
Well before Trump was on the political radar, the US undermined a duly elected Ukrainian government that was more sympathetic to Moscow than to the EU.
Politics_Observer wrote:Plus we can tie down Russian forces in Ukraine to where they don't make trouble for us elsewhere, we can force them to spend more money out of their economy to keep their gains in Ukraine which then that money doesn't go towards modernizing their military to pose an even greater threat to us.
The Russian military is not a threat to the US military. The US military footprint is superior to the Russian footprint in almost every way.
Heisenberg wrote:The sanctimony of the American liberal will never stop being hilarious. You might want to do five minutes of reading on America's attitude to democracy in countries that happen to vote the wrong way. Indeed, spend five minutes reading about what America has got up to in Russia and eastern Europe since the fall of the Soviet Union, before playing the victim.
Not too many people understand the deep state and their historical actions.
noemon wrote:Russia is run by a one-man fascist dictatorship who meddled inside Ukrainian politics to prevent the Ukrainians from making a trade agreement with the EU. You have never offered a justification for these extremely pathetic actions on behalf of Russia.
Russia's military strategists have made that clear from the fall of the Soviet Union--that Ukraine was off the table. I understand NATO expansion to Poland, but they pushed it right up to the Baltics. They were even considering making Georgia a NATO member, which is when Medvedev embarrassed the Bush administration by invading Abkhazia and South Ossetia as "liberators."
noemon wrote:Why does Russia has an issue with Ukrainians doing business and travelling in the EU?
They don't. They have a problem with Ukraine moving toward becoming an EU member state and/or a NATO member. The Russians viewed a trade agreement as a precursor to that objective.
noemon wrote:It's obvious that the Russians managed for a brief period of time to change the narrative inside the US.
Russiagate was a Hillary Clinton psyop carried out by her allies in the deep state. Russia had nothing to do with the Trump 2016 campaign, even by Mueller's own admission.
noemon wrote:Lots of Republicans even inside PoFo became Russian apologists @blackjack21 being one of the most prominent.
First, I am not a Republican and haven't been since 2006. In the early 2000s, I was an ardent Bush supporter but saw serious flaws in his foreign policy. I didn't agree with many of his domestic policies. I ended up leaving the Republicans because of McCain-Kennedy--i.e., the establishment siding with human trafficking and de facto peonage. However, it was not before I said that nation building in Iraq and Afghanistan meant we could not fight a two front war, and that Russia and China could take advantage. Putin did.
You tend to misread me a lot. When I was a Bush supporter, George Friedman closed down his message board at Stratfor when I said I thought he was wrong about the US needing the 4th ID in Turkey to stage an invasion of Iraq. His retort to me was that "logistics is not a stock on NASDAQ." The US did succeed in its invasion of Iraq, and we didn't need a huge airpower campaign or the 4th ID to get it done. For that, I was called everything in the book: imperialist, facist, Nazi, war monger, etc. I was just calling it like I saw it.
When Obama scuttled his Benghazi mission and went on a fundraiser the next day, that's when I said that China and Russia would read that as weakness. For that, I was called racist for criticizing Obama and pro-China and pro-Russia. I was just calling it like I saw it. Just like Bush, Russia was able to best American geo-strategists, because they had nothing left with which to threaten Russia other than sanctions or nuclear weapons. Similarly, China began building military islands in the Spratly islands.
noemon wrote:Since when do you remember Republicans aping for Putin and Russia?
People like me have a long history of being anti-communist--not anti-Russian. There is a huge difference.
Politics_Observer wrote:Some of the trauma the Ukrainian soldiers have had to endure has been pretty severe. The thermobaric weapons the Russians employed against the Ukrainians were particularly insidious. One Ukrainian soldier interviewed stated one of his fellow comrades literally got burned to the bone and was begging him to shoot him to put him out of his misery. That's some serious trauma.
Thermobaric weapons have a long history, including the Nazis and the Soviets. The US developed them post haste for use in the Global War on Terror, using them against Al Qaeda. We also developed the AGM-114N Hellfire II to that end. Yes, they are insidious weapons, but it's nothing the US hasn't done very recently. Obama was very fond of Hellfire missiles launched from drones.
noemon wrote:Russia is currently illegally occupying large parts of the Ukraine.
You are quite right about this. The counter to these arguments is that Russia's adversaries--namely the United States--cannot make a moral argument against this when the US is illegally occupying large parts of Syria. We're left with realpolitik now, like it or not.
noemon wrote:And neither of those 2 points were part of Politics_Observer's argument which you quoted when you denied that Russian bots played a huge part in the narrative during the US elections.
They would have played little or no part without media complicity.
Politics_Observer wrote:Dude we have learned A LOT. It's in our interest to continue supplying the Ukrainians with weapons and money and the intel we get in return is a treasure trove, plus, keeping some of Russia's forces tied down in Ukraine or more focused on Ukraine if Crimea and Donbass is threatened.
Sure it's in the American interest to support Ukraine against Russia. However, destabilizing a region is not without consequences as the Iraq War demonstrated.
B0ycey wrote:Russia would of course accept that. We wouldn't.
This is similar with the US supporting independence in Kosovo, which the Russians did not accept happily. Or further afield, the US supporting the separate state of South Sudan. Again, this is the problem with trying to make foreign policy about morals while ignoring antecedent positions that reflect the same objectives used by a new adversary.
JohnRawls wrote:Both sides violated the ceasefire almost every weak since the ceasefire was signed. Nobody really cared till now for some reason.
Nobody in the Russian military hierarchy believed Trump was a war monger. Biden, while his faculties are in question, is politically supported/controlled by the neoliberal/neoconservative types who have a well earned reputation for the liberal use of military force.
Juin wrote:It is definitely not a game. Russia still has nukes. That in itself calls for caution.
Yes, but they aren't likely to use them on other slavs.
Juin wrote:Afterall, China is transitioning away from communism without collapsing like Russia.
Not collapsing yet... Chinese aggression probably masks internal division.
Juin wrote:And lots of poaching at Russia's expense went on. Nato/EU crept further and further east. Closer and closer to Russia.
That's the problem at hand. It's not just a problem for Russia either. It's a problem for NATO. It makes sense to fight a war to defend Poland. Does it make sense to wage World War III for Estonia, Macedonia, etc.? Much of NATO expansion has been a really dumb idea. There is nothing North Atlantic about Georgia, for example.
Juin wrote:It would have been political malpractice if Nato/EU had sat on its haunches and done nothing.
Maybe economically, but read Prisoners of Geography. Our military leaders should have known instantly that pushing NATO further and further East would spawn a reaction.
Juin wrote: That is a lot of gain at little cost.
It is much more likely that further gains will no be at little or no cost.
Well, it hasn't been at a cost of military counter attack or economic privation. However, it has shown NATO to be something of a paper tiger with respect to the invasion of Georgia, just as the situation in Syria is also demonstrating the problems with NATO.
Juin wrote:If Ukrainians, as a minority under Russian domination, are entitled to their own independence, then why should Russian minorities under Ukrainian domination not also have the right to independence?
This is the problem with pushing a moral-based foreign policy. The US already took such a position with respect to Kosovo and South Sudan. So it's hard to press an alternate position as a moral stance now.
noemon wrote:Putting Russian nuclear warheads near the US was never going to happen and it didn't happen.
US intelligence concluded that Cuba was building facilities for Russian medium-range ICBMs. They were not deployed, because of the Cuban Missile crisis. The US blockaded Cuba (which is an act of war).
Godstud wrote:Ukraine entering into NATO is not a threat to Russia, in any conceivable way.
I'm sure Russian military leadership disagrees with that assertion.
JohnRawls wrote:EU and US will have no choice in this regard. Perhaps even full oil and gas embargo.
Things appear to be going the other way. Nord Stream 2 is coming online shortly. Europe gets a lot of natural gas from Russia. Where do you propose they would get it if they embargoed Russian gas?
Politics_Observer wrote:I don't see where it was in our interests to invade Iraq and topple Saddam even if Saddam was an evil bastard.
The US could not guarantee the territorial integrity of Saudi Arabia or Kuwait without troops in the region. Bin Laden's demand was that US troops leave Saudi Arabian soil. To comply with that request, the US needed to take out Saddam Hussein's regime. Military leadership looks at capabilities and past deeds. Iraq did invade Kuwait and Saudi Arabia under Hussein, so it was thought he would do so again.
Politics_Observer wrote:Had the Russians not demonstrated to be a threat to the U.S. with their past actions, you might have a legitimate point.
How are the Russians a threat to the US?
Politics_Observer wrote:The fact of the matter of is, as @Rugoz pointed out in his previous point, this whole thing was orchestrated by the government of Russia itself and there were not problems until Russian went into Ukraine and orchestrated all of this.
Russia routinely warned the West about NATO encroachment. The invasion of Georgia should have been a clue. What was the point of inviting Georgia into NATO? They aren't a North Atlantic country by any stretch of the imagination.
Politics_Observer wrote:Russia didn't have to invade Ukraine to assure it's own security.
Russia needs Sevastopol, because it is a warm water port.
Politics_Observer wrote:The common denominator here is Putin.
Borders and geography determine much of foreign and military policy. Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, Ivan the Terrible, etc. would all have done the same thing as Putin. Replace Putin and you will still have the same policy, because you have the same geography.
"We have put together the most extensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics."
-- Joe Biden