btw, what is particularly astonishing about this is that Scholz was like a wet rag for the first twelve months of this war. Of the main parties, the SPD (the party he leads) is the party that is LEAST likely to take Ukraine's side. How times change.
Yeah, quite the turnaround in Scholz. It wasn't that long ago in my daily readings where Germany's name was repeatedly getting dragged through the mud for their stalling and minimal support tactics. I think everyone in Europe understands this is their once in a generation opportunity to put Putin and his expansionism ideas back into a cage - and bury it for at least another 20 yrs.
Ah, yes, the Crimea. We also remember something that Obama said in a hot mike message to Putin earlier that he (Obama) could be more flexible towards Putin's needs after his reelection.
It was Medvedev, not Putin, and he said that in 2012âtwo years before the invasion of Crimea.
The topic, btw, was missile defense. Putin had just been "elected" to replace Medvedev,
That invasion did happen on Obama's watch, and the subsequent occupation and annexation was the status quo Trump accepted as the new reality when he started his cozy relationships with the world's despotic dictators.
Spring of 2022? Why wait so long? Why not negotiate with Putin in 2014, when he first invaded - you do remember that, no?
btw, what is particularly astonishing about this is that Scholz was like a wet rag for the first twelve months of this war. Of the main parties, the SPD (the party he leads) is the party that is LEAST likely to take Ukraine's side. How times change.
Ah, yes, the Crimea. We also remember something that Obama said in a hot mike message to Putin earlier that he (Obama) could be more flexible towards Putin's needs after his reelection.
Appalling. And even more appalling were his public suggestions that NATO probably shouldnât continue to exist and the time when tried to hold up millions in approved Congressional funding for Ukraine in order to have them investigate a political rivalâs offspringâ¦
Ah, yes, the Crimea. We also remember something that Obama said in a hot mike message to Putin earlier that he (Obama) could be more flexible towards Putin's needs after his reelection.
Important to focus on a "hot mic" moment 10 years ago as some sort of "show of weakness" (when our NATO allies living on the continent only ever supported the sanctions that were placed on Russia) instead of considering our current Republican front-runner who called the invasion of Ukraine " genius" and "savvy" in his never-ending genuflection for Putin.
The Ukrainian government turmoil at the time and the strong Russian sentiment in Crimea complicated any response. Oh yeah...we were also over a dozen years into Afghanistan.
Upset are we now VV? Does that explain your juvenile us versus them rhetoric? Of course the Russians are willing to kill a large number of Ukrainians and ultimately others if you and your fellow Americans back them into a corner. Whether you agree or understand, the Russians view pushy NATO as an existential threat. Personally, I would have kept NATO out of the former Warsaw Pact Treaty countries. But you already know that don't you? Given US-lead NATO's blunders to date, I would have sat down and negotiated seriously with the Russians in the spring of 2022. You support President Biden's hawish stance and rhetoric on Ukraine; I do not. Quite frankly, I see your policy stance as self-loathing assuming that you genuinely care about American economic and strategic outcomes and welfare. The USA is coming out of this conflict weaker, not stronger.
Spring of 2022? Why wait so long?
Why not negotiate with Putin in 2014, when he first invaded - you do remember that, no?
Ah, yes, the Crimea. We also remember something that Obama said in a hot mike message to Putin earlier that he (Obama) could be more flexible towards Putin's needs after his reelection.
Upset? No just making a point. Seems you might be the one upset. I was responding to the original us vs them post.
Warsaw pact is no more⦠effectively dissolved as you should know. Those countries are free to determine their own destines and alliances as they see fit without having to worry about what Putin/Russia might want or desire. Thats the reality of the situation and isnât justification for the invasion of Ukraine. If aligning more strongly with Russia is what Ukraine desired then they could go down that path⦠they didnât as they didnât want to be held back economically / politically.
I love how all pro-Russian propagandists all focus on America. Seems you have nothing to say about the advanced weaponry supplied by England, Poland, Germany et all. Some of it more advanced than what US has supplied to date. That doesnât concern⦠bother you?
Bidenâs hawkish stance? You mean the one where he wants Russia to stop invading Ukraine and leave it? Guilty as charged⦠I support that.
US is not coming out of this weaker at all⦠I guess you havenât seen the recent jobs report.
+1 to all of the above.
and not only that but the assertion that Russia was backed into a corner by NATO encroachment is so fucking backwards it beggars belief.
First it assumes this is all about a military threat à la Cuban missile crisis. That particular argument was rendered null and void by nuclear submarines looooong ago.
Secondly, Russia already had a direct border with NATO since its inception (Norway and - with a little bit of water in between, the US (Bering Strait).
Thirdly, NATO is a defensive association that is only triggered by an attack against one of its members.
Finally, this whole geopolitical analysis put forward by Dugan, propped up by Mearsheimer and a gaggle of myopic anti-capitalists on the left and rabid nationalist wannabe fascists on the right is intellectually lazy and tailored to stoke the ego of a battered imperialist power, on the one hand, and smear the position of the west on the other.
Wars are just another way of trying to influence someone else's thoughts and beliefs in the absence of any cogent and compelling arguments to win them over otherwise. In the final instance, even empires need to sell something to their people to retain power. When they fail to do that, they crumble.
The fact of the matter is that Russia, with its weird amalgam of a Mafia boss ruling over a coterie of kleptocrats spinning a nationalistic dream based on days of glory past, while actually creaming it by stealing from the people, actually doesn't offer any compelling or cogent arguments to win over its neighbours. Its economy is propped up by selling oil and gas and for a country of its size and its wealth of natural resources, it is an absolute failure.
Upset are we now VV? Does that explain your juvenile us versus them rhetoric?
Of course the Russians are willing to kill a large number of Ukrainians and ultimately others if you and your fellow Americans back them into a corner. Whether you agree or understand, the Russians view pushy NATO as an existential threat.
Personally, I would have kept NATO out of the former Warsaw Pact Treaty countries. But you already know that don't you?
Given US-lead NATO's blunders to date, I would have sat down and negotiated seriously with the Russians in the spring of 2022. You support President Biden's hawish stance and rhetoric on Ukraine; I do not.
Quite frankly, I see your policy stance as self-loathing assuming that you genuinely care about American economic and strategic outcomes and welfare. The USA is coming out of this conflict weaker, not stronger.
Upset? No just making a point. Seems you might be the one upset. I was responding to the original us vs them post.
Warsaw pact is no more⦠effectively dissolved as you should know. Those countries are free to determine their own destines and alliances as they see fit without having to worry about what Putin/Russia might want or desire. Thats the reality of the situation and isnât justification for the invasion of Ukraine. If aligning more strongly with Russia is what Ukraine desired then they could go down that path⦠they didnât as they didnât want to be held back economically / politically.
I love how all pro-Russian propagandists all focus on America. Seems you have nothing to say about the advanced weaponry supplied by England, Poland, Germany et all. Some of it more advanced than what US has supplied to date. That doesnât concern⦠bother you?
Bidenâs hawkish stance? You mean the one where he wants Russia to stop invading Ukraine and leave it? Guilty as charged⦠I support that.
US is not coming out of this weaker at all⦠I guess you havenât seen the recent jobs report.
Upset are we now VV? Does that explain your juvenile us versus them rhetoric?
Of course the Russians are willing to kill a large number of Ukrainians and ultimately others if you and your fellow Americans back them into a corner. Whether you agree or understand, the Russians view pushy NATO as an existential threat.
Personally, I would have kept NATO out of the former Warsaw Pact Treaty countries. But you already know that don't you?
Given US-lead NATO's blunders to date, I would have sat down and negotiated seriously with the Russians in the spring of 2022. You support President Biden's hawish stance and rhetoric on Ukraine; I do not.
Quite frankly, I see your policy stance as self-loathing assuming that you genuinely care about American economic and strategic outcomes and welfare. The USA is coming out of this conflict weaker, not stronger.
Spring of 2022? Why wait so long? Why not negotiate with Putin in 2014, when he first invaded - you do remember that, no?
Interesting that you can't call it a war. Seems you should be asked the same questions. How many men's lives does the fool Putin want to sacrifice to try and save face in the context of a losing conflict: 200,000? 1/4 million? 1/2 million? More? Should we put you down for 2 million and more? How much additional damage does he want to inflict on his economy and his people in the face of a losing proposition?.,...
Upset are we now VV? Does that explain your juvenile us versus them rhetoric?
Of course the Russians are willing to kill a large number of Ukrainians and ultimately others if you and your fellow Americans back them into a corner. Whether you agree or understand, the Russians view pushy NATO as an existential threat.
Personally, I would have kept NATO out of the former Warsaw Pact Treaty countries. But you already know that don't you?
Given US-lead NATO's blunders to date, I would have sat down and negotiated seriously with the Russians in the spring of 2022. You support President Biden's hawish stance and rhetoric on Ukraine; I do not.
Quite frankly, I see your policy stance as self-loathing assuming that you genuinely care about American economic and strategic outcomes and welfare. The USA is coming out of this conflict weaker, not stronger.
Allow me to come clean: I worry every time Max Boot vents enthusiastically about a prospective military action. Whenever that Washington Post columnist professes optimism about some upcoming bloodletting, misfortune tends to follow. And as it happens, heâs positively bullish about the prospect of Ukraine handing Russia a decisive defeat in its upcoming, widely anticipated, sure-to-happen-any-day-now spring counteroffensive. (...)
As astute readers will already know, apart from a few staged forays near
the front linesâofficially controlled and monitored, never at the front
linesâcorrespondents from The New York Times, the other big dailies,
the wire services, and the broadcast networks have accepted without
protest the Kyiv regimeâs refusal to allow them to see the war as it is.
Content these professional slovens have been to sit in Kyiv hotel rooms
and file stories based on the regimeâs transparently unreliable
accounts of events, all the while pretending their stories are properly
reported and factual.
Even for well-reported 20th century wars, decades later, historians are still seeking to improve our understanding of them. With the Ukraine conflict, weâre in the midst of the unprecedented experience of being able to discern a remarkably high proportion of what is afoot, albeit with a great deal of noise in the signal between aggressive propagandizing and issues of sourcing with various purported close-to-the-action accounts. (...)
Here's some background and context. Mearsheimer was interviewed in November 2022 by the New Yorker. He pontificated then about Putin's motives: Putin didn't have imperialist intentions before the last invasion because...he said so. The fact that he had since annexed large chunks of Ukraine doesn't matter because...well, it just doesn't.
In the speech above he seems remarkably confident that Russia will win, defined as conquering and controlling certain territory. The facts on the ground don't support this, but whatever. Russia's cheerleaders in this conflict seem oblivious to reality on many levels. Like Putin, Mearsheimer made a seriously bad call and he's doubling down on it.
He also makes it clear that he doesn't want to talk about his visit with Victor Orban. At all.
