ok, so the shit has hit the fan and we have a war on our hands.
what happens next?
Either Russia takes over Ukraine but will be forced to install a very repressive regime not only in Ukraine (with most likely sustained guerrilla warfare going on) but also domestically as the true scale of the war on his "own people" (presuming the Russians buy into the Ukrainians are us argument, which is highly likely) becomes known.
Maybe with the sanctions in place he can keep spinning the us vs. them narrative for a while to justify this oppression, but I can't see him being able to maintain this too long.
or the Ukrainians manage to push back or contain the Russian advance. I don't know what happens then. It could be a negotiated ceasefire, it could be an internal putsch removes Putin, or it could be that Putin goes nuclear out of desperation.
I have no idea.
To say any of these outcomes lies in the hands of the Americans would be to overstate their influence. I wouldn't put it past the Ukrainians to push back the Russian army even without western assistance. They are fighting for their land and Putin has just done them the massive favour of uniting them against a common foe.
At the very beginning I phrased this whole drama as the dying throes of a political dinosaur. I still think that is the case, regardless of various machinations by the US or the west. The basic historical trend is the demise of Soviet one-party rule. All the other satellite states have done it already. Russia is just taking a bit longer.
Hey, here's an idea. The EU, the US and Russia all stay out of it and Ukraine gets to decide by itself.
If it only were that simple. Remember the ARTE documentary further down the road? - Maybe watch it again, till the end this time.
Because... In your summary of it(thanks for it, I was simply too lazy to do it myself) you may have just missed some crucial facts... like the world being multipolar by now, e.g. - a fact that is willfully ignored by politicians and media in the West.
What on earth are you referring to? The growing tensions between the three blocks? (I referred to this in my synopsis of the video).
All the guy says is that the military invasion of Ukraine is a bit awkward for China as it so has pursued a doctrine of recognizing territorial integrity to date (and military intervention contravenes that). But he says the current war (and sanctions) will automatically force Russia to get into bed with China (as I have also stated many times here already).
Basically this means that Russia, with an economy smaller than South Korea but sitting on vast natural resources, will be totally beholden to China. Supremely stupid from a geopolitical viewpoint if you ask me.
So basically, there are no longer three major blocs. There are currently just two and no doubt this will change in the near future due to shifting demographics and relative wealth.
President Vladimir V. Putin is not crazy, the director of the C.I.A. testified on Tuesday, but his views have hardened over the years and he is determined to prevail in Ukraine. The Russian leader’s increasing isolation and insulation from conflicting views make him “extremely difficult to deal with,” William J. Burns, the C.I.A. director, told the House Intelligence Committee.
Might he be responding to US/NATO's uptight mentality? What if? Stiffen us all the more uptight, pushing sticks up our asses even more? I don't think so, US and NATO! Instead, let us negotiate with him. Find a compromise (and reduce our own hegemony drive a bit for a while). Let's face it: The world has become multipolar, even if we don't like it. But hey, who am I?
Hey, here's an idea. The EU, the US and Russia all stay out of it and Ukraine gets to decide by itself.
President Vladimir V. Putin is not crazy, the director of the C.I.A.
testified on Tuesday, but his views have hardened over the years and he
is determined to prevail in Ukraine.
The Russian leaderâs increasing isolation and insulation from
conflicting views make him âextremely difficult to deal with,â William
J. Burns, the C.I.A. director, told the House Intelligence Committee.
Yves here. Weâve pointed out that Russia has yet to deploy some significant economic sanctions against the West, presumably because Russia still hopes to negotiate a peace and have the US and Europe drop the choke chainâ¦.although even then, they would need to wait a bit until tempers have cooled and unwind them slowly. Weâve mentioned having Russia seize Western assets and break patents as possible countermeasures.
We need to remind readers that even hard core Tory and Russia hater Ambrose Evans-Pritchard said that Russia would eventually win any sanctions war, it had too large a position in too many essential commodities.
This article is a translation of an article describing the possibilities, by Olga Samofalova, translated and introduced by John Helmer.
——————
In keeping with the times since 1945, the US empire has been more straightforward. It doesnât require pilgrimages to the White House fence for children of tender age. It does require you keep the US dollar in your pocket, or the local currency whose value is fixed in proportion, and whose state surpluses of taxation and pension funds must be stored in US Treasury notes, as well as the dollar.
In Russia, starting in 1991, Boris Yeltsin innovated on these measures by inviting US advisors to run the Russian economy, which Yeltsin paid for by imposing a 100% tax on ordinary Russiansâ salaries. This started the system of oligarchs whom Yeltsin allowed to dispatch and store, tax free, in the US, UK and EU as much state capital and income as they could carry off. How that system has worked for the past thirty years, oligarch by oligarch, has been the subject of analysis here. The effort has not gone without recognition.
At this very moment, the oligarchs are facing a Christian tax, but itâs not the Russian one you might think they have earned. Instead, the 100% tax is being imposed in the form of confiscation statutes by the US, UK and EU. This is not economic warfare so much as the application of the principle that what the oligarchs have been doing to Russians should now be done to them, according to the Mandate of Heaven as recorded in the Gospel of Matthew 7:12, Luke 6:31.
The Mandate of Heaven can also be found on the bottom of the US dollar note. Thatâs the signature line where the Treasurer of the United States and the Secretary of the Treasury promise to pay âall debts public and privateâ. Like other US treaty signatures, this no longer applies to Russians, common ones, oligarchs, or the state, according to this novelty in the Rules Based Order. Russians must now sell everything in the country of value for US dollars â oil, gas, coal, uranium, aluminium, titanium, wheat, potash, urea, bank loan debts, airplane leases, etc. But those dollars cannot be used by Russians to buy anything else. That value has been confiscated.
The response is still being formulated in Moscow. Russian government officials, members of the State Duma, the Central Bank of Russia, the General Staff, the oligarchs and their lobbyists have yet to agree. The terms of the debate are still largely secret; here was an opening shot against the Central Bank by Sergei Glazyev.
As Russia faces off against Western nations over Ukraine, it has edged closer to China, a relationship that increasingly poses a challenge to American dominance on the world stage.
miamizsun wrote: did he say horde lands? I think Putin is going to turn this into a war of attrition rather than a hot war. Every time he so much as moves a finger, Ukraine and NATO shiver in fear (even if it's just some of them). That wears people down. Point being, Putin is trying to maximise his leverage. Play off the EU against each other, drive a wedge between NATO members, still sell gas (Europe needs it, at least for the time being), keep the money coming in, play the strong patriot in front of his people in the face of a foreign threat, win the next round of elections, kill his opponents, that sort of thing. I didn't realise the demographics of the Russian people were so precipitous. That changes things quite a bit.
yeah putin has literally put russia into a well known and legendary quagmire in a few months when that ground thaws, any vehicle is going to be sitting/operating in a giant mudhole (maybe a lesson from ww2?) i agree he is trying to max out his leverage and i think he wants negotiate some sort of deal while saving face
demographics are a huge problem for russia and big players around the globe china is the fastest aging country on the planet, their one child policy worked very well and is going to be a major challenge
generally i agree with much of this information in his presentation (esp the demographics) have a look and make of it what you will enjoy (for educational purposes only)
I think Putin is going to turn this into a war of attrition rather than a hot war. Every time he so much as moves a finger, Ukraine and NATO shiver in fear (even if it's just some of them). That wears people down. Point being, Putin is trying to maximise his leverage. Play off the EU against each other, drive a wedge between NATO members, still sell gas (Europe needs it, at least for the time being), keep the money coming in, play the strong patriot in front of his people in the face of a foreign threat, win the next round of elections, kill his opponents, that sort of thing.
I didn't realise the demographics of the Russian people were so precipitous. That changes things quite a bit.
In post WWII Russia, Stalin banned the possession of any western music. All records allowed in the country had to be of Russian composers. But there was an underground hungry for Western popular music—everything from jazz and blues to rock & roll. But smuggling vinyl was dangerous, and acquiring the scarce material to make copies of those records that did make it into the country was expensive and very risky. An ingenuous solution to this problem began to emerge in the form of “bone music," or sometimes called "bones 'n' ribs" music, or simply Ribs. A young 19 year-old sound engineer Ruslan Bogoslowski in Leningrad changed the game when he created a device to bootleg western albums so he could distribute them across Russia. Problem was he couldn't find material to bootleg his pressings onto, vinyl was scare as were all petroleum products after the war. Then, one day he stumbled upon a pile of discarded X-rays. It worked. At the time, Russian law mandated that all X-rays had to be destroyed after 1 year of storage because they were flammable so he dug through trash bins and paid off orderlies for x-rays and for 20 years he handmade about 1,000,000 bootlegs onto X-ray film of everything from classical to the Beach Boys, eventually spending five years imprisoned in Siberia for this rebellion. For over 20 years, Bone Music was the only way Russian music lovers could get western music, which they played at "music and coffee parties" in their kitchens, away from the KGB ears and eyes. So I had to find one. This is a 78 rpm recording of the Indian Song "Awaara" by Raj Kapoor on an exposed Chest X-ray. Probably around 1951. Each Rib, was handmade, and one of a kind. Bone Music. A testament to the underground courage to subvert authority, rebellion, and the love of music. The spirit of rock n roll.
And from the comments on the reddit page, another one:
it was for their own good comrade! western culture, especially music, is evil!
I think Putin is going to turn this into a war of attrition rather than a hot war. Every time he so much as moves a finger, Ukraine and NATO shiver in fear (even if it's just some of them). That wears people down. Point being, Putin is trying to maximise his leverage. Play off the EU against each other, drive a wedge between NATO members, still sell gas (Europe needs it, at least for the time being), keep the money coming in, play the strong patriot in front of his people in the face of a foreign threat, win the next round of elections, kill his opponents, that sort of thing. I didn't realise the demographics of the Russian people were so precipitous. That changes things quite a bit.
