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[W:718] The west must hold its nerve on Ukraine

lwf said:
And the US has laid claim to none of these territories.
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You appear to think that if there is no obvious plan or any plan to expand territorially then the country doesn't present and immediate and present danger to other countries. Like as though attacks that are not designed for land acquisition are ok. No they are war crimes in the same way as what the Russian state has engaged in are war crimes.


lwf said:
Therefore a defensive alliance against US expansionism is unnecessary,
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A defensive alliance against the USA is badly needed imo. They have wrecked Iraq, helped wreck Afghanistan even more, same with Syria, Libya . They believe that Central/Latin America is theirs to decide who and what the people there can choose, otherwise the attack them through proxies , along with economic warfare and diplomatic attacks.

The truth is that the US rap sheet and global state terrorism dwarfs that of the Russian state and is probably the most rogue state in the world and you, because it doesn't want to expand anymore, think it poses no threat to other states. lol



No it's rightfully being used to show the complete hypocrisy and international criminality of the US and the media lackies that serve as collaborators for it. Crimeans voted to leave Ukraine, remember? Polls undertaken, even before the 2014 coup showed widespread support for the region to re-join Russia.

The Ukrainians themselves ended up provided the 3rd most troops when the US illegally invaded and occupied Iraq. Think of some other occupations that have gone on a whole lot longer that the US , virtually alone, supports, bankrolls and diplomatically protects and you will understand the hopeless hypocrisy of western commentary.
 

It's also a question of how long individual liberal democratic and some less-than-democratic nations can withstand persistent inflation on things like energy, food, and rents.

The only way we have complete leverage in a conflict with Russia is to destroy their war-making capabilities. We chose to avoid doing that for fear of getting into an all-out hot war between NATO and Russia. By declining that riskier option we're reducing that risk of an all-out conflict, but we're giving up some of our ability to get all of what we'd like to have out of Russia.

That means we will probably have to accept some sort of compromise in which Russia accepts Ukrainian sovereignty and Ukraine accepts that it has lost Crimea and portions of the Donbas states forever. I wish that were not the case, and I don't think it had to be this way, but in 3-6 months we're looking at Biden's party getting bludgeoned at the polls, Europe entering winter without Russian gas, and an exploding food crisis that might end up pinching consumers even in food-rich countries.
 
multivita-man said:
That means we will probably have to accept some sort of compromise in which Russia accepts Ukrainian sovereignty and Ukraine accepts that it has lost Crimea and portions of the Donbas states forever.
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Correct, and what sensible people have been saying all along. The problem is, and always has been, that the media is the mouthpiece for the state and the state wanted to use the Ukrainians as proxies for as long as the fiction could be presented as fact. Now that the cat is getting out of the bag support for the war will wane and when the damage of the sanctions war hits properly people will be even less likely to see this hopeless fight continue.

But many here are too influenced by the western propaganda system and have set their flags up for victory, while someone else is paying the real price with blood and rubble.
 
The USSR would have invaded Canada if they thought they could pull it off.

Then Mexico of course.

Russian imperialists don't stop until they're stopped, as we saw with the Germany run by Nazis into the 1940s.

The Ukrainians will to fight only increases and accelerates and good on 'em for it.
 
Except there is nothing "great" about Russia's power either militarily or economically. But you are right Russia has reverted to their old ways under Putin and we are more than willing to confront them on their imperialist aims as we were before.
 
There can never be any agreement that Russia will abide by so that is a non-starter. They already had an agreement recognizing Ukraines sovereignty which was not worth the paper it was printed on. Perhaps Ukraine would give up some territory but only if NATO would police the agreement. I'm pretty sure that Putin will never agree to that. I'm afraid that put us at a stalemate which the Ukrainians will use to take back whatever Russia has taken and will have our help to do it.
 

I don't disagree in principle but the problem is that this is a situation that's a decade or more in the making, and NATO/the West is just now deciding to respond to it. By waiting so long, we put ourselves (and Ukraine) in a situation in which our options are limited. The way to ensure Russia's defeat is to destroy their army inside Ukraine. We chose to fight a proxy war and a proxy war of attrition.

Russia's political reality is that they cannot take all of Ukraine and NATO is stronger than before the invasion (for now, but not invulnerable either). Also, their economy is struggling. But there's a political reality for us as well. The political reality for the West/NATO is that we waited too long and we did not have a coherent plan to deal with Russian aggression and I'm not sure we do now. Meanwhile, we're democratic countries, and in all countries, democratic or not, there's an increasingly complex political reality that is going to intersect with our desires to keep Ukraine free.

The hard way out is to wait and keep fighting this war of attrition but this is going to be increasingly unpopular with people in Europe and the U.S. We can say 'We can't let Putin win' all we want. The reality is, the number of people who feel that way is small. Most people would accept a compromise. If we didn't want to compromise we should have fought a hot war with Russia in Ukraine. We didn't. This is what we're dealing with.
 
iguanaman said:
Except there is nothing "great" about Russia's power either militarily or economically. But you are right Russia has reverted to their old ways under Putin and we are more than willing to confront them on their imperialist aims as we were before.
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The US is heavily involved this time mainly because the Europeans are furious there's an all out conventional war in the center of Europe in 2022. Even the long time and shameless Russia Hugging Germany has had to reject Moscow and Putin.

When the EU and the EMU were formalized in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War I saw some French grande dame on tv waxing eloquent that war in Europe had become "unimaginable." I remember her word "unimaginable" vividly she was so ecstatic.

This is how livid the Europeans are about Putin and the shameless Russians in Ukraine duplicating Hitler and the shameless Nazi Germany in so many ways (except for effectiveness of course).
 
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What you call a "compromise" the Ukrainians see as surrender and they are the ones with the skin in the game. They will never sign on to any agreement that does not preclude ANY further future intrusions into their country and that will mean NATO will need to police it. Perhaps Putin will have to agree to that but until that happens the war will go on. What you call "unpopular" are the personal sacrifices we and the Europeans must make to allow the Ukrainians to defend their territory. I think is time for all of us to put on our big boy pants and stand up for the democracy we all cherish. You may want to cower to the threat of high gasoline prices but compared to what the Ukrainians are facing it is nothing. Personally I am in it as long as the Ukrainians are and they say they will fight to the last man.

 
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Yes the E.U failed to see the threat that Putin was despite multiple warnings. I think we are overjoyed to see Putin's army decimated and ridiculed because that is the only way to deal with him. His imperialist ambitions are rooted in Russian history and he thinks he is the new Stalin. In fact he has revived the hammer and sickle as the new symbol of Russian imperialism and is making those in occupied territories pledge allegiance to it .

 
iguanaman said:
What you call a "compromise" the Ukrainians see as surrender and they are the ones with the skin in the game.
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No disagreement there.

iguanaman said:
They will never sign on to any agreement that does not preclude ANY further future intrusions into their country
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I understand what Ukraine wants but they can't defend themselves without NATO/Western weapons so it actually does matter the extent to which other countries are willing to go. They might have to give up Crimea and Donbas states, but I would agree that any agreement should include enforceable demands that there be no more incursions.

iguanaman said:
and that will mean NATO will need to police it.
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NATO would defend NATO territory; UN peacekeepers would have to police the armistice.

iguanaman said:
Perhaps Putin will have to agree to that but until that happens the war will go on. What you call "unpopular" are the personal sacrifices we and the Europeans must make to allow the Ukrainians to defend their territory.
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I feel you but political reality is political reality. If people get fatigued over paying $6-8 per gallon for gas...that matters, regardless of how much we want to help Ukraine. I want to help Ukraine but I also want to be realistic about what we can achieve. I was actually hoping we'd be more aggressive than we have been, but we're not willing to go there, so we have to accept political reality for what it is.


You misunderstand me - I don't want to cower. I think we should have actually fought a hot war with Russia in Ukraine. But nobody wants to do that. So because we're not willing to do that, we have to understand what that means. We're fighting a war of attrition. That's a safer war, but attrition isn't just a question of what Russia's pain tolerance is; it's also a question of what our pain tolerance is. Russia's regime is a lot less sensitive to public opinion than Western states are because they're less democratic. We can only ignore public opinion for so long.
 

With respect:

It's impossible to tell if that's paranoia and/or militaristic propaganda that's combined with historical hysterics about Nazi Germany.
 

With respect:

I'd like to see how progressive you are about anti-war and such.
 

In other words the US did not lay claim to of those territories.




There was one. The Warsaw Pact.

Guess what. Most of those no longer believe the US is as evil as you do.

oneworld2 said:
The truth is that the US rap sheet and global state terrorism dwarfs that of the Russian state and is probably the most rogue state in the world and you, because it doesn't want to expand anymore, think it poses no threat to other states. lol
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Whataboutism.


There was no legal means for Crimea to secede. And the pro-Russian vote was held at Russian gunpoint.


WTF are you babbling about?



I don't see Ukraine listed.

Perhaps you erroneously meant Gulf War I in 1991.... Wait. Can't be that.
 
Antiwar said:
It's impossible to tell if that's paranoia and/or militaristic propaganda that's combined with historical hysterics about Nazi Germany.
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Well, I do know garble when I see it.

I'm not the only one of course.

As I read the threads.
 
I don't give a ****. We've been footing the bill for global security for decades. The EU can pay for it 100%.
 
There is no such thing as western propaganda. Everything that comes out of Russia, China, and all other places not friendly with the US is 100% pure propaganda, but rest assured that 100% of eveything coming out of western media is pure unadulterated unbiased truth and has been triple checked for complete accuracy by expert fact checkers.

That being said, we must continue to display unwavering solidarity for NATO in this NATO-Russia proxy war being fought in Ukraine until the last ukrainian is dead. Any other behavior is treasonous and should be dealt with harshly.
 
Fishking said:
I don't give a ****. We've been footing the bill for global security for decades. The EU can pay for it 100%.
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Kindly consider relocating to Switzerland or perhaps South Africa or places that are same or similar in this vein.

There are lots of small countries where few taxes are paid and nobody is keen or, more importantly, is threatened by sinister nuclear powers.

Because it's clear you're not up to being a citizen of the global superpower that the USA is. Indeed, the thread is about the West "holding its nerve" in the face of Nazi Germany like aggression against our civilization by the Russian Barbarians. Then there are the grandiose and swiftly arbitrary Chinese of course. And the "death to America" ayatollahs of Iran....and so on and so on.

And so on.

You are entitled to your views of course. It's just that with the attitude stated in your post -- and the vile enemies the USA has in the world -- you won't be entitled to your views once the USA collapses of isolationism and from sticking its head in the crapper for malevolent foreigners to flush.
 
Rogue Valley said:
The current war is an existential struggle for their homeland, identity, history, language, and traditions.
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I’m sure for the Donbas Rus this is absolutely true, for the Ukranian regime it is about forcing Ruthenian language far beyond its original small area.

The Ukrainian oligarchs however are not tied to this at all. They’re tied to power and if the Maidan regime is collapsing they’ll have no problem sending the poor out to delay the Russian advance while they rape the treasury and jet out.
 
Tangmo said:
The number one foreign policy and military strategy of Russia is to separate USA allies and Strategic Partners from the United States.
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There is no such thing as a “US ally” none exist anywhere in the world. The GAE has a lot of client states, but none of these countries are equal to us.
Tangmo said:
The number one foreign policy and military strategy of the CCP DictatorTyrants in Beijing is to separate USA allies and Strategic Partners from the United States.
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Again, there’s no allies to seperate us from. Beijing wants our proxies gone, not allies because these nations are not allies
Tangmo said:
The number one foreign policy and military strategy of the PutinTrumpRowers in America is to separate the USA from its allies and Strategic Partners.

Nobody's fooling anybody.
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Blah blah
 
Lolz. Rest assured no one in any foreign ministry in the world takes this guy seriously.
 
Fledermaus said:
It was ceded by the USSR to Ukraine SSR over half a century ago.

As of 1954 Crimea was Ukrainian.
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No, it wasn’t. Because no such country as “Ukraine” existed.
Fledermaus said:
When the USSR failed in 1991 Crimea remained Ukraine.
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Not for long!
Fledermaus said:
You are, as usual, wrong.
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Lol. This attitude is why Ukies have lost Kherson. It’s really a shame because they could’ve smelled the coffee months ago and signed a better peace deal after the failure of the northern offensive, now they’re going to lose badly and probably be left landlocked
 
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