Seeing this play out in the media reminds me of the Iraq War hysteria in 2003. Completely one-sided coverage, classic war-time propaganda (ghost of kiev), banning Russian arts and paralympians, etc. I've lost all faith in the media. Period.
You may think that there is an absolute answer to this situation, but there isn't. I recommend that you study commentators and scholars such as: John Mearsheimer, Zbigniew Brezinski, George Friedman, Peter Zeihan, George Kennan, Noam Chomsky, Peter Hitchens, Gonzalo Lira, Tim Marshall, Robert D Kaplan, etc., etc. to gain some insight into the other and more complex side of this story. Their books are a good and quick read.
I am a proud American -- but, I am convinced that my country started this entire episode and planned to have it be so for a long, long time. 9/11, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, etc. just got in their way. Instead of drawing a rational meet-me-in-the-middle red-line with Russia (ex: Poland and the Baltics) that we could live with, we decided to take Ukraine for this ride. We did that. We encouraged Zelensky to talk about acquiring nukes, grabbing Crimea back, grabbing Luhansk and Donestk, joining NATO and the EU, etc. -- instead of encouraging Austria-like neutrality, we promoted our-way-or-the-highway.
And now what are we doing? Fighting to the last Ukrainian? Fighting until they lose even more in a country that has lost ~20% of its population from its peak? We are literally sacrificing their country and encouraging suicide. This. is. just. wrong!
I despise this western-centric view- were only the people in the west are real people, that can make decisions for themselves, and the rest is just pawns for playing a funny great board game.
The idea that even a new-born nation, could walk out of the board game and do its own thing is so outrageous to the players, it is not even considered.
Well, ukraine just tried that. Its a sovereign nation, and it wanted nothing to do with its imperialistic neighbourhood. And all the zhars horse and all the zhars man, could not hold all its conquered ethnicities in again and again, cause technology now favors david instead of goliath.
So ukraine might not walk this time, but others will, until this ball of muddy-power dissolves one last and final time. Russia, this unreformable assembly of thiefdoms, is stumbling like a feverish plague victime towards the end of its story and it will not be pretty. To blame this corrosion on the west, is pompous victim blaming.
Russia is also falling apart near the chinese border, were large parts of the economy are now owned by chinese state owned companies. Its just a failed state and to the man with glass-bones-disease even a friendly handshake is a attack.
It's not really western centric so much as military power centric - that only the military powers count and less armed people in the middle are pawns. For example in the 1904 skirmish between Russia and Japan those two powers were arguing over who should control Korea and nearby areas with weak militaries.
It's become a bit passe with the internet and human rights movements and the like - you can't just go militarily occupy the neighbours these days without pissing off a lot of people as Russia is finding just now.
The 1904 thing was quite interesting in the current context. Emperor of Russia Nicholas II thought it would be easy to take out the Japanese navy but they ended up with most of the Russian navy sunk and subsequently the Russian royals got overthrown and replaced by the communists which has led up to what we have now.
It's possible that history will play out in a similar way - Putin thought taking Ukraine would be easy but loses that and then loses power at home and ends up replaced. Perhaps by a normal democracy, looking on the optimistic side.
> It's possible that history will play out in a similar way - Putin thought taking Ukraine would be easy but loses that and then loses power at home and ends up replaced. Perhaps by a normal democracy, looking on the optimistic side.
This usually doesn't work. We've tried this before, believe it or not.
The problem is you're arguing from an idealistic point of view.
But in the real world might makes right. Doesn't matter what Ukraine wants if it doesn't have nukes to back it up.
USA won't let Russia come near the Americas so that won't happen.
France didn't care that Libya was a "sovereign" nation, neither did USA care about Iraq's sovereignty.
Unfortunately that's how the world works, rules are for the weak nations only. Superpowers don't really care.
no they did not, what they did is nothing like what Sweden, Finland, or Singapore did. Joining the EU, sure, but joining NATO and claim to be trying to "walk out of the game"?
> We encouraged Zelensky to talk about acquiring nukes, grabbing Crimea back, grabbing Luhansk and Donestk, joining NATO and the EU, etc.
This seems to be a US-centric view of the world, which assumes that Ukraine following blindly in whatever encouragement was provided.
Zelensky is Ukraine’s 7th President, 3 years into his term. Ukraine has had administrations that were Russia-centric (two Kuchma terms, and then half of Yanukovich’s term) and in economic terms those did not pan out to be impressive.
Ukrainian companies seem to crave access to European markets, as in many core areas (grains, livestock, aviation, machinery) they are competing with Russia. In energy consumption Ukraine also seems to get a better price for Russian natural gas when they are part of EU monopsony, negotiating a bulk discount, vs one-off negotiations.
Is it too radical to assume that Ukrainians were acting out of self interest?
> I am convinced that my country started this entire episode
Unequivocally the government of the Russian Federation is the aggressor here. That the United States has been inconsistent with respect to Ukraine doesn't diminish the fact that the military of the Russian Federation is actively shelling hospitals, schools, residential dwellings and precipitating a humanitarian crisis in Europe.
Do you know about what Victoria Nuland (leaked intercepted tapes), Senator John McCain, Senator Lindsay Graham, Hunter Biden, CIA John Brennan, etc. did in Ukraine?
Zelenskyy ran on peace with Russia, but his puppet masters in Washington would never have allowed that.
So, by late-2021, do you know that Zelenskyy had a sub-28% approval rating from his own population because he threatened to acquire nuclear weapons, threatened to join NATO, join the EU (comes with military connections also, BTW), take back Crimea and the entirety of the Donbas, etc.? His population mostly wanted Austria-style neutrality but he was being strung along by the US because we wanted to turn it into a battering ram against Russia.
So, Russia acted pre-emptively. Heck, by our logic, this war is more justified than the Invasion of Iraq in 2003.
You have to look at the entire political situation in Ukraine, starting at least since 2003-4. And, especially 2014 and the US-backed putsch that took place that year.
So, unless Cuba was actually going to use those nuclear missiles and unless Turkey was actually going to use those nuclear missiles, the US and the USSR were both wrong in their actions?
I'm also surprised at just how many of my friends have turned from dovish "can't we all just get along" types into rabid "Russia Delenda Est" types who think that anyone who believes that even a modicum of this is perhaps America's fault is committing treason.
For what it's worth, what Russia is doing is wrong. But I do absolutely understand Mearsheimer's perspective that this is basically a Cuban Missile Crisis 2.0 moment. The United States should have clearly recognized that trying to get Ukraine into NATO or even the EU was clearly going to make the Russians think they're being backed into a corner security-wise. We could have just as easily kept trading with Ukraine and cooperating without starting the process to join NATO.
The propaganda onslaught is unparalleled. Ukraine is painted as heaven on Earth, a beacon of democracy. McFaul even suggested that Putin essentially "hated Ukraine because it was free".
In reality Ukraine is even more corrupt than Russia, their economy is in terrible shape, despite having more natural resources than most, and a diligent educated population. GDP per capita is a third of Russia's, lower than Belarus! The elites, including Zelensky, are incredibly corrupt.
I love Ukraine, only had wonderful experiences there, but it's getting ridiculous.
Does Ukraine kill journalists who criticize their government? Does it send assassins who murder political dissidents abroad with polonium? Do they imprison and torture people for being queer?
It seems your argument that Ukraine is corrupt and poor creates a false equivalence with Russia. It seems to me that Russia under Putin is far, far worse.
There is definitely less violent repression of journalists in Ukraine. But the corruption is worse, and the economy is doing very badly, it's the poorest country in Europe, despite fantastic conditions.
I'm obviously not saying it's OK to invade a country just because it's corrupt, and that's obviously not the reason. I'm only talking about the absurd apotheosis of the corrupt Zelensky and the crazy idea that Ukraine is some kind of democratic paradise.
If you listen to Western media, Ukraine is just another democratic European country. Most Americans probably imagine that it's something like the Czech republic, when in fact it's 50% poorer than Belarus.
About corruption being worse, that's mostly anecdotal. I have friends running parts of, or working for major corporations in Russia and Ukraine. But also, look at the amazing wealth of natural resources in Ukraine and compare it to the GDP.
Euromaidan (Nov 2013, leading to the Revolution of Dignity, Feb 2014) seems to be one of the main things that pissed Russia off, that made them fear for their national security. Here's the people of Ukraine, showing hope & trying to cast off the corruption, unwilling to simply swallow the long dark agenda their leaders are pushing them towards. Amazing.
Having hope & democracy & people getting better is an existential threat to a nearby country that rules via corruption & force. Ukraine has improved slowly, moved up in the ranks of corrupt countries, passed Russia (now #122 vs Russia' #136 in the Corruption Perception Index, https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2021 ). The model of people being free to speak up against the bad is a primary threat, and happening too close to Russia for them to bear it.
As FP put in the Dec 2021 subheading,
> The country’s democratization and ongoing efforts to fight entrenched graft and cronyism are a threat to Putin’s model of governance.
I think Putin and friends are more worried about Putin and friends being overthrown. The Russian national security would be fine. Putin on the other hand has killed so many people that he can't allow a democratic takeover without going to jail.
This kind of sharp ideological turn is typical for outbreak of wars.
From what I have read, both the 1870 Prussian-French war and the outbreak of WWI in 1914 were followed by huge outpouring of militarist attitudes, even though there wasn't even radio (much less TV or Internet) and most common people didn't read newspapers, or rarely so.
We seem to have a collective subroutine for turning into murderous apes in our societal firmware. It was probably adaptive once. It may not be as adaptive in the nuclear age.
I agree with Chomsky on a lot of things, don’t think I need to watch CNN or read the New York Times to take Ukraine’s side on this one.
The international condemnation and lock step sanctions, is that the media’s doing? Or is it the consequence of Russia being the aggressor? I agree with my sibling, opinions tend to stiffen up when war breaks out, with or without the radio.
It may appear so from the west for someone who is mostly depending upon major Western news sources, but in the larger context, many countries including Israel, Mexico, South Africa, Pakistan and many major Middle Eastern Nations are refusing to join in sanctions or even in trying to condemn Russian actions and is essentially seeing the conflict from a neutral perspective. Condemning Russia and trying to sanction them is not a universal policy among nations.
It is important to remember that Chomsky has repeatedly supported actual genocides so long as the person committing the genocides was anti western in some way.
Dude. This is just not true. He didn't deny genocide. There are many reasons not to like Chomsky. I don't like him as of late. But, genocide-denial isn't one of them.
People exist in the West outside the USA, you know. They also have their own agency and a fear of Russia annexing their countries thanks to the close proximity to the current conflict.
>But I do absolutely understand Mearsheimer's perspective that this is basically a Cuban Missile Crisis 2.0 moment.
There was no hope of Ukraine joining NATO without the resolving of the Crimea/eastern Ukraine territories. In other words, not in the foreseeable future. Same with the EU, in practice.
Even if Ukraine were to a) resolve the territorial issues and b) convince the rest of NATO (any one member country being able to veto accession), this would not have brought NATO to the Russian border; Norway was a founding NATO member in 1949, and Poland and the Baltic states joined 15 years ago.
I'm no fan of the USian empire, but there is a categorical difference between playing the propaganda / political puppet game to affect a democratic process, and open war against another sovereign country because you don't like the result.
All this talk of Russia getting upset that "its" sphere of influence would rather look westward is completely writing off the agency of individual countries that haven't been part of the USSR for over a generation. There are very good reasons why Ukraine et al look West instead of East - chiefly riches and individual freedoms. Russia could have riches, but instead suffers from the resource curse. Russia could have liberalized, but instead continued to rely on (and is now even tightening up) uniparty-based censorship.
Say what you will about the failings and pathologies of Western liberalism. In fact, it's your patriotic duty to do so! But never take it for granted.
> All this talk of Russia getting upset that "its" sphere of influence would rather look westward is completely writing off the agency of individual countries that haven't been part of the USSR for over a generation.
Exactly. Russia has no inherent right to a sphere of influence. If it wants the support of its neighbours it will have to work hard to win that support.
Yes, I agree. Russia doesn't have an inherent right to a sphere of influence. But, it is also a principle in international relations that one nation-state should not increase its security at the expense of another. This situation is reminiscent of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
> We are literally sacrificing their country and encouraging suicide. This. is. just. wrong!
what on earth? Who is we? Policy that pisses Russia off I can take blame for, but Americans sacrificing Ukrainians? I really just cannot parse how you lay guilt at our feet for Ukrainians’ propensity for defending their sovereignty from invaders.
If you are fine with the claim America goaded Russia into war, I don't see how you can then say America doesn't have blood on its hands. Clearly both would be culpable under the premise, regardless of who deserves what share of blame.
> do you not understand how pissing Russia off leads to sacrificing Ukrainian lives,
Russia has been literally inventing pretexts for this action and keeps inventing new ones. No one's outside action “pissing them off” (in any immediate sense) is relevant here. It's driven more by economic gain and national greatness ideology than as a response to any immediate action or inaction of outside actors.
This is similar to what i had argued in another thread.
NATO/US/EU played a geopolitical game with Russia where Ukraine is the sacrificial pawn. While Russia is the naked aggressor, the role of NATO/US/EU is more insidious and needs to be called out. It is the Ukrainian (and Russian) soldiers/people dying and suffering while NATO/US/EU have gotten away scot-free.
3) The relevant research by the professor referenced in the above article can be found at https://www.jrishifrinson.com/ Excerpt from one of his papers "George H.W.Bush: Conservative Realist as President" :
Acting Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger observed in an accompanying memorandum, “It is in our interest to see the peaceful end of the Soviet Union as we have known it since 1917—a strong, totalitarian central government able to mobilize the vast human and material resources at its control. . . . The sine qua non for eliminating this threat is substantial devolution of economic and political power [emphasis added].” Even more direct was Secretary of the Treasury Nicholas Brady, who argued in a June 1991 meeting of senior policymakers that “A real reform program would turn [the Soviet Union] into a third-rate [military] power, which is what we want;” judging from their comments at this meeting, Baker, Scowcroft, and others seemed to accept this point of view. Put simply, the spread of freedom, liberty, and U.S. values into the Soviet space was normatively attractive, but it also carried starkly advantageous geopolitical consequences for the United States.
Not true. You have to look at the entire political situation in Ukraine, starting at least since 2003-4. And, especially 2014 and the US-backed putsch that took place that year.
I'm well aware of political situation in Ukraine. I took part in the protests of 2004 that led to "US-backed putsch", had nothing to do with USA. You're stripping Ukrainian people of any agency. Not everything is secretly manipulated by USA or Russia, people of the country are not mindless bots.
why would USA be secret about supporting Ukraine? USA was one of the countries guaranteeing Ukraine's safety in exchange for nuclear weapons release. I would argue USA is not doing enough for what they signed up for.
We made no such guarantee. This is a tiresome revisionist reading of history. No one in the United States signed up to turn Ukraine into an American protectorate in 1994.
It's deeply dishonest to claim that a handful of deeply tragic mistakes are in any way morally equivalent to the systematic and relentless targeting of civilians that the Russians are engaged in.
The U.S. military has committed war crimes. They have all been prosecuted by the U.S. government. From Abu Ghraib to Clint Lorance to the Marine Snipers to Eddie Gallagher. There is no moral equivalence.
Sorry dawg, but I accidentally bombed your hospital and your wedding party! We cool though, right?
Napalming the Vietnamese... rice farmers on the other side of the world who couldn't hurt us if they tried... and spending so much money to do it that we had to end Bretton Woods... a "deeply tragic mistake."
Destroying Iraq, over imaginary WMDs and Bin Laden (playing xbox in Pakistan at the time)... shelling the cities with so much depleted uranium that the babies are coming out deformed... oopsie!
And I'm the one being "deeply dishonest"? Ha!
Now that we've gotten the obligatory moral scolding out of the way, who really cares what John Mearsheimer or George Kennan have to say when we have twitter?
I go to the website... "Thanks to the Global Shapers Community...," another offshoot of the World Economic Forum. The Spice must flow, I guess.
"Built by Stanford Ukranians...," foreign silver-spoons agitating for Americans to die for mommy and daddy's regime. It's an understandable move--Iranian and Iraqi expats made the same one years ago--but no thank you.
Feel free to criticize Nixon for getting involved but the U.S. prosecutes soldiers who commit war crimes. Even in Vietnam. And when people try to cover it up, U.S. service members have the moral courage to push back.
Russia intentionally encourages, even orders, soldiers to commit war crimes. There are no prosecutions for it. There is no comparison.
> We are literally sacrificing their country and encouraging suicide.
Who is we ?
A) President Z and the Ukrainian army can literally wave the white flag and let the Russian tanks roll into Kiev - they are the ones doing the sacrifice here
B) Or President Putin can give the order to withdraw
They're fighting because they are being attacked, and because Slavs are courageous and stubborn. But the West are not telling them to give up, to save civilian lives. Instead they encourage them to keep fighting, delaying the inevitable. I don't know by how many days that will prolong the war, but it's reckless.
Imagine Biden telling Ukraine to lay down arms and capitulate to the Russian occupation, and we thought Trump acted like the Manchurian candidate !
I really can’t see into your mind, how is Putin not the reckless one here? He’s going on a military adventure that has kept the Russian stock market closed for a week.
There can be more than one reckless party. Putin obviously started the war, and Russia will have suffered huge losses, not to mention the devastating human toll.
But do you think Ukraine has a chance here? What is the purpose of fighting? It would only make sense if there was a chance of NATO or the EU stepping in to help them, but that seems to be ruled out.
NATO absolutely has stepped in via intelligence and ammunition. Kyiv would not stand for as long as it has without this support.
What is the purpose of fighting? Have you looked at Russia? ukrainians would like to remain free of totalitarianism and will die trying. They will not accept becoming a vassal state. What is the alternative to fighting?
It is clear to me they have a chance, as Russia has failed to gain air supremacy and the conscripts keep defecting. [I admit I only see pro-Ukraine propaganda, but as long as they are transmitting this propaganda out of Kyiv they are winning]
> What is the purpose of fighting? Have you looked at Russia? ukrainians would like to remain free of totalitarianism and will die trying. They will not accept becoming a vassal state. What is the alternative to fighting?
The point is that it seems completely hopeless without direct military help from the West. Looked at Russia, in what sense? I have lived there, so I know what life is like there, but I don't know the state of the military. Except that it's enormous, and only a fraction has been deployed so far.
Why won't they accept becoming a vassal state, if the alternative is complete destruction? Or are they betting that Putin will back off before it's levelled to the ground. Perhaps he will, but I wouldn't bet on it, look at Chechnya.
Clearly Putin thought the resistance would be weak and starting out they went to great lengths to spare civilians, but that has already started to give way. It's awful to think what will happen if this drags on.
I will respect that you know better than me, an American that would like to see the sights of Russia one day.
In the sense that Putin murders/poisons his political opponents and journalists like Navalny & Politkovskaya, tortures and imprisons activists like Magnitsky and Nadya Tolokno. I can sympathize with anyone who would avoid a government responsible for such acts, granting that I'm ignorant of any Ukrainian equivelancies.
To me, Ukraine has the hope of a European future of democratic rule and economic prosperity, unburdened by such kleptocracy as that which has deprived the Russian military of its competence. Really, I think Putin was told his forces on the border were topped off with food, fuel, and combat units hungry for conquest. He is sorely mistaken, and his troops are hungry, out of gas, and without purpose. Again, this is just what I see. A superpower that isn't. As the war drags on, Putin has to answer to his fellow oligarchs as much as anyone else, and Ukraine will continue to be supplied by Russia's enemies.
I recommend you look into these authors/commentators/analysts:
* John Mearsheimer
* Noam Chomsky
* Vladimir Pozner
* Jeffrey Sachs
* Zbigniew Brezinski
* George Friedman
* Peter Zeihan
* Peter Hitchens
* Gonzalo Lira
* Tim Marshall
* Robert D Kaplan
* Jack F. Matlock Jr
* George Kennan
* Stephen Cohen
* Henry Kissinger
Indeed. NATO/EU expansion is essentially a slow-moving replay of Brest-Litovsk and Barbarossa from the Russian point-of-view. I'm an American but I totally understand why Russia just did what it did. Never forget that Lenin was sent to Russia BY GERMANY for the express purpose of destabilizing Russia during WW1. This is the type of destabilizing regime-change that Russia fears. Their fears are not unfounded if you pay close attention to what the US has done in Ukraine, which is something our media doesn't even cover.
I watched the fox news clip with the colonel and find it frankly offensive. All Putin wants is a nuetral Ukraine, Zelensky should just hand over all his weapons?
Tell me, do you believe Ukrainians preferred the government they deposed in 2014 ? That would see them never joining EU, never joining a defence pact to protect from Russian invasion?
I see people fighting for their country, as if they know that if Ukraine is without an army, there will not be a Ukraine for long. I trust their judgement, not that of thinkpieces and fox news guests.
> In the sense that Putin murders/poisons his political opponents and journalists like Navalny & Politkovskaya, tortures and imprisons activists like Magnitsky and Nadya Tolokno.
In that regard, Ukraine is doing much better. But it's nevertheless utterly corrupt, and Zelensky has been closing down opposition media, but as far as I know they're not killing journalists or jailing opposition politicians. But politics are sort of a moot point, since the oligarchs essentially run the country as they wish.
> I can sympathize with anyone who would avoid a government responsible for such acts, granting that I'm ignorant of any Ukrainian equivelancies.
Sure, we all want freedom of speech, freedom of the press etc, but is it worth dying for? Especially if you're desperately poor?
As I wrote. Ukraine will obviously defend itself when attacked, with or without the West. And the West has been clear about not helping. But encouraging them to keep fighting, when it seems completely hopeless, is not doing them a service. Keyboard warriors in the US telling Ukrainian civilians to throw Molotov cocktails on tanks is especially infuriating.
There's nothing inevitable here. The Russian army is being show to be a joke right now.
Ultimately there will have to be some sort of negotiated peace (Ukraine can't fight all the way to Moscow) but the more of the Russian Army they destroy and the longer they hold them off the better the terms they will get.
If you said something like that to a Polish person during early days of WW2, they would slap you in the face, or worse. You have no right to say something like that. If Ukrainians want to fight until the end, that is a choice they can make.
I'm not saying they "can't make that choice". I'm saying it's a bad idea to make that choice. If Russia tried to invade Sweden, my home country, I would say the same. Resisting an overwhelming force might sound good on paper, but when it's your own country that is being laid waste to it's different. If Finland tried to invade, fighting back would be more attractive.
The comparison with Poland and the Nazis is not an apt one. The Nazis despised Slavs, and life under German occupation would be terrible, WAS terrible. Unless you believe the craziest Western propaganda, you know that Russia has no plans to set up concentration camps, Russians consider Ukraine a brother, not a lesser form of human. If Ukraine waves the white flag Putin will most likely install a loyal government, peel off DNR and LNR, keep Crimea, establish some Russian military bases and then leave.
Life in Ukraine as a Russian vassal state would be nothing like life as a Pole under Nazi Germany, it's not a reasonable comparison. It would be more like living in Belarus. That's not amazing, but it's better than total destruction.
This is spot on! What has shocked me is how easily the narrative has been pushed in the EU. There has not been much backing for less confrontation. On the contrary, EU more than anything, is escalating by imposing economic sanctions on the Russian people. (Does sanctions ever do anything else than push people into poverty?) Everything appears to be designed to push Putin into a corner so he has no choice but to use those nukes. Are there any efforts at all to de-escalate the situation?
Not to mention the fact that these sanctions are going to make poor people starve. Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine make up a huge chunk of world grain, fertilizer, oil, and gas exports.
In the Grand Chessboard, former NSA Zbigniew Brzezinski openly talks about oil and gas pipelines and diverting them away from Russia. That's what this war is really about.
> Not to mention the fact that these sanctions are going to make poor people starve.
This seems a very likely outcome. The EU obviously has no other "weapon" than sanctions. In my view, it has become a social media popularity contest. Let's punish everyone in Russia financially so maybe there will be an uprising. And, let's top it up with a free for all hunt on the assets of oligarchs. Is it anything else than the popularity contest playing out? Maybe it's ultimately like you say: about control of the oil and gas coming from Russia.
I have studied this situation nonstop for the last week and I pretty much have the same opinion as you. If you ask a simple question, Cui bono? (Who benefits?) it becomes clear that it’s ultimately another military industrial complex project. The sad part is that the only real victims here are the Ukrainian people, who were led along with false promises.
Had NATO been wiser, none of this would be happening.
Quite the list of signatories, including C. William Maynes (editor of Foreign Policy magazine), Sen. Bill Bradley, Raymond Garthoff (former ambassador to Bulgaria), Morton Halperin (former ACLU director), Sen. Gary Hart, Arthur Hartman (Reagan's ambassador to the Soviet Union), Sen. Mark Hatfield, Sen. Gordon Humphrey, Fred Ikle (the man who proposed sending weapons to the Mujahideen), Sen. Bennett Johnston, James Leonard (ambassador to the UN), former Secretary of the Navy Paul H. Nitze, former Secretary of Defense McNamara, Sen. Sam Nunn, Ambassador to East Germany Herbert S. Okun, commander of US Air Force Japan Robert E. Pursley, CIA Director Stansfield Turner, plus a list of everything from well-known professors to Purple Heart recipients.
In other words - left and right, ACLU and Senators, academia and veterans, a broad swath of the American political landscape - I'm not sure why this perspective doesn't attract more attention these days.
This is also playing right into NATO's hands in a way.
But, after reading the authors I mentioned closely, I now realize that this is a war for control/negative-control over natural resources (grain, oil, gas, fertilizers, etc.). Also, this is about geostrategic security (anchoring at the Carpathian mountains and Bessarabia Gap).
Same here, I too seek out the motive behind actions; otherwise, history is the most boring and unintelligible sequence of events known to man.
I recommend you look into these authors/commentators/analysts:
* John Mearsheimer
* Noam Chomsky
* Vladimir Pozner
* Jeffrey Sachs
* Zbigniew Brezinski
* George Friedman
* Peter Zeihan
* Peter Hitchens
* Gonzalo Lira
* Tim Marshall
* Robert D Kaplan
* Jack F. Matlock Jr
* George Kennan
* Stephen Cohen
* Henry Kissinger
Indeed. NATO/EU expansion is essentially a slow-moving replay of Brest-Litovsk and Barbarossa from the Russian point-of-view. I'm an American but I totally understand why Russia just did what it did. Never forget that Lenin was sent to Russia BY GERMANY for the express purpose of destabilizing Russia during WW1. This is the type of destabilizing regime-change that Russia fears. Their fears are not unfounded if you pay close attention to what the US has done in Ukraine, which is something our media doesn't even cover.
This — only have listened to the Hitchens so far — was fantastic. Thank you so much for sharing this. I wonder what he would say about Germany deciding to militarize overnight. No wonder Macron was telling Putin Russia is “European”. Wheels within wheels.
Indeed. NATO/EU expansion is essentially a slow-moving replay of Brest-Litovsk and Barbarossa from the Russian point-of-view. I'm an American but I totally understand why Russia just did what it did. Never forget that Lenin was sent to Russia BY GERMANY for the express purpose of destabilizing Russia during WW1. This is the type of destabilizing regime-change that Russia fears. Their fears are not unfounded if you pay close attention to what the US has done in Ukraine, which is something our media doesn't even cover.
I seek out the motive behind actions; otherwise, history is the most boring and unintelligible sequence of events known to man.
I recommend you look into these authors/commentators/analysts:
* John Mearsheimer
* Noam Chomsky
* Vladimir Pozner
* Jeffrey Sachs
* Zbigniew Brezinski
* George Friedman
* Peter Zeihan
* Peter Hitchens
* Gonzalo Lira
* Tim Marshall
* Robert D Kaplan
* Jack F. Matlock Jr
* George Kennan
* Stephen Cohen
* Henry Kissinger
I think military-industrial complex gets its pound of flesh rain or shine. Westerners like their high-paying defense jobs. This is about bringing the entire world, state-by-state, under anglosphere concepts of law/property/morality/etc--but instead of subordinating Indians and Africans, it's Slavs this time.
Following several hundred years of rule by Poland and then Russia, in 1991 the Ukrainians voted overwhelmingly for independence from Russia. (I assume you think that was a mistake?)
Between 1991 and 2004, two the administrations of two presidents retained close ties to Russia. However, in 2004, in an election festooned with accusations of fraud (serious accusations, not Trump-accusations), another pro-Russian president was elected, sparking protests and a second election, which brought into power another president who called for closer ties with the European Union. (Yeah, this guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Yushchenko demonstrating the results of not recognizing Russian authority.) Corruption seems to have abounded during most of these and the next president's terms.
In 2010, another pro-Russian president was elected, which in 2013 and 2014 led to the Euromaidan protests, complete with violence, that led to that government's collapse. This was the time when Russia annexed Crimea and civil war broke out in Donetsk and Luhansk. (They should have just given up then, right?)
The next President, elected in 2014, began again the policy of closing the relationship with the EU and withdrawing from the Commonwealth of Independent States, the association of countries from the USSR, and generally trying to clean up the mess. In 2019 the constitution was amended:
"The authority of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine include ... determining the principles of internal and foreign policy, realization of the strategic course of the state on acquiring full-fledged membership of Ukraine in the European Union and in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
"The President of Ukraine is a guarantor of the implementation of the strategic course of the state for gaining full-fledged membership of Ukraine in the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
"The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine provides the implementation of the strategic course of the state for gaining full-fledged membership of Ukraine in the European Union and the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization."
(Stupid fools, don't they know they have no rights a world power is bound to respect? They're barely human!)
Now, Putin has said that the big mistake happened when Lenin's USSR gave Ukraine any autonomy at all, which may in fact be true. But,
1. The Ukrainians are not victims. Well, they are, but only of Russian aggression.
2. The military-industrial complex seems to have an awful lot of reach and power. Shades of the Elders of Zion, eh? On the other hand, seems like they could have worked a bit faster.
3. NATO does not look to be a very big player; the EU and Poland have had as big a hand in "false promises" if you choose to look at it that way.
> 2014 led to the Euromaidan protests, complete with violence, that led to that government's collapse. This was the time when Russia annexed Crimea and civil war broke out in Donetsk and Luhansk
Your have written a lot but omitted the crucial details about the maidan. US instigated the coup and installed nationalistic government. The separatist tendencies were the direct result of that government's actions.
(I like the line, "A "new low?" From a Russian perspective, assuming they did it, it was brilliant. And it didn't require assassinating a former spy in a foreign capital with a radioactive isotope.")
There's nothing there about a "US instigated coup." What you're looking at are boring US State Department discussions of how to, yes, arrange to move the situation closer to something the US would like. Who to talk to, what to talk about. That's what they do. Here's the conclusion of the BBC diplomatic correspondent:
"The US is clearly much more involved in trying to broker a deal in Ukraine than it publicly lets on. There is some embarrassment too for the Americans given the ease with which their communications were hacked."
One should note that Russia was also engaged in shenanigans, including providing advisors in the operations to suppress the protests. (You don't see the phrase "the use of snipers to disperse crowds" very often.)
This phone call was released in early February 2014, during the protests. Unless you somehow believe that the US has mind-control technology that can cause tens of thousands of innocent people to risk their lives protesting their government, there is not a whole lot of US agency here.
I know this is hard to believe, but people outside the US are actually people, and have their own beliefs and values, and are capable of making their own decisions.
There were protests going on but there's still a legitimate president (de jure at least).
US diplomats are caught on tape discussing who should be and should not be in the new government.
To me it means that they were directly talking to the protesters leaders and assuring them of us support.
If that kind of diplomacy sounds fine I don't quite understand why the Americans were so sensitive about the so-called "Russian involvement" in the US elections
You may think that there is an absolute answer to this situation, but there isn't. I recommend that you study commentators and scholars such as: John Mearsheimer, Zbigniew Brezinski, George Friedman, Peter Zeihan, George Kennan, Noam Chomsky, Peter Hitchens, Gonzalo Lira, Tim Marshall, Robert D Kaplan, etc., etc. to gain some insight into the other and more complex side of this story. Their books are a good and quick read.
I am a proud American -- but, I am convinced that my country started this entire episode and planned to have it be so for a long, long time. 9/11, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, etc. just got in their way. Instead of drawing a rational meet-me-in-the-middle red-line with Russia (ex: Poland and the Baltics) that we could live with, we decided to take Ukraine for this ride. We did that. We encouraged Zelensky to talk about acquiring nukes, grabbing Crimea back, grabbing Luhansk and Donestk, joining NATO and the EU, etc. -- instead of encouraging Austria-like neutrality, we promoted our-way-or-the-highway.
And now what are we doing? Fighting to the last Ukrainian? Fighting until they lose even more in a country that has lost ~20% of its population from its peak? We are literally sacrificing their country and encouraging suicide. This. is. just. wrong!