Yes, it was harder to prove or disprove a claim when information was not as readily accessible as it is today. For the same reason, the likelihood of even becoming aware of any "fringe theories" without digital communication was much lower. So, overall I would say they are more pervasive today.
Yeah I agree. Its much easier to disseminate false information in the digital age, because if you have the means, you can drown out the true information in a way that's much harder to detect. I don't think this is an oranges to oranges comparison.
I would say "link blogging" is how weblogs started: Relatively short logs of your accomplishments or mysteries you had solved that day or just musings about one's recent discoveries on the web published on the web. It was an answer to more static "personal websites" where any new article had to justify its existence by meeting a certain threshold of novelty and newsworthiness. Weblogs got shorter and shorter, Tumblr started, then some went on to this new thing called Twitter.
A lot of it comes down to the attitude that product quality (at least when it comes to a product's longevity aspect) is less and less valued because the low quality alternatives became so cheap. Or, as someone put it here once: "I don't want to have to think really hard about which trivial household item I want to spend the rest of my life with. I'd rather pick a random cheap one and then not feel too bad about replacing it, if necessary." It seems the negative externalities of this trend are not effectively priced at the moment.
I feel exactly the opposite. It's somewhat ironic as well, because socially I have and have had a reputation as someone who is both 'gadget obsessed' and 'bougie', but I don't think you can really be both. I have much much less 'stuff' than almost anyone I know, but almost everything I own I spent at least a few months researching before buying it and I plan to keep it as long as possible (and repair it if possible when it breaks). As a tech guy, the most obvious place this exists is in my desk setup, which currently (laptop and USB chargers not included) has an average age of around 5 years for everything on it. The oldest item I acquired 12 years ago and have no intention to ever replace if possible. The newest item was acquired as part of a move 2 years ago and pulls the average down.
It's a constant struggle though, because even when I find something of high quality (recently pants and shirts), this doesn't prevent the company from discontinuing the product or changing it. I've had to since switch pants and shirts, and rotate my wardrobe because of button and zipper failures on a brand I previously relied on heavily and recommended to others. They likely made this choice as a company to cut materials costs to not move their price point, but I would have happily absorbed a 20-30% price increase to maintain quality and not need to spend another 3 months figuring out which pants to start buying. Instead, they've lost a customer entirely that previously directed them additional customers. I wish consistency of quality was more of a thing, so even when you find something you always have to keep an eye on it.
This might have been true in the past but from anecdotal evidence a lot more people seem to actually shop on their mobile phones nowadays where switching between tabs is less convenient. They build their item shortlist using shops' wishlist features or just add them to the cart.
It depends on what you want to do with the data. It can be easier to just stick nicely-compressed columnar Parquets in S3 (and run arbitrarily complex SQL on them using Athena or Presto) than to try to achieve the same with shell-scripting on CSVs.
how exactly is this solution easier than putting the very Parquet files on a classic filesystem. Why does the easy solution require an amazon-subscription?
This is adjacent to "why would I need EC2 when I can serve from my laptop?"
In terms of maturity of solution and diversity of downstream applications you'll go much further with BigQuery/Athena (at comically low cost) for this amount of data than some cobbled together "local" solution.
I thoroughly agree with the author but the comments in this thread are an indication of people who haven't actually had to do meaningful ongoing work with modest amounts of data if they're suggesting just storing it as plain text on personal devices.
I'm not advocating for complicated or expensive solutions here, BigQuery and Athena are very low complexity compared to any of the Hadoop et-al tooling (yes Athena is Trino is in the family, but it is managed and dirt cheap).
I think there is little hope of normalizing relations with Russia, so unfortunately these "Western assets" need to be written off anyway. A large part of them ($98bn) came from Cyprus which might just be round-tripping Russian money.
All wars have something in common: they end. That thought in your head about lack of hope of normalizing relations is just the current propaganda working.
Edit: it's amazing just how short-sighted people can be. Look, we still bring up the Nazis as an unassailable argument for how something is bad. And yet the war with Germany ended and they are now a US ally fighting Russia. I'm sure in the midst of WW2 the common folk also believed that there can be no peace with Germany, after all the man on the radio said so.
Besides, during WW2 the situation was the opposite: Russia was an ally. And hey, if you study European history at all you'll note that it's a series of wars with shifting alliances.
So do countries, if we're looking at a long enough time scale. There is no end in sight for the war in Ukraine and when the end comes it's likely to be messy. It might be more of a pause than a true end, and one or both sides will likely be pretty unhappy with the outcome. It could be many years before Russia and the west go back to a comfortable economic relationship.
Neoconservatives are not, and indeed have not held power in the US for the better part of a decade. Indeed not even back when Russia invaded Crimea if memory serves me correctly.
Of course, there's a decent probability that you've redefined "neoconservative" to mean "people whose politics I don't like" as opposed to any definition that's actually useful for an analysis of foreign policy, and concomitantly that you are so myopically focused on one specific component of foreign policy that you would refuse to admit any evidence that might actually prove you wrong.
Talking to people actually living in the place could give you a clue. Putin is a neocon, sure, but no bureaucrat started this war and Ukraine is very unlikely to just fold and submit if the US stop their support. Liberals have also nothing to do with Russian aggression.
This war will likely end with Ukraine losing some amount of land - it is just a matter of if they ever accept this or whether they want a Korea style frozen conflict.
It will not "end" until Russia has installed a subservient client regime in Ukraine like it has in Belorussia.
If you doubt this, I encourage you to look at actual opinions within Russia itself. Interviews with Russians (the 1420 channel on Youtube for example), Russian media, Russian politicians. Their objection is far more than "there's Russian speakers being persecuted by Ukraine." Their national chauvinism leaves them unable to tolerate actually-sovereign nation states on their borders, especially one with an intertwined cultural-linguistic-political history like Ukraine.
"Split Ukraine into two and give the far western half to Poland and absorb the rest into Russia" is a commonly held "solution".
Those same people on 1420 will tell you that Poland and UK need to be denazified. It's just propaganda working, you can't mistake it for real strategic goals.
Absolutely, it's not scientific at all, but it shows the strong presence of a chauvinistic compliant population.
FWIW I think you could find similar nonsense on the streets of many (but not all) American cities. It's the kind of hubris that comes from being a huge country that is its own centre of gravity and a political leadership that runs around saying it's the "best country in the world" and stuff like that. That's how it looks from up here in Canada, anyways.
Anyways, you don't have to look at 1420, just the public pronouncements of Putin himself
I love how you all create these little side threads where you imagine people's views and then argue against them rather than taking the actually stated views of people in this thread at face value.
Putin says a lot of things. No, he's not laying out his grand strategy in front of you, he's saying what is politically useful at the moment.
You can't really know the Russia's strategic thinking from public proclamations. You need to read between the lines, and even then it's mostly guesswork.
Ukraine has been fighting Russia for nearly a decade, with active if low-level warfare in the Donbass region the entire time. I wouldn't exactly call that "accept[ing] it and liv[ing] on."
From about 2017 the war was very low-level, limited to some artillery duels. And those duels weren't entirely Ukrainian choice, if Russia shoots at you, you can't just ignore it.
Remember when the local "insurrection" to kijev marched into the theater in kherson because they thought it the regional governments office. For all their propaganda multitudes fines online, they are just lethal clowns on the ground, unable to innovate, because bound by puppeteer strings. Ukraine will win. Moscovia will fall apart once again.
Not quite! The immediate history here plays a huge role in where we're at today. In the 2014 the US backed a [coup, revolution, insurrection - whatever you want to call it] in Ukraine that saw their democratically elected pro-Russian President overthrown. Numerous Ukrainian territories that also leaned pro-Russia refused to recognize the new government and declared their independence, the Donbas region and Crimea among them.
For the 8 years from 2014 to 2022 Ukraine was intermittently attacking and shelling these breakaway territories (excepting Crimea, which had become part of Russia) which were (and are) largely populated with ethnic Russians, and Russia was "secretly" protecting them. This led to a series of treaties, The Minsk Accords [1], to try to arrange peace between Russia and Ukraine, and give the breakaway territories some sort of special status while remaining under Ukraine.
These treaties were always violated. And while this was happening Ukraine was increasingly fortifying and arming itself, as well as seeking to join NATO - which NATO was, sincerely or not, indulging. This all really set the stage for where we are today. It also sets the stage for where we're going tomorrow, because the inability to maintain any sort of a peace over these regions is going to make obtaining a 'minimally unfavorable' settlement for Ukraine, over this war, much more difficult.
None if this is true. For example, the "pro-Russian President" wasn't overthrown. At Russian pressure, he ditched a very favorable trade agreement with the EU that would've opened up many new business opportunities for Ukrainians. When protesters assembled, he ordered police snipers to shoot at them, killing 108 people. He fled to Russia the next day and Ukraine's parliament voted to remove him from office, and scheduled new elections, which were held three months later.
Wiki has a surprisingly good timeline of the event. [1] Even the identity of the snipers has, again, a quite reasonable page on Wiki. [2] You might want to at least add in the whole thing about "protesters" shooting at police officers to try to escalate the conflict, occupying government buildings and seizing substantial quantities of weapons, Western cities (which tend to be very pro-EU and anti-Russia for those not familiar with the geography of Ukraine) spontaneously refusing to acknowledge the President's authority, and ultimately the military as well.
Even the end of it all was quite odd. There was a settlement agreed upon, but far right types refused to accept anything short of the President's ouster, and the government was then subsequently directly threatened by the now in control "protesters". Following said threats riot police and others that were guarding the presidential compound "vanished." [3] And it was in this context that Yanukovych fled. Had he not, he probably would have been killed.
If you lack interest in reading all the sources yourself, feel free to ask for the specific reference of any single thing I've said and I'll happily cite it for you.
> People of Ukraine did the revolution. The western backing you’re talking about was limited to vague verbal expressions of support.
Obviously no revolution can happen without popular dissatisfaction and massive popular support for an alternative. But I think the Nuland-Pyatt call leak firmly puts to bed the notion that US involvement was 'limited to vague verbal expressions of support.'
Are you referring to that leaked call? https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26079957 If the leak is true, the people in the call are doing precisely what they publicly said they were doing — trying to negotiate a peaceful political resolution of the ongoing crisis.
As shown by the events which followed, all their talks achieved absolutely nothing.
The resolution of the crisis in Ukraine was neither peaceful nor political. Instead, couple weeks after the alleged call the crisis was resolved after the bloodshed on February 18-20.
Then Russia has launched military invasion, escalating the internal political crisis into an international war. Sadly, the war is still ongoing, despite almost 10 years have passed since these events.
The reason Yatsenyuk became a prime minister, on February 27, 2014 the parliament of Ukraine made him so, with 371 out of 450 deputies supporting the decision. Just because some western politicians also viewed the guy as a good fit for the role doesn’t prove they affected the events in any way.
BTW, President of Ukraine has way more executive power than the PM. As the immediate result of the revolution, Turchynov became the acting president. He received way more political power than Yatsenyuk, yet the unknown people speaking on the leaked call never mentioned his name.
No, I think the people of these regions should have been allowed to decide their own fate, which then should be internationally recognized. This is, of course, impossible now because the war means that the demographics have shifted substantially and irreversibly. But this would have at least been a viable path forward in 2014. The problem is that nobody wants this sort of democracy unless they like the answer they're going to get.
Like imagine if in 2020 the January 6th rioters had somehow managed to overthrow the government and get Trump in office again. It would seem, to me, perfectly reasonable for e.g. California to then say 'No thank you.' and refuse to acknowledge his authority. That probably would have led to a civil war but if you're asking what I think - it's that people in such scenarios (which, granted, are not so easy to define) ought be allowed to decide their own fate.
All Ukrainian regions have voted for Ukrainian independence in the 1991 referendum. All the way until 2014 there wasn't actually any relevant pro-independence movement in Crimea or Donbas, until the Russian soldiers showed up, and dictated the course of events, of course.
How about if trucks full of soldiers without uniform crossed the border from Mexico to go on a sunny vacation, and decided on the spur of the moment to help their new friends out by imposing martial law and holding sham elections and shooting down airliners?
> No, I think the people of these regions should have been allowed to decide their own fate, which then should be internationally recognized.
This means that Russia needs to go back to its border and free and fair elections need to be held, in accordance with the country’s constitution. Right? You realise that Russia leaving the country is a pre-requisite for the people to vote freely? Unless you count what we’ve seen in Crimea, in the Donbas and in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia oblasts as somehow free and fair. You know, when the ballot boxes were brought to each house by armed Russian soldiers with tanks on the streets.
> But this would have at least been a viable path forward in 2014.
2014 was when Putin put everything in motion, having spent the previous years setting it up. If you think that anything reasonable could happen under Yanukovich, well, you were not paying attention.
You say it like it’s their choice. Moldova never asked for Transnistria. It’s fairly SOP for Russia to take bites from its neighbours, let’s stop blaming the victims. Whatever Russia ends up doing, they are preparing for themselves a second Chechnya at the very least.
Of course it is not just their choice. Russia has indicated their willingness to accept current holdings (for now, you are right there are no guarantees).
Ukraine could and should get better than just that, but this notion of taking back Crimea is a pipe dream and I don’t support continued funding until that goal is realized.
If you want to be extremely cynical and seek to strictly extend and project the USA's power as harshly and effectively as possible, the war in Ukraine was God's gift to the USA. They get to basically take out Russia (China's key geopolitical ally) without losing a single American life, for a tiny fraction of the amount they're used to spending on wars.
And yet it's American nationalists themselves who want it all to stop, to throw all of its European allies under the bus and burn the alliance with the rest of the Western world to the ground. An amazing and almost impressive act of self harm.
It's not so much "America first" with you lot, it's "America alone".
> If you want to be extremely cynical and seek to strictly extend and project the USA's power as harshly and effectively as possible, the war in Ukraine was God's gift to the USA. They get to basically take out Russia (China's key geopolitical ally) without losing a single American life, for a tiny fraction of the amount they're used to spending on wars.
In a sane timeline, support for Ukraine should be unanimous amongst US politicians. Whether they would be neocons (following the calculation you outlined), liberals out to support oppressed people, cold-hearted capitalists out to make a buck both during wartime and in reconstruction, anyone supporting the military who will get an influx of new toys as their old ones are shipped out to Ukraine at basically no cost for the taxpayer, testosterone-addicted macho patriots who get to see American technology crush the remains of a former peer adversary.
You are assuming I am some Trump American-first Republican. I think you are severely misjudging the politics of Ukraine support in the US, which has collapsed in the last few months.
Perhaps I am opposed to harsh projections of American power in an increasingly multipolar world? The global playing field is leveling, I think that is precisely the wrong time to be making even bitterer enemies.
Yes I am assuming that very much, but it does not matter that much, either you're America first or you agree with their foreign policy anyway on Ukraine. I understand that Ukraine support has been politicised even when it should not be. This says much more about the utterly dysfunctional state of American politics and the decline of American society whereby you're seriously entertaining reelecting Trump next year. It does not say much at all about Ukraine. If it were not Ukraine, it would simply be something else equally irrelevant to domestic American politics but equally politicised.
>Perhaps I am opposed to harsh projections of American power in an increasingly multipolar world?
I don't know, are you? Put another way the USA is helping support a free and independent country against an imperial genocidal conqueror. Isn't that what the USA is kind of supposed to do? Otherwise what exactly does it stand for?
Or another way: In forcing "détente" on Europe, are you happy to trade good relations with most of Europe, your oldest allies, for maybe better relations with Russia, your enemy who hates you and seeks your destruction? Really? Sounds like a shit and moronic deal to me.
>The global playing field is leveling, I think that is precisely the wrong time to be making even bitterer enemies.
It's too late lad. Russia hates you even more than they hate your mother country, my homeland, the UK. In fact Russia hates you more than any other country on the planet. They utterly despise you and Anglo-American cultural hegemony. In for a penny, in for a pound and all that. They've been working to undermine the USA since well before the war started. There is no going back any time soon. Instead you advocate surrender to the same people who wish to destroy you. Weak.
> In forcing "détente" on Europe, are you happy to trade good relations with most of Europe, your oldest allies, for maybe better relations with Russia, your enemy who hates you and seeks your destruction? Really? Sounds like a shit and moronic deal to me.
There won’t be any détente in Europe. There was an opportunity in the early 2000s but both Russia and Western European countries fumbled it. Now the door was closed and Russia’s actions ensured that it won’t open for quite a while. It is difficult to grasp how profound the effects on European politics has been.
This is what is so pathetic about those Americans who delude themselves thinking that if they close their eyes it will be ok. The world is slipping through their fingers and they don’t realise that this is accelerating the disintegration of American power. This war is fundamentally different from Iraq in a way they do not seem to grasp.
It's pretty typically American to only be able to see the world through the lense of their own parochial internal interests and partisan conflicts. Their economy and military and geography of the country are so big that the gravity field of the place is massive, and both liberals and conservatives there rewrite things in terms of their own dysfunctional political cultural battles. Not to say other places in the world don't have ideological blinders, but the US is extreme.
The prime example of this was the nonsense that got Trump impeached ... Trump trying to strong-arm Zelensky into intervening into US domestic politics. "Art of the deal" wasn't so much that, as it was just total blindness to anything outside his own internal interests. American tribal politics were clearly so important that the survival of Ukraine itself was a bargaining chip.
FWIW up here in Canada none of the 5 mainstream political parties have taken a position against supporting Ukraine, financially and militarily. Given the size of the Ukrainian-Canadian population (third largest Ukrainian population after Ukraine and Russia) such a position would be electorally toxic.
> it does not matter that much, either you're America first or you agree with their foreign policy anyway on Ukraine
It does matter because you basically said "if you really cared about maintaining American unipolarity no matter the cost, you would be all in on Ukraine" - and I don't care about maintaining American unipolarity no matter the cost. A multipolar world is an inevitability.
> you advocate surrender to the same people who wish to destroy you. Weak.
Somehow I suspect that I am not the jingoistic nationalist here.
That was a hypothetical. I was just observing that the Ukraine war is amazing for US interests in a strictly Machiavellian, geopolitical sense. We Europeans are getting fucked over by the Russians, Ukrainians most of all and of course Russians are destroying themselves too for the sake of land (as if Russia hasn't got enough...). The USA is laughing here. I mention this because it's clear that it isn't a humanitarian issue for the US isolationists, they just don't want to spend the money (at least in theory, of course it's really all about domestic political tribalism and almost nothing to do with Ukraine for at least one side of the divide in the US), so I am speaking to them here on those terms.
>Somehow I suspect that I am not the jingoistic nationalist here.
Yes indeed how nationalistic of me to checks notes oppose wars of imperial conquest in Europe.
That rhetoric, outside of being sociopathic, is also almost certainly just not true.
I'm sure you've also been watching this war play out. When Russia first invaded their army was disorganized, relatively ineffective, and on extremely unstable footing. And when NATO entered the picture there was genuine fear about Western weaponry. Now Russia's military is much more effective, the visage of dominance of Western weaponry has been completely destroyed (along with large amounts of said weaponry itself), Russia's military production has reached highly competent levels, and they're altogether in a much better place. Even the no American lives part is false. Not only have numerous mercenaries and contractors been killed, but I think it's extremely safe to assume that there have been casualties among the inevitable individuals who are not officially there.
Also, one mistake you make is in claiming that withdrawing will have negative consequences (which I agree with), and then jumping from there to 'well, then we shouldn't withdraw!' Unfortunately in real life the choice is often not between a good choice and a bad choice, but between a bad choice and an awful choice. This is even more true when acting under poor leadership, or leadership with insufficient foresight. And I don't see how continuing this war is anything but negative for basically everybody, except perhaps Boeing and other arms dealers.
Have you noticed near to everything "we" say, as far as analysis of this war goes, ends up being simply not true? Russia's running out of missiles, the Russian economy is collapsing, this counter-attack's going to destroy Russia, this weapon or that weapon will be a 'game-changer.' So forth and so on. And now we're at "well it's just a stalemate."
The latest 'big battle', so far as I know is ongoing in Avdiivka. [1] I have not read the Wiki page on it, but if you're interested in following the war, that'd probably be a reasonable starting spot.
Nice cherrypicking and building strawmen. How about the Russia's obvious failures? Was Kyiv offensive a "feint" according to you?
Avdiivka is a village of 1000 inhabitants, and it's the biggest Russian assault since Russia took the town of Bakhmut about a year ago. With this pace, Russia is going to take Kyiv in the year 3000.
No, the Kyiv offensive was obviously a poorly executed failure. And it happened right at the start of this war, which is exactly what I am saying. "That" Russian military lost to a relatively improvised small scale counter-offensive, while the "new" Russian military beat back a massive Ukrainian counter-attack directly backed (and probably directed) by NATO. These are practically two different forces. We're not weakening Russia, we're hardening it.
As for Avdiivka, read the Wiki on it for more info. It's an industrial city, one of the most heavily fortified locations in Ukraine, and of significant strategic value. Every inch in that place comes at a high price, and both sides desperately want to control it. So it's a pretty reasonable bellwether to keep your eyes on.
You don't have to worry about my knowledge of Avdiivka. It's a village which has a value only for Russia, because it's very close to Donetsk city and is a major thorn in the Russian propaganda - can you explain to me how is Russia so strong and at the same time after 2 years of war still can't push Ukrainians more than 10 kilometers from the downtown of Donetsk city, the capital of DPR?
For Ukraine, the only value Avdiivka represents is that it allows them to bleed Russians for it, because it just matters so much for them. Otherwise, Avdiivka is even less important than Bakhmut (that one was at least a logistics node) and the loss of it did not lead to any frontline collapse - on the opposite, Ukrainians were able to recover Bakhmut flanks since then.
> We're not weakening Russia, we're hardening it.
What military analysts are you following? Because from what I hear from my sources (e.g. Kofman, Massicot) Russia's forces are very much degraded with many of the best units lost.
The scale of it is astounding. In the past few weeks, it has been a wave every hour or two, sometimes faster, with 5 to 20 vehicles a wave; minesweepers and a 2:1 bmp to tank ratio. Lots of troops and they barely get anywhere. It is horrid. The only real breakthrough that the Russians have made was through a long waste pipe into town. They rushed a ~150 people through after smaller groups, but those mostly ended up cut off from any resupply with the AFU having retaken their 3rd, main line of defense in that area. Destroyed a massive Russian column in that too.
I find analysis for this war quite inane to consume. The reality of war is that very often even the participants themselves are not entirely sure what's going on, let alone what will happen. See, for the most obvious example, the Ukrainian counter attack. So I simply prefer to look at what little data we can get that both sides agree upon and use that to get an indication of the broad "direction" of the war.
So for instance the average Ukrainian soldier is now up to 43 years old [1], more than a decade older than when the war began. And Ukraine has been turning to increasingly aggressive conscription efforts, with the military demanding even more. There's now also major friction between the head of the Ukrainian military and Zelensky, with Zelensky looking to replace him. [2] These sort of little nuggets, which are not disputed by either side at this point, give you an indication of the "direction" of the war.
It's the same reason I find Avdeevka relevant. Avdeevka does have strategic value, but what really matters is that it's a hill both sides have decided to die on. It's similar to something like Verdun. Verdun is a completely irrelevant town in France, far smaller than Avdeevka and with much less strategic value, yet hundreds of thousands of people lost their lives fighting over it. The reason the result mattered is not because this side or that now controlled Verdun, but because it was a major bellwether for the "direction" of the war.
My grandparents carried some anti-German sentiments 70 years after the war ended. Maybe you are able to switch your opinions that quickly, most people can't.
War didn't technically "end" between North and South Korea, North Korea is still a pariah state even if we were to accept the Korean war ended many decades ago.
Relationship between Russia and the west will probably be restored at some point but not without a lot of Russians and to a lesser extent Ukrainian getting killed, their economy and infrastructure gutted.
Well, at the current point of time Russia's economy and infrastructure are mostly intact. I'm not sure why is that for a dramatic change.
If you look at Iran, it also has its infrastructure in quite OK conditions - perhaps in better shape than all of their neighbours, and now that may even include Turkey. Russia is larger and has not self-inflicted being a theocracy.
As for the losses of both sides, I'd suggest leaving that to military experts.
As the war drags on we can expect to see escalation in Ukrainian strikes against Russian infrastructure targets such as refineries. Russia is already short of air defense systems and isn't able to provide much coverage for civilian targets. Whether this works will depend on the level of sustained foreign aid for Ukraine.
Depends on if Trump takes the Whitehouse in the fall and how European elections go :-(
In either case, even a Ukrainian defeat means Russia will be a pariah state to countries with reasonable governance. Trade will be difficult and diminished, same as it is with Iran.
Putin&Lavrov have clearly made this calculation and decided this is in their own interests. Whether it's in the interest of the Russian people I think is questionable.
It's interesting that you bring up Iran. They are actually doing pretty well considering that the US stole all their foreign currency reserves (and also precipitated the original conflict in the first place).
Not to mention having their neighbours destabilized into the most insane civil wars, over the past two decades (with gems like ISIS/Daesh having their year or two in the sun).
If anyone's wondering why Iran has its fingers into Syria and Iraq militias, note they've been invaded (with US support) by one, and are allied with the other.
Kremlin will just use those attacks as an excuse to occupy larger parts of Ukraine. Bombing of Belgorod is now used as an excuse to create "demilitarized zone" that includes Kharkiv (second largest city in Ukraine). I guess another "demilitarized zone" will follow in Odessa, after some attack on Crimea.
With the current rate of attacks Ukraine is not able to cause any noticeable infrastructural issues, and anything beyond approximately the Volga river is not reachable by any weapon systems.
It's sort of a moving target like "How long would it take for Freddy Krueger to kill all Chinese teenagers"
Ending wars and normalising relations can take a hell of a lot of time, though. Just ask people who lived in the Balkans, central or Eastern Europe, Korea, or in Palestine at some point in the 20th century, to name but a few examples. Or those who lived in a constant background of warfare basically anywhere in the world at any point in time. The pax romana and the stability brought by well-managed empires are remarquable for a reason.
I agree that animosity is deep rooted between neighbors. But I suspect it is less deep between distant countries that have had working relationships in the past.
I think there's deep animosity between Russia and much of the West.
It's very easy for Americans to shrug their shoulders and say "we don't care it's a long way away", regardless of whether or not that would be a historic surrender for the global hegemon, but we Europeans cannot. It's on our doorstep. Russia has not just attacked Ukraine, but all of Europe. There will never be normalised relations with Russia whilst he is in power, just as there never could be normalised relations with Adolf Hitler once he had crossed the Rubicon and started WW2.
I wonder when you will arrive at the understanding that if Russia is not going to have more revolutions, then you are going to have to live alongside Russia on the tiniest of continents and it would be best for both sides to learn how.
Is's not like you're going in with a military action and capturing Volgograd, after all. Adolf Hitler could be neutralized by capturing Berlin. Good luck dealing with Russia that way.
Learning to live is arming the eastern NATO border to the teeth. Russia has never stopped trying to expand westward, is still very far from giving up on its imperialism and strength is the only language it understands.
Not sure how much (more) arming to the teeth of NATO is needed when France / UK / USA have thermonuclear ICBMs.
The problem is what to do with the likes of Georgia and Ukraine (which has been deeply regretting giving up nukes against Russian/US/UK "protection" for some years now).
There is no good way out of the situation where both sides are armed to the teeth. The best bet is a political failure of one of the sides.
If that does not happen, these sabers will be rattling from time to time. If Russia's (and China's) immediate borders are packed with countries armed to their teeth, there would be wars.
Buffer states happen for a reason.
I believe USA kind of understands this (see how they reacted to Cuba) and EU surely understands this too (see how Sweden reacts to any signs of Russian militarization), but they have trouble projecting it on other countries or still believing they can coerce these countries into "dealing with it".
If these countries are "armed to the teeth", Russia will invade some of these countries. Both sides will point fingers at each other while some Eastern European homes burn. Eventually the prospect of horrible death while grasping the Western-provided arms will dissuade these countries from being armed to the teeth. I sincerely believe the preferred lifestyle of Eastern Europeans is sitting on a porch of their nice tiny house, not dying from a mortal wound in a ditch.
Arms do not win wars without people holding them, and even then, fighting off an agressor does not mean your country isn't ruined.
Ukraine was in the process of ditching its buffer state status by choosing a side. They bragged for a decade how they are going to do that. Needless to say it didn't go so well for them, and only them so far. Other countries in thir position turned out to be smarter as not to win the first Russian invasion target prize.
Please note that I'm not asking for a moral judgement because everybody else who may pass it has worse skeletons in their own closet than Russian Ukraine affair.
There is no scenario where Eastern European countries, who had been living under Russian tyranny for several centuries, only recently to secure their independence and security as part of the EU or NATO, are going to unilaterally disarm just to please Russia.
Other countries just managed to join NATO fast enough before Putin lost his mind. Ukraine's mistake was joining too slowly. Now Russia and Ukraine both suffer for basically no reason other than the fantasies of a senile 71 year old man.
>Please note that I'm not asking for a moral judgement because everybody else who may pass it has worse skeletons in their own closet than Russian Ukraine affair.
I don't know if that is true, the Ukraine War stands out as particularly evil. Russia is guilty of particularly evil crimes against humanity in this war that they chose to start.
> who had been living under Russian tyranny for several centuries
Most of these countries Russia never touched, or fought off of Turks and then let them be. They never lived under Russia's anything. Were it Czechs live under several centuries of Russian tyranny? Because these ones are particularly obnoxious now, despite many years of feeding off of Russian statesmen in Karlovy Vary.
I don't think you even remotely understand what you are talking about, and people are going to die in great numbers before they start reading history books instead of NYT columns on the subject.
> stands out as particularly evil
I guess they just don't hand out history textbooks in the child care...
> Most of these countries Russia never touched, or fought off of Turks and then let them be.
Does the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact ring any bell? Do you know what the Baltic states went through? Did you hear about the Prague spring or that glorious sister republic in eastern Germany? Fuck, do you know about the Holodomor?
It’s a bit rich to say these countries never knew Russian oppression. It may not have lasted very long, but it was particularly brutal. The first thing they did is get away at the first occasion and all of them are traumatised to this day. Ukraine and Belarus tried to play nice. Belarus is now subservient and annexed in all but name, and Ukraine is being torn apart. So tell me why those Eastern European countries would not do anything they can to stay out of Russia’s reach?
I'm not sure what's wrong with socialist Czech or DDR. They've got the Communism lite try before you buy inoculated package and now they squeal like a pig being butchered. Russians saw many orders of magnitude worse things than any of the stuff DDR or Soviet Czech was up to. The way Eastern Europeans are trying to show how they require special treatment is a disgrace to any Russian. They literally complain how Soviets curbed their access to white privilege they were entitled to.
XX century was a disaster, you had to grind your teeth and survive through it. Holodomor is a pathetic Ukrainian attempt to privatize a much greater Communist hunger and frame it on its victims. They do so because they believe that they should get a specific, better treatment than everybody east of them. Rings any bells?
Needless to say Russians did not invent Communism and you can find a huge number of fans for it in any HN thread. Russians sincerely believed they have a traumatic experience of struggle to share with the rest of "socialist camp" only to discover that the whole 500 million strong camp frames it on their small ethnic fraction.
Belarus is a paradise now compared to Ukraine (and to extent Russia). You can do whatever you like and there is no fear of draft. There are also jobs and industry intact. You can cross the border if you are male but is not economically obliged to do so.
Czechs were only part of the Russian Empire for about 45 years, and only in the 20th century. Could have been worse.
I think you just struggle to understand how fundamentally your country is hated by Eastern Europeans. Russia is like Germany, if Germany still was proud of its Nazi heritage. You just don't get it, it's sad, you're so hated but you have no idea why, you're just so blinded by ultranationalism. Russia could have chosen to enter the 21st century but instead decided to enter the 18th. Meanwhile most of your people outside of Moscow and St Petersburg don't even have indoor toilets. It's honestly tragic what a gigantic shithole your country is, and yet you're so proud of it being such a gigantic shithole. Just tragic.
I think I don't struggle to imagine how Eastern Europeans loved Russia, Soviet Union and Communism just 40 years back. 80 years back, Eastern Europeans just loved Germany and Hitler. Now they are huge fans of the USA. This time it's for real. Genuine Eastern European feeling and honest hatred for everybody who came before.
The problem with most Eastern Europeans is that they'll sing and dance on anybody's 5 cents. You can buy and sell them and they will always be eager to serve.
That is frankly revolting to Russians who are able to maintain long term loyalties, and will be heartbroken to betray long term commitments. Russians do not hate Eastern Europeans, neither do they want to invade and occupy their countries, but Russians do despise Eastern Europeans now. Every stupid thing you say gets laid on these scales.
Armenia is run by a US-backed stooge, so Russia expected the US to defend Armenia. But whoops, the US chose to win a favor with Turkey by backing Azerbaijan instead :)
Armenia has suffered a national tragedy which they then turned into circus by their accusations against Russia. They neither recognized Karabakh as their own nor did they put up a serious fight. But they can's shut up telling everybody how they expected somebody else to fight instead of them.
Still, Russians did not write Armenia off completely even after all this.
That "writing them off completely" is even on the table shows that this "ability to loyalty" is BS. It's like if you have a boyfriend that say "well, at least I won't leave you over this" every day. Don't make you feel very secure do it?
I won't call the bearded Pashinyan "a girlfriend", but it is the other way around:
Armenia basically tell Russia they break up with them to join another relationship. However, the other side does not look like they want Armenia. No breakup exchange of personal effects happens. In the end, Russia lingers there to see what happens and is not closing the door yet. Again, it is a bad analogy because even the closest country to country relations are not monogamous.
The reason of why the breakup is discussed: your bearded girlfriend taunted another girl (with a mustache) and got serious bruises in return. Now she thinks you should've fought with that another girl instead of her doing so. Your girlfriend was the cause of the fight but you do think the mustached one has overreacted.
Good that we established who was, is, and will be the aggressor. I'm looking forward to the mental gymnastics about those who invade being actually the ones who defend themselves. As is the tradition in the Russian propaganda, invasion of Finland, Baltics, Poland etc. were all just defensive wars.
But I'm more optimistic about that and don't believe your empty threats. If the NATO strengthens its eastern border, Russia's military has simply no chance there. It's a suicide, it doesn't make sense to bang your head against the wall. Russia has many other weaker neighbors it can abuse instead.
> Ukraine was in the process of ditching its buffer state status by choosing a side.
Ukraine was invaded because it wanted to get closer to EU in the form of the association agreement.
Interestingly, the roughly analogous CIS was never a problem in this concept of "buffer state". Or does "buffer state" actually mean "Russia-aligned"?
And that's the crux of the issue. You can stay as a buffer state only as long as you're a Russian puppet.
All small countries are someone's puppets. The US tried to take a puppet state away from Russia and somewhat succeeded so far.
The first move was at the end of the Cold War. The drunken President Yeltsin took the existing administrative map of the USSR and created a new state that had artificially attached Russian regions. This set up the time delay fuse. Second was the US-backed coup in 2014. And third - what we have today. The US is good at playing the long game. Only China is better.
Downvote away, it seems to make you happy. But maybe before you write this off as "Russian propaganda" go read what Solzhenitsyn had to say on the subject. Yes, that Solzhenitsyn, the dissident who wrote "Ivan Denisovich".
> There is no good way out of the situation where both sides are armed to the teeth. The best bet is a political failure of one of the sides.
Look, we tried normalising relations. In the end, Russia just takes what it can. It’s lunacy to believe that everything would be better if European countries just rolled over, accepted being bullied, and just gave Putin what he wants. It’s insane.
I just don't remember any of those attempts. Which year was that? I remember the disastrous Obama's great reset which caused these relations to deteriorate at greatly accelerated rate.
I also remember how bad they were during COVID time, etc.
We'll have another cold war, carefully watching each other like Koreans on both sides of the DMZ do. Russia likes frozen conflicts so that what they'll get, until it collapses again like the USSR did and like all empires do. The trouble with that is a bunch of unstable dictators with nukes instead of one czar with nukes.
The comparison between Putin and Hitler is ridiculous.
Europe’s economy is in shambles, they do not have the power to push back if Russia and the US were to push for détente never mind that the country with the most EU influence (Germany) is a major dove on this issue.
It's not ridiculous at all. Not all leaders can be negotiated with, that is simply my point. Maybe as an American you do not understand the depth of feeling, it does not affect you because you don't live here and subsequently you don't care. You can regress into the isolationism that the US likes to embrace every now and then. But we still have to live with an imperialist Russia on our door step.
> (Germany) is a major dove on this issue.
No, they're not dovish, they're just not leaders and not willing to take initiative and require others to move first. That stems from their history. They've sent huge amounts of aid already to Ukraine (~1% of GDP versus 0.2% of GDP for the USA).
> Europe’s economy is in shambles
I mean, it's not as good as the USA's, but it's not in shambles. It's relatively OK. I live here. I'd rather live here than in Russia. Russia is a glorified petrol station with nukes and a military. Europe's economy still absolutely dwarfs Russia's. When I speak to my (many) Russian colleagues, it's clear they'd rather be here in Germany than in Russia.
> US were to push for détente
It's not realistic. The only person who is going to do that is Trump. There's no scenario where we Europeans just give up our security and let imperial war conquests become acceptable on our continent (not yours, yank) for the sake of Trump's ego. Why? Because we think he's completely retarded. Only Americans like him. And how would we benefit exactly from trading away our security? How can the US force us? All it would do is seal the USA's historic break from its European allies (And I know it's not popular at the moment in the USA, but any one with a basic understanding of geopolitics knows that the USA's strongest asset its just how many rich and powerful allies it has). Good luck standing up to China alone, in that case. Then the West is truly fucked!
> Not all leaders can be negotiated with, that is simply my point.
Putin isn't Hitler. People are way too quick to write off negotiation when it is people's real lives at play.
> They've sent huge amounts of aid already to Ukraine (~1% of GDP versus 0.2% of GDP for the USA).
False? not sure where you are getting your numbers from but USA has sent both considerably more in magnitude and as a percentage of the GDP through the end of 2023.
Germany doesn't even spend 2% of GDP on all military expenses (they recently pledged to as it is a new NATO requirement), they are not spending half of that on Ukraine allocation.
> It's not realistic. The only person who is going to do that is Trump.
Wavering support for the Ukraine war is not just a Trump-ism phenomenon. I am not sure how the media reports this in the UK but support is collapsing across both parties in the polls.
A majority of Americans think Trump is stupid too and you are very unlikely to meet a supporter on HN.
> Good luck standing up to China alone, in that case
US policymakers already perceive no will to stand up to China among EU lawmakers.
> And how would we benefit exactly from trading away our security? How can the US force us?
EU+UK citizens will not be willing to pay the full brunt of this conflict for an extended period of time.
The fact of the matter is that most Europeans are much more ambivalent about this conflict than you are implying [0] which is obvious from the polling. Ratchet up the spending and energy price impact to considerable portions of GDP and what will happen?
>Putin isn't Hitler. People are way too quick to write off negotiation when it is people's real lives at play.
No he's not Hitler, he's Putin. Putin cannot be negotiated with, that is the point.
>False? not sure where you are getting your numbers from but USA has sent both considerably more in magnitude and as a percentage of the GDP through the end of 2023.
Where are yours from? If you have better numbers, share them.
>Wavering support for the Ukraine war is not just a Trump-ism phenomenon. I am not sure how the media reports this in the UK but support is collapsing across both parties in the polls.
Wavering or collapsing? The majority still support aid for Ukraine. That much is a fact. I am not in the UK anyway, I live in Germany.
Your source for polling is sadly incoherent, just quoting random countries, but judging by this poll, it looks clear that Europeans support Ukraine:
But to some extent it does not matter, there is no choice, because Europe is being attacked. It's not as if we have choice but to support them. Arguably more importantly, our establishment supports Ukraine.
>US policymakers already perceive no will to stand up to China among EU lawmakers.
US policymakers firmly believe that the best way to counterbalance China is through strengthening alliances around the world.
>EU+UK citizens will not be willing to pay the full brunt of this conflict for an extended period of time.
We already are. I think a lot of you yanks like to get high on the idea of Europe being seconds from collapse, but actually things here are OK. The worst is over, that first winter after the invasion? Yeah that was tricky, but it's already past now. The way you talk it's like we're rationing supplies to make ends meet to raise money for another missile. Yes the USA is richer than Europe, but Europe is the richest place in the world after the USA, so it's OK, there's no shame in being second place. Everything's OK. Europe will ultimately do whatever it takes to see out Russia's invasion. There's no way a country with an economy the size of Spain can outlast the entirety of Europe. Russia is a paper tiger, as evidenced by how shit its military has performed ever since it invaded.
> The comparison between Putin and Hitler is ridiculous.
And yet, here we are with another ultranationalist dictator hell bent on getting back that vital space and dreaming of fallen empires. Hitler had Charlemagne, and Putin has Catherine and Peter the Great. Putin did not gas anybody that I know of, but the gulags remained the whole time. It’s true that he is closer to Stalin than Hitler in many respects, but I am not sure it’s much better.
> Europe’s economy is in shambles, they do not have the power to push back if Russia and the US were to push for détente never mind that the country with the most EU influence (Germany) is a major dove on this issue.
That is a terrible misreading of how the EU functions. By design it cannot be dominated by a single country and Germany is basically following others. It’s not a major dove in any way, it’s just in the middle of the pack and they started from a fundamentally pacifist political background. The fact that they are merely talking about rearming is a demonstration of the seismic shift in domestic politics there.
Détente won’t happen in the current situation, regardless of what the US push for. They simply have no power to force that outcome. What would happen is another Korea, Georgia or Moldova: a country split in two, with one half living under yet another brutal dictatorship.
> All wars have something in common: they end. That thought in your head about lack of hope of normalizing relations is just the current propaganda working.
I don't think your comment is grounded on reality, and it's ironic how it parrots one of Russia's anti-ukraine propaganda tropes: the collective west should just stop backing Ukraine because the faster they cave in, the faster all relationships normalize.
Even if you believe fairy tales about forgetting Russia's perpetual threat of nuclear annihilation and Russia's "our empire will extend to Lisbon" threats, all you need to do is look at the Soviet Union's rejection of peace and a free world up to it's collapse to understand that any talk of normalization is at best thoroughly unsupported and at worst more Russian propaganda.
Not really? Many conflicts routinely simmer on for decades, and peace treaties that officially end a war rarely resolve conflicts. Israel is fighting I believe it's 4th war against Hamas this century, for example; its broader conflict against its neighbors has been going on arguably at least a full century. The Balkans are somewhat infamous for the depth of history of its conflicts: the assassination of Franz Ferdinand was chosen to occur on the 500-somethingth anniversary of another conflict, for example.
Germany was utterly defeated, that's why there could be a reconciliation. Neither Russia nor the West will be defeated like that, Russian regime will likely survive. That means a chance of some meaningful reconciliation is slim during next couple of decades.
It's true that all wars end eventually. But this happening seems to me a sign that relations might not normalize quite so easily after. Why else would businesses with operations in both Russia and EU be seeking to split themselves apart neatly in advance of sanctions that would make such operations extremely difficult?
Putin will need to put a gun to his head in a bunker before anything "normal" happens. Russia is a Third Reich level regime at the moment. Hence 300k killed and wounded causes zero reaction from the Russian public.
The Soviet-Afgan war was ended due to public discontent with 100k killed and wounded
Russian independent media have only confirmed 43k Russian casualties, not 300k. (Yes, Russian independent media exist; they are forced to operate in exile.)
Nice try, but that link says 41,731 deceased in the first paragraph, and 43,014 deceased under the the visualisation with the Soviet stars (bit weird). I admit this is based on a machine translation, but I expect that Google and DeepL can get the meaning of "killed" correct.
You seriously think there are only 43k killed and wounded in total?
No Russian attracting enough attention is outside the reach of the Kremlin anyway, unless you avoid tea and underwear your whole life. So i put only marginally more trust in this report than the official figures of 7000 or whatever it is from Puntin himself.
> I think there is little hope of normalizing relations with Russia
After 9/11, the US maintained productive relations with the Saudis. They're actively supporting Israel through the Gaza business. They have a long history of propping up dictators and thrashing countries for hard-to-articulate reasons (I still don't get exactly what the point of Afghanistan or Iraq was, even accepting the blunt "oil" that is sometimes given out).
I don't see why relations with Russia aren't normalised now. As can be seen in this very announcement (suddenly international deals are being handled in Yuan), the US appears hell-bent on taking Russia and China then welding them together. That seems wildly stupid to me and personally I think it is a serious foreign policy blunder. The US should have sought a quick peace in Ukraine and normalised relations immediately.
The US sought a quick peace in Ukraine, they even asked Russia to not invade even before Russia started their invasion. You can't get much quicker than before the events have taken place. It didn't work because Russia isn't interested in peace, but that's not the US' fault.
We were all there, the US and UK were warning about the invasion for a long time before it happened. The Russians and their useful idiots in the West laughed, of course they would never invade! Then the invasion actually did happen and now magically history has been rewritten and it was the US that somehow caused it in the first place.
Only problem: I do have a memory and I can remember 2 years ago. So yes very clearly Russia started this war all by themselves despite the US trying to dissuade them from doing so.
Lol, you completely forgot about the little green men affair when Russia absolutely denied they were invading the Donbas and all was just local militias fighting for independence, right?
You've been played by Russian propaganda, and seems to be liking it.
What if Donbass took a tour of independent Ukraine and changed their mind, especially as Kiev crowds have ousted the president that they all voted for?
Granted, he wasn't any good, but he was likely the best one Ukraine will ever have, and now has no chance of it ever catching up with 2013.
I'm genuinely not sure why you think people can't change their mind. After all, they also voted "Yes" on Gorbachev's "reform and keep the USSR" referendum a year before that.
Giving in to all their demands, of course. And then giving in to all their new demands five to ten years later when they try it again, and again, and again.
"Anti-war" people always seem to have a curious blind spot when it comes to the countries that actually start wars.
That can't be my position, I don't know what all Russia's demands were. But offering to draw NATO's sphere of influence back out of Ukraine seems like an obvious carrot that should have been offered. Maybe some guarantees to reign in any US interference in Ukraine's politics. Not supplying endless arms and materiel. That would have dramatically reduced all killing and destruction we've seen since 2023.
The comparisons I'm going to draw are Iraq and Afghanistan. Although Russia was probably going to be a lot more careful as occupiers given that this is happening on their border. Eg, not supporting the drug trade so much and hopefully being a bit more serious about rebuilding.
> "Anti-war" people always seem to have a curious blind spot when it comes to the countries that actually start wars.
Who are you talking about there? The US? UK? NATO? Iran? African Nations? That is a wide net.
>(I still don't get exactly what the point of Afghanistan or Iraq was, even accepting the blunt "oil" that is sometimes given out).
Are you serious? At least on the Afghanistan one? The war in Afghanistan began because the Taliban refused to extradite Osama Bin Laden (and several other terrorist, but Osama was the biggest one), it's pretty straightforward.
Bin Laden hadn't lived in Saudi Arabia since 1991?
If you're referring to the fact that the relatively newly declassified parts of the 9/11 commission report suggest that several powerful members of the Saudi government and royal family were involved in the attacks, then I agree with you that we should have (and still should) insist that the Saudis extradite those involved and take strong military action against the Saudis if they don't. But I don't see how this makes our attack on Afghanistan for refusing to extradite Bin Laden unjustified, it just makes us inconsistent.
It is the kind of inconsistency that makes some people die and some live. One would hope it is avoided to avoid confusion and miscalculations on all sides.
<< Bin Laden hadn't lived in Saudi Arabia since 1991?
Was Pakistan bombed in 2011 then?
I understand what you are saying, but it does not make it look any better.
<< If you're referring to the fact
I was not. I am merely connecting some obvious dots.
<< But I don't see how this makes our attack on Afghanistan for refusing to extradite Bin Laden unjustified,
Hmm. Even the word extradite is obfuscating what happened, but that is beside the point.
Lets adjust this conversation a little as 'justified' is a little loaded. Everyone thinks they are justified in doing whatever they are doing. edit: In fact, there are a few wars happening right now, where people feel very justified.
Lets have a more fun conversation.
Do you think it ( attacking Afghanistan ) over 9/11 ( whether the cause was just or not ) was a good idea for long-term US survival? This is not a bait. I am really curious about your thought process.
>Do you think it ( attacking Afghanistan ) over 9/11 ( whether the cause was just or not ) was a good idea for long-term US survival? This is not a bait. I am really curious about your thought process.
Attacking? Yes. Long-term occupation? No. I think we should have targeted strikes directly at Taliban officials until they relented to our demands.
It's amazing that some people think this is a valid retort when Abbottabad, Pakistan is a 5 hour drive from Jalalabad, Afghanistan, and of course it's safer to hide in the country that US doesn't have access to compared to the 10 year search they've been doing in Afghanistan.
I'm sure you're saying that from a place of honesty, but you clearly aren't speking for the people who actually make these decisions:
1. When the US actually wanted to get Bin Laden in a country that wouldn't extradite him, they sent a special ops team to Pakistan. They violated Pakistan's sovereignty a little bit and then everyone moved on. So the idea that they needed to launch a full invasion of Afghanistan is just silly and the people who sent the army knew that. They had to have had ulterior motives, or sending the military was so incompetent there would have been a very public purge of the US military leadership.
2. If we're saying the US military is a magic button to override the legal system in another country (which, fair enough, it is) then what is the issue with what Russia is doing? Their interests in Ukraine are more legitimate than the US not feeling like negotiating or due process for Bin Laden & friends. Of course if the US had spent a bit more time doing things legally, the planners would have had time to point out that a full scale invasion was counterproductive, and I think it is less obvious that Russia would have found something similar; I don't see how they could have dealt with what the US state department seems to be doing without an army. But hey, I'm not a diplomatic corps, maybe they could have come up with something.
And if I look at the wiki article [0], we see "The Taliban offered to turn over bin Laden to a neutral country for trial if the US would provide evidence of bin Laden's complicity in the attacks". Maybe 2-5 years of negotiating and some actual evidence would have been justified? The US must have had evidence against al-Q, because otherwise they couldn't have known who was responsible. if they'd negotiated to send him to Pakistan where the SEAL team is comfortable operating then they could have short circuited a lot of death, wasted time and wasted money.
I know you didn't say anything about the Russian invasion, but this is sort of my angle here - the actions in Afghanistan show that this sort of thing is a bit of a non-event as far as international politics goes. It is only a big deal because the US is making it one.
In those links, the Taliban wasn't offering to hand Bin Laden over to the US, they were offering to hand him over to a third country that would never hand him over to the US. We can argue about whether Bush should have agreed to that offer, but it's a far cry from "refusing to take him":
> Afghanistan's deputy prime minister, Haji Abdul Kabir, told reporters that the Taliban would require evidence that Bin Laden was behind the September 11 terrorist attacks in the US.
> "If the Taliban is given evidence that Osama bin Laden is involved" and the bombing campaign stopped, "we would be ready to hand him over to a third country", Mr Kabir added.
> But it would have to be a state that would never "come under pressure from the United States", he said.
> In Jalalabad, deputy prime minister Haji Abdul Kabir - the third most powerful figure in the ruling Taliban regime - told reporters that the Taliban would require evidence that Bin Laden was behind the September 11 terrorist attacks in the US, but added: "we would be ready to hand him over to a third country".
> The offer came a day after the Taliban's supreme leader rebuffed Bush's "second chance" for the Islamic militia to surrender Bin Laden to the US.
> Mullah Mohammed Omar said there was no move to "hand anyone over".
That was a highly-conditional offer, that I suspect the U.S. administration felt was designed to give the Taliban and bin Laden breathing room to escape/hide/whatever their next move would have been.
Well thankfully we put a stop to that and immediately brought an end to the conflict and captured Osama without billions of dollars and a potential war!
We have nothing to gain by normalizing relations with Russia. They have nothing that we want and they can't be trusted to negotiate in good faith anyway. So it's back to containment: Cold War 2. As such we should take every opportunity short of direct conflict to disrupt, undermine, disrespect, and humiliate the Putin regime. In a few decades the Russian empire will undergo another internal collapse or civil war, and then more of their outer territories can be stripped away.
Sure they do - a big border with the US's main geopolitical rival, China. The US anti-China strategy relies on making it difficult for China to secure resources in the event of a war - blocking sea routes, destabilising western paths that could be used, southern countries being a bit leery of China's military.
They're majorly screwing themselves over by encouraging cooperation through the northern border and giving Russia every incentive to establish what overland trade routes it can. The NATO response to Ukraine seems a bit panicked - they're acting like they suddenly realised they aren't as competitive and secure as they thought. Building up a Russia-China-Iran axis under those conditions is an unforced error that is not clever. If the US had been more reasonable about Ukraine, we could be talking about how China is hemmed in from all angles. Instead the north and west look like they might be opening up to them.
Combine that with the US getting literally nothing out of the Ukraine war except an opportunity to blow up resources that they really needed at home (and reopening old wounds with people who didn't need to be enemies I suppose), and the situation is a bit of a baffler. I can explain it with corruption, I can explain it with stupidity, but I'm struggling to find a "here is how the US comes out ahead" perspective.
I can only guess at what Iran and the Houthi are thinking, but it is interesting that after watching NATO's performance in Ukraine the Middle East immediately starts to flare up. Might be a coincidence but that isn't saying great things about NATO's reputation. I dunno, it might be fine. We'll see.
This is a genuinely interesting take despite me disagreeing with the analysis.
<< I don't see why relations with Russia aren't normalised now.
At the end of the day, people like when the day follows is the same as the previous one. This allows people to plan ahead, live life and so on. It allows business to run uninterrupted. Russia was upending existing post-ww2 order. It was initially doing it slowly. Slowly enough that no one in the west cared to do anything. Obama famously sought a 'reset' with Russia at the time.
Even in Ukraine, it was not until after Crimea that there was even an appetite and realization that it won't magically stop.
<< the US appears hell-bent on taking Russia and China then welding them together.
This is probably one of the few spots where we are kinda close, but US already made BRICS a reality with current sanctions regime making it even more relevant. The decisions being made now are a big gamble and I would like to hope that those are made consciously with some forethought. That said, remembering 9/11 Afghanistan, it is merely a hope.
<< I think it is a serious foreign policy blunder.
That, sadly, we won't know until it all plays out. Who knows what life will look life 50 years from now?
reply