What in the actual hell is going on with Ukraine? Here's a brief rundown:
- Russia masses 100,000 troops on Ukraine's border. An invasion seems imminent.
- At a press conference, President Biden plays down the crisis.
- Ukrainian officials are unnerved by this, but then heartened when Biden "clarifies" what he meant.
- Nevertheless, everyone goes nuts and Ukraine turns into the latest dick measuring contest among military hawks.
- Biden sends a list of negotiating demands to the Russians. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky says he's seen it and is happy with it.
- Then, today, Zelensky suddenly asks everyone to calm down. “If you look only at the satellites you will see the increase in troops and you can’t assess whether this is just a threat of attack or just a simple rotation,” he said. “Our professional people look deep into it.”
Just a "simple rotation"? I'm no expert on Russian military activities, but as near as I can tell Putin has "rotated" nearly the entire Western and Southern military districts to the border of Ukraine.
Zelensky apparently wants everyone to back off and just give him lots of jet planes. That's not going to happen, and I doubt that Ukraine has hundreds of trained pilots around to fly them anyway. So that's just a weird nonstarter.
This whole thing is the damnedest game of chicken I've seen in a while. Putin says he wants NATO to agree to stop expansion on Russia's border. That primarily means Finland, Belarus, Ukraine, and Georgia:
Naturally, the NATO position is that it's up to us who we invite to join our club, but the weird thing is that Russia's position really ought to be perfectly acceptable to the NATO states. I've always supported the post-1991 expansion of NATO, but it's gone as far as it should. The farther away from the core NATO countries we get, the farther we are from countries that truly have any kind of strategic value or cultural connection to us. How serious are we about having, say, a treaty obligation to defend Ukraine if Belarus gets frisky?
So we're stuck in this odd position: halting the expansion of NATO is probably good for NATO, but we can't allow it to look as though Putin is coercing us into it. So our public stance—which is more etched in stone with every passing day—is the exact opposite of our national interest.
I have no idea how this turns out.
Ukraine is not worth the effort. Heck, I’d let Putin have Poland too. They really suck… best buddies with trump.
I’m an anti-war guy so this is all very unfortunate. Since so many people around the world are incapable of peaceful coexistence, I’ve come to accept that every once in a while you all will try to kill each other. Let the orgy of violence begin. It won’t affect me so I will enjoy the show.
With any luck, someone will blow up the gas pipelines from Russia to the west too.
Off topic good news… another dead Anti-vax Republican cop! It’s a trifecta!
https://bnonews.com/index.php/2022/01/former-washington-state-trooper-who-refused-vaccine-dead-of-covid-19/
Just let Russia eat up a signicant EU and NATO member (and the very one that divvying up against natonal will has historically set off major European conflicts, brilliant) all because a Polish adminstration was not cold-shouldering Trump.
Bizarrely childish and myopic reaction.
Threat inflation is a tried and true method for justifying bloodlust.
“The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.”
Just nuke Russia now.
Hysteric rhetoric inflation and impoverished strawman argument responses are tried and true responses of the superficial twit.
I have several friends there, some expats some ukrainians so fuck that.
Hey! Peace is easy! Just give the other guy everything he asks for! What could go wrong?
Peace in our time after all.
This is what we would expect from our resident warmongers and racists.
All you wear loving people should take note. The US military is still fighting in Syria. Wait, Syria? When did we invade Syria?
HASAKA, Syria — U.S. and Kurdish forces battled ISIS fighters in northeastern Syrian on Saturday, in the most intense urban combat involving American soldiers in Iraq or Syria since the self-declared ISIS caliphate fell in 2019. Fighting spilled into the residential areas of Hasaka, Syria, near where Kurdish forces were trying to subdue the last ISIS gunmen barricaded in a prison in a weeklong siege.
If you want the US military to invade Syria and fight, then they might as well do the same in Ukraine and dozens of other places all over the world.
😀 war loving ❤️
Not really an equivalence; the action you cite is against the ISIS insurgency, not the Syrian government.
Poland definitely it worth defending.
“The scene that unfolded last November in Treblinka is one of the most vivid examples of a dangerous new threat that is spreading rapidly today in Eastern Europe: Holocaust distortion. A false equivalence of victimization is but one hallmark of the new Polish historical revisionism. Another hallmark is a state-sponsored effort that downplays antisemitic terror at the hands of the Poles, though such incidents are well documented in the historical record.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/29/opinion/holocaust-poland-europe.html
Ha! Not worth defending. Ugh.
I think NATO’s position is that Ukraine, Finland etc. are sovereign nations and are free to decide their own alignment. It’s been sixty years since we tried to overthrow the government of Cuba, which remains sort of aligned with Russia. We still impose some economic sanctions on Cuba and Venezuela, but we still buy oil from the latter. So we have some standing to oppose the ‘spheres of influence’ claim of Russia.
Of course Putin’s supposed concern for Russia’s security is nonsense; NATO hasn’t the capacity to threaten Russia militarily, or to limit its sovereignty in any way. This whole show is to divert the attention of Russians from Putin’s mismanagement of the economy and the pandemic.
Precisely, so closing the door to their membership under Russian pressure is rather a bad idea on many levels. It does not mean per se either they nor NATO desires real expansion, although the Russian pressure has in fact incited Finns to rethink a general disinterest in NATO.
It is really not puzzling nor confusing at all.
I think NATO’s position is that Ukraine, Finland etc. are sovereign nations and are free to decide their own alignment.
That's all well and good, but Nato should likewise be "free to decide" who gets to join. At the end of the day it's an organization designed to bolster the security (vis-a-vis Russia) of various Western states on the Atlantic rim. It's far from clear membership on the part of additional nations like Ukraine and Finland would be consistent with that mission. Indeed it's far from clear Nato expansion of this sort wouldn't weaken the security of current member states.
They are "free to decide" and no one has, outside of the fevered imaginations of Russian imperialists, been particularly working for any expansion.
However it's bloody fantastical to write such about Finland, which has suffered rather as much Russian (unprovoked) aggression historically as the Baltics and Poland.
That the Putin demarche has started to push the Finns towards NATO is not NATO nor the Finns fault. It is purely the Russians - or rather than Putin regime and its Sov Imperial revanchisme. Of course they, the Finns, prefer also to have options open.
Totally agree re Finland.
Honestly though re Kevin - “Finns and Swedes have no cultural affinity to the US”!? Ever been to the upper Midwest on both sides of the border. Remember ‘A Prairie Home Companion’ , it satirized Nordic immigrants. Geez, Delaware and the surrounding area was a Swedish colony called ‘New Sweden’ - granted it was back in the mid 1600’s.
Re Russia - the country produces nothing but weapons, oil/gas and Vodka. It’s run by Kleptocrats. When a country is failing leaders always push the nationalism button.
+1 pasty in Iron Mountain
"That's all well and good, but Nato should likewise be 'free to decide' who gets to join."
Which of course it does. Article 10 of the treaty says that new nations can be only be admitted by unanimous consent. If Ukraine asks to be a member (which it hasn't), the other NATO members could easily disagree, or structure a transition period, or whatever they want. That's sorta the point. It's a pretty foundational/aspirational value of many countries (such as ours) that other countries should get to self determine. As such, if Russia doesn't want Ukraine to join NATO or whatever, Russia is free to try to convince Ukraine with diplomacy, trade, cultural envoys, etc., but it's pretty goddamn illegitimate for Russia to threaten to murder people en masse unless it gets its way.
None of this Ukraine nonsense would be happening if there weren't rich assholes at the helm of Russia. Nobody is threatening Russia, and nobody in Europe wants to do anything to Russia other than maybe enter into trade agreements with it. But *Putin* is threatened by neighboring countries demonstrating that democracy is actually pretty good for the people, because that might inspire Russians to think they might like some democracy, too, and thereafter replace their gangster-king with an elected government. So here we are.
but it's pretty goddamn illegitimate for Russia to threaten to murder people en masse unless it gets its way.
Yes, of course it's illegitimate. This word aptly describes most aspects of the Putin regime. That's not really in dispute. The question, rather, is what kind of actions on the part of the Western alliance in response to Putin pass cost-benefit analysis. *
Fortunately, the consensus on the part of most officials in the countries in question, Joe Biden very much included, would appear to be that military action is something that doesn't pass such c/b analysis. Perhaps your mileage varies.
*Another question, of course, is: has Nato expansion into territories further east, including three former Soviet republics, helped bring Ukraine to its current predicament? We don't have a parallel universe to test such a thesis, but at minimum it doesn't seem self-evidently crazy to conclude the answer is "yes" (especially given the widespread reportage to the effect that such expansion was contrary to what was agreed to at the time of the USSR's dissolution).
Kindly point to where I was advocating for "military action." Hint: I wasn't. My point is merely that Russia is seriously in the wrong here.
FWIW, I'm in favor of crushing economic sanctions against Russia if it does send (more) troops into Ukraine, coupled with selling/giving the Ukrainians weapons with which they could fight off invaders (if that's what they want to do).
What was agreed to:
https://1997-2001.state.gov/regions/eur/fs_nato_whitehouse.html
Note in the last paragraph:
YES!!!
Iraq, Libya, and Syria were/are sovereign nations too. NATO and its dominant player the US have no record of respecting sovereignty. See also Vietnam, Cuba, etc.
Funny how sovereignty only means anything to hawks when it isn't the US violating it.
We don’t occupy any of those countries; we didn’t annex any of their territory, or assist any separatist groups in any of them. Russia has done all of the above quite recently, in Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine.
Indeed. Also, having done bad things in the past doesn't mean we can't do good things in the here-and-now. Otherwise, no nation (or person!) could ever advocate for doing better than the worst thing they've ever done. Hypocrisy is far from the worst crime one can commit.
We did occupy Iraq to the degree that we could, though briefly. The main reason we DON'T occupy other countries is that it is damnably expensive in blood and treasure. Plus, of course, it is contrary to what we say we believe, and, to a qualified degree, do believe.
We don’t? Troops for 20 years in Afghanistan. Invasion of Iraq to install a puppet government? And troops occupying land and fighting today in Syria? I get that many think these are mostly righteous actions by the good guys, but I don’t at all. I think the hypocrisy is obvious. Not that it matters. All governments ruthlessly and selfishly pursue their interests without much actual regard for morality or consistency. Or truth.
1. That's moving the goal posts. The international norm is against transborder aggression, not merely occupation, and "sovereignty" does not refer to whether your country is occupied, but whether it is bombed and invaded. It's a ridiculous position to say that you can bomb a country, invade it, murder people within it, etc., and you are still respecting its "sovereignty".
2. It's worth noting that we have temporarily occupied places even under your standard. Or is an occupation OK if it only lasts a certain amount of time?
3. We have assisted separatist groups in numerous places, most notably the Kurds in Iraq.
Re 3), we assisted Kurdish forces in fighting ISIS/ISIL, not in seeking to establish an independent Kurdistan. Though it’s arguable that an Earth with a Kurdistan (and consequently, somewhat weakened Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria) would be a better Earth than the one we live in. The status of women and religious minorities would certainly be better than the rest of the region.
Re 1) and 2), ‘occupation’ is not apparently defined precisely in international law; see https://www.icrc.org/en/doc/resources/documents/misc/634kfc.htm
I was thinking of occupation in the narrower sense noted by the ICRC, that of subjecting all local civil authority to the invading force. We never had enough forces in Afghanistan or Iraq to monopolize authority over more than limited areas for limited times.
That said, I opposed the invasion of Iraq, and I supported action in Afghanistan only so far as apprehending the perpetrators of 9/11 and their enablers, and then getting out.
FWIW, transborder aggression is defined pretty precisely (and to be clear, Russia has committed transborder aggression against Ukraine and threatens commit more of it).
The problem is, there's clearly a de facto exception for transborder aggression by nuclear armed great powers (which the United States repeatedly exploits), and it's really hard to argue that de facto exception only applies to the US.
Now, if you move to occupation, then you get the vague issue you allude to of "what is an occupation?", and it's also important that as I said above, that's not the national sovereignty norm- the national sovereignty norm is about transborder aggression, even if no occupation (however temporary) occurs.
Well, it’s not an exception; it’s that no one else is an a position to do anything about it. A number of major European nations publicly opposed our unjustified invasion of Iraq, for all the good that did to dissuade Bush and Cheney.
Exactly.
This idea that we should limit NATO from accepting members because of Russia's demands is ridiculous.
If Ukraine wants to choose, it's up to them.
This idea that we should limit NATO from accepting members because of Russia's demands is ridiculous.
This is straw man argumentation, although inadvertent, I'm sure, on your apart. No serious person thinks NATO should or shouldn't expand based solely on Russian concerns. The question, as always, is, or should be: what is in the best interest of NATO itself?
Reasonable people can disagree on the desirability of adding additional countries to the alliance, of course, but the notion that expansion further east isn't in the best interests of NATO is far from "ridiculous."
Rather, It's an eminently debatable topic. And that's because the utterly critical importance of the alliance dictates member states proceed with an abundance of care with respect to questions of enlargement. A bigger alliance isn't necessarily a stronger or more effective alliance.
Objectively it is really Not a Good Idea to expand to include the Ukraine for both long-term Ukrainian interests and NATO ones. Rahther more sustainable is a kind of 20th century state of Finlandisation, 21st century Ukraniian style.
But it is also Not a Good Idea to openly engage not to do so under Russian pressure. So some creative ambiguity in public is a tried and true diplomatic response, excluding exclusion under pressure, but also not actually proceeding with any prospective Ukrainian demarches.
Even the Finns who have been motivated by Putin's ham-handed Russian supremacism have 'only' moved from excluding NATO membership to stating they might be interested and reserving their sovereign right to make that choice. A rather peculiar own-goal by Putin given the Finns have generally comfortably navigated "Finlandisation" for decades.
Well, I suppose Finlandization was preferable to invasion, but that is a ways off from ‘comfortable’.
Vox has an interesting take on this:
https://www.vox.com/22902846/ukraine-russia-nato-zelensky-poroshenko
Basically, Putin is trying to get the Minsk accord he wants, "independence" for the eastern regions of Ukraine. Devil in the details, so Russia pushing the issue via sabre rattling (or worse if he could get away with it?)
And here I thought he was trying to pick off Odessa...
Whew. For a moment there, I thought maybe you were going to ask if we were going to commit troops to defend NATO member Estonia -- a country with 3% of the population of Ukraine and 1/5th of Ukraine's GDP -- from a Russian invasion. I can read a crowd pretty well and your blog members are decidedly against defending the smaller NATO allies, amirite?
That's a different question, I think: "Should NATO troops defend non-members?"
It's implied that the treaty KD is referring to is a NATO charter and the obligation is the invocation of Article V.
A defense of the Baltic states from a Russian invasion would result in their complete destruction. Just like in Iraq.
“RAMADI, Iraq -- This is what victory looks like in the Iraqi city of Ramadi: In the once thriving Haji Ziad Square, not a single structure still stands. Turning in every direction yields a picture of devastation.”
“You remember. It was supposed to be twenty-first-century war, American-style: precise beyond imagining; smart bombs; drones capable of taking out a carefully identified and tracked human being just about anywhere on Earth; special operations raids so pinpoint-accurate that they would represent a triumph of modern military science. Everything “networked.” It was to be a glorious dream of limited destruction combined with unlimited power and success. In reality, it would prove to be a nightmare of the first order.
If you want a single word to summarize American war-making in this last decade and a half, I would suggest rubble. It's been a painfully apt term since September 11, 2001. In addition, to catch the essence of such war in this century, two new words might be useful: rubblize and rubblization.”
A defense of the Baltic states from a Russian invasion would result in their complete destruction. Just like in Iraq.
Surely you mean our complete destruction. A Russian attack on a Nato state means war with America. Which means a nuclear war between Moscow and Washington. Which means quite a few dead humans, many millions of them Yanks. If things really got out of hand it might even spell the end of our species. Well, at least human-induced climate change would cease.
That's the problem with expanding an alliance. Doing so increases the number of ways Armageddon can be brought about. I agree with him on just about nothing, but on this one issue Pat Buchanan in my view has mostly been proven correct.
Theirs, ours… it’s all pretty much the same problem for all these little countries living in bad neighborhoods. We hope that China and Russia are content to stay within their current borders but if they aren’t, there is little we can do to stop them.
Mostly I want to remind us all how catastrophic these wars can be. If the only way to liberate parts of Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan from their evil governments or some other group is to turn them into rubble, is it really worth it?
"A Russian attack on a Nato state means war with America."
The NATO motto is the same as the QAnon motto: "where we go one, we go all."
"Well, at least human-induced climate change would cease."
To be replaced by nuclear winter.
QAnon has no motto. It was a con.
That is not the outcome of expanding the alliance, that's the outcome of Russia choosing aggression over diplomacy.
We aren't the ones massing troops on the border.
Quite surreal. The fellow who's massing troops on others borders with no real actual provocation, engaging in archaic national imperialism is framed by some odd ducks here as the guy in the right....
From the article:
Yep. War is hell. If you want to console yourself with the knowledge that it is hell, I agree. If you wish to exonerate yourself by saying the enemy is worse, well… that’s really not an argument I find persuasive.
Just noting your selectively edited comment, Justin. You quoted two different sources, without attribution, making it appear that they were a single article. The first paragraph was from AP; that article covered the situation in all its complexity, and later quoted some US officers who were rethinking their approach based on the horrific outcomes in Libya. But that kind of nuance doesn’t fit your narrowly doctrinaire worldview, so you pasted on several more paragraphs by Tom Engelhardt in Le Monde Diplomatique, who apparently is grinding the same axe as yourself. Placing the two excerpts together implies that the destruction was entirely caused by the Americans and that it was the object of the military effort.
The greatest destruction of the city of Kabul, Afghanistan occurred during the early 1990’s, when neither the Soviets nor Americans were engaged there militarily. It was done by the artillery of various militias, shelling the city relentlessly for years. Wikipedia cites two sources for the claim that the city was 80% destroyed.
He's quite the Nevilliste.
What are you afraid of? I’m not afraid so I see no reason to engage with the Russians. We all have a point at which we will support a violent response. Mine is just in a different place than yours.
You needn’t worry. My views have no effect on the outcome. I don’t work in foreign policy or have any influence. I’m just a random guy commenting on the foolishness.
It’s no axe. I simply find all these arguments in favor of military action unpersuasive. The battle causes damage and it is, to me, disingenuous to fault only one combatant for it.
You all wanted to destroy ISIS. That had a cost. You knew that going in and didn’t care. That’s fine. Own it.
- It was Engelhardt who was disingenuously faulting only one combatant.
- There is a difference between not caring about the cost (in lives) of military action; and weighing the cost against the cost of inaction, and making one’s choice. You haven’t provided evidence that Western decision-makers ‘didn’t care’.
I think you don’t care.
You don’t know me.
https://tomdispatch.com/
I think you might have missed the lesson he was trying to sell:
A defense of a Baltic nation who willingly joined the EU and NATO, requesting support against a Russian invasion, seems significantly different than overthrowing an existing government and occupying that nation, wouldn't you say?
Or no, they're the same and the result will be the same? By inference, your opinion is also that the US shouldn't have gotten involved with WW-II, amirite?
The result - complete destruction and death - will be the same even if the cause is righteous.
So yeah, you would be against the US entering WW-II. I mean, look at the destruction from all those carpet bombs.
One war was started by Republicans. This time it could be the Democrats. So opinions on the righteousness of it are somewhat different this time around. You know war is imminent when #UkranianTransLivesMatter spreads on Twitter.
It's worth noting that NATO expansion has always been something of a bluff.
Arguably, NATO itself has always been something of a bluff: Does US political leadership really believe preventing Soviet/Russian domination of Western Europe is worth tens of millions of American lives? *
(*I think the tactical issues related to conventional warfare have evolved over the decades, to say the least; but at the height of the Cold War, there was very little doubt that NATO's conventional military power in Europe was insufficient to block a full-scale attack by the Red Army, and that the presence of US forces in effect was a nuclear tripwire reminding the Kremlin that an attack on West Germany constituted an attack on the United States).
Anyway, whether or not the US was bluffing, it's worked.
KD is right that this is bizarre, but the dynamic underlying it isn't.Putin doesn't want to share power with the Russian people. It would set a bad precedent if the Ukrainian government were answerable to Ukrainians, whom Putin has decided are "Russian." The US prefers to back liberal democracies wherever they will flourish, but historically economic and strategic value rule decision making, as they should. The US will not back liberal government in Ukraine if it means the US has to sell another war to its Covid-weary citizens. Some middle ground will be found unless someone does something dumb -- but that's a very real and growing possibility.
Russia is having its own problems, so let's have a war....
And the Belarus uprising scared him...maybe...
The Russian settlement is basically a post 1936 creation. Russian controlled the Soviet from the start.
I believe the outcome is anyone's guess, until the US steps in and we will have another never ending war.
Subjects of American imperial authority are purposely being excited for war by Biden's 'acute and burning' warnings of a phantom threat of an invasion of Ukraine by Russia. American liberals duly respond with hate for Russia and enthusiastically support arming Ukrainian ethnic nationalists.
'Phantom threat' of placing an army of a size not seen in decades on the border of a relatively small nation?
The US has placed an army of over 110,000 in Texas. Mexico should be preparing for invasion.
Very true! If those troops were placed there recently, were anywhere near the border instead of hundreds of miles away (Texas is pretty big), if the US was an autocracy under an absolute leader who had been in power for decades and who publicly stated things like "Mexico is not a real country" and "so-called Mexico is an important and intrinsic part of the United States," and if that said leader had just eight years ago conquered a part of Mexico with the exact same rhetorical justifications that leader was using now, then yes, the situations would be exactly the same, and Mexico would be in big trouble.
Of course, since none of that is true, Mexico can breathe easy for the moment.
The Russian troops in Ukraine are not newly mobilized. If they were moved, that is in response to US armament deliveries to fascist Ukraine, which is motivated to exterminate its Russian population like when they joined with the Nazis to exterminate Jews and communists.
Javohl , Herr Goosestepper! Heil Vladimir!
Juvenile liberal response stimulated by corporate media to opposition of Democratic war mongering.
I'm with you, Goosedat! Anything other than a full-throated endorsement of gangster-king Vladimir Putin's desires to impose his will on other countries via force is Democratic war mongering.
For too long, richest-man-in-the-world and Russian autocrat Putin has been cruelly deprived of the opportunity to expand his empire. All this Biden talk of economic sanctions if Russia invades Ukraine against Ukraine's will is just just bellicose yankee imperialism. I say, Putin should get to militarily conquer all the countries he wants, and anybody who voices opposition plainly is some sort of barbaric war-mongerer.
Sophomoric response parroting US corporate and late night talk show monologues of anti-Russian propaganda. Russian has not exhibited the type of military conquest the US does but that does not stop liberals from endorsing more aggression.
How was Orlando?
My impression is that Zelensky's just really out of his depth here. People forget -- he was a just a television comedian before becoming president. Imagine President Pete Davidson. His polls are in the shitter and I'm sure he is panicking and doesn't appreciate the Americans saying the quiet parts out loud, namely that guys like Putin generally don't mobilize 100,000+ troops on a border unless they intend to do something with them.
Closer to Pres. Jon Stewart. Which would be worse than CIC Pete.
The EU has a population of about 450 million. Our population is about 330 million. Russia’s population is about 130 million.
The EU has a GDP of about $17 trillion. Our GDP is about $13 trillion. Russian GDP is about $1.4 trillion.
The EU is bigger than we are, richer than we are, and just as technologically advanced as we are. Why are we still defending them 75 years after the end of WW2?
Because there is still a residue of mutual suspicion among Europeans. There is a reason that Germany, under any of its governing parties or coalitions, is extremely hesitant to become involved in military actions beyond its borders.
They literally can't defend themselves. Britain and France could not sustain a 2 week air campaign in Libya alone.
"The EU is bigger than we are, richer than we are, and just as technologically advanced as we are. Why are we still defending them 75 years after the end of WW2?"
For the same reason the U.S. is content to have its navy police the oceans: there's a relatively cheap peace the comes from having a relatively benign hyperpower completely occupy the military sphere. Part of the reason that Europe has been such a jolly peaceful place for seven decades is that no Euro state really has any sort of military capability sufficient to influence any other Euro state; instead, they use diplomatic and economic tools. Force is off the table.
This is the sort of thing that fools like Trump never seem to understand. Sure, it's less than ideal that our allies get a free ride when we spend money on defensive military, but it's not *better* for everybody to beef up their militaries, as then we'd just have to beef up ours even more to maintain the hyperpower untouchability that encourages large-scale peace.
Very well-reasoned explanation. That is exactly the situation. It’s imaginable that under some future government, Russia will come to the same way of thinking as the rest of Europe. Won’t happen under Putin, of course.
Thumbs up. It looked like it would happen in the 1990's, but unfortunately Yeltsin, though I believe a genuine democrat, was asleep at the switch. The MOTU's ["Masters of the Universe"] on Wall Street "armed" a bunch of former Siloviki with mountains of cash to bribe their way to control of the country's productive wealth.
This left a HIDEOUS taste in Russians' mouths. They were deeply humiliated by the ease with which this rape happened and are resentful about it to this day.
The younger generation who grew up mostly or entirely after 1991 at least enjoyed personal freedom; even Putin hasn't taken that away from the general public. Eventually the people who were adults during the Great Theft will die off and leave the country to young people who value freedom and life as a European more than "Russian Revanchism".
I am starting to think Boris Yeltsin, first freely elected president of the Russian Federation in 1989, & in that a counterweight to Soviet Union politburo grandee Mikhail Gorbachev, was not actually a pro-democracy, pro-market reformer, but just not as bad as the other guys.
He was basically Aung San Suu Kyi with a drinking problem.
Pax Americana.
Not that it really affects your argument, but the US GDP for 2020 seems to be just shy of $21 trillion. The other numbers seem about right.
...Because we're allies? And it only looks that way? Even if the EU and the US put in the same effort in size to their economy in defense - and they do - it would look like the US was defending them.
It benefits us to work together to do things. The EU doesn't have an EU army, it has member states - none of which are as large as the US.
And the US is the one that would be hurt the most economically by any war - because we trade with /everyone/.
The EU has a GDP of about $17 trillion. Our GDP is about $13 trillion. Russian GDP is about $1.4 trillion. The EU is bigger than we are, richer than we are, and just as technologically advanced as we are
The United States (GDP: 21.7 trillion USD, 64k per capita) is considerably richer than the EU (GDP: 19.7 trillion USD, 46k per capita).
I've cited PPP numbers; exchange rate numbers are more favorable to the US.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD?locations=EU
Also, the notion that "we're defending" Europe is an incomplete one. And that's because Europe is defending America, too. This is not merely word play: an attack on a NATO member constitutes an attack on all of them. Including nuclear powers Britain and France. This reality is only going to become more important in the days ahead with respect to (to cite the most important example), China.
Germany alone has about triple the GDP of Russia, and Germany's GDP is concentrated in manufacturing rather than in resources like Russia. Germany could certainly raise and equip enough panzer divisions to give the Russian army a thorough kicking. Is that what we want? I can pretty much guarantee it's not what the Russians want.
As a comedian, he reminds me of the scene from Animal House where Chip Diller insists, "Remain calm! All is well!" -- https://youtu.be/zDAmPIq29ro
Putin is certainly welcome to Belarus, but don't Finland and Ukraine have more in common with the rest of NATO, strategically and culturally, than Turkey?
I’m old enough to remember when ‘Finlandization’ was a nominalized verb. Apparently it isn’t fondly remembered by the Finns, who also have been invaded by Russia in the past, because there is discussion in the country now about applying for membership in NATO.
Not just invaded; from 1809 through 1917 they were an administrative unit of Russia (a "Grand Duchy"). There was a Diet with some genuine authority, but a Governor-General was appointed by the Grand Duke who always happened to be the Romanov Emperor. They escaped during the Russian Revolution and fought against the Soviet Union throughout World War II.
Crazy people would wonder why NATO just doesn't adopt Russia and they could all get along. It's not like it's the Middle Ages anymore. What's the difference? Organized crime runs the world. Pretty sure this is all organized just fine. They don't mess around. Putin sits tight and the syndicate lets it ride.
Putin simply does not want a semi democratic state up close and personal. Might make the Russian folks think there could be a different system running the country. The shame is Russian domestic politics could lead to a disaster. Back in the day the Communists obsessed about being "encircled" by Capitalists. Now they are obsessing about encircled by democracies.
Finland, Latvia, and Estonia are all three highly ranked democracies. And they all border Russia.
My sister went to Russia recently and people their were telling here they are democratic. The problem is that Putin has given them a Trumpian view of things. Just pretend you have a real democracy, and claim it's actual the Western countries with the dangerous defects in their systems.
Still, as you note, if Russians can freely visit nearby democratic countries - you'd think at some point they'd see through Putin's BS. On the other hand, we're still waiting for Trump supporters to see through his BS.
I think Zelensky's remarks are for home consumption. Now that the west is alerted , he fears panic at home.
Sound thinking.
Ukraine belongs in NATO more than Turkey. Freedom House ranks Ukraine as Partly Free, Turkey is ranked as Not Free. Authoritarian countries have no business being in NATO. The whole point of NATO is to defend the democratic countries.
I guess before booting Turkey out of NATO we should see if Turkey's people can salvage their institutions after the tyranny of Erdogan.
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2022/01/28/big-war-ceos-theres-chaos-in-the-world-and-our-prospects-are-excellent/
Do you all realize how much you are being manipulated? I guess not.
According to chief executives of the top taxpayer-funded weapons firms, their balance sheets will benefit from the U.S. engaging in great power competition with Russia and China, the recent escalations in the Yemen war, and the potential for a Russian invasion of Ukraine. But at least one CEO didn’t want to give the impression that weapons firms are simply merchants of death, claiming that her firm, the third largest weapons producer in the world, “actually promote[s] human rights proliferation.”
People favoring a certain policy from base motives has no bearing on the worth of the policy. That’s just the inverse of the argument from authority, and is just as fallacious.