View Poll Results: Whom do you support and to what extent?

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  • I support Ukraine fully.

    103 69.59%
  • I support Russia fully.

    15 10.14%
  • I only support Russia's claim over Crimea.

    4 2.70%
  • I only support Russia's claim over Crimea and Donbass (Luhansk and Donetsk regions).

    11 7.43%
  • Not sure.

    7 4.73%
  • I don't care.

    8 5.41%

Thread: Russia, US, Ukraine, and the Future

  1. #7501

    Default Re: Russia, US, Ukraine, and the Future

    Quote Originally Posted by Kyriakos View Post
    That's not supported by anything either :/ Even if Russia wanted to - which by now it's clear it does not - it couldn't annex all of Ukraine. Too many hostiles. Their plan for some time now seems to be to annex a land corridor to Crimea and leave it at that, so they probably would agree to peace with keeping most of what they currently control.

    Would that be a good deal for Ukraine? Of course not. But not due to a fear of full annexation.
    This is simply not true. Russia wanted entirety of Ukraine, not just the land corridor made up of 4 provinces due to inability to score an easy win through Kyiv. In reality, Putin wants all ex-Soviet republics back. He made direct remarks towards a lot of them already. If Russia is left to have its way with Ukraine through what you suggest we'll have an other escalation of hostilities within 5-10 years to take whats left. Then Moldova. Kazakhstan. Georgia. So on and on.

    You would not be content with Turkey getting a single Greek island. Why are you telling people to accept Russia annexing 25% of Ukraine?
    The Armenian Issue

  2. #7502
    Ludicus's Avatar Comes Limitis
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    Default Re: Russia, US, Ukraine, and the Future

    Quote Originally Posted by conon394 View Post
    @alastor. Why did you dodge all the questions about the Hersh Story and his general recent track record for not credibility?
    Alastor already said that " I did not start believing that the US is likely responsible for the pipes blowing up because Hersh said so", but here's another answer, The Sy Hersh effect: killing the messenger, ignoring the message.

    Absolute crickets. That is the sound in the major mainstream media — both foreign and domestic — following the charges by veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh that the United States led a covert operation to blow up the Nord Stream pipelines in September 2022.
    The story, released on Hersh’s new Substack last week, unleashed a Twitter war between Hersh’s defenders and detractors, but a simple Google search betrays a dearth of mainstream coverage, with only brief reports by Bloomberg, Agence France Presse, The Times (UK) and the New York Post (a conservative holding of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire). The Washington Times editorial board, also squarely on the right, wrote sympathetically about it on Monday, and Newsweek has covered it as well.
    All other newspapers of record — the Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal — and European outlets — BBC, the Guardian, and most German newspapers (an interview on Berliner Zietung dropped late Wednesday ) — have ignored it. Tucker Carlson and other hosts covered it on FOX News, another Murdoch staple, but the rest of the cable news circuit — CNN, MSNBC — are seemingly on board with what appears to be a total MSM blackout.
    Maybe not an entire blackout: Business Insider published an unflattering report topped with this unwieldy headline: “The claim by a discredited journalist that the US secretly blew up the Nord Stream pipeline is proving a gift to Putin.”
    Moving outside of this relative void to social media and Substack, there appears to be two primary lines of open attack against Hersh’s reporting, which details the story of a covert unit of expert U.S. Navy divers, directed from the very top of the Biden administration, engaged in sabotage plans that were set into motion “in December of 2021, two months before the first Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine.”
    First, critics are seeking to discredit Hersh, who has spent the last 50 years embarrassing the U.S. government with myriad exposes (many of them published in major outlets like the New York Times and New Yorker). His most prominent revelations include the My Lai massacre by U.S. troops in Vietnam, the massive CIA spy program against Americans called Operation Chaos (for which the New York Times called him the “Teller of Truth”) in 1974, and the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuses in 2004. Nevertheless, detractors accuse him of engaging in conspiracy theories, sloppy reporting, and bad sourcing.
    Second, they point to what appears to be “single sourcing” in Hersh’s Substack report (though he is much more ambiguous about this in his interview with Radio War Nerd this week). Additionally, Twitter and Substack sleuths, using OSINT (open source intelligence,) say they’ve found holes in the details (like the class of minesweeper ship involved and where it was located the day Hersh claims the explosives were planted) that cast doubt on his entire story.
    But the questions raised about Hersh and his reporting (appropriate or not) do not explain the lack of mainstream coverage of his extremely detailed, 5300-word article, which under any other circumstances should have opened the floodgates of journalistic inquiry. Here remains an extraordinary mystery: Who blew up the Nord Stream pipelines, which run from Russia to Germany, are majority owned (51 percent) by Russian Gazprom, along with German, Dutch and French stakeholders, and had at one time accounted for 35 percent of the energy the EU was importing from Russia (via Nord Stream 1)?
    Additionally, is Hersh correct in highlighting statements from U.S. officials, from Biden on down, as possible tell-tale signs that they wanted to take down Nord Stream 2 long before the Russian invasion? Did Washington have an interest in cutting it off, and would it have gone so far as to sabotage it and then blame the attack on Russia? Why did top State Department official Victoria Nuland say she was “gratified” it was now “a hunk of metal at the bottom of the sea”?
    Germany, Sweden, and Denmark are reportedly conducting separate investigations into the pipeline explosions. Last fall the Swedes confirmed it was “gross sabotage” and that the attack had the markings of a “state actor.” After a flurry of elite media and official Washington figures pointed fingers in Russia’s direction, the Washington Post published an unusually off-script report two months ago quoting “European officials” asserting that there was “no evidence” that Russia was behind the attack.
    But that was in December, and, until Hersh’s explosive allegations, the story had been languishing in news cycle purgatory. Now, following his claims, the absence of any real reporting on the subject seems even more striking.
    “If anyone has a more convincing story then come out with it, show us the goods,” charged Mark Ames, co-host of the Radio War Nerd, which on Monday hosted Hersh in his first interview since the article was posted.
    In an on-air exchange about the lack of media coverage, Ames, co-host Gary Brecher, and Hersh criticized what they said was a compliant media that unquestioningly supports U.S government aims in regard to the war in Ukraine. It’s that deference that accounts for the apparent lack of curiosity over the story and the urge to attack the messenger rather than grill officials over Hersh’s claims.
    “The mainstream media, they have decided on their own that we are at war and by ‘we,’ that means the Acela corridor, the expensive suburbs of the East Coast … and that means the rules (of journalism) have changed,” Brecher offered.
    Ames went a bit further. “I’m not surprised that they’re so incurious about who blew up the pipelines, but I am sickened,” he told Responsible Statecraft in a subsequent exchange.
    “The corporate media is ignoring Hersh’s story because they’re deeply invested in the U.S. empire and don’t like stories that make the U.S. empire look bad.”
    For their part, government officials are flatly denying Hersh’s reporting as an absolute falsehood. When reached, a spokesperson for the National Security Council called the story “utterly false and complete fiction.” Same for the State Department press office: “this is totally false and complete fiction. We can say categorically that the United States was not involved in any way and we continue to work with Allies and partners to get to the bottom of what happened.”
    The State Department confirmed that the U.S. is not investigating the pipeline explosion but is aiding its “European partners” as they pursue their own probes into the incident.
    “Hersh’s report does not close the case on who attacked the Nord Stream pipelines. But it does highlight the need for a serious congressional investigation into what happened,” says George Beebe, former veteran CIA analyst and Director of Grand Strategy at the Quincy Institute. He also lamented that the press appears uninterested in the questions raised by Hersh’s reporting.
    “If the U.S. engaged in what many would regard as an act of war, destroying the critical infrastructure of a NATO ally, without notifying Congress, that raises profound issues of executive-legislative relations, and intra-alliance management, let alone what it might mean for the possibility of Russian retaliation on American infrastructure,” Beebe told RS.
    Media critic, author, and podcaster Robert Wright suggests the media blackout is part of an ongoing trend of one-sided and incurious Ukraine War coverage. He pointed to explosive, yet little-reported claims by former Israeli prime minister Neftali Bennett earlier this month that the West had killed a tentative peace deal between Russia and Ukraine last March.
    “In some ways I think MSM’s more or less ignoring Naftali Bennett’s comments on aborted early-March Ukraine negotiations is even less excusable than ignoring the Hersh story,” Wright said in an email exchange with RS. “MSM can always say Hersh is now just a freelancer and was relying basically on a single anonymous source, etc — but Bennett is an eyewitness to what he’s describing, and he’s the former prime minister of Israel!”
    “I think these two data points together — MSM basically ignoring the Bennett story and not even using the Hersh story as an occasion to revisit the question of who blew up the pipeline (which they could have done even while treating the Hersh story skeptically) — are more evidence of how committed much of the elite media now is to serving the official American narrative,” said Wright. “And in the long run this kind of journalism isn’t good for America.”
    Hersh´s interview to theBerliner Zeitung, Joe Biden sprengte Nord Stream

    ---
    Occasionally, laughter is the best medicine Object downed by US missile may have been amateur
    it would mean the US military expended a missile costing $439,000 (£365,000) to fell an innocuous hobby balloon worth about $12 (£10).
    We don't have to engage in hysterical crusades against Russia and China.

    …This attitude isn’t limited to Russia’s war with Ukraine. The recent Chinese balloon incident in the United States saw what might almost be described as political hysteria on both sides of the U.S. political divide. China is certainly — alongside Russia, Iran and North Korea — squarely within U.S. political crosshairs and labelled as a threat to a Western-dominated international system.
    The fury being levelled against such states in Western political circles and the press certainly warrants the suggestion that the West has whipped itself up into a frenzy of crusading zeal. Arguments offered by other state actors for their conduct — often pointing to similar actions by the West — are simply dismissed by Western leaders who are also willing to ignore the fact that Russia and China in particular are major powers with not only significant conventional military capabilities and potentials, but also nuclear weapons.
    …In the black and white world of Western international relations today suggesting a more realist approach to foreign policy means that you are simply a stooge of a foreign adversary — as John Mearsheimer has found out. But if we continue to ignore the idea that other state actors might have legitimate concerns — that are backed up by significant military power — we risk careering toward a global conflict that can only end badly.
    …Sadly, a more realistic and culturally tolerant approach to many international issues today would not serve the egos and interests of many politicians who have boxed themselves into a corner over their maximalist stances. Nor would a change of tack, and particularly over Russia and Ukraine, suit Western energy companies or a U.S. military-industrial complex that is one of the principal beneficiaries of the war in Ukraine. However, this kind of realist engagement is ultimately going to be the only way to save the many lives that will otherwise be lost in the sort of clash of civilizations that has brought so much human misery over the few millennia that humans have been able to document their follies.
    No matter how hard some might wish, Russia’s war in Ukraine is unlikely to lead to any sort of crushing Russian defeat on the battlefield, and sooner or later negotiations will have to take place.
    Last edited by Ludicus; February 19, 2023 at 06:30 AM.
    Il y a quelque chose de pire que d'avoir une âme perverse. C’est d'avoir une âme habituée
    Charles Péguy

    Every human society must justify its inequalities: reasons must be found because, without them, the whole political and social edifice is in danger of collapsing”.
    Thomas Piketty

  3. #7503
    nhytgbvfeco2's Avatar Praefectus
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    Default Re: Russia, US, Ukraine, and the Future

    Quote Originally Posted by Kyriakos View Post
    That's not supported by anything either :/ Even if Russia wanted to - which by now it's clear it does not - it couldn't annex all of Ukraine. Too many hostiles.
    Russia would simply do the same thing it did every time it took over new territory with a large hostile population, and that's the thing its already going in the occupied territories:


    As for the implication that Putin doesn't want to annex Ukraine.. Lol. Lmao, even.
    It was just Crimea 8 years ago, today it's just a land bridge to Crimea, in 8 years it's just Kyiv, and in another 8 it's just Ukraine.
    Appeasement does not work. A bridge to Crimea? A bridge too far.
    Last edited by nhytgbvfeco2; February 19, 2023 at 07:03 AM.

  4. #7504
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    Default Re: Russia, US, Ukraine, and the Future

    Israel continues to occupy the Golan Heights, let alone settling more palestinian territory every few months - so I am still surprised you have double standards there ^^
    I would love it if Russia just left everything (including Crimea). It simply won't happen.
    Λέων μεν ὄνυξι κρατεῖ, κέρασι δε βούς, ἄνθρωπος δε νῷι
    "While the lion prevails with its claws, and the ox through its horns, man does by his thinking"
    Anaxagoras of Klazomenae, 5th century BC










  5. #7505
    Peresvet's Avatar Civis
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    Default Re: Russia, US, Ukraine, and the Future

    Quote Originally Posted by Kyriakos View Post
    Israel continues to occupy the Golan Heights, let alone settling more palestinian territory every few months - so I am still surprised you have double standards there ^^
    I would love it if Russia just left everything (including Crimea). It simply won't happen.
    But Kharkov province and Cherson was deoccupied by Ukraine. If Ukraine will have strong military equipment , tanks leopard, avia f16, long range missiles, ukrainian forces will deoccupy more territory.
    I am Russian and I hate putin and war. Stop war in Ukraine.

  6. #7506
    Kyriakos's Avatar Praeses
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    Default Re: Russia, US, Ukraine, and the Future

    Maybe they will, but will it be enough to make a difference and end the war?
    Λέων μεν ὄνυξι κρατεῖ, κέρασι δε βούς, ἄνθρωπος δε νῷι
    "While the lion prevails with its claws, and the ox through its horns, man does by his thinking"
    Anaxagoras of Klazomenae, 5th century BC










  7. #7507
    Alastor's Avatar Vicarius
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    Default Re: Russia, US, Ukraine, and the Future

    Quote Originally Posted by StarDreamer View Post
    You don't care about that. Quite frankly Russia winning would cause immense damage to world and European ecenomy and cause massive instability all over the world for decades to come. Unless you think the EU would win by the world going massively unstable with wars popping up all over the place.
    Oh? You will tell me what I care about? You know better than me? No, but here you are yet again trying to "expose" me.

    Your justifications are simply laughable too. If you are in the business of predicting the future you need to listen to more sources than Washington's. But I'll humour you, by all means do explain how a Russian win would have damaged the European economy, had the EU not cast its lot decisively with Ukraine? How would a Russian victory cause global wars for decades to come? It's a conflict in the ex-Soviet sphere, it's hardly the first, why is this one the one? I do have an answer what makes this war special btw, but it's not what you may think. Either way, consider now that even without the EU's help following the invasion, Ukraine proved a far tougher nut to crack than Russia, in fact the world, expected. If anything Russia is humbled, yet here we are making it existential for their regime and pushing them to double down. In my opinion, it is our intervention that makes the world a riskier place, not the alternative.

  8. #7508
    Peresvet's Avatar Civis
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    Default Re: Russia, US, Ukraine, and the Future

    Quote Originally Posted by Kyriakos View Post
    Maybe they will, but will it be enough to make a difference and end the war?
    war will continue , untill putin is alive. He put in prison 140 millions of people, because now in Russia no any chances of protests, win on elections and peacefull change of state - all conntrolled by giant repressive apparatus of siloviki - policemen, FSB, rosgvardia and others dogs of regime.
    I am Russian and I hate putin and war. Stop war in Ukraine.

  9. #7509
    nhytgbvfeco2's Avatar Praefectus
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    Default Re: Russia, US, Ukraine, and the Future

    Quote Originally Posted by Kyriakos View Post
    Israel continues to occupy the Golan Heights, let alone settling more palestinian territory every few months - so I am still surprised you have double standards there ^^
    Oddly enough I'm not surprised about the whataboutism.
    Israel attempted to return the Golan heights multiple times, how many times has Russia offered to return Crimea?
    I would love it if Russia just left everything (including Crimea). It simply won't happen.

  10. #7510
    saamohod's Avatar Tiro
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    Default Re: Russia, US, Ukraine, and the Future

    Ukraine indeed has a Nazi problem.

    https://streamable.com/m63f86
    "Orcs were mustering, and far to the east and the south the wild peoples were arming."
    J.R.R.Tolkien.

  11. #7511
    conon394's Avatar hoi polloi
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    Default Re: Russia, US, Ukraine, and the Future

    Alastor already said that "I did not start believing that the US is likely responsible for thepipes blowing up because Hersh said so", but here's another answer, The Sy Hersh effect: killing the messenger, ignoring themessage.
    Or possibly when looked at critically his story is a hot mess and so have his other recent revelations on Bin Ladin on Gas in Syria and the fact he is 85


    The granularity of every aspect of the operation is incredible. The ships he palaces in the operation where never there. The Does (as his historical example proves) not do these operations by making a supposed ultra secret operation expanded to what 4 nations affair. It so large by the end of the story that lack one collaborating bit off evidence is massive a problem. And others have offered perfectly ligament reasons for Gasprom to carried out the attack - and examples of that happening in the past.

    Also might want to read

    https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/50/3093#e

    The statute does not care about whom the president picks it could be a band of 12 condemned prison's - its the nature of the act. And this would certainly meet the contained definition of a covert military act. It certainly makes no differentiation of what US soldier or sailor you use. And why trainees? Why experienced navy divers from around the fleet?

    At evert turn the story is fantasy.

    John Mearsheimer
    You do love favorite quoted IR guy don't you. You do know back in 1993 he a hawk on Ukraine keeping its nukes and like the paper I posted earlier firmly believed Ukraine had control of the bomber based weapons and the Ukraine built SS-24s (although longer term they would have to scrabble to build a persistent new source for fuel). He supported this even though he thought it might - probably would provoke a preventative Russian invasion (guess he did used to care about Russia feeling so much ). Not that would also leave the Warsaw pact nation which now thinks never should been allowed in NATO kind of dangling don't you think - guess time for them to nuke up. So think of that spending on rebuilding the economies not happening.

    Note previous to his argument Ukraine had handed of tactical stuff and broadly most people agree thay had full control over that so have put there foot a earlier they would gave even better armed.
    Last edited by conon394; February 19, 2023 at 09:18 PM.
    IN PATROCINIVM SVB Dromikaites

    'One day when I fly with my hands - up down the sky, like a bird'

    But if the cause be not good, the king himself hath a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in battle, shall join together at the latter day and cry all 'We died at such a place; some swearing, some crying for surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left.

    Hyperides of Athens: We know, replied he, that Antipater is good, but we (the Demos of Athens) have no need of a master at present, even a good one.

  12. #7512
    Peresvet's Avatar Civis
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    Default Re: Russia, US, Ukraine, and the Future

    American actor Sean Penn called on the United States to send troops to Ukraine. “I think it’s very clear that whatever it takes to keep US troops out of there [Ukraine], we will eventually be there. So why not now? he said in an interview with The Guardian. In addition, Penn believes that the United States could have "decided" on the supply of weapons to Kyiv earlier, and now calls on Washington to take a "level of shame" for the delay. The actor called Russia's victory in the conflict a "cover" for everyone.
    I am Russian and I hate putin and war. Stop war in Ukraine.

  13. #7513
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    Default Re: Russia, US, Ukraine, and the Future

    Biden in Kiev, Ukraine!
    I am Russian and I hate putin and war. Stop war in Ukraine.

  14. #7514
    Alastor's Avatar Vicarius
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    Default Re: Russia, US, Ukraine, and the Future

    Damn, we are one loose bomb away from a Kamala Harris presidency.

  15. #7515
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    Default Re: Russia, US, Ukraine, and the Future

    Quote Originally Posted by Alastor View Post
    Damn, we are one loose bomb away from a Kamala Harris presidency.
    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails photo_2023-02-20_12-52-36.jpg  
    I am Russian and I hate putin and war. Stop war in Ukraine.

  16. #7516
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    Default Re: Russia, US, Ukraine, and the Future

    On the anniversary of the start of the Russo-Ukrainian war, russian opposition leader in jail, Alexey Navalny published “15 points of a Russian citizen who wants the best for his country” - his new political platform.

    The text talks about the problems of modern Russia, the course of the special operation, and also suggests ways for the development of the Russian Federation. Navalny proposes to return Ukraine to the borders of 1991 (Zelensky insists on the same), to pay it "compensation" from the sale of oil and gas, and to establish a parliamentary republic in Russia. http://navalny.com/p/6634
    I am Russian and I hate putin and war. Stop war in Ukraine.

  17. #7517
    conon394's Avatar hoi polloi
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    Default Re: Russia, US, Ukraine, and the Future

    @Ludicus

    On Hersh have you actually read the Hersh story on MAi Li. It really is the stuff to deserve a major award...

    The My Lai Massacre | The New Yorker

    One thing you might notice is that before it describes the events at the end you get a painstaking description of a massive about of sources. Of course by this time there were sources well documented and absolutely independent of Hersh. The Army's initial record on the day and than another and another investigation. Its attempts at spin, Nixon's attempts at spin. The fact that quite before Hersh typed a word Soldiers like Hugh Thompson and Ron Ridenhour had made multiple public statements about the parts they were aware or had first hand knowledge of. Notice the wealth and accuracy detailing the all the various units and officers in involved and the wealth of named soldiers and others Hersh cites and talked to... before presenting a reconstruction of the event. Notice it is not in fact riddle with easily detectable factual errors. Notice it does not expect me to believe one source was aware of everything from the decisions Kissinger and Nixon were making to the communication between Huge Thompson and crew were having as set their chopper and all while being anonymous. One is award winning journalism one is the fantasy of an 85 year man.
    Last edited by conon394; February 20, 2023 at 10:20 AM.
    IN PATROCINIVM SVB Dromikaites

    'One day when I fly with my hands - up down the sky, like a bird'

    But if the cause be not good, the king himself hath a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in battle, shall join together at the latter day and cry all 'We died at such a place; some swearing, some crying for surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left.

    Hyperides of Athens: We know, replied he, that Antipater is good, but we (the Demos of Athens) have no need of a master at present, even a good one.

  18. #7518
    Ludicus's Avatar Comes Limitis
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    Default Re: Russia, US, Ukraine, and the Future

    Quote Originally Posted by nhytgbvfeco2 View Post
    Israel attempted to return the Golan heights

    My good friend, Israel tried to "return" the Golan heights.Someone wrote, paraphrasing Moshe Dayan, "it is possible to argue that the Golan without peace is more vital for Israel than peace without Golan". Read also what Rabin wrote in 1994. Anyway, what really matters,
    Israel will never return Golan Heights, Benjamin Netanyahu says
    Three years on, US still views Syria's Golan as Israeli territory
    Friday marks the anniversary of the United States’s declaration that the Golan belongs to Israel – a move that experts said backed a clear violation of international law. And this year, it comes as Washington is promoting the concept of “territorial integrity” to push back against the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
    ---
    Foreign Affairs on JSTOR
    “Since 1922, the Council has published Foreign Affairs, America's most influential publication on international affairs and foreign policy. It is more than a magazine — it is the international forum of choice for the most important new ideas, analysis, and debate on the most significant issues in the world. Inevitably, articles published in Foreign Affairs shape the political dialogue for months and years to come.”
    Two interesting articles published in the last few days. Excerpts.
    The New Spheres of Influence-Foreign Affairs
    In the heady aftermath of the Cold War, American policymakers pronounced one of the fundamental concepts of geopolitics obsolete. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice described a new world “in which great power is defined not by spheres of influence . . . or the strong imposing their will on the weak.” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared that “the United States does not recognize spheres of influence.” Secretary of State John Kerry proclaimed that “the era of the Monroe Doctrine is over,” ending almost two centuries of the United States staking claim to its own sphere of influence in the Western Hemisphere.
    Such pronouncements were right in that something about geopolitics had changed. But they were wrong about what exactly it was. U.S. policymakers had ceased to recognize spheres of influence—the ability of other powers to demand deference from other states in their own regions or exert predominant control there—not because the concept had become obsolete. Rather, the entire world had become a de facto American sphere.
    Spheres of influence had given way to a sphere of influence. The strong still imposed their will on the weak; the rest of the world was compelled to play largely by American rules, or else face a steep price, from crippling sanctions to outright regime change. Spheres of influence hadn’t gone away; they had been collapsed into one, by the overwhelming fact of U.S. hegemony.
    The Persistence of Great-Power Politics - Foreign Affairs

    What the War in Ukraine Has Revealed About Geopolitical Rivalry
    (…) particularly after Russia’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine, it was commonly understood among foreign policy elites that NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia was more aspirational than practical. As the scholar Michael O’Hanlon put it last February, weeks before the invasion: “To say that Ukraine won’t be joining NATO soon (if ever) is not a concession to Putin, but an acknowledgment of reality.
    Yet even as war loomed, U.S. policymakers were not willing to acknowledge that reality, making clear that they would not discuss NATO’s open-door policy with Russia.

    WHY “SPHERES OF INFLUENCE” ARE BACK

    …Detractors contend that spheres of influence are morally indefensible, as the great powers condemn smaller countries to suffer at the hands of their larger neighbors.
    Yet this is a fundamental misunderstanding of the concept. A sphere of influence does not have to be some kind of courtesy offered by one great power to another over the heads of smaller, more vulnerable states. It is more often a mere fact, an assertion of geography and power.
    A sphere of influence is simply a place where one great power asserts dominance and another is afraid or unwilling to challenge it because the perceived costs are simply too high.
    (…) Some commentators suggest that we cannot accept such arrangements, arguing that the world has moved past these antiquated, colonialist ideas into a more enlightened era. But the truth is more mundane.
    During the unipolar moment, the period of U.S. global dominance that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States simply did not need to concern itself much with the question of spheres of influence because its power was unchallenged.
    Thee political scientist Graham Allison put it succinctly: U.S. policymakers had ceased to recognize spheres of influence, but “not because the concept had become obsolete. Rather, the entire world had become a de facto American sphere.”
    ----
    Meanwhile Borrel (the Europe’s racist gardener- the rest of the world is a “jungle”) says China will cross 'red line' if it sends arms to Russia

    In that case, what would Borrel do? after almost a year of hostilities, it is time to confront facts with speeches. This exercise should be done regardless of personal beliefs. The fact that the overwhelming majority of the media is on the side of the Ukrainian cause, however legitimate, does not legitimize or justify the systematic promotion of propaganda. Any statement from the Ukrainian government, as well as some other sources, such as British intelligence, turned into a news agency in this conflict, is automatically considered an unquestionable truth. The door has been opened wide to manipulation. We accept complex realities as Manichean representations of saints on one side and sinners on the other.

    Let's see: the Russian forces had no ammunition (enough for only a week), they were unprepared, they were ill-equipped, they learned how to handle weapons from wikipedia, they had no boots, soldiers deserted, the defense minister was fired, the head of the armed forces was killed, Putin was stricken with various terminal illnesses, civilians were the target of the bombing, not to forget the attribution of the destruction of Nordstream to Russia.

    All this to mold public opinion and create the dogma of Ukrainian victory, as if it were a divine imposition. After all, Kiev is the one who has no ammunition, Europe and Ukraine are the ones who do not have an industrial and technological defense base capable of supporting the war, the ones who survive only on foreign aid, the ones who have made a deep governmental reorganization, launched huge mobilization campaigns, etc.

    Here, in addition to truth, democracy is also a victim of this war. The divergence of opinion has become a sin of opinion. Not only here, but also in other latitudes. Meanwhile, warmongering zeal has reached ridiculous levels, even in this country, where Costa is impatiently awaiting the end of his term to go to Brussels, where an important position awaits him. Costa: paz só é possível com “a vitória da Ucrânia e a derrota da Russia

    Peace is only achievable with the victory of Ukraine and the defeat of Russia”, he says.
    Biden, a few hours ago: “"When Putin launched his invasion nearly one year ago, he thought Ukraine was weak and the West was divided. He thought he could outlast us. But he was dead wrong."
    It took Biden 26 hours to reach Kiev, which for the US president shows great determination. The US, btw, alerted Russia of Biden's trip to Ukraine. Let's see what the next days will bring us.

    Anyway, it seems to me that the adults in the room are the military, not the politicians. Once again, February 16, Ukraine war pushes US to review arms stockpiles
    Milley’s remarks, a week before the first anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, reflect a broader debate among western allies about the possibility of the war dragging on indefinitely…Milley has been one of Washington’s most prominent advocates for a negotiated settlement between Kyiv and Moscow. While he did not tie the depletion of stockpiles to his support for peace talks, he said he still believed the war would end at the negotiating table, with neither side likely to achieve their military aims…he noted that, with Russia’s nuclear arsenal, the stakes were higher. “In this particular case, it’s against a country that is large and is nuclear-armed,” he said. “So you have to be very, very conscious about managing escalation.
    I’m afraid that's all Milley can say, without talking the risk of being fired. Just as a century ago, during WW1, both belligerents thought they were capable of imposing a total victory on the other. We do not know how this war will end, but history has already shown that the idea of a "war that will end war" bringing with it the "opportunity of liberalism" is an illusion. We also know that in 1919 the Treaty of Versailles brought "a peace to end all peace." In a nuclear age, let's see where this war, which once again promises to end war, will take us.
    Recommended books:
    -H.G. Wells, “The War That Will End the War”, 1914.
    - David Fromkin, “A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East”.
    The phrase "peace to end all peace" was ironically uttered by British military officer Archibald Wavell in the context of the Versailles negotiations and has been echoed in this book in relation to the almost permanent state of conflict and war in the modern Middle East that emerged from that war. After the war to end war, they seem to have pretty successful in Paris at making a “Peace to end Peace”, Archibald Wavell (later Field Marshall Earl Wavell) an officer who served until Allenby in the Palestine campaign, commenting on the treaties bringing the WW1 to an end.
    Il y a quelque chose de pire que d'avoir une âme perverse. C’est d'avoir une âme habituée
    Charles Péguy

    Every human society must justify its inequalities: reasons must be found because, without them, the whole political and social edifice is in danger of collapsing”.
    Thomas Piketty

  19. #7519
    Kyriakos's Avatar Praeses
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    Default Re: Russia, US, Ukraine, and the Future

    Borrel won't do anything, he is just a figurehead and the Eu has stopped even aspiring to be a major power for a decade now.
    Currently it is just the largest US vassal and does not have a foreign policy of its own, nor is it moving towards any actual "union" status.
    Λέων μεν ὄνυξι κρατεῖ, κέρασι δε βούς, ἄνθρωπος δε νῷι
    "While the lion prevails with its claws, and the ox through its horns, man does by his thinking"
    Anaxagoras of Klazomenae, 5th century BC










  20. #7520
    conon394's Avatar hoi polloi
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    Colfax WA, neat I have a barn and 49 acres - I have 2 horses, 15 chickens - but no more pigs
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    Default Re: Russia, US, Ukraine, and the Future

    Borrel won't do anything, he is just a figurehead and the Eu has stopped even aspiring to be a major power for a decade now.
    Currently it is just the largest US vassal and does not have a foreign policy of its own, nor is it moving towards any actual "union" status.
    Is there an actual majority of people who want union of the EU states and all that would entail? Your are talking about reducing every member to essentially a US type state. No more fiscal policy balanced budgets all around only the Central EU government gets to run a deficit. Unify the army that going to painful just look how many factories will . Quick count how many different types of SP 155 howitzers are being mad in Europe right now. Unified Europe only needs one model because other you wasting money on inefficacy of production and maintaining them.
    IN PATROCINIVM SVB Dromikaites

    'One day when I fly with my hands - up down the sky, like a bird'

    But if the cause be not good, the king himself hath a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in battle, shall join together at the latter day and cry all 'We died at such a place; some swearing, some crying for surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left.

    Hyperides of Athens: We know, replied he, that Antipater is good, but we (the Demos of Athens) have no need of a master at present, even a good one.

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