On Ukraine: what course others may take
Commenter Bauxite wrote:
Putin’s invasion of the Ukraine is a disaster…
There were no good outcomes for the Ukraine once Putin invaded. Once the invasion happened, all of the options that included a Ukrainian victory involved considerable death, destruction, and human suffering for Ukrainians. The options that included a Russian victory involved differing levels of death, destruction, and human suffering along with either the end of Ukrainian sovereiegnty or a significant reduction in Ukrainaian sovereignty.
Given that, it is perfectly reasonable to ask whether different policy choices by the western powers over the 30 years or so since the breakup of the Soviet Union led to the current situation or whether different policies might have avoided it. This is especially the case given the links between US and Ukrainian elites over the past few decades, especially among our administrative class. Did the US politicians and bureaucrats like Nuland, Vindman, and Hill lead western-oriented Ukranians down the primrose path to disaster by making them think that NATO would support them or that the Ukraine would eventually join NATO? Asking that question is not being a “mouthpiece for Putin.” Asking whether the US or other western powers might have avoided the current terrible situation with different policy choices is not acting as “Putin’s press office.”
I agree with much of this – certainly the “disaster” part. But not all of it.
Commenter Art Deco wrote in response:
“Given that, it is perfectly reasonable to ask whether different policy choices by the western powers over the 30 years or so since the breakup of the Soviet Union led to the current situation or whether different policies might have avoided it.”
No it isn’t.
Rather minimal.
Commenter “Bauxite” replied:
“No it isn’t.”
Sure. When a bad thing happen[s], one should never ask why and never consider whether one’s own choices may have contributed to the bad thing. That might cause one to discover out that he or she is not omnisicent. We couldn’t have that.
Let go of my leg. That’s the go to narrative of topical commentary, magazine journalism, snap books, and academic literature whenever there is some conflict having vaguely to do with the United States.
In this case, it’s preposterous.
But, as commenter Barry Meislin writes:
The real question is, what is a true reason?; and what is a useful excuse?
However, when one is dealing with either paranoiacs or thugs (or paranoiac thugs—thuggish paranoiacs?), the differences collapse on themselves and all bets are off. IOW, it really doesn’t matter.
In such cases, it only matters whether one has the power to withstand the aggression…and whether one is prepared/willing to use it.
Sometimes people get confused about the assignment of responsibility for some bad result. For example, I don’t go out walking at night in a high-crime area. But if I did, and if I were to become the victim of a crime there, the person who committed that crime is 100% responsible. I bear no responsibility at all. No one forced him (it would probably be a “him”) to break the law and attack or rob me. The fact that my decision could be considered somewhat risky and not all that smart has nothing to do with the fact that he has total responsibility for his own crime and I have none. The fact that the crime would not have been committed – at least, not on me – had I not gone walking there that evening is utterly irrelevant to the apportionment of responsibility.
Putin’s history is that of an aggressor and of a corrupt tyrant who murders his opponents. He has spoken at great length of his desire to reclaim the empire Russia once had, after the fall of the Soviet Union led to what he considers to be a terrible disaster: Russia losing what used to be called by some in the west its “captive nations.” Putin aims to capture quite a few of them again, whether they like it or not.
It probably was not inevitable that Putin invaded at exactly this time – for example, I think he would not have invaded now if Trump had continued to be president. Putin was almost undoubtedly waiting for the right opportunity, and the Biden administration’s weakness plus Europe’s dependence on Russian fuel offered him a golden one. But short of Ukraine’s, NATO’s, and the US’s appeasement of and surrender to most or all of Putin’s unreasonable wishes and demands before the war ever began (and/or of their being so strong as to convince Putin to postpone the invasion until a weaker administration presented itself), in my opinion nothing would have stopped him.
But the arguments in the US continue unabated. In line with this, it’s instructive to look at this interview with Walter Russell Mead, who is talking here about historical strains in US foreign policy:
Q: And it’s the case that if one doesn’t look back to history, one tends to see each case — Kosovo, the debate over NAFTA, relations with China — as a distinct, discr[ete] case study with no overarching view of what it says about our past or how it relates to our past and what it might say about our future.
A: Yes. For example, in the revolutions of 1848 in Europe, the Hungarians threw off the Austrian yoke, but the Russians came in and crushed them. The leader of the Hungarian resistance, Kossuth, came to America. His tour of American was an amazing event. Thousands and tens and hundreds of thousands turned up. There was a demand that the President of the United States receive him. People wanted the United States to do something about the crushing of the Hungarian freedom movement and, in general, the crushing of the democratic revolutions of 1848. We actually did send the navy to Rome, where the papal forces had crushed the republican forces in Rome. And we provided political asylum for the refugees of 1848. So we did end up intervening a little bit. But to listen to the Bosnia/Kosovo debate, you would never have thought — and believe me, the 1848 event was not an isolated event, either, in American history — you never would have thought that these debates over humanitarian interventions are something that go back to the eighteenth century in the United States. And that, in general, the forces and the arguments that advocate and resist these interventions tend not to change all that much over time.
That’s about the US. For Ukraine itself, this speech is the way the defenders of the country probably feel in facing Russian aggression:
Shall we resort to entreaty and humble supplication? What terms shall we find which have not been already exhausted? Let us not, I beseech you, sir, deceive ourselves. Sir, we have done everything that could be done, to avert the storm which is now coming on…In vain, after these things, may we indulge the fond hope of peace and reconciliation. There is no longer any room for hope. If we wish to be free…we must fight! I repeat it, sir, we must fight! An appeal to arms and to the God of Hosts is all that is left us!
They tell us, sir, that we are weak; unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when a [Russian] guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance, by lying supinely on our backs, and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot? Sir, we are not weak if we make a proper use of those means which the God of nature hath placed in our power…Besides, sir, we have no election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in submission and slavery!…
…Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace but there is no peace. The war is actually begun!…What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!
The Ukrainians are familiar with the Russian yoke, thank you very much, and the vast majority don’t want any part of it.
Ukraine is not America’s tar baby?
I await elucidation from the commenting savants.
“Did the US politicians and bureaucrats like Nuland, Vindman, and Hill lead western-oriented Ukranians down the primrose path to disaster by making them think that NATO would support them or that the Ukraine would eventually join NATO?”
Nuland, Vindman, and Hill are a troika of perverts leading Ukrainians and us down the primrose path of covering up by a nice deep war the decades of corruption they fostered and arranged inside the Ukraine for their own perverse pleasures and fortunes. This ain’t no noble Ukraine vs Evol Russkies except at the soldier citizen level. Above that, it’s US criminals allied with Uke Criminals vs. Russian criminals. Either way its perverted leaderships all the way down from the coke sniffing Biden right over to the coke sniffing Zelenkyites. Who knows what Putin’s sniffing other than being high on his own supply.
Bottom line: No idealism available this time. I’m fresh out.
shambling man, has already dribbled out that ‘regime change’ is the end game, the bearded marxist, chris coons has punctuated that point, meanwhile we draw down our weapons, and resources and spare parts are scarce,
Nuland, Vindman, and Hill are a troika of perverts l
You think Victoria Nuland is into leather?
I agree with everything here.
It’s pretty clear to me that the failures on the US’s part (and West in general) are that we’ve been too appeasing and accommodating towards Putin over the years rather than not accommodating enough as a depressing number of people have asserted around here and elsewhere since this whole affair kicked off in February.
Also, it should be obvious to everyone in America now that it’s generally not a good idea to have a weak, corrupt, and likley senile person occupying the oval office. It emboldens characters like Putin and Xi.
Private parts vs foreign policy, think with your other brain Gerald.
Shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine, “Hubert,” recommended Andrew Michta as someone worth reading. Last week, Michta published an article arguing that a Russian defeat could “redefine the geopolitics of Eastern Europe, ending the region’s status as a ‘crush zone’ of Great Power imperialism” (https://tinyurl.com/4enmm27n). This is a quick read of just under a thousand words. Please take a look.
Also worth reading is an interview (https://tinyurl.com/52u2jfwm) with N.S. Lyons, who writes a substack newsletter entitled “The Upheaval.” The interviewer refers to Lyons as an expert on China, and here’s how Lyons starts talking about Russia’a invasion of Ukraine:
“This is not how the China-Russia alliance was supposed to go down, at all. Russia was supposed to be there to support China during any invasion of Taiwan by being a formidable, menacing presence in Europe, while helping to break the West’s global economic and ideological stranglehold. Instead Putin miscalculated and prematurely blew it.”
I’m a natural pessimist, so I’m happy to read that Russia’s invasion might be defeated — however that’s defined — and that the consequences of that defeat would greatly benefit Eastern Europe and beyond. Similarly, I can’t help but enjoy reading that Putin’s botched invasion may reduce the likelihood of China invading Taiwan.
Unfortunately, I have to admit that my knowledge of this level of world geopolitics is limited to childhood play at the board-game “Risk.” Even so, it’s nice to know that not everyone thinks that the world is inevitably going to hell.
Hopefully. I mean I thought a lot of the sinophiles were really underestimating how tough an amphibious invasion would actually be. With the results in Ukraine I’d think China is now very reluctant given how much trouble Russia had with a land invasion.
Putin’s history is that of an aggressor and of a corrupt tyrant who murders his opponents.
Sort of like the Clintons?
I am not convinced that we should have entered WWI, so that is where I stand.
When the Clinton’s send hit men with nerve agents or Polinium-210 get back to me. Pikers in comparisson.
BTW this reminds me of something. I was listening to an NPR where they were talking to listeners right after the Rittenhouse decision came in. The attitude of both the hosts and listeners was literally the opposite of this. That Rittenhouse was to blame for being in the wrong place at the wrong time and should be punished anyway. Kind of disturbing people that considered themselves educated and enlightened thought this way. I would not be surprised if people had that kind of disturbed opinion when it comes to Ukraine.
Mike K:
Putin is many degrees worse than the Clintons They certainly aspire to greater powers than they ever had, though. .
Do you think we should only have declared war on Japan and not Germany during WWII?
“The fact that the crime would not have been committed – at least, not on me – had I not gone walking there that evening is utterly irrelevant to the apportionment of responsibility.”
Point of order. Your behavior in the example has nothing to do with the criminal’s responsibility. You, however, remain responsible for your own behavior. Going walking alone at night in a high-crime area is an inherently foolish thing to do. Your foolishness may not obviate any of the criminal’s guilt but you still did something foolish.
Mike
Correction neo: Germany declared war on us in WWII first so we were spared that decision.
“You still did something foolish”
And therefore Bunge will heap blame on neo while ignoring the perp. Not like he hasn’t done it before.
vanderleun:
I was unaware that you were so deeply familiar with the perversions of Nuland.Vindman, and Hill.
MBunge;
If you read what I wrote in the post, I already said the behavior was risky and not smart, but that those things in no way made me responsible or the perp less responsible.
This mess in the Ukraine will be playing out for the next year, actively. Long term remains to be seen, but not good even 10 yrs from now.
Mike K said we shouldn’t have entered WWI. He didn’t say what he thinks about WWII.
“It’s pretty clear to me that the failures on the US’s part (and West in general) are that we’ve been too appeasing and accommodating towards Putin over the years rather than not accommodating enough as a depressing number of people have asserted around here and elsewhere since this whole affair kicked off in February.”
It’s not an issue of appeasement or accommodation. And saying that Russia has been complaining about NATO expansion even before Putin came to power is NOT an assertion. It’s a fact.
Here’s an assertion: Putin’s thinking on whether or not to invade Ukraine was significantly affected by the American elite’s obsession with making him a boogeyman in order to undermine Donald Trump as President.
Mike
Kate:
I know he said nothing about WWIi. I’m curious though.
FOAF:
As a hypothetical. If Germany hadn’t done it first.
I think we would have declared war on Germany in WWII not long after Pearl Harbor even if they hadn’t declared war on us first.
I don’t set National policy. I have no input to National policy either.
I don’t even get to set my own household’s policies. Though I do get some input.
Ukraine is EUROPE’S problem. The fecklessness of the EU in general and major European leaders in particular allowed Putin to invade Ukraine and Russian forces to commit terrible acts of savagery against innocent civilians.
It’s totally Europe’s fault. Let Europe’s young men and women and Europe’s welfare state economies – unfairly subsidized by us Americans who ACTUALLY pay taxes – pay for this war.
Yes, we Americans are indirectly affected by European violence. But it’s been that way since 1914! Or, perhaps, even earlier.
Let those brilliant Europeans who are always giving us Americans moral lessons pay the price. Not America.
Why on Earth would we not ask ourselves what policy decisions may have contributed to the current situation in Ukraine? That sort of self-reflection seems to have been absent for the last thirty years, with the U.S. inserting itself at various levels all the way up to putting boots on the ground and dropping pallets of cash around the world like a WKRP promotional event – all with a great big shrug when nothing changes or it inevitably goes wrong, despite somewhat predictable outcomes.
To continue the analogy, if you continue walking in high crime areas, it’s of little consolation that your assailant is brought to justice but you’re found dead in the street because repeating a prior mistake.
Of course Russia bears the blame in this war of aggression, and I do feel sorry for the innocent people caught up in the storm, but this is a European problem. Our hands are dirty enough in this sorry affair. Americans are rightfully fatigued by European inability to work-out their troubles. It’s time to take the training wheels off.
If Putin’s aim was to prevent NATO expansion, this is a major failure for him. Sweden and Finland will apply for membership in May:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10751743/Sweden-Finland-agree-apply-NATO-membership-defiance-Russian-threats.html
The entire argument that if the West / the USA / NATO had done or not done this or that, then Putin would not have invaded Ukraine, is specious.
Any major historical event one chooses to examine in RETROSPECT can be blamed / explained by any logical series of events, and the actions chosen to justify one’s opinion will be determined to a great extent upon that individuals world view.
So, if not for the onerous elements of the Treaty of Versailles, Hitler never would have become Chancellor. If the UK and France had “allowed” Hitler to invade Poland and had chosen to totally ignore Hitler’s invasion , there would not have been a WWII
Of course, if Hitler was not determined to create a Greater Germany, there would not have been a WWII.
If the UK had decided to take France’s side during the Franco-Prussian War, than WWI may have started 45 years earlier. If France had decided to ignore
a telegram – a telegram !! – than there would not have been any Franco-Prussian War.
If Russia had ignored the decision of the Austrian-Hungarian rulers to “punish” Serbia for assassinating the Archduke Ferdinand, then there would have been no “flame” that initiated WWI.,
If FDR had not ceased sending oil to Japan and basically kept his mouth shut in re: to Japan’s “activities” in Manchuria, there would have no Pearl Harbor.
If, if , if, if…………….
The fact is that on this planet, there are murderers, rapists, thieves and child molesters, drug dealers, pimps, etc. And I am sure all sorts of explanations can be provided to explain their behavior.
BUT THAT DOES NOT EXCUSE THEIR BEHAVIOR !
And the fact is that some leaders of nations unfortunately are real bad apples. Let’s see; Castro, Kim Jong, Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Napoleon, Tojo, Mao and, oh that’s right VLADIMIR PUTIN.
These guys will do what they will do.
Pretty much all of them invent, devise , concoct reasons to justify their actions. Consistent within their reasoning is that they are compelled to embark upon the course of action they initiate.
Yep, they are being FORCED to do what they will do.
And every time, without fail, there will be many many useful idiots who will tell us morons that the bad actors are being forced to behave badly because of actions, events, or policies imposed upon them by outside agencies or internal “enemies of the state.”
One way or the other, Putin was going to invade Ukraine. He himself stated that Ukraine has no right to exist as an independent nation. He might as well have proclaimed that Russia needed Lebensraum and those dastardly Ukrainians (Putin’s version of Hitler’s Jews) were to blame.
This comment by Putin – that Ukraine has no right to exist as an independent nation is conveniently ignored by those who blame the USA, NATO, or the incredibly stupid morons in the US State Dept or whomever.
That Ukraine is corrupt and led by crooks and drug users is besides the point. If you leave your car unlocked ( a big mistake) whose fault is it if it gets stolen.
Let’s see; oh , that’s right, the thief, not you, gets arrested .
Rulers of nations are human. They suffer from the same personality foibles – albeit with far greater quantities of arrogance – as anybody else.
Some rulers are good, some are real bad.
What is so hard to understand about this?
Why on Earth would we not ask ourselves what policy decisions may have contributed to the current situation in Ukraine? That sort of self-reflection seems to have been absent for the last thirty years,
No, you just haven’t been paying attention. The innovation of the last 30 years is the blame-America-first discourse developed a starboard variant in addition to its usual portside variant.
Americans are rightfully fatigued by European inability to work-out their troubles.
Again, this is a “European” problem only inasmuch as it is occurring in a segment of Europe. It is not ‘Europe’s’ troubles, but Russia’s trouble. Russia’s trouble is an unwillingness to be content with its territory, an unwillingness expressed in beating on the Ukraine. (Another problem is an inability to develop and maintain a full repertoire of responses to problems in international relations. They default to threats and bullying).
If Putin’s aim was to prevent NATO expansion, this is a major failure for him. Sweden and Finland will apply for membership in May:
I’m hearing the voice of an old gal pal from my tween years: “Ah, face”.
Russians selling coffee:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmhIizQQol0
On a previous Ukraine thread, miguel cervantes, referring to the Potato regime, said They stole our country from us, in order to destroy it, change my mind
Exactly correct. Off topic? No. Until the theft is rectified, it’s the underlying reality of most other topics. Those easily distracted from it are looking for an escape or enjoying a cushion that they think will get them through this life unscathed. The only way forward at this point is promoting, working for, and/or contributing to strong MAGA candidates and election integrity efforts.
Actually that is appeasement. The implied argument being that we (meaning NATO members) should never have even openly talked about the possibility of making Ukraine a member… or else.
No one forced him (it would probably be a “him”) to break the law and attack or rob me. The fact that my decision could be considered somewhat risky and not all that smart has nothing to do with the fact that he has total responsibility for his own crime and I have none.
While I would agree, my local police have informed me that if I were to leave my garage door open in the middle of the afternoon while I work in my backyard, well…that’s just an “invitation” to teenagers and such to commit a crime. They got very uncomfortable when I suggested that someone I never met being in my garage just might be an open request for an @ss beating.
Here’s a Twitter thread that decently sums up the differing ways of viewing Russia/Ukraine without tipping the scale toward one or the other.
https://twitter.com/DrRadchenko/status/1518105261348687872
Here’s a chunk of what the Russians are saying about what they are doing… via an account on Telegram:
====
A good night text for you , you‘ll like it a lot 🙂
In general, tactics in the Izyum direction have not changed. Parts are moving from settlement to settlement, leaving units to control key points.
The First Tank Army continues its steady advance westward from Izyum on both sides of the Seversky Donets River. Plants and Chervony Miner were taken, Velyka Kamyshevakha, which is a major defense center of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, is visible through binoculars.
The heroic 20th army, having taken Sukha Kamenka and Suligovka, attacks the enemy in the direction of the village of Dolgenka and Kurulki, cutting off the supply routes to the units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine throughout the Slavic-Kramatorsk agglomeration.
Parts of the 41st Army reached the line of the Oskol River.
The low rate of advance, instead of moving in long columns at the beginning of the war, made it possible to reduce losses in personnel to a minimum, while at the same time inflicting huge damage on the enemy.
For example: the 39th brigade, which stormed Suligovka, has a couple of dozen dead and several dozen wounded during the entire period of hostilities, while only the 95th brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine lost more than 100 people killed in battles with them, while being in a well-prepared defense. And in addition to the 95th brigade, units of the 93rd mechanized and 25th air assault brigades of the Armed Forces of Ukraine were also defeated there.
As many have rightly noted, they stopped showing Russian prisoners, and the reason for this is simple, they simply do not exist. On the other hand, fresh batches of captive ukros are sent to Russia every day.
We have problems, the war forced us to look at and evaluate many things differently, but what I can say for sure is that now we see a completely different army than on February 24, 2022. And this can be best described in the words of A.S. Pushkin:
But in the temptations of a long punishment,
Having endured the blows of fate,
Strengthened Russia. So heavy mat, crushing glass, forges damask steel.
https://t.me/SolovievLive/103073
====
“I don’t go out walking at night in a high-crime area. But if I did, and if I were to become the victim of a crime there, the person who committed that crime is 100% responsible. I bear no responsibility at all. No one forced him (it would probably be a “him”) to break the law and attack or rob me. The fact that my decision could be considered somewhat risky and not all that smart has nothing to do with the fact that he has total responsibility for his own crime and I have none. The fact that the crime would not have been committed – at least, not on me – had I not gone walking there that evening is utterly irrelevant to the apportionment of responsibility.” neo
True, you would bear no responsibility for their crime. However, if you knowingly placed yourself in a situation involving high risk, you would bear responsibility for that action.
om,
“When the Clinton’s send hit men with nerve agents or Polinium-210 get back to me. Pikers in comparisson.”
Vince Foster and Seth Rich might argue otherwise.
FOAF,
“And therefore Bunge will heap blame on neo while ignoring the perp.”
Bunge did no such thing. He first agreed that the perp bears responsibility for their actions. Then pointed out that we are all responsible for our conscious decisions.
Kate,
“If Putin’s aim was to prevent NATO expansion, this is a major failure for him. Sweden and Finland will apply for membership in May”
Presumably ‘unintended’ consequence: the increased likelihood that the world will move closer to nuclear war.
“There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death” Proverbs 14:12
JohnTyler,
“Any major historical event one chooses to examine in RETROSPECT can be blamed / explained by any logical series of events, and the actions chosen to justify one’s opinion will be determined to a great extent upon that individuals world view.”
Does that also apply to you?
Art Deco,
Unless gmmay70 has previously engaged in “blame-America-first discourse”… a willingness to “ask ourselves what policy decisions may have contributed to the current situation in Ukraine?” is not evidence of engaging in “blame-America-first discourse”. While declaring that self-examination itself… is evidence of such, is evidence of intellectual avoidance.
vanderleun:
Whom are you addressing when you write, “a good night text for you”?
You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to ME?
NAH. It’s part of the quoted text. It’s how the item starts. I supplied a link.
@Mike K
Very much like the Clintons right on down to the dysfunctional and debauched “family”/private life. The main differences is that Putin rarely even has to pretend he’s anything other than a dictator and so can make his equivalent of Arkanscide even more blatant and prolific, but he might act on a smaller scale than the Clintons.
Fair, and I can understand why even if I disagree. I think a lot of this comes from how thoroughly misunderstood WWI was on multiple levels, particularly the US (I have seen people unironically argue that Wilson- admittedly a horrible wretch of a man who generally did far more harm than good- entering WWI “ruined” the 20th century while ignoring how most of the things they blame for that happened before he entered).
I guess the best response I have is to ask: at what point WOULD you suppose entry into WWI?
Because while it tends to get overshadowed by the sequel and the Second Reich tends to have a sort of rose tint to it due to how unspeakably awful (and well known) the Third Was, by the time of 1917 the German Empire and its allies had not only behaved far worse than any other faction in centuries except maybe the Qing and violated lots of international law in the war (which you can argue- I think reasonably- was not the US’s problem) but had committed a conga line of acts of war against the US.
In large part because of this particularly perverse and onesided Cold War the Second Reich had- for some reason- towards the US starting sometime between the 1880s (when Germany and an ad hoc alliance of the US and UK- sound familiar?- squared off against each other in this kind of proxy civil wars over Samoa) and 1898 (when the US victory in the Spanish-American War SERIOUSLY triggered the German government for some reason and they outright concluded there was a need to break the Monroe Doctrine).
So the truth is that to a large degree, the US was already involved in WWI whether it wanted or not, because the Germans largely made us so.
Sponsoring terrorism by arming and funding just about every tinpot in Hispanic America that promised to shoot in the direction of the Yanquis? Check.
Repudiation of neutral rights and systematic attacks on US and other shipping? Check.
Trying to help organize a foreign nation (in this case, Mexico) launching a war of aggression against the US? Check (See: Zimmerman Telegram).
Terrorism on the American Homeland? Well, the Black Tom Explosion didn’t happen by an accident..
Ultimately reneging on the oath to stop the aforementioned mass sinking of US ships and going back to unrestricted submarine warfare? Check.
This was a track record on par with just about any nation or political faction the US had gone to war with, with the POSSIBLE exceptions of 1830s Mexico and Britain in the 1810s.
Wilson tried hard to avoid or ignore this (particularly because of how phenomenally pro-Prussian he was- what a lot of people arguing “the Allied victory in WWI ruined everything” is how many of his toxic ideas were the product of his admiration of Germany, from the “bureaucratic”/”Rationalist” state to his Fed Reserve), but ultimately it proved too much even for him.
@Gerard vanderleun
A: They’d be picking a remarkably strange way of doing it; war tends to bring scrutiny, especially on the areas where it is being waged. In much the same way that you saw the outbreak of the Rif War lead to a bunch of account-settling even in Spain that revealed things like one war hero having been killed by rifles he embezzled from army stores and sold to the Rif. I won’t say it is impossible but it is a dangerous game. Especially since the Russians would presumably have at least some motivation to reveal any info they found, and escalating the war beyond the Donbas opens the possibility of them finding more.
B: I find it curious you talk about those three but do not mention Putin, who is at least about as perverse and perverted as he is in his private life and also started the wars, both in 2014 and now in 2022.
Even if this logic were true, that doesn’t mean all criminals are alike. Even if the “Uke criminals” were this prominent (and I can believe that given Ukrainian culture) the fact is that they’d be FAR from the most repulsive criminals we’ve made deals with and supported against a greater evil or at least more immediate threat. As I mentioned before, the KMT and CCP during the Nanjing Decade make even the most outlandish propaganda stories of Ukrainian government and oligarch corruption look like wholesome children’s bedtime stories but they were far less of a threat to American interests or international peace than the invading Japanese.
So I’d rate corrupt oligarchs as lesser criminals than a wannabe genocide purveyor.
Fair, which is why while I am not QUITE fresh out of idealism, most of my stances are based on pragmatism that does not rely on believing Zelenskyy, Ukrainian politicos, or Western ones are good.
The simple fact of the matter is that Putin has not even alleged anything that would justify the kind of violence and perfidy he’s waged. Moreover, said violence and perfidy is a slap in the face to the US’s prestige and word due to violating things like the Budapest Memorandum and is bound to encourage a lot of bad actors (most of whom Russia is at least tacitly allied with) like the Iranian Mullahcracy and CCP.
And as a Californian Refugee, I dunno about you but I really don’t want to know what MEChA and La Raza will be like if they get encouraged at the idea you can violently dismember a nation in violation of treaties on the grounds of “traditional territory.”
I also don’t want to know how much of a boogeyman the Left will make Putin in order to further demonize and persecute us if he wins.
And of course, Vlad has shown he is incredibly untrustworthy and unable to use the power he does have responsibly; I have no reason to want him to have more power.
@Banned Lizard Understandable indeed, and I agree. And the fact that our own government(s) are illegitimate greatly shapes how I view the Ukrainian Crisis, starting with how I want to support the Ukrainian defense in order to help defang both Putin the real man and dictator and Putin the boogeyman the Left uses. But I do not want the US to be involved precisely because that would be even more of an open season for the Left to persecute us and other political undesirables.
Russia is I think a problem for what’s left of the free world and will remain so at least until Putin is removed, but unless you are Ukrainian or MAYBE one of the Eastern/Northern European countries on his border he is not the most important threat to freedom or sovereignty. Which is why as an American I say America must come first, and our own struggle against Biden and his puppeteers.
France might have ignored Bismarck’s telegram setting up the Franco-Prussian War, except they were having some loosey-goosey troubles in the government and could use an external enemy to tighten things up.
As a result, Germany became Prussia and Prussia became Germany. The Kaiser was Kaiser of all Germany, not just Prussia.
As to Neo’s walk down a dark alley: Decades ago, there was some interstate which faded into four-lane divided with access so slowly you hardly noticed. After a few miles, there was a RED LIGHT!!!
Keeping in mind highway hypnosis, I made it a point to pay attention if I were stopped at that light. One morning, checking my mirror, I saw a semi coming up my keister, turned right briskly and he missed me, highballing through the red without even a horn blast. Thank God nobody was crossing on the green.
I am so responsible for being alive–making a note about the conditions and then acting on it each time I was there–that being dead might be in part my fault if I’d seen the issue and not bothered to act upon it.
So it would be the driver’s fault if I were dead and my fault I’m alive. Grok that.
Somehow it is overlooked the past presidents whose policies might have stalled Putin are Clinton (8 yrs), Bush the Weenie (8 years), and Obama (8 years). Putin was half his present age when this presidential farago began. That totals a bunch of years, the stupidity of Iraq and Afghanistan and a general disregard of our military forces: Do more with less; piss away assets. Sure! And we are surprised Biden gave the Taliban $80B of leading-edge combat equipment ? Leadership is required, and these were not leaders. Biden the fool merely followed their path.
Unless gmmay70 has previously engaged in “blame-America-first discourse”… a willingness to “ask ourselves what policy decisions may have contributed to the current situation in Ukraine?” is not evidence of engaging in “blame-America-first discourse”. While declaring that self-examination itself… is evidence of such, is evidence of intellectual avoidance.
Geoffrey, I’ll speak slowly. It is absolutely bog standard that you have some egg-salad-sandwich in discussions like this offer some daisy-chain about how we’re at fault. The complaint that we should be ‘willing to entertain’ blah blah blah is silly; we’re badgered to entertain it every time.
Again, Bauxite has his usual guises and poses, as do you. They’re not persuasive.
Neo: Putin is many degrees worse than the Clintons They certainly aspire to greater powers than they ever had, though
Well, Putin is in a place he can do very bad things to people. I wouldn’t assume the Clintons wouldn’t be as bad or worse in the same situation.
To Geoffrey:
Sorry to be so late getting back to you I was in a Contamination Area. It takes a particular kind of fool not to recognize the difference in capability for evil of one (Vlad) who can muster nerve agents and Polonium-210 to murder, and the Clinton’s who though, evil, never had that level of sophistication. You may say dead is dead, but that would be the talk of a fool.
Putin’s problem with NATO is that membership in NATO complicates gobbling up nations. He fully intended to gobble up Ukraine. In fact before the Orange Revolution he was controlling the government. The “Little Green Men” in 2014 happened because he lost control in Ukraine.
There is a reason the former Warsaw Pact countries joined their old (nominal) enemy NATO after the fall of the Soviet Union. Likewise several countries that were former parts of the USSR. And why Finland and Sweden will probably now join.
It’s not an issue of appeasement or accommodation. And saying that Russia has been complaining about NATO expansion even before Putin came to power is NOT an assertion.
The utility of appeasement is contingent on your opposite number having circumscribed goals. What Britain, France, and Soviet Russia learned the hard way in 1939-41 is that their opposite number did not. Israel learned the same lesson in 1993-2000. You might have been able to appease Russia in 1997. Not true today. What we learned on 24 February 2022 is that they do not have circumscribed goals. They may reacquire them, but fool-me-once it’ll be a looong time before the small countries of eastern Europe ever it.
@MBunge
A Decent read, thanks.
Though I ultimately think that Radchenko goes far too soft on Putin particularly and the Russian Kremlin in particular. I myself lean more towards the “traditionalist” version, though I would go further. This I think was never purely limited to Vladimir Putin himself, especially since one of the seminal events I keep pointing to (the Transnistrian War, whose legacy still looms large over Eastern European history and in this war in particular) started well before Putin had power, raging from late 1990 to mid 1992, in which mostly-ethnic-Russians faced with the at-first-reform and then collapse of the USSR and dedicated to defending their power took up arms and fought the emergent Moldovan government, with the mostly-Russian army garrison in the area supporting them and then ultimately entering the war by bombarding Chi?in?u.
This I think shows that focusing too much on Putin’s personal psychoses, complexes, and grievances is the wrong action. That he represents a terrifyingly broad coalition among the old Soviet and emerging Russian elite who are still salty at the fall of the Soviet Union or at least the degraded state of Russia and view violent expansion on its borders, ethnic warfare, destabilization, and even state terrorism as a means to rectify it. Especially since Putin does not rule alone but is front man for a bunch of interest groups and cliques with the clout to help keep him in power. Indeed, if I tried hard enough I could point back literally centuries to traditional Muscovite disregard and high-handed treatment of the peoples in Ukraine that alarmed even allies of theirs like Bohan Khmelnitsky.
Moreover:
I think this is simple whitewashing writ large. I’ve written more on the internal dynamics of the conflict in Ukraine than most people (albeit in an unofficial fashion) as well as the lengthy and nasty Blue-Orange standoff that lasted a quarter of a century and saw things like the Orange Revolution and the Yanukovych Resurgence.
But that internal conflict in Ukraine started to fade in part due to how outrageous Yanukovych and Putin’s conduct regarding the EU Association Agreement was and was further muted by the Russian invasions. Frankly, the Russian invasion started in 2014 and the “internal conflict” in Ukraine and Minsk would not have happened (at least in the way they did) without that. As such, the “revisionists” would err in not blaming Putin for that.
Moreover, focusing too much on NATO expansion ignores the fact that this conflict is fundamentally not about NATO expansion, it is about Russian dominance of and political influence in Ukraine and Ukrainian politics. I’ve pointed this out to Geoffrey Britain a bunch of times regarding the chronology and how Ukraine was not seriously considering entry into NATO prior to the invasion.
Likewise, the grievances between the two countries such as the tariff war was separate (even if adjacent) to the EU/NATO issue and predated Putin’s rise.
Simply put, I think sometimes the truth is remarkably simple. Maybe this invasion was not “inevitable”, but it became so because the nature of the Russian government under Putin and kindred power players meant that they would never peacefully tolerate Ukraine breaking away from their influence, and whatever personal motives or alleged grievances (real or perceived) on the matter are ultimately secondary.
I honestly do think it is in this case. Pretty much every POTUS in my lifetime- including Trump- has come to office promising to mend relations with Russia (and for most of that time that means Putin), and have been sorely disappointed. That I think points to a problem in treating Putin and his kin for what they are, which some like Mark Steyn pointed out ages ago: anti-Western tyrants.
Agreed, but I think this should prompt the counter-response of WHY they are complaining about NATO. I think at heart – whether we are talking about Putin, Gorbachev, or Yeltsin- it is because it undermines Russia’s ability to lord over its “near Abroad.”
And moreover, complaining to the US or the West about NATO expansion is a more attractive proxy and move for Russian elites than the actual remedy: talking to the likes of Ukraine and Poland and asking WHY they want to join NATO so hard, and trying to alleviate tensions and old bad blood to walk forward in the future. I also like pointing out how most “realist” analysts and those emphasizing Russian opposition to NATO expansion (which I think is overblown in this particular conflict’s context but whatevs) tend to ignore how NATO expansion was driven from the bottom up rather than the top down, often in the face of extreme hesitation from not just many domestic Western audiences but also senior Western statesmen and particularly the major “Old members” of NATO like Federal Germany.
This is why I think Russian governments whining and shouting at the US etc. al. about NATO expansion (which they have been doing since AT LEAST Yeltsin if not Gorbachev) is ultimately an ineffective ego-soothing alternative to actually trying to mend Russia’s reputation and relations. And that failure to grasp that is now what is leading the likes of Finland and Sweden towards NATO.
There’s something to be said about how a given actor is the common factor in all the relationships that actor has with others, and I think the blame for this can mostly be laid at the Kremlin’s doorstep, on a level that transcends even Putin.
I don’t really see it, Mike.
Putin invaded Ukraine in 2014, which in fact put an end to the Obama era “reset” with him about a year or so before Trump even entered the political jungle and was smeared as a Russian Bot. The escalation of the war is new, but the war itself is not.
Only a complete narcissist, or someone who has never had to assess the effects of any action for corrective measures would think that U.S. foreign policy has been beyond reproach. The actions of the Obama administration, with HRC helming the Ship of State, to anyone who has been paying attention should disabuse anyone of such a notion that examining the effects of foreign policy is somehow “blaming America.” Good Lord.
I’m pleased to be the first to inform you that Europe is not the EU and vice versa.
To anyone who has been paying attention, this is absolute bollocks. Between the European need for energy and NATO’s overtures toward the Ukraine (and the reciprocal overtures toward NATO and the EU from Ukraine), Europe has its scent all over this. You think Putin wants to expand his borders because…why precisely? Your bizarre position would have me believe that all of Russia’s scheming, paranoia, and national strategy exists in a vacuum, completely independent of NATO and the EU. You think Putin’s threats to invade Finland and Sweden and nuke European cities is, what, simply a Russian domestic concern?
om,
Putin is the dictator of Russia and former KGB.
Clintons would like that kind of power, but haven’t had it and never will at this point.
The only way to know what they would do with that level of power is if we could witness it, but I’d bet they wouldn’t be one bit better, and Bill would no doubt have taken full advantage of the ladies if he was in Putin’s shoes.
To Geoffrey:
Sorry to be so late getting back to you I was in a Contamination Area. It takes a particular kind of fool not to recognize the difference in capability for evil off one (Vlad) who can muster nerve agents and Polonium-210 to murder, and the Clinton’s who though, evil, never had that level of sophistication. You may say dead is dead, but that would be the talk of a fool.
neo,
A really interesting post and an effective way to encapsulate some of the debate going on here, and elsewhere.
I’ve written very little here on this subject because I don’t have a strong, personal opinion other than: the death, maiming, separation of families, terror and material destruction are awful beyond words. It is hard to imagine how the attack can be “worth it” to Russia (especially given an almost certain, continual counter insurgency even if Ukraine surrenders), yet I also wonder if Ukrainians and Ukraine wouldn’t be better off not resisting; at least not now. But far be it from me to advise Ukrainians on whether the cause of independence from Russia is worth dying for, or if fighting now is more effective than some other tactic.
I hope to eventually verbalize my stance, and I’ve tried several times, but I end up deleting before hitting the “Post Comment” button. And I keep reading all of your comments and pondering.
Although I like neo’s analogy about a walk in a high crime area, and agree that the assailant deserves all of the blame, I find that more of an apples to pear (or maybe quince) comparison. Close, but there is a difference. Zelenskyy is not the only one impacted by his decisions and the decisions of his compatriots in Ukraine’s government. There are almost certainly some Ukrainian mothers who have lost sons and daughters in the resistance who would have preferred a diplomatic, rather than military opposition to Russia’s invasion, and who believe there are worse fates than saluting a Russian flag.
What if neo ran a daycare or nursing home or community college in a safe neighborhood and she received video and audio intelligence that a gang of MS 13 members believed the facility she ran was on their turf and MS 13 were on their way to take it over? Does neo deserve any blame for their actions? Of course not. They are wrong to attack innocents. However, neo, like Zelenskyy, is responsible for those innocents. The annals of history are full of armies that retreated, only to regroup, refortify later and gain the higher ground. Even against a very aggressive, dangerous invader.
You think Putin wants to expand his borders because…why precisely?
Because that’s exactly what he’s trying to do. The threat from NATO is that membership would complicate invading Ukraine. He’s not afraid of NATO invading Russia. He’s afraid it will make territorial expansion more difficult.
Zelenskyy is not the only one impacted by his decisions and the decisions of his compatriots in Ukraine’s government. There are almost certainly some Ukrainian mothers who have lost sons and daughters in the resistance who would have preferred a diplomatic, rather than military opposition to Russia’s invasion.
The latest invasion was intended to topple the Ukrainian government so Russia could take over. Putin wasn’t simply asking for a part here or there. He was going for the whole thing.
@gmmay70
That’s the thing. We absolutely should ask ourselves, honestly and deeply. I know I have. The issue is, the conclusion I have come up with is that honestly, our policy decisions have not contributed anywhere near as much to the current situation in Ukraine (that is, the decision of the Russian government to invade) as is often made out to be. To be sure the US and other Western nations have had an impact (and some actors like Soros have had a baleful one), but ultimately I do not think that changes much in the way of the fundamentals, even if it might have worsened or exacerbated them.
The Kremlin’s willingness to use violence, ethnic cleansing, and terror in an attempt to retain power and influence in its near abroad is not new, and indeed well predates Putin as shown by a kaleidoscope of different Russian governments supporting the 14th Army’s shenanigans in the Transnistiran War. The West offered an alternative and different sponsor in the turmoil between Russian and Ukrainian economics and politics, but it did not change the fundamental calculus NEARLY as much as many want to claim it did, since Russia has long wished to dominate Ukraine and has for centuries.
I’m not sure where the hell you’ve been these last thirty years but I certainly did not notice a lack of self-reflection or at least attempts at self-reflection. Indeed, there’s been a superabundance of self-critical to the point of self-loathing navel gazing here in the West, which is a major reason why our efforts have often been so ineffective.
Just yesterday I tore into some idiot on Reddit who asserted it was “Common knowledge” that Saddam had “no connections” to Al Qaeda and that had been debunked “a decade ago.” Which would surely have been news to Saddam as shown by the captured documents showing his opportunistic and brutal support of Osama and co on and off over the years. I still deal with idiots who claim there were no WMD found in Iraq (rather than “merely” rather few and older than we expected). The truth is we have taken self-reflection to a monomania that is often egotistical and counter-productive.
What’s the worse mistake: Walking in high crime areas (which perhaps you NEED to walk in or have to) or forever writing off entire areas of a city or country as “high crime areas” that are fundamentally unfixable?
I think we both know the answer there.
Oh, and this is before we talk about another fact: Crime tends to be somewhat “infectious.”
You may THINK you’re being smart, moral, and responsible because you never go to the Third World Country wracked by civil wars and literally cutthroat competition over the drug trade where people routinely chop each other up with chainsaws, but then you start finding your previously luxurious and relatively crime free neighborhood back in the States turns into a war zone due to said successful drug lords smuggling their “product” into your neighborhood. Like..say.. Florida?
And those in say New York or Dallas might think they are being smart by not visiting that war zone in Miami, but then deal with the fact that the Medellin Cartel put some of its money into nasty lawyers and corrupt banks for money laundering and have come to your neighborhood, spiking “White Collar Crime.”
Ultimately crime cannot be entirely eradicated any more than human evil, but it does have to be managed or confronted.
Au contraire. This is an American problem. We signed the Budapest Memorandum. We promised the Ukrainians we would support their territorial integrity if they gave up their Soviet nukes. So this is our issue, even if we can “lead from behind” and use it to try and kick the Euros in their rears to get in the game.
Or at least we could try if we did not have utterly self-destructive and tyrannical leadership.
I agree, which is why I did not accuse you of that. Though I do think we on the whole have had plenty of “self-reflection” or at least what passes for it. Actual self-reflection is valuable, but what is called that is often disguised narcissism, as if We could somehow change the axis of hundreds of years of Russian policy and attitudes towards Ukraine.
I disagree, even if it is just part of the story.
Sure, but not more than Putin.
Let me count the ways:
A: To reassert Russian power and prestige on the global stage in general
B: To sew instability and thus increase Russian dominance over its “near abroad” and “encourage” others like Belarus to toe the line.
C: To safeguard Russian dominance of the Donbas, Crimea, and Black Sea.
D: To prop up the Putin regime’s popularity.
E: To gain the economic benefits of the ancient “Black Earth” regions of Ukraine and the demographic benefits they have.
I could add more but that is sufficient.
I do not think it is a purely Russian domestic concern or that Russian agendas operate in a vacuum, but some are so old and deeply rooted they well predate NATO and show there needs a more thorough housecleaning.
seeing as the ‘free world’ has proven itself, less free than we thought, with the panopticon worse in the southern regions of oceania, australia and new zealand, the last is due to a lefty import from the UK, who has contempt for all the traditional liberties, but they are ‘free’ in one regard, the pursuit of hedonism, the
open contempt for traditional values, that’s what triggered the obama administration, and it’s mockingbirds like julia ioffe,over the targeted killings like politskayava, and litvinenko,
the events around Ryazan, are murky, the prologue is interesting however, turkish chechen and Russian officials all meeting in the south of france at khashoggi’s villa in the summer of ’99, one operative, basayev, had worked with the russians in their separatist endeavor in abkhazia,
then the series of bombings, that would trigger the second chechen conflict the methods that arose out of that conflict, the zachista, cleansing, the filtration center, concentration camp by another name, of course RT hammered coalition forces for much less aggressive actions, like abu ghraib, that was more impromptu snafu then policy,
@Rufus T. Firefly
Fair enough.
Fair enough and I largely agree. As for whether Ukrainians would be better off not resisting, my stance towards that is conditioned by two things.
A: It’s been proven time and again (in Ukraine’s history included) that the worst oppression and brutality comes when you have a group of armed forces lording over an unarmed or barely armed populace. So I certainly cannot fault anybody hesitant about their chances.
and
B: Ultimately, it is not my country so I think the Ukrainians can decide that (more on that later) and from a brutally pragmatic position I think the US benefits from supporting the Ukrainians in fighting and dying for their cause while weakening the Russian regime.
Fair enough RTF, and I can understand.
I agree it is not perfect.
I agree, but here’s the thing. Zelenskyy is not the only one impacted by his decisions, but that is one reason why he was elected: he was a johnny come lately to this war, which began in 2014 even if it violently escalated later Indeed, Zelenskyy came to power in an election mid-war in part because he proposed a diplomatic solution of a demilitarized vote in the Donblas oblasts that the Russians refused while more hardline Ukrainians scorned.
I think that there is at least for now a critical mass of Ukrainians who oppose most terms Putin demands and Zelenskyy- as an actor by trade- is savvy enough to position himself as the vessel for that defiance.
Sure, but this is more akin to Neo inheriting management of that faculty after the previous manager retired/ was voted out by trustees because of the MS-13 issue, and they were brought in to try and manage it.
Agreed, and I think that is what we will see.
Here’s an assertion: Putin’s thinking on whether or not to invade Ukraine was significantly affected by the American elite’s obsession with making him a boogeyman in order to undermine Donald Trump as President.
It is my view that Putin has a clear understanding of US politics and understood that the Democrats were just doing that for domestic politics and it really had no deeper meaning.
Democrats have not been serious on foreign policy, and treat it as a game where they can score points, for example Clinton deciding on the air war in Libya. Putin might have opposed that but he understood the motive.
Do you think we should only have declared war on Japan and not Germany during WWII?
Germany , in a moment of idiocy, Hitler declared war on us. FDR had provoked Hitler as he had provoked Japan. Still, Hitler never understood the power of the US. I might add that most of that power is gone and the idiots running the US government could not win a war with Mexico.
neo – I think you hit the nail on the head again, which is why I like coming here. I agree that responsibility is the explanation for why some of us here seem to be talking past one another.
I suspect that all of can us agree that Putin and Putin alone is morally responsible for the horror in the Ukraine. I don’t believe anyone else intended for it to happen. If one is thinking about it in terms of criminal responsibility, as neo alludes to, Putin is clearly the only one responsible.
I’ll add a bit of a caveat by saying that if our State Department bureaucrats or other western powers acted in a way that prompted the Ukrainians to think that we were going to let them join NATO or that NATO would defend them if Russia, then we bear some (small) level of responsibility because, if that is the case, we deprived the Ukrainians of the chance to make a realistic choice about how to deal with Putin. (I am definately persuadable about whether we did mislead the Ukrainians, but I strongly suspect that the connections between our elites and certain Ukrainian elites had the potential to give the wrong impression.)
All of that aside, whether a nation bears moral responsibility for a war is one thing. Whether the geopolitics practiced by that nation could have avoided a war is an entirely different matter. I think Rufus T. Firefly’s daycare example and Richard Aubrey’s semi truck example are instructive. Putin is what he is. Could we have managed him better? It’s not “blaming America first” to ask the question and it’s not “blaming America first” to conclude that, yes, maybe things could have turned out differently if we had acted differently.
Mike K, it is consistent with Germany (and likely the rest of Western Europe to some extent) to underestimate the US. They did that in WW1 as well, and earlier in the late 1800s during a dispute over Samoa. And they fully expected Spanish victory in the Spanish American War.
And America’s power has been due to the American people much more so than the leaders.
An aside – it is very disorienting to see a hawkish left. Not too long ago, all the serious leftists had bumper stickers announcing that they were already against the next war. Now they the same folks are quoting Winston Churchill. Something just feels off about the domestic politics of the Ukraine war.
Only a complete narcissist, or someone who has never had to assess the effects of any action for corrective measures would think that U.S. foreign policy has been beyond reproach. The actions of the Obama administration, with HRC helming the Ship of State, to anyone who has been paying attention should disabuse anyone of such a notion that examining the effects of foreign policy is somehow “blaming America.” Good Lord.
You’re rebuking me for something I did not assert nor did I imply.
You want me to ‘entertain’ we’re responsible, you have to come up with a situation wherein that argument would be minimally plausible.
To anyone who has been paying attention, this is absolute bollocks.
If course it isn’t, but I’m not pre-disposed to manufacture excuses for Russia. You are.
Between the European need for energy and NATO’s overtures toward the Ukraine (and the reciprocal overtures toward NATO and the EU from Ukraine), Europe has its scent all over this. You think Putin wants to expand his borders because…why precisely?
Europe’s trade relations with Russia are irrelevant here. I think Russia wishes to expand it’s borders because that is what it is currently attempting to do and it has issued demands and threats in re the alliances of east European countries it once controlled.
An aside – it is very disorienting to see a hawkish left. Not too long ago, all the serious leftists had bumper stickers announcing that they were already against the next war. Now they the same folks are quoting Winston Churchill. Something just feels off about the domestic politics of the Ukraine war.
It is the establishment left you are talking about. They spent years marinating in Russia collusion, then there was the Ukraine phone call impeachment. That’s a huge part of it, and I also think they thought the war would give Biden a bump.
But there are some details: Still using Russian gas and oil, using Russia to negotiate for us with Iran, some reluctance to provide weapons, and then Biden making several offers to get Zelensky out of the country (which would have handed Putin a win).
Sorry I am somewhat off subject but
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kula
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor
@Mike K
Honestly FDR provoked Hitler far more than he provoked Japan. FDR’s administration was very Euro-centric and was mostly reaction-based towards the Japanese, mostly trying to cut their supplies and embargo them when they acted up. Before repeatedly lifting the embargos. Things were reaching a boiling point and FDR felt he needed to hang tough, but he still thought that embargoing Japan would keep it out of the war by preventing it from attacking the Soviet Union.
Well, he was half-right.
I’d imagine Hitler thought much the same after WWI. To be honest I have grave misgivings about the sham show we’ve seen from our tyrants but I don’t have much doubt we could defeat “Mexico.” Pacifying it or the bunch of factions is another matter.
We are winnowing our best fighters using the vaccine mandates making it ne’re impossible to adequately supply ourselves starving our energy production no wonder dugin thinks we are an easy mark
Turtler,
Explains why I have hesitated to write much here on this topic and your point about Zelenskyy explains why I haven’t campaigned to be the Commander in Chief of any nation’s forces.
Personally, there are a lot of things I would fight for, including fighting against a foreign nation attempting to topple the U.S. However, when others are involved I take a more holistic view based on human suffering. There is certainly some number of Ukrainian dead that makes resistance regrettable. Is it 99% of Ukrainians? 50%? 10%? I don’t know the population of Sodom in 1,900BC, but God assured Abraham He would not destroy it for the sake of 10 righteous people.
France was under Nazi rule for five years after surrendering in 1940. How much longer will Putin live? What are the odds the next Russia leader, and the Russian electorate, have the will to persecute Ukraine after Putin is gone? How much different would life be for the average Ukrainian under Russian rule?
If I was a native Ukrainian living there I’m pretty sure I’d be in the fight and willing to die for the cause. But when I consider advising others what to do, and try to calculate the path of least human suffering, I just don’t have the data to make a call I’m confident in.
Personally, there are a lot of things I would fight for, including fighting against a foreign nation attempting to topple the U.S. However, when others are involved I take a more holistic view based on human suffering. There is certainly some number of Ukrainian dead that makes resistance regrettable. Is it 99% of Ukrainians? 50%? 10%? I don’t know the population of Sodom in 1,900BC, but God assured Abraham He would not destroy it for the sake of 10 righteous people.
Given the situation–naked Russian aggression–the reasoning to apply is “is there a reasonable chance you can defend yourself?”. If the situation was absolutely hopeless and Russian victory a given then think to minimize the suffering. But you can’t establish the principle that the bad guys get what they want even when they can be stopped, just to prevent suffering.
France was under Nazi rule for five years after surrendering in 1940. How much longer will Putin live? What are the odds the next Russia leader, and the Russian electorate, have the will to persecute Ukraine after Putin is gone? How much different would life be for the average Ukrainian under Russian rule?
Highly likely the Russian impulse for a long time will be national greatness which includes uniting the greater motherland.
The Germans looted the French economy, sent able bodied males to Germany to work as slaves in their factories. Exterminated villages as reprisals for those who resisted. And many in France chose to collaborate with the Germans. And then there is the fate of the French Jews. Petain chose to sit it out and make an arrangement with the Germans. History hasn’t judged that decision favorably.
As regards the fate of the average Ukrainian under the Russians; condider two historical examples, kulak, and Holodomor.
Under the soviets that the likes of nellie ohr of fusion gps and cia fame, saw as reasonable
Don @ 7:03pm,
I am a big fan of our Founding Fathers, the Declaration of, and battle for, Independence, the Constitution and the nation it all brought forth.
However, I sometimes wonder if none of it had happened, if the Declaration signers didn’t commit treason and risk their lives, if Washington’s army hadn’t fought so bravely, if they hadn’t fought at all…
How different would my life be? Canada? New Zealand? Australia? They all continue to live under the cruel heel of Elizabeth and her reign of terror.
The difference between a Russian and a Ukrainian is similar to a Brit and Yank circa 1800. What percentage of the U.S. population would you have risked in the Revolutionary War to live like an American, rather than an Aussie?
The above isn’t cynicism, or sarcasm. I simply don’t know.
@Turtler
I see nothing objectionable about this. In fact, it mirrors my own opinion. And I’ve been unambiguous in saying where and who I think bears most responsibility in this situation. That said, that doesn’t mean I think we shouldn’t re-examine where we went wrong so that we don’t repeat the same mistakes. Why some people seem antagonized by this position is bizarre to me.
And I’m not sure where the hell this tone comes from. It certainly indicates to me that any disagreement isn’t coming from a wholly rational position. The foreign policy establishment has been far more consistent than the politicians, whom the selfsame establishment calls “the seasonal help”, and they have been consistently wrong, to the point of destabilizing entire regions under HRC’s steady hand at the till or completely ignoring the orders of a duly elected president (James Jeffries as just one example). So while some sort of self-reflection may have occurred, the lessons that might have been learned were summarily rejected.
This is torturing the analogy quite a bit. The point was to illustrate where responsibility lies in a situation of violence, not some sort of broader geopolitical comparison or domestic socio-economic commentary. But to your point, I have no problem addressing issues on the geopolitical stage. My point has been that we have done so very stupidly over the past thirty years, across multiple administrations, and show no sign of changing for at least another three.
I’ve got no problem prodding, nay kicking the Europeans into action on this. I’ve got no problem sending humanitarian aid to Ukraine. I’ve even got no problem arming them as long as they pay for it, even if on credit. What I do have a problem with is the idea of sending any of our young men and women over there to die for this nonsense when Europe can’t seem to wean itself off American Defense spending. And I’ve got a big problem with Zelensky demanding almost half the Ukraine’s nominal GDP in welfare from the U.S.. I’ve some goodwill toward the Ukraine, but crap like that will make my well run dry, Budapest Memorandum or not.
I didn’t even imply otherwise. Putin being the main problem doesn’t mean Europe isn’t involved.
Let me add to this most excellent list then – to secure a geographic weak point on the SW corner of the Russian sphere of influence. And they’re securing it from Europe, not that Europe presents and serious military threat to Russia, but Russian paranoia is powerful. And so this makes it predominantly European issue, which was and still is my point.
While I certainly agree on all points, my point was not strictly about NATO, but, again, to point out that this is largely a European problem.
You should probably reread what you wrote then
The only thing I’d want you to do, is to respond to what I’ve actually said, rather than claim I said we’re “responsible” and then expect me to argue that. There’s a word for that. I said we’ve contributed to the problem, and in the same comment I said Russia bears the blame. I’m not sure where your confusion stems from.
And then there is the fate of the French Jews.
Largely survived. Those deported were drawn from the population which had migrated to France after 1927.
Rufus T. Firefly:
Russia wants to incorporate Ukraine, not “just” occupy it. And wants it to be in perpetuity. And it probably will be, if the Ukrainians don’t fight. Last time it was a lot longer than 5 years, and many millions of Ukrainians died as a result. Surrender doesn’t necessarily save people.
Zelenskyy isn’t making the PatrickHenry/Churchill type decision alone, either. Seems to me the majority of the Ukrainians are with him. Many have left the country as refugees in order to wait it out, as well.
Also, France would have been occupied by Germany a whole lot longer if other countries hadn’t continued to fight Germany.
From the pogroms in odessa and lvov to the holomodor to babi yar that land is soaked in enough blood to fill the black.sea the upa also aided in the crushing of the warsaw rebellion as well as the volhynia massacre.
No, I’m not, and no competent reader would agree with you. You seem predisposed to the juvenile view that reviewing our foreign policy errors and correcting them means I’m some sort of patsy for Putin. I can’t roll my eyes any harder.
To assert that Europe’s trade relations are irrelevant in this situation is quite convenient for whatever point it is you’re trying to make. Germany’s deal with Putin for natural gas is one of the many factors that emboldened Putin, and enabled him to at least partially fund his misadventure in Ukraine. One wonders how spectacularly short Putin’s failure in the Ukraine would have been had it not been for Europe’s need for his energy.
Putin’s antics in Georgia and Crimea didn’t seem to deter certain EU member states from seeking Putin’s energy. And certain EU member states had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the current sanctions regime. It’s not like Europe didn’t know Putin was a monster, but decided to get in bed with him anyway, while leaving the bill to us.
Art Deco,
It is not the rate of your speech that is needed but a great deal more clarity. Try to improve the word salad you offered.
Sadly, it’s clear that you’re not open, even in the least, to persuasion. Not once can I recall you responding to disagreement with thoughtful reconsideration of even the slightest part of your prior position. It must bring you great satisfaction to be that certain of yourself…
Turtler,
“focusing too much on NATO expansion ignores the fact that this conflict is fundamentally not about NATO expansion, it is about Russian dominance of and political influence in Ukraine and Ukrainian politics. I’ve pointed this out to Geoffrey Britain a bunch of times regarding the chronology and how Ukraine was not seriously considering entry into NATO prior to the invasion.”
Stating an opinion does not make it necessarily so. That applies to you, as much as myself. Putin does indeed seek dominance of and political influence in Ukraine and Ukrainian politics. Wherein we disagree is in, of what his foremost motivation consists, in seeking that dominating influence.
As for “Ukraine was not seriously considering entry into NATO prior to the invasion” if that were so, then to what purpose NATO’s announcements in 2008, 2010 and 2020 that the Ukraine would be admitted into NATO at some yet to be announced date?
Great way to stir the Russian’s feathers…aye?
Do you imagine that NATO made those announcements without prior consultation with Ukraine’s governments?
BTW, if memory serves, Zelensky did call for the Ukraine to be granted a special exemption to join NATO and did so before Putin invaded. So Ukraine’s President wanted it and NATO has a clear history of being desirous of it. That despite repeated and fierce opposition to NATO’s advancement by Russia but they should trust in the West’s leadership’s good intentions, aye?
There’s a reason why Russians consider the appellation “Empire of Lies” to be an accurate description of the edifice that the West’s political and global leadership have created.
A label our betters are doing nothing to discredit.
Yes the first was what sparked jabotinskys (the founder of the likud) political awakening there is a reason they call it the bloodlands
neo,
I don’t disagree with what you write, but it really boils down to Ukraine’s odds of repelling Russia. Ukraine is doing better than most anyone expected, but many of her citizens are suffering mightily. How far will Putin go and will resisting him result in a better outcome than some form of surrender?
To go Godwin, and compare Putin to Hitler, I suppose the question is: is Ukraine Poland or is Ukraine Great Britain? Poland fighting to the last man in WWII would have resulted in Poland fighting to the last man. And woman. And child.
I hope Putin isn’t Hitler and I hope Ukraine isn’t Poland. Those are the bets Zelenskyy is making. I admire his courage. I hope it is matched by an accurate assessment of Russian forces, armaments and strategy. The die is cast and I am sincerely rooting for him and the Ukrainians.
For my people the rum and coke nic has been called the little lie, the us could not be bothered to deal with marxist on its doorsteps they go everywhere from the horn of africa to the gulf of tonkin but one place is untouched
Mike K said we shouldn’t have entered WWI. He didn’t say what he thinks about WWII.
WWII was a consequence of WWI and I consider them one war with a 20 year armistice. The only difference was Japan. Had Hitler not declared war on December 8, Roosevelt might have had trouble getting us into a war with Hitler. We are living with the consequences of WWI even today. I don’t believe there would have been a Great Depression without WWI and Versailles.
Now, I am kind of an Anglophile and I shocked a friend, a retired British army doctor, when I said we should have stayed out of WWI. I added that they should have stayed out, too. I know about Belgium and the High Seas Fleet but the war, and the incompetent generals, destroyed the British Empire. Certainly, they destroyed that generation of young men.
I don’t agree with Pat Buchanon’s book, The Unnecessary War,” where he blames Churchill and Edward Grey. but it stimulated me to read a biography of Grey. Grey had a lot to do with Britain entering the war. He acted much like US administrative statists do now. I’m not sure he was any more competent.
Hubris personified, Geoffrey projecting and opining about Putin’s motivations, and then bemoaning the west as the Empire of Lies.
What exactly does the west stand for today freedom of religion except islam freedom of speech freedom of association with precious few examples they have become oceania yes russia is eurasia poland and hungary are the exceptions
Mike K you might consider expanding your knowledge of WWI. Lectures by The Western Front Association on YouTube would be a start.
Have you read burleighs sacred places about the chasm the Great war left even among winners like the uk, we can leave out fergusons pity of war
The backstory to 1917, is rather fascjnating
http://www.encyclopediaofukraine.com/display.asp?linkpath=pages%5CV%5CA%5CValuevPetr.htm
History has a long tail in those parts just as in the balkans the serbs killed radic and a hardier breed took over, stalin arranged petlura liquidation and bandera arose
Miguel Cervantes:
I haven’t read that title. I’ve read Michael Burleigh’s Moral Combat, not the same Burleigh?
Smart phone limitations for searching (operator).
A lot of ideas here today. Some I agree with, some I don’t, but food for thought. Some rather simplistic, others not so much.
I just got back from France. Spent a week on the Normandy Beaches with 4 Historians discussing the Landings. Visited the Cemetery above Omaha Beach, for the 4th time. Always very sobering.
Then a week in Eastern France visiting, for the second time, sites of WWI. The massive and numerous Cemeteries there take your breath away. French, British, German and America. One small cemetery had about 60 graves of Brits, but included one German. All the same in Death. So many many Dead. I do not want more of them. But the Ukrainians defending their homes and way of life, that is what matters to them. How or why probably matter little in this Life AND Death situation.
“Sometimes people get confused about the assignment of responsibility for some bad result. For example, I don’t go out walking at night in a high-crime area. But if I did, and if I were to become the victim of a crime there, the person who committed that crime is 100% responsible. I bear no responsibility at all. No one forced him (it would probably be a “him”) to break the law and attack or rob me. The fact that my decision could be considered somewhat risky and not all that smart has nothing to do with the fact that he has total responsibility for his own crime and I have none. The fact that the crime would not have been committed – at least, not on me – had I not gone walking there that evening is utterly irrelevant to the apportionment of responsibility.”
Well, of course you are right. However, I do recall Scarlet being told to avoid the shanty town. She didn’t, and was attacked. Mostly scared, not really hurt. She got home and told people, and some men went to teach those people a lesson about manners. Scarlett’s second husband died in the resulting fight. Well, not her responsibility for the ones who attacked her. Her husband. at the time, didn’t consult with her about going, nor did any of the other men. Somehow, she got off scot free. Somehow, somebody needs to talk some sense into her head. But that would be a waste of time.
Yes, Putin is a bad guy. However, in a Control-F, only one commenter mentioned the Minsk accords. This is a bad affair all the way around, but the history needs to start earlier than 2014.
Why wasn’t NATO dissolved after the USSR dissolved? American arms manufacturers definitely have benefitted. Yes, Russia has nukes, but then so does UK and France. We have people in DC who really want to go after Russia. They want this war to drag out, and to drain Russia. I would suspect such people of contributing to an atmosphere where the war would be encouraged.
If Russia “wins” this war, it seems we should brace ourselves for the Russians trying to win this round of world domination. What if the war drags on, or Russia loses? My guess is the New World Order types will pivot to energy and food shortages and climate and crap, and seek covid flu lockdowns, and greater control over our lives.
My first wish is no war. Second is war over quickly. With the sanctions which seem meaningless, and disruption to food and fuel, dragging the war out makes things worse for everybody. I’m not interested in making sacrifices to keep the poor and corrupt Ukraine poor and corrupt. However, the shortages and crisis atmosphere will make it easier for control freaks to destroy lives. The Davos, New World Order people will make the world much worse if they win.
Remember the arab spring this will be that on steroids all around the world the longer this war goes on.
So much blather. I believe that history offers insights. If it is honestly recorded. I also believe that it is nonsense to use history as a contemporary road map; or as an excuse, or explanation for current decisions.
Early on, as Putin huffed and puffed about invading, I said that I did not want Ukraine to be invaded, but I did not think America should be drawn into the conflict.
I was wrong.
I clearly had no concept of what would occur. Should our Governing and foreign policy/intelligence mavens have anticipated? I don’t know. But, they do get paid for anticipating events and outcomes. They also get paid for steering the ship of state; including changing course when it is clearly warranted.
Early on, as it became more likely that Putin intended to follow through on his perversity, I realized that we needed to stand firm. When Putin rattled his sabres, there certainly should have been no talk of shaping our response to avoid provoking escalation. It should have been clear that, although we were not committing to any specific course of action, we were not sacrificing any options either; and would consider naked aggression in Europe as intolerable, and requiring a robust response.
If there is to be civilization, there must be some willingness to defend it whenever it is threatened. What is happening in Ukraine is uncivilized; and if tolerated, threatens civilization elsewhere.
Vanderleun, your little diatribe about perverts. cost you credibility. How irrelevant. Who cares if the Ukrainian elites behaved like elites around the world tend to behave? Who cares if they are a bit more corrupt than the political leadership in our major cities and, yes, our own First Family? If they are. Who cares about Zelensky’s past? He is standing very straight and tall now.
The Ukrainian people are being slaughtered simply for defending their own homeland. The (so called) civilized world is not doing enough to stop it. That is the issue.
Whatever it takes.
If I were not so old and feeble; I would be there. Maybe I could fly their airplanes, if they have any.
By the way. I consider the hysterical talk of nuclear armageddon to be just that. Putin may be crazy, but he cannot act alone. People of a certain age lived through all of this before. In fact I was at one time qualified as a “nuclear delivery pilot” in the USN. (That’s not like driving the UPS truck.) We were ready, but never sincerely believed that we would be called on to exercise our qualifications. The threat–from Russia– is less real now.
Why wasn’t NATO dissolved after the USSR fell apart? Yeah that would have been wise? Something about cause and effect escapes it seems. Why didn’t Roosia disband it’s arms and turn them back into tractors? Oh. you didn’t know how much foreign exchange Roosia earns from arms sales? Oh that is the West’s fault. How many countries of NATO kept up Cold War spending levels after the USSR cratered? Try NONE. That was the Peace Dividend. The End of History and that BS, Roosia got back to its historic old behavior. Sorry you missed that.
Now Vlad has brought NATO and Europe out of its 30 years of Unicorn thinking. But somehow it is the west’s fault for his behavior. You can’t control him so just kick the dog?
Maybe if we didn’t have a Navy or Air Force the CCP would just live and let live? You trust the CCP and the Roosian Federation I take it. Do you trust the NorKs and Iran too? Or is it the fault of those “themsters” (our mysterious monsters) in the west and not the CCP and Roosians?
I noticed some “failure to communicate” in the discussion earlier, caused by two ways of reading a sentence:
1. Why does he want to expand his borders?
2. Why do you think that he wants to expand his borders?
Hopefully that’s as clear as mud! 🙂
Oops, sorry, I was trying to explicate the ambiguity in this sentence:
You think Putin wants to expand his borders because…why precisely?
“…because…why precisely?”
Recidivist Russian imperialism…
– The Tsars
– The Soviets
– Putin
…which one may well have thought—with the dissolution of the USSR—was all “behind us”.
Well think again….
http://www.ukemonde.com/murderbymoscow/petlura.html
Read the link above—thanks much Miguel for the reference to Petlura/Petliura—and notice that the parts of it referring to Ukrainian nationalism of +/- 100 YEARS AGO (vis-a-vis Tsarist Russia and its Communist successor) could have been written about the current conflict.
(Alas, post-WWI Polish delusions of empire are also complicit, causing significant Ukrainian death and destruction, if to a smaller degree…but still…)
File under: Remembrance of Empires Past….
@Mike K
Largely agreed.
I really don’t. I mean, for better and for worse (and I’d honestly argue mostly for the better) the world of 1913 and the world of 1920 were very different places. The people who we fought in WWII were the heirs of the leadership we fought in WWI (one of the really untold stories is the way that Erich Ludendorff- a man many have never heard of- went on to be the John the Baptist for modern totalitarianism), but few of them served in the same military (indeed, two of the Axis Big Three were on our side). There were commonalities but the issue was similar.
Not really. Japan, Italy, a treasonous and mass murderous Soviet Union in comparison to the less repulsive Imperial and Republican governments in Russia, etc.
This much is true, though I do think he would have gotten his way sooner or later. One thing Hitler was astute to note was FDR was very consciously gearing up for a 1917 style entry into the European War far earlier than even Wilson had.
This is true. However, I think that in many ways- especially in politics- the consequences of WWI were mostly better. Certainly better than the alternatives. Moreover, some kind of massive conflict was made inevitable by the inability of the German and Austro-Hungarian leadership to reconcile themselves to the fact that they were getting their economic teeth kicked in peacefully and that they could reconcile themselves to this and give up their dreams of authoritarian grandeur, adapt so that their clunky odd systems of Royal Socialism could start dealing punches to the likes of Herbert Dow, or go out fighting.
Honestly the world is better where absolute monarchism- the bane of centuries- is now a fringe ideology, things like the Hague and Geneva Conventions at least have some salutary effect on moderating the horrors of war, and the world does not have to deal with international politics being dominated by a bunch of odd Monarchico-Socialists who think genocide is a fine way to iron out border disputes and that things like the free market and democracy are an inevitable threat to be destroyed.
I can think of half a dozen nations and people that flat out Would Not Exist had the Central Powers won WWI and continued on their pre-designated policy courses, and this would be the norm in international politics in a way that even Putin’s Russia and Xi’s China have never been able to be too straightforward about.
Oh yah, and you like a world in which Weapons of Mass Destruction are something taboo and used for deterrence? Well, you can probably forget about that in a world where the Central Powers win, because if they can break international law to do things like poison gas and can be seen to have gotten an advantage out of it, they’d probably keep doing it in the leadup to what would probably be (in their eyes) an inevitable Atlantic Confrontation with the US.
This I can’t agree with. A lot of the roots of the Great Depression came from the follies of a lot of early modern and proto-Keynesian fiscal policies, most of which were in place before WWI or made worse (and- funnily enough- a lot of which were inspired by German norms like the rush to confiscate Gold in the leadup to WWI). WWI and the hellishly complicated debt and rebuilding system made the system worse and more strained but I think the growth of the Progressive Leviathan and credit gone wild would’ve led to something like it.
And ironically, as bad as FDR was- and make no mistake, he was QUITE Bad, especially on domestic policy and fiscal matters- he was ironically MORE MODERTE than Wilson and a generation of prior Progs were in part due to seeing the overreach he had during late WWI.
Honestly, I can’t agree. Firstly: a lot of people who talk about “incompetent generals” in regards to the British Army (especially at the higher levels) tend to be too dependent on a lot of outdated garbage like Alan Clark’s The Donkeys.
Granted, there were quite a few incompetent British Generals (Charles Townshend of Kut infamy being the one at the top of my list for being not only incompetent but also repulsive and devoid of the redeeming features- like bravery and humanity- that other stinkers like John French had), but the top ones- especially on the Western Front- tended to be rather competent. Including the much-vilified Haig.
Which is controversial, especially when I argue that there is a qualified and quantifiable difference between being incompetent, and making costly mistakes. Especially when the cost is on the scale of the First Day of the Somme. But it’s hard to understate how these people basically WROTE the book on modern warfare and performed far better than a parade of psychopaths and incompetents elsewhere, like Luigi Cadorna in Italy, Conrad von Hoetzendorff in Austria-Hungary, Enver Pasha in Turkey, and so on.
Secondly: The British Empire was blooded deeply by WWI, but it was not destroyed. In contrast, allowing the Germans to dominate the North Sea and Channel Ports would have destroyed the British Empire and probably crippled British freedom and international peace not long thereafter. The horrible fact of the matter is that the idea of sitting the war out and letting the Germans have their fun seems more superficially welcome until you start mentally gaming out the probable aftermath of that and how a continental juggernaut in control of Europe (especially Eastern Europe) with massive safe harbors in the Baltic to build a fleet capable of threatening Britain will play out. Especially when we ask about the consequences of Britain putting all its eggs on the immediate threat and drawing down its power to face down the Germans across the Channel, at the expense of letting everything go.
Honestly, I think that’s a great disservice to Grey. Not only because I think he made the right call in a monumentally unenviable situation, but also because it was largely thanks to him that peace remained as long as it did in the face of increasingly aggressive German and Austro-Hungarian trawling for an excuse or opportune moment for a war, at a time when Hoetzendorff in his role as Chief of the Imperial and Royal Army proposed “preventive war” even without casus belli at every annual meeting of the Austro-Hungarian Chiefs of Staff for more than a decade and the Germans began seeking open conflict with France while pursuing their crack-headed but utterly dangerous idea of forcing a confrontation with Britain over naval superiority.
He also is probably a major reason why Wilhelm’s attempts to mend fences with Tsar Nikolaj into some kind of grand “Three Emperors’ League Mark II” against the West fell through by pre-empting him.
It can’t have been easy for him to watch his life’s work seemingly go up in flames as a result of a terrorist murder in Sarajevo, the Habsburg insistence on Serbia’s destruction as an independent nation, and the Germans declaring war on the continent*.
* One thing a lot of people- and particularly those determined to whitewash the conduct of the Central Powers- tend to not realize is the order of the war declarations. The conventional schoolbook summary tends to go something like “Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, Russia declared war on Austria-Hungary, Germany declared war on Russia, France declared war on Germany, Germany invaded Belgium, Britain declared war on Germany).
But that’s actually NOT what happened. Maybe in an alternate timeline it did.
But what actually happened is that after the Austro-Hungarians declared war on Serbia, the Russians began mobilizing against Austria-Hungary (while specifically trying to defuse tensions with Germany by reassuring them it was not against them but their ally), the German Imperial Cabinet outright lied to the public about the nature of their correspondence and *Declared war on Russia first.*
Then, two days later, they *declare war on France and Belgium.* The day after that, Britain responds by declaring war on Germany. Then after a two day lull (during which time Montenegro- Serbia’s little brother- declared war on the Habsburgs) the Austro-Hungarians finally get around to declaring war on Russia.
That’s right. Germany started WWI because it escalated the situation from what Might have been a regional conflict between Austria-Hungary and Serbia and maybe Russia, to a continental and indeed global one. Indeed, its declaration of war on Russia at a time when Russia wasn’t even at war with Austria-Hungary (though it was obviously preparing for) basically ended the last chance that this crisis would be ended somewhat peacefully. Which I think says something about the mentality and morals of the people in the Zweibund’s leadership.
And to be fair from their point of view it was quite sensible, albeit monstrous. They had been encircled by the Entente and were being economically ground down, believing that preserving their power against the tides of reform and economic out-competition meant appealing to the sword. So I can understand why they did it, and also why I think Grey recognized them for what they were and rose to the challenge in spite of the huge cost it had for Britain, the Empire, and himself personally.
I think he was very correct in realizing the alternative would have been even more costly.
As for Patrick Buchanan, do not even get me started on that repulsive, lying little scumbag. As a history autist who sort of specializes in the 19th and 20th centuries- and particularly the world wars- I’ve had the “pleasure” of reading through his “Unnecessary War” and regard it as nothing short of blood libel on par with Der Sturmer.
In particular, the guy seems to have a burning hatred for Churchill and the British that translates into outright libel.
I could go on ripping Buchanan apart in multiple ways, but my posts are already long enough as it is. And here are some general references to get you started on it.
https://scottmanning.com/?s=Buchanan
https://richardlangworth.com/buchanan
Basically, I don’t know WHY he decided to stake his hat on minimizing Hitler and the criminal nature of National Socialism or outright trying to ignore that WWI started because of a couple seething, angry Central European Autocracies (or rather their military leadership) who decided the proper way to salvage their economics was genocide. But he did.
And it’s also ironic how a lot of his nonsense is often diametrically opposite to the truth, such as insisting that Churchill maintained a “starvation blockade” on Germany after the Armistice while ignoring his relief efforts (as well as the fact that at the time A: Peace had not been signed, and B: There was an entire semi-rogue German Army in the Baltic under General Leopold von der Goeltz claiming to be fighting the Bolshevik invaders on behalf of the regional governments but actually trying to take over the region and prepare for a return to the war, so it KIND OF Makes sense why the Allies would be rather hesitant on allowing unlimited shipment to Germany).
The irony of course is that the Central Powers actually weaponized food, and under the Hindenburg Programme (acidly and accurately called “War Socialism”/”Kriegsocializmus” by the Germans) the Reich and its allies engaged in massive, continental scale looting to the point of famine in the occupied areas as well as a host of other atrocities.
(And people who ask why Versailles was raised so high on reparations tend to not know stuff like how the German military had illegally used POWs and civilians from the occupied areas as slave labor in war factories and did things like- upon realizing they were about to be evicted from a region- went around poisoning wells, destroying villages, and flooding mines even in the last hours of the war.
The Third Reich and other Axis powers would do similar in WWII. Not surprising since they- and the Soviets- basically based much of their administrative and military apparatus off of this system.
The likes of France, Serbia, Belgium, etc. had to rehouse the survivors and rebuild somehow and it wasn’t going to come out of thin air.)
@gmmay70
On that much we agree to a large degree. But I think a lot of it comes from the fact that it’s often used as a Trojan Horse for “begging the question” and the like in bad faith.
Try arguing against brick walls on incredibly basic facts like Saddam’s sponsorship of terrorism and the Taliban not acting in good faith re: claiming to be willing to hand over Osama. Or the idea that Teddy Roosevelt should be unpersoned for not being up to par with the standards of Current Year because of people who- whether sincerely or in bad faith- insist we need to be critical of our past.
And do it for 20 years.
It gets annoying after a while. And moreover I won’t pretend it is.
Does disagreement ever come from a wholly rational position? Well perhaps it can, but I concede I am not such a person on this issue. It is one of my weaknesses, and I admit it.
And like most people, I mingle reason and emotion, but I think I can hold the latter down to a tolerable level and argue on the merits and rationales.
Largely agreed.
I wouldn’t go that far, though yeah they have been often wrong. You’ll meet few people who are as full of contempt for Foggy Bottom as I am (and the Arabist stranglehold is a subject enough to get me ranting). But at the same time they have made valid points on a few things.
I hate the Witch but I’d be stressed to consider an “entire region” that started destabilized under Canckles’s hands rather than one she did. I opposed the Libyan Bombing Intervention and Syrian ones on legal and practical grounds because it was obvious Obama was not trying to get the right legal channels and because of the sign it would send to aspiring dictators with WMDs to never give them up or moderate, but Gaddafi and Assad dragged their own nations to hell quite happily with minimum intervention from the Foreign Policy Wonks.
Indeed, and that I think is the strongest argument for going back to the Spoils System if need be to fumigate the “Civil Service” and other ones.
Or they took the wrong lessons from it. Just take a gander at the pivot towards detente with the Mullahs of Iran (as if Germany hadn’t spent a couple decades showing how utterly failed that was).
Of course, but I think with reason and that even under such rigor the analogy holds.
Far be it from me to claim that everybody illegally shooting in a “bad part of town” is acting rationally or coherently as an evil genius, but I assume a lot of them are using illegal violence as a tool to try and expand their interests and get what they want. Rational malcontents who have proven time and again they will often repeat it or go on.
This is also why trying to clean up or at least contain the pathologies or bad actors in the crime ridden areas is important.
Fair, and mine was to try and view the issue from another side while incorporating those in.
On that much we mostly agree. Indeed I’ve made a point of showing how a conga line of US Administrations made many of the same mistakes (trying to buddy up with Putin being the one I’ve talked about most here but far from the worst or most persistent one). Trump was a welcome breath of fresh air in comparison but even he was not perfect.
On that much we absolutely agree.
Understandable. I am similar. I don’t have a particularly big problem with Zelenskyy making those demands or even the more inflammatory and I think disasters ones like a No Fly Zone. Even if he were as corrupt and inhumane as Jiang/Chiang was that doesn’t change the urgency of his situation. Moreover, I expect the President of Ukraine to agitate for Ukraine’s best interests or at least what they think.
What I WOULD have a problem with is if we uncritically jumped at everything he did, because that would be irresponsible and not putting America’s interests firsts. Of course, the problem with this “leadership” and Obama’s role as one of the powers behind the throne means not putting America’s interests first is exactly what the norm is.
Indeed, and fair.
A fair addition, though I’d note. While Europe isn’t particularly powerful or serious as a military threat, I do think that the state of Russia means that an EU that can march in the same direction and got on even partial war footing would indeed be a very serious threat to Russia- militarily, economically, and politically. Moreso since Russia seems to be stumbling on what was supposed to be its weaker little brother slash imitator.
Now add that to the prospect of- say- more muscular Islamist settler societies emerging from the ashes and appropriating the resources and I think you get even more.
I’ve been quite acid about Russian national and strategic psychoses, hubris, and paranoia but I’d be hard pressed to say they don’t have a point. I don’t think Putin is self-deluded enough (YET) To think NATO or the EU would roll over him without some kind of provocation (at least for the foreseeable future) but the possibility is there and Russia’s faced plenty of threats. With Siberia far away and Moscow dependent on Chinese Goodwill while Central Asia and the Steppe have been subjugated for a couple centuries, that leaves the Western Approaches.
Moreover, he’s had to see that the EU being unwilling to muster a force to roll over him doesn’t mean they need to. Yeltsin even before Putin complained that NATO expansion was a “humiliation” for Russia and the allure of trade with the EU (or at least the prospect) was enough to lure even some of Putin’s vassals like Yanukovych.
I’m not a fan of the Euros and their ingratitude and I agree they should be taking the lead. But I think one thing Putin isn’t wrong in is that they are a more serious threat to him and Russia- in both soft but even hard power- than you might be giving them credit for.
Fair and on that we agree. Alas part of the issue is that Truman etc. al. de-nadded our European allies a bit too much after WWII. Hopefully this might get the Europeans to act with more vigor, but I don’t hold out too much hope with this regime.
In any cases, apologies for any miscommunication and that tone from me.
@Rufus T. Firefly
Understandable.
Agreed, and I Thank God it is not my nation yet, though the rise of AntifA and the Biden regime make me question if that will last.
Nah, most of it was actually under Nazi Rule for about 4 years; June 1940 – (Fall/Winter) 1944. And it already caused a lot of damage.
Moreover, the occupation was only that short because- as Neo pointed out- not everyone stopped fighting.
Moreover, France was a tough nut to digest for a few reasons, starting with how Hitler viewed the French as too alien to directly annex/assimilate but also not inferior enough to be worth a concentrated campaign of extermination like Poland. Ukraine is in a less favorable position.
To answer those questions: Probably not too long. As for the next Russian leader though, I think that depends. But I think Putin is in many ways both a cause and symptom of greater issues, and to be frank I think unless he is discredited he will probably be replaced by someone of similar political orientation and beliefs and policies. Putin may be a strongman but he is head of an odd coalition of interest groups centered around the state bureaucracy, and my points re: Transnistria were meant to iron out how the issues often go well beyond Vova personally.
Depends but probably not good. The Donbas and Crimea have given us two decent examples, and while it isn’t like the horrors of Stalin or the Nazi General Governates or RKs it is a remorseless, grinding oppression to try and denationalize these regions for incorporation. Of course, there are many different possible Russias and Ukraine under something like-say- the brief February Provisional Republic of 1917 or even Yeltsin would be a significant improvement to many things (including I thin Kuchma’s reign). But I don’t think we’re in much risk of Putin being succeeded by some kind of free and tolerant democratic republic without a serious jolt.
I can understand, and join the club. I am a fat autist on a computer in America dealing with the creeping authoritarianism of Biden and co. The only shots I’ve fired have been on a range and I have no great idea how I would act. But that’s also why I figure I leave the decisions for that to the Ukrainians.
Coming to these posts and reading the comments is like having a graduate seminar in foreign relations that meets every day.
Sometimes the arguments are better than other times, and sometimes the evidence in favor of one side or the other is persuasive, and sometimes not so much, but the breadth and depth of knowledge and passion exhibited by the authors is energizing and instructive.
I am going to introduce a few readings that I found of interest, which are more “opinion” than “fact,” and which present some ideas that are applicable to the broader context of the Ukraine-Russia war. Some are repeats linked in other threads, but IMO they play well together.
https://amgreatness.com/2022/04/24/our-spanish-civil-war/
Victor Davis Hanson – heavy on the facts supporting his opinion.
https://peakprosperity.com/you-are-not-real/
via a Zerohedge post cited by Barry Meislin on last Saturday’s post
“For The Narrative-Creators, The Play Is You… And You Are Not Real”—
A very provocative analogy, which I find plausible — and not unique to the modern era.
https://notthebee.com/article/if-you-truly-want-to-understand-modern-progressivism-you-only-have-to-be-aware-of-this-one-single-easy-to-remember-fact
“It exists entirely as a reaction-driven philosophy to modern American conservatism.”
I don’t know that I would go with “entirely,” but “in many ways” certainly applies.
@ Geoffrey Britain
Correct. Which is why we should shape our opinions in reference to facts and evidence, as I pointed out. Speaking of which: do you need a primer on Ukrainian geography, or do you understand where Odessa is now?
To which I respond that quite frankly I do not have to care much about what his “foremost motivation consists of.” It is largely academic, and even if the establishment of a Greater Russian hegemony incorporating Ukraine much as Russian regimes have sought for centuries in the name of imperial glory and racial unity are not his “foremost” motivations, they are at least in the pile and thus cannot be ignored.
Moreover, I think a careful parsing of events can handily show that these factors weighed more heavily on Putin than things such as NATO expansion.
Learn the difference between NATO pronunciations, and Ukrainian government ones.
In any case, prior to the Russian invasions of 2014 NATO membership and even EU membership were extremely distant on the horizon and subject to intense partisan divisions, favored by a minority in the immediate future and still contentious later. Which is why the NATO pronunciations are of far lesser importance than things such as the Pact of Kharkhiv, which for various reasons all but ruled out NATO membership for Ukraine for decades… until the violation of it by Russia.
2020 is the one time this was clearly motivated to stir the Kremlin’s feathers, and given their conduct I cannot blame them for it. The prior ones were made at a time when it was still believed that NATO and Putin’s Russia could- if not play nice- at least mend wounds like Georgia and get along.
And in any case, the NATO pronunciations were not the proximate cause of the conflict in Ukraine. The EU Association Agreement proposal was. Putin skillfully neutralized the impact of the 2008 and 2010 announcements with diplomacy like the Pact of Kharkhiv to muted effect, but it was the backlash at Euromaidan that brought things tumbling to a head.
And of course by 2020 he was half a decade into a grueling undeclared war in the Donbas and was not in a position to adjust.
I don’t, but I do think that Ukraine’s governments could and would change their minds. As indeed, we can see from the multiple changes of orientation in the decade prior to the invasions of 2014. In any case the announcements had scant if any legal effect and Putin could shrug them off.
As indeed, he did.
He did ask for a special exemption, but he couldn’t have done so before Putin invaded unless he had a time machine.
https://kyivindependent.com/national/russian-court-openly-documents-moscows-military-presence-in-donbas/
This is why I keep referring to the fact that the war and Russian invasions started in 2014, not February. Putin escalating the invasion and dropping the pretexts that it was merely separatism underlines that.
NATO has a clear history of being desirous of it but has not had a practice of extending it with this kind of ambivalence and resistance to it that was present prior to the invasions. While the political consensus in Ukraine only gathered steam after Putin invaded and started the war in 2014.
Putin’s been happy to trust the West’s leadership and good intentions many times before, mostly when it benefits him to do so. The West’s leadership has certainly had a more trustworthy track record than Putin has.
And in any case, whining about NATO expansion to the US is largely ignoring the actual counter: trying to reconcile with and draw support with the “Near Abroad” to make NATO membership less desirable. And to what credit he can be given, Putin seems to have grasped this for most of his tenure regarding Ukraine, albeit in his ham-handed and rather impolitic way.
Euromaidan however saw this backfire in a big way. Why I’m not sure- was it the prospect of one of “his men” seeking an EU Association Agreement? Frustration at defections among “Blue Voters” to the Protests? Panic? Does it really matter at this point beyond academics- why but he reacted in a bunch of really radical ways, from encouraging Yanukovych to deploy Berkut and try to get the Ukrainian military to open fire in general, and when all of that helped lead to Yanukovych’s ouster Putin invaded.
In any case, emphasizing NATO in a war that started over the EU Association Agreement is torturous at best.
Last I checked, “Russians” are not a hive mind, so making broad and lazy generalizations about their common consensus- especially when consensuses are hard to gauge in general and made worse by authoritarian repression/censorship- is tenuous.
Though not as tenuous as trying to emphasize the role of NATO pronunciations on a war that started over an EU Association Agreement.
Or mucking up which Oblast Odessa is in.
Perhaps, but Putin seems hell-bent on rivaling them given things like the “Bioweapon Labs” twisting of the admittedly sketchy Biolaboratory stuff between Foggy Bottom and the Ukrainian Government. Had the Kremlin been smart at all they could have used Nuland etc. al.’s dishonesty as an easy cudgel to batter the West and especially the US over and sew doubt.
Instead they fucked it up by hilarious overkill such as alleging an “anti-Slav” bioweapon developed in a Slavic Country (apparently throughout the Presidency of their man Yanukovych too).
It’s similar to the shambles they’ve had with other lies.
Such as the discovery of an alleged terrorist plot by a “Ukrainian Nazi” who decided to sign their name- and I quote-
“Signature Unclear.”
As in one of the idiots making this obvious frameup literally wrote the words “Signature Unclear” in a legible-enough hand. And the idiots apparently didn’t think for five seconds when taking photos of the plot to NOT hold the folder up to the camera so the world can see it.
https://twitter.com/Zeddary/status/1518641354401886209?t=LTJkg4UebAvdAi59zz1YIw&s=19
https://twitter.com/sumlenny/status/1518624438358626304
How the mighty lineage of the Okhrana and Cheka have fallen!
Like, I was prepared to accept the “Medal” for the reconquest of Crimea with Zelenskyy’s name spelled in the Russian fashion was possibly authentic (and maybe a kind of trap set by the Ukrainians, producing a medal with that flaw so that when the Russians took it and tried to make propaganda out of it, it’d look like an obvious lie).
But here the FSB was apparently comfortable enough trying to peddle this nonsense.
@Millwaukee
Agreed.
Honestly I don’t mention Minsk much, because they strike me as the Taggu Truce of this war. A rather ceremonial but unserious agreement that neither side really trusted or honored and which was quickly rendered largely ineffective. Heck, Taggu might’ve had a better track record than Minsk.
Granted, I might dive into it more if I was writing more about the war itself rather than the outbreak and causes, but still.
Fair, which is why I generally talk a great deal about things like the two decades leading up to it such as Ukraine’s Cold Civil Conflict between Oranges and Blues and the Russian era.
A bunch of reasons, but mostly boiling down to a few facets.
A: Around the exact time that the tea leaves would’ve been most opportune for it, a bunch of crises hit. The Transnistrian War (showing Russian military misadventures were not dead), the First Gulf War, and above all the escalating crackup of Yugoslavia (complete with some war scares against Austria and Hungary by the Serb-dominated Belgrade Government, particularly during the brief war in Slovenia).
All of these outlined that Fukuyama aside, there were other problems than the Soviet Union that NATO might be useful for and might be appealing.
B: The fact that at this very same time, you had a stampede of nations asking to be let IN to the Alliance (often to the consternation of the senior, major members). Which is going to make rolling up the alliance a bit awkward for a bunch of reasons.
C: Bureaucratic inertia.
In any cases, there were a bunch of very good reasons why NATO did not disband.
Sure, but they weren’t the ones driving policy there.
Sure, but on an order of magnitude less. And particularly with a much weaker military that seemed vulnerable.
Indeed, which is an issue.
I’d count myself as among them, since I doubt that a quick and sharp defeat of Putin’s Russia is likely. I do not envy the people caught in the grinder, but at the same time it has been there for nearly 8 years, and I think a drained Putinist Russia is better on the whole for the world, even if we factor in the possible role he has as a check to our NWO types (which I put little stock in given how happy he is to work with them on occasion and how wretched he is in general).
Indeed, which is what worries me. And why I oppose the US or other Western countries entering the war. I want to see Putin’s forces be drained but I am willing to accept his winning in order to avoid it.
I doubt it, since Putin- while ambitious- has limited resources and is largely interested in maintaining his long term clients/allies and dominating the “Near Abroad.”
What I DO fear is that it will empower him and other bad actors he is alligned with like the PRC.
Yup, right in one. They were happy to do it before, and I’m sure they will keep at it.
However, I think even the ability to force them to pivot will be better. It will help defang Putin as a sort of boogeyman they can use to justify persecuting and silencing us, and the importance of energy independence and an armed citizenry are useful counterbalances to their pivots.
Does this mean we will win? Of course not. But it is worth an attempt.
Fair, and a sympathetic one.
They seem meaningless and in some cases like virtue signaling are, but mostly because the Kremlin engaged in a massive effort to outwardly project strength for the Ruble and economy at a high cost. If the sanctions keep up, that will start to waver.
This I think sums it up quite well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEpk_yGjn0E
I’m not entirely sure I agree. It will hurt most people sure, but I am not sure it will be worse for everyone than a quick war.
Fair, but I’m willing to in order to neuter the Putin Boogeyman and the Putin the Bad Actor reality. Besides, we are unfortunately making sacrifices already with COVIDiocy.
Fair, which is also why I hope for a Ukrainian victory. The costlier the war is for Putin and the more humiliating it is, the less credible a crisis he is and the harder it will be for them to use him to justify their repression. Meanwhile, even a corrupt and poor nation going to arms to fight off an invasion is a useful counter-example to the Davoise and the Leftards arguing nobody needs a gun.
Is this a perfect solution or rationale? Of course not. But I think it is sound.
I have stated it from the start. This war did not have to happen and we all will suffer tremendously for it. I make no excuses for Putin. Putin is acting in the best interest of Russia as he sees it. Just like Orban for Hungary, Macron for France, Merkel for Germany, Kaczynski for Poland etc. Russia regards Ukraine as a vital national interest and have clearly stated that from Gorbachev, Yeltsin to Putin. Something that was recognized by HW Bush in his famed 1991 Chicken Kiev speech warming Ukrainians about “suicidal nationalism”. Harsh stuff but accurate. Just like the US regarded Cuba. You may not like it but that is the truth.
Like all tyrants, Putin has clearly articulated his goals. To restore Russia to its historical status. Not to the Soviet Union era but the Czarist era. White or Great Russian are in demographic decline vs. collapse during the Yeltsin era. His goal is to get them under Russian protection if not incorporated into Russia itself.
The NEOCONS of the west aim has always been regime change in Russia to return of looting the resources of Russia and help bring about a new world order. Tens of Billions was being looted until Putin put a stop to it. In 2014 as Russia’s “little green men offense” was progressing well bringing potential regime change in Ukraine Merkel flew to Putin and signed the Minsk II agreement that stated that the rights of ethnic Russians will be respected. It was promptly undermined by the US State Department. Nuland is the public face of this. Not reported in the west was the continuous numerous shelling’s by the Azov National Guards units to the separatist regions of Donbass and Luhansk. Independent journalism has documented this. If the Minsk agreement had been adhered too then a lot of this suffering would have been avoided. THIS IS WHERE THE WEST BEARS RESPONSIBILITY.
Zelensky was elected because he promised to implement the Minsk accords and bring peace. The ultra nationalists did not allow it and he followed their orders. He is a puppet stating his lines as they are given to him.
Many readers aren’t grasping the patchwork of ethnicities in Eastern Europe because legacy media is so weak in backstory analysis. Transdniestria, Odessa, Crimea were settled by Northern Russians mainly during the time of Catherine the Great. The Cossacks, who are more agrarian, settled between them. When serfdom was “ended” by Alexander I, settled down as small stakeholders called kulaks who got destroyed by that ethnic Georgian, Stalin. The roots of hate and resentment by the Ruthenians (as Ukrainians call themselves) to the Soviet was nurtured by the Holodomor. The construct of modern Ukraine is an amalgamation of various regions that were threwn together in the post WWI period. Lenin put the Donbass and Luhansk in Ukraine as they were ardent worker communists to counterbalance the kulaks of Western Ukraine. Khrushchev deeded Crimea to Ukraine to make it administratively easier to manage. Crimean’s were not happy about it. That is why the “little green men” offense worked. The citizenry aided and supported it. The story is not the same with the Ruthenians in the plains of Ukraine in 2022.
If you consume legacy media, you are being lied to.
This thread as well as legacy media is starting to quietly slip in that Ukraine will lose this needless war. There is a comprehension that this is happening. Three weeks ago, the stories of rotting tires, mud, rebellious troops, no fuel, no ammo, no air superiority abounded. Now those stories are muted. Stories and videos of captured Ukrainians, piles of captured intact Western Ordinance is in the non-Anglo media space. But the Neocons will not let this war end. They will fight to the last Ukrainian shoveling Western arms and money into Ukraine that can be stolen and sold on the black market like the Hillary/Sarkozy Libyan misadventure. The ramifications of that policy will rebound back against us, the ordinary citizen. A debt ridden country blithely sending money that we don’t have. Look at the French monarchy who bankrupted their finances supporting us in the Revolutionary War as an example. I hope that the same does not happen in the US.
Turtler – as I cited in my prior post. What if a long war drains the West and not Russia? Russia has the gold, oil, coal and metals. Europe does not. Already the Europeans have agreed to the Rubles for Oil decree. The US is draining the strategic oil reserve to send to Europe. Then what? Yellen told the EU NOT to embargo oil products from Russia as the global effects would be catastrophic to the West and not Russia.
Russia is moving towards the Zoltan Poszar’s Bretton III model. Something that the US is also well situated with good political leadership. China and Europe are not. Will it happen? Time will tell.
In regard to assignment of “responsibility,” I am of the opinion that this is a non-starter. Who thinks that any of those idiots who controlled American foreign policy will be held “responsible”? No, our inquiry is legitimate primarily in order to seek to prevent similar policy catastrophes from recurring. By analogy, if a patient with a 40 year history of heavy smoking goes to the doctor and comes out with a diagnosis of terminal lung cancer, it is not irresponsible of the doctor to inquire about the underlying history to elicit a possible cause. This is part of the diagnostic method, which, when carried out repeatedly with other examples, can lead to a conclusion containing a corrective measure, viz., don’t smoke tobacco. While this conclusion will not help the terminally ill patient, it may help others avoid such a predicament. Moreover, it does not entail any attempt to hold the patient “responsible” (by which it is inferred that punishment should follow), but it hardly needs to be said that to do otherwise is simply facilitating ignorance and thereby courting similar disasters in the future. So, yes, by all means let us inquire into the underlying set of facts and circumstances that created the current mess, in order that we might better avoid such messes in the future.
What if a long war drains the West and not Russia? Russia has the gold, oil, coal and metals. Europe does not.
Extractive industries account for about 3% of the value-added in a typical occidental economy, about 15% in Russia. Russia accounts for about 11% of global oil exports. The export sector in Russia remains dominated by fuel and minerals. I’m going to guess they’re more vulnerable than their trading partners in this respect.
I make no excuses for Putin. Putin is acting in the best interest of Russia as he sees it.
“As he sees it” is that the ‘best interest of Russia’ is to subjugate those European countries who cover the Warsaw Pact territory as it was in 1989 (less the east German lander but including Finland).
Who thinks that any of those idiots who controlled American foreign policy will be held “responsible”? No, our inquiry is legitimate primarily in order to seek to prevent similar policy catastrophes from recurring.
It’s not our catastrophe, it’s Russia’s.
I don’t believe there would have been a Great Depression without WWI and Versailles.
I do. The Great Depression was a consequence of bad monetary policy, not the 1st World War.
There seems to be some confusion over “what we could have done differently” over the last 1-2 or 4 or 5 years vs. the last THIRTY years.
That’s a completely different question. And one people seem not only content to stick their head in the sand and pretend it isn’t a question, but downright obstinate in asserting that they must.
I have no doubt whatsoever that events of the last 30 years could have transpired differently so as to prevent the invasion of Ukraine, and Georgia, and Crimea.
But let’s continue to insist that those events were all inevitable, given the thug tyrant in charge of Russia.
And, again, some people really, REALLY need to get out the house.
I have no doubt whatsoever that events of the last 30 years could have transpired differently so as to prevent the invasion of Ukraine, and Georgia, and Crimea. But let’s continue to insist that those events were all inevitable, given the thug tyrant in charge of Russia.
The events were not inevitable. They’re a consequence of contingent decisions of the boss of Russia. His decisions, not ours.
I do appreciate gmmay70, because I also thought denouncing retrospective discussion as “blame America” to be an useless stretch. I understand that many people do conflate retrospective as looking for responsibility, but in military matters, retrospectives are common and intended not to affix blame but prevent further casualties by identifying and learning about root causes. I know now not to do such things here.
Putin is a bad guy – just like a car thief who steals an unlocked car (with or without the keys in it).
How much “responsibility” is there? Either it’s up to 100% total, a single 100%, or it’s some uncountable #of people making influential decisions, each of which is up to 100% (like Putin or a car thief), plus all the other partial 5, 10, 50, 90% decisions by others.
These are two different ideas about responsibility, and defining its characteristics. Either it has a maximum, like 100%, or there is no upper maximum.
The world would be better if we agreed on the former idea, a single maximum 100%, with at least 51% given to the person who is acting & deciding, and to this minimum for the final decider, a maximum of 49% for all other actors.
Then disagreements can be more clearly defined numerically – I think it’s Putin at a (bad) 70%, with corrupt US Mil-Ind-Complex + NATO (10%), Biden weak (10%) and all other responsibilities 10% for a total of 100%. Others might think, and thus disagree and discuss, that it’s Putin at 90%, and all others at 10%; or Putin at 51%, and all others at 49%.
Life is full of tradeoffs. Also shades of gray (or grey, if more like Gandalf, one of the reasons I chose that spelling when I changed my name in ’84).
The thief who steals a car with the keys is more like 51%; the one who steals an unlocked car w/o keys is 70%, and the one who carries car stealing tools and chooses a car to steal and then steals is more like 98%. In the later case, choosing to buy a “likely target” car over a less desirable “less likely target” car, is a small but not nothing encouraging choice with some responsibility.
We all DO have “some” responsibility for others, but it’s limited. And the others who have choices always have 51% or more responsibility for their choice. Including the heroic choice to risk losing your life to stop the evil Putin from taking over your country.
The The is singing around min 38: “If you change the world, change yourself”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCEbR5MtxAw
“If you CAN’T change the world, change yourself”
sometimes one creates an error in a last minute addition.
After considering all of the contributions to this thread my conclusion is:
Yes indeed: Ukraine IS America’s tar baby.
So, the bottom line re: Ukraine:
would Putin have invaded Ukraine if Ukraine had made no entreaties to join NATO?
Apparently many commentators believe NO and others believe YES.
So, how does one decide?
Well, how about examining the previous actions of Putin :
1. other military adventures of his (this does not support the NATO’s fault argument).
2. the number of his critics that decide to commit suicide by jumping off high rise balconies in addition to a recent 4 or 5 oligarchs that hanged / shot themselves along with their wives and children (Clearly, Putin had nothing at all to do with any of this. Show me; where is the proof?)
3. the number of his critics that wind up dead because they decide to experiment with ingesting / injecting ricin into their bodies (darn those CIA and MI5 /MI6 agents killing off “alleged” Russian spies)
4. his remarks stating that Ukraine has no right to exist as an independent nation
So, let’s see; yep, number 4 above, re: his remark that Ukraine has NO RIGHT TO EXIST.
Well, that does it for me !!
Clearly, in his own words , Putin is “really” saying; “those SOBs of NATO, I’ll show them.”
So, it’s clear; Putin was forced , compelled, pushed to the limit, to invade Ukraine because of NATO’s actions.
I just don’t see how everybody does not understand this.
You should probably reread what you wrote then
No, you need better reading comprehension.
deadroddy:
Glass houses much? Check your pockets for gravel.
This is our problem because we played a major role in causing it. If Ukraine had nuclear weapons, does anyone think Putin would have invaded? In 1991 Ukraine had the third largest nuclear arsenal in the world, left behind by the defunct Soviet regime. We (and the Russians) talked them into giving up the weapons by promising to support Ukrainian independence and territorial integrity. At the time this was thought to be a major blow for world peace. (If there were fewer weapons in the world, there’d be few wars – isn’t that what Liberals are always telling us?) But having made the promises, we should at least give the Ukrainians weapons and diplomatic support.
like the washington naval convention, and the kellogg briand treaty, nice in theory,
but we’re stuck with the annoying reality, that the russians in 2014 and 2022, but not in 2017-2021
@Turtler
No apology necessary – No harm intended, no foul taken.
Appreciated your thoughtful responses.
When will Secretary Austin be visiting the Southern Border of the USA?
Don’t hold your breath.
@I am Spartacus
As I stated before in my other posts, a long war will drain both. But it would drain Russia significantly worse than the West for a number of reasons, starting with overall economic size and the lower, stronger ceilings on Russian production.
It is better and worse than that. Because Europe has gold and coal in particular, as well as oil. The kicker is that for various dumb reasons they’re not using them, which I suppose is what really matters in this context. Which gives Russia a pimp hand on those counts.
Indeed, another major miscalculation.
It’d be catastrophic for both, but I imagine Yellen probably “reasoned: (to the extent they are capable) that an embargo of that right now would hurt the West more than it hurts Russia, especially with the Indian Summer in Ruble Value the Russians have pushed.
I think the “Bretton III model”- while in some ways remarkably adept for the time especially given the habitual indiscipline we’ve seen from money issuers- is a bit grandiose. A lot of commodity markets- particularly gold- are not liquid and in particular Russia has a relatively finite and small amount of them. This ties in to issues with the more fringe ideas we’ve seen with things like the theory of Gaddafi’s “Golden Dinar”- which I’ve seen a lot of people argue was the “real” reason he was overthrown because it supposedly threatened the Eurodollar system- because A: Gaddafi didn’t have the kind of gold reserves on him to even get the currency going, B: Even if he had been able to it was monumentally unlikely he’d be able to make the currency attractive enough for people and countries (especially the supposed goal of Africa) to trade with him over the bad blood prior. And C: Even if he could get over those humps it was unlikely it would be particularly competitive and able to supercede the Eurodollar system.
Which is why that particular theory was limited to the realm of cranks.
Russia is in a stronger situation, don’t get me wrong, which is one reason why this is popping up. I’ve read Poszar semi-regularly over the past few years and unless something really drastic has changed, he’s not a crank like pretty much everyone who emphasized the “Golden Dinar” as a reason for Gaddafi’s overthrow or bought into “Petrodollar” nonsense was. And I think he does have at least some good reason for what he’s writing: Russia is in a much stronger situation.
B is not really a problem for it at the moment, particularly if it can wrap the war up in a decent fashion. It can count on economic support from China, a rogue’s gallery of friendly regimes ranging from Venezuela to Pakistan, a host of nonaligneds like India, and as you’ve mentioned a good amount of the West and others including its stated enemy Ukraine.
II also has a much more robust stockpile of gold than Gaddafish ever had or could even hope to obtain, though I’d argue its supply is still remarkably limited to make something like Bretton III work. But it has fat to burn. C is the big issue and it is the one that I think is the most important. It’s also the one most subject to issues in Russian and Western leadership. Particularly given how trade diplomacy and fiscal policy would be so important in this, and I have vanishingly little confidence, particularly in a Fed dominated by Biden’s puppeteers.
However it’s hard for me to understate how fundamentally vulnerable this system is for Russia, particularly since it required heroic efforts to stabilize the Ruble already (and those are causing a cost) and how the decision by Ukraine and the West to not fully embargo Russian oil could be reversed. We’re going to see a sort of supplier’s war mixed in with diplomats trying to influence important nonaligneds like India and OPEC to do things favorable to one bloc or another. The West came to this with a much weaker hand than it had any right to given the Mullahphillia of the US triggering such a backlash among the Sunni Gulf States like their refusal to increase oil production, but it still has the stronger relative advantage for now since it is economically and demographically* stronger (and relatively speaking this is a field where the reductionist economic stuff about immigrants/migrants actually plays in, because for these purposes it really doesn’t matter all that much if an immigrant is a destabilizing Muslim newcomer in the medium-to-long term so long as they are not a complete parasite not working or contributing in the short-to-medium term. Which admittedly is far from something we can take for granted but still not the norm.)
Honestly China and Europe are much better to try and play in this field than you might think- in particular I’d argue we have seen a sort of proto-Bretton III model with China only with the commodity being labor and manufacturing basing in addition to things like Rare Earths- for a while. In the meantime Europe is- as usual- its own worst enemy in resource gathering. Maybe that will change, but I won’t be holding my breath.
As you pointed out, a lot comes down to leadership and overall economic potential. The latter strongly favors the US and other anti-Russian factions, the former is one of said alignment’s great weaknesses right now and unlikely to change in the immediate future.
Largely agreed, though to be honest I think we will be suffering more from our present leadership than the war itself per se. Indeed, were it not for the 2020 steal and the Left’s jihad against energy independence the US would be in a spectacular position to capitalize on this (which might have been one reason why Putin decided to escalate the invasion now, since he recognized a major economic threat had shot itself in the foot).
Maybe, though as someone who has worked in Russia for a few months I am not so sure on that. I think he is largely acting in the best interest of himself and his cliques, which he largely sees as being in the best interest of Russia (indeed, there are a lot of important overlaps) but which are subtly different. And when they have diverged he has generally gone with the former. Chechnya is the example I constantly bring up, because Kadyrov is fundamentally a destabilizing factor to Russia on a national scale given his campaign of Islamization, moderately-veiled persecution of the region’s non-Sunni minorities (especially Orthodox Christians), and general swagger. Which is one reason why he has been so controversial and we saw a faceoff over him between his clique and the FSB in which Putin sided with the former and did a purge of the FSB.
However, while I think it is fairly safe to say he is a destabilizing influence on Russia- especially in the long run- he is a stabilizing influence on Putin’s regime. Or at least more of a stabilizer for it than he is a destabilizer. He holds down the fort in the North Caucasus and allows the Kremlin to claim that it won the Chechen Wars and that they are largely over. It’s REALLY hard for me to understate how important this is for Putin’s reputation and mythos, especially inside Russia: as the Hard Man who did what Yeltsin could not and won Chechnya. Doing the necessary reforms to stabilize Chechnya as a part of Russia and curb Kadyrov’s more unsavory (from a Russian national interest POV) predilections would risk that and be costly on an internal political view. At an extreme it might even run the risk of Kadyrov raising the flag of revolt and starting the war. So Putin has left the Kadyrov Clan with their fief.
By itself that would be eyebrow raising and unfortunate but understandable. But what I think is really telling is that Putin hasn’t just done that. He has in fact spread Kadyrov’s influence within Russia and Russian politics, such as encouraging the reputation of Chechen units as enforcers and culling those directly opposed to Kadyrov. That I think is a clear case of Putin placing his regime’s own interests (or at least short-medium term ones) over the Russian national interest. Probably in part because he thinks he mostly has a medium term left. Which has the effect of compounding and spreading the kind of instability, corruption, and criminal or terrorist sponsorship that Yeltsin went in to confront Dudayev over in the first place.
I talk at length about that because I think it is one of the most easily visible disconnects between Russia’s best interests and Putin’s even from the point of view of a more or less foreign policy agnostic or anti-Western Russian nationalist. But it’s also present in more than a few other areas, such as economics and asset stripping (which I’ll cover more later), the calculated instability in Russian leadership and succession (to prevent anyone from getting to comfortable in where they stand in the question of who will come after Putin), and perpetual tariff wars in the near abroad to name just a few.
This is a fine distinction sure and in many cases it won’t really matter since I think in many and maybe even most cases what Putin views as best for his regime is also what he views as best for Russia (or objectively what is good for Russia), but I think it is worth talking about.
And even earlier.
Agreed, and while I do think Chicken Kiev is better than its reputation warrants. While I do think it was a blunder in context and an avoidable one at that, but on the foundations I think it is fairly sound and even a good one worth revising. However, this doesn’t touch on a few issues.
Firstly: At the time it did not seem contradictory to encourage regional democratization among the non-Russian SRs and encouraging the central government.
Secondly: Ukrainian nationalism has always been an uneasy neighbor to Russian nationalism, especially since the latter tends to view the former as a cancerous infestation that needs to be purged in spite of whatever foundations it has. (One of the things I like pointing out is how Gogol- a Greater Russian nationalist and imperialist- admitted that “Southern Russia” after the Mongols had a drastically different nature than “Northern Russia” around what would become Muscovy and Novogord).
But that brings us to the next issue: What has been up with Cuba lately? Turns out that nations can lose thee areas they view as vital national interests if they are not careful, with the US succeeding mostly in getting nuclear weapons out.
Agreed and well said.
This is one of the most glaringly false things I’ve seen in this comment. Particularly as someone who was conscious during the first parts of this century.
The truth is, the “NEOCONS” were on Russia policy strikingly like many other US and Western foreign policy factions in seeking out cooperation and detente with Russia. It is one reason why pretty much every US President- “Neocon” or Neocon-influenced or not- opened their presidential terms much the same, promising to fix relations with Russia and particularly with Putin, seeking cooperation on matters (particularly the Middle East and War on Terror).
And time and again they’d fail and generally get played as Putin used the honeymoon period for some kind of political sucker punch.
It is why I grew disillusioned with the approach after Georgia in ’08, a thoroughly avoidable war largely sparked by Putin to try and capitalize on Georgian focus division. But few people were asking me and the West was by and large nowhere near as serious at regime change in Russia as the Kremlin drummed up.
As someone who spent time in Russia during the early 2000s? Don’t make me fucking laugh.
The looting never stopped under Putin, and if you know where to look you can still see it today (indeed, one of the problems Russia is facing now is that a lot of that looting came from Russia). Indeed, it seems like Putin got his fiscal and political start by embezzling state resources using his position as KGB Desk Jockey.
You can also see this in familiar aspects such as Siloviki buying up real estate in the West or other countries where confiscations are not so arbitrary and the law is more reliable (a strategy they share with the Chinese), and offshoring in places like the Caymans.
What Putin did rather than stop the looting (which he had no real interest in- another key disconnect between what’s good for Russia and what’s good for Putin) was impose discipline and the order of the state on it. A bunch of siloviks who he deemed his enemies or particularly harmful got eliminated or captured, and the others were forced to follow a number of unofficial and official rules by the state.
Which did have the benefit of slowing down the hectic pillaging and collapse, and I suppose is better than nothing. But it also reveals a lot of hollowness.
One interesting aspect of this is that I wonder about the effect of sanctions and Western asset freezing/seizures, since it’ll likely put a stopper on a lot of the usual outflows of stolen loot and other assets by the Siloviki to the West and likely encourage- at least in the short and medium term- a kind of “Rally around the Flag.” But I’ll need to research more on that.
I’m not sure where the hell you’re getting this narrative from, but it simply isn’t true. If you actually study the campaigns of ’14 and ’15, the Russians opened strong- taking advantage of the element of surprise, the aggressor’s advantage of initiative, superior numbers and firepower, and the mildew in the Ukrainian military plus whatever genuine separatist support there was- to make heavy initial gains. But the Ukrainians did not collapse altogether and did resist unlike in Crimea.
Which ground the Russian advance to a slowdown, particularly due to stubborn resistance and costly siege operations like the epic Siege of Donetsk Airport while the Ukrainians rallied and pushed the Russians back.
Which is why you went in the early days from talks of a widespread dismemberment of Ukraine by half and the creation of a “Novorossiya” to that getting shelved.
In any case, the Russians badly overestimated the amount of support they’d get in this caper among ethnic Russians, Russophones, and the traditional “Blue” party bases. Which is one reason why Russian control of the region prior to the escalation in February this year peaked at something like control of 2/3rds or 3/4ths of the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts before being blasted back to being around 1/3rd to 1/4th of it wedged up against the Russian border (where they could receive quick resupply, reinforcements, and even battery fire from inside Russia).
Indeed, even Debaltseve- which was a significant victory for the Russians- was underwhelming and disappointing because what was supposed to be a cauldron battle to destroy a significant Ukrainian government command saw the Ukrainians withdraw in remarkably good order (Far better than they had any right to) due to the shoddy perimeter control and lack of pursuit.
Simply put, the Kremlin miscalculated in 2014. Badly. They were not seriously at risk for effecting a regime change in Ukraine (at least in the way they wanted; discontent with how the war was being run helped destabilize a few Ukrainian cabinets and saw them replaced, but not by ones seeking peace on Russian terms), and indeed they proved unable to affect regime change throughout the Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts.
This is one reason why both sides were willing to come to the table at Minsk in order to at least go through the motions of trying to come to an agreement.
Also, the “rights of ethnic Russians” were never what Putin was terribly interested in, particularly since most ethnic Russians were cautiously supportive at best if not indifferent or outright hostile to it. One thing I see those either explicitly or implicitly cribbing from Kremlin sources ignore is that the (justifiably!) infamous Azov Battalion is significantly Russophone-native and ethnic Russian.
And in any case, the negotiations for MInsk showed Putin put “the rights of Ethnic Russians” regarding stuff like primary education language in schools below political concessions like on the pipelines.
Frankly Minsk and Minsk II undermined themselves. I have no love what-so-ever for Nuland and only a sliver of respect for Foggy Bottom, but the premise behind the Minsks was that things would be better by freezing the conflict and making it closer to another Georgia or Transnistria.
In a settlement that really satisfied nobody and where both sides had the resources to contest it. Minsk did not end the fighting by any stretch of the imagination, and in particular did not end the artillery duels or surgical advances. It just put them on the side burner.
*Sigh.* So much wrong with this….
Firstly: Azov- like that of most volunteer National Guards- has an ORBAT that is overwhelmingly light weapons. AS YOU’D EXPECT from a unit of the National Guards (particularly ones not equipped or trained up to US Standards) whose task is there to support line units at or near the front or to keep order in the rear areas.
They are overwhelmingly not the people with access to the artillery in the Ukrainian Loyalist Order of Battle. A: They aren’t the people with the equipment and training for it. B: They’re fundamentally not trusted by the Ukrainian governments (and rightfully so, since they can’t be sure if Azov will not break rules in using it or even turn it against them), and C: That isn’t the niche their kind of unit fills (either in service- as Volunteer Nat’l Guard- or in size- yeah sure, a Battalion is going to be in charge of Regimental and Divisional Artillery).
The majority of the Ukrainian Loyalist artillery has been with the regular military. WHICH REALLY ISN’T SURPRISING if one has studied the war or how the various branches of the Ukrainian military act.
So the knee-jerk conflation of “Azov Battalion” with Artillery I think is a tell or give away that someone has been getting too much of their information- directly or indirectly- from glorified Kremlin propaganda due to the knee-jerk reaction to Azov (and their admittedly repulsive ideology and atrocities) without studying the war or the units. In contrast, I’m a historian by trade and wargamer by hobby. I I’ve been gaming conflicts in this war out for half a decade for morbid enjoyment.
Secondly and more importantly: there is a reason for the “continuous shelling”, and indeed it went both ways. Because this was still an active war zone, and indeed the Russians usually brought heavier firepower to bear than the Ukrainians did, often from over the border.
https://d1kn6o6up31pvd.cloudfront.net/news/uk-and-europe/2016/12/21/russian-artillery-strikes-against-ukraine/
https://uawire.org/news/bellingcat-tens-of-thousands-of-russian-soldiers-were-involved-in-the-conflict-in-donbas
Simply put, Minsk was a Stillbirth.
To which I simply reply BULLSHIT.
Minsk was never a very convincing method to end this war, and lacked the respect or support of either side that penned its name to it. As shown by the nonstop artillery duels. Ultimately, neither side lacked the goodwill or trust to stick to it, and I think primary responsibility for that lies with the Russian government and military, not just for showing it was willing to break PRIOR treaties (thus undermining its credibility and good will) but also for not knowing when to tune it down.
Dubious at best. Again, by the time Zelenskyy was elected Minsk was already disreputable and honored in the breach more than the actual execution by both sides. Indeed, Zelenskyy was one of the more dovish candidates in the election he won since he proposed some measures like a demilitarized plebiscite for the Donbas, guarded by international peacekeepers after the withdrawal of both Russian and Ukrainian forces (which the Russian government never even responded to). And he got criticism from that from the “Ultra nationalists” (who are frankly a marginal political force, at least if we are talking Neo-Fascists) and even more mainstream Ukrainians.
So the idea that he necessarily was some kind of puppet of Ukrainian “Ultra-nationalists” Does not wash for me, nor does the idea that he was terribly committed to following a fatally wounded agreement.
Fair, and I won’t claim I have entirely. Though I have done better than most.
More like during or after the time of Catherine the Great, who mostly obtained control over the regions and whose successors flooded in. And even that’s easy to overstate since Odessa was always a cosmopolitan city.
Eh…. What the fuck?!?!
Firstly: The Cossacks by and large were there first (at least in the context of Ukraine) and the settlers relied on them as local auxiliaries. Indeed, it was Hetman Khmelnitsky’s rebellion against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and his (grudging) agreement to the Treaty of Pereyaslav that was a catalyst for Moscow’s control to spread South.
Secondly and even more egregiously: The Cossacks were semi-nomadic social bands. They were actively defined by being LESS Agrarian than most of the colonists people like and after Potemkin sent into their villages (which have alas a bad reputation due to the Potemkin Village myth). They were usually heavy agrarian themselves- most worked at least part of the year as farmers- but they were much more mobile and less attached to the land than the farmers and colonists sent in by the Russian Crown (among others). And indeed the Russian government actively tried to enforce settlement and the formation of more permanent things like the Sichs.
This is the problem with a little bit of knowledge being quite troublesome. Because unless you know the Cossacks and Eastern European history this looks like a sophisticated and historical analysis.
It’s when you realize that “Cossack” etymologically is related to “horseman” and “Free Man” and actually study the reason that you realize “Hey, the people you claimed are more agrarian than the settlers are less agrarian, WTF is going on?!?!”
Agreed.
Agreed, but it was predated by a LONG time. Indeed, one of Stalin’s supplementary crimes to the Ukrainian Holodomor* and one that shows that it was genocidal in nature was due to the extermination campaign against the traveling bards known as the Kobzars. But part of the reason they were traveling was not just the traditionally migratory/fluid nature of life in the “Wild Fields” but also calculated attempts to persecute them by the Russian Tsars.
* Yes, there was more than one Holodomor, with the Ukrainian one having kin in the Southern Caucasus and Central Asia.
Half-true. The truth is that the Donbas and Kharkhiv were traditionally administered as the Russian bastions onto the Wild Fields and Ukraine, and you can see right on down to the Governate names that these were viewed as being part of the administrative regions of “Little Russia” ie Ukraine. Lenin- like in many other things- was largely following tradition.
That is the main reason Khruschev did it (unlike Lenin who was mostly reverting to old Tsarist administrative districts), but it did go back earlier such as the initial union of Crimea with the Ukrainian Directorate (with the support of the Germans). Moreover, “not happiness” over the administrative transfer to the Ukrainian SR was mostly in hindsight, especially after years of sluggish (at best) recovery under the Russian SR following the brutal invasion and occupation of the Reich. The fact that not that much changed during the time frame because Bolshevism helped.
Crimeans- both Tatars and Greater Russians- have generally viewed themselves as being distinct from Ukraine but have been tolerably happy to be part of it under certain conditions, which is one reason why Crimea turned out a majority during the Ukrainian independence voting.
Still, I’ll be the first to admit that Crimea is a rather odd fit with Ukraine. Not only have the two regions been historic enemies going back centuries (and it’s REALLY hard for me to understate the horrifying effects of the Giray Khanate’s “Harvesting of the Steppe” on Eastern European history) and the demography is different. Certainly, the ethnic Russian majority is a lot more favorably disposed to Russia and Putin in general.
<That is why the “little green men” offense worked. The citizenry aided and supported it. The story is not the same with the Ruthenians in the plains of Ukraine in 2022.
The “Little Green Men” strike in Crimea worked first and foremost because it was a sudden attack with the element of surprise by troops and material based nearby, against an enemy that was quickly paralyzed and refused to fight back until it was too late and the invaders already occupied the key centers on the peninsula. Civic support for the invasion in Crimea was significant but ultimately secondary.
In the meantime, the Little Green Men offensives on the mainland failed not merely against the Ukrainians/Ruthenians “in the plains of Ukraine” but stalled and underperformed among the Greater Russian/Ukrainian Mosh Pit in the Rust Belts and mining areas of the Donbas, for the reasons I’ve mentioned. Resistance was again taken by surprise but was willing to fight, and support for the occupation was SIGNIFICANTLY less than the Kremlin had predicted among ethnic Russians, Russophones, and “Blues.”
Hence why early dreams of forging a “Republic of Novorossiya” in basically the South and Eastern half of Ukraine faded VERY quickly in the face of stronger-than-expected Ukrainian resistance, the Russians were pushed back from their high water mark at something like 2/3rds of the Donbas Oblasts, and stalemate set in.
The Russian government now seems to be drawing out the old Novorossiyan blueprint or something like it given talks of forming yet another Manchukuo based at Kherson, but that doesn’t change the fact that public support was not the central factor you’re making it out to be in how much the Little Green Men offensives succeeded (and frankly you’re already overstating their effects and success).
And to their credit the Russian leadership seems to have acknowledged this and planned accordingly, trusting in the guns of their troops rather than the goodwill of the locals. As is only wise. But the execution was not as ideal as they wished, particularly with the failure to secure Donetsk city and its environs ASAP.
Of course. But if you consume most media you are being lied to, whether willfully or not, directly or not. Which is why it is important.
We’ll see on that.
Largely because there’s only so much you can rehash the same points before they get boring, particularly when there’s not as hardcore an ideological reason for doing so as the Trump Russia Collusion Hoax.
Moreover, as you pointed out legacy media is quite dumb and uninformed as well as being stupid, and frankly doesn’t have the expertise or knowledge of dedicated experts (what I’ve seen of Dreizen makes me GREATLY question his professionalism and honesty- to put it mildly- but I do not doubt his knowledge is better than that of the average for MSM talking heads; while I am pretty sure he was willfully lying about the 1877-1878 Russo-Turkish War and certain parts of it most talking heads wouldn’t even know what the hell that was in the first place). So they’re less likely to pick up things such as the VDV Mutiny and the court martial that happened recently.
This is also due to wartime restrictions. Both sides are tamping down reporting on war material and the course of the conflict FOR ENTIRELY UNDERSTANDABLE REASONS, so it’s a bit harder to dig up info on-say- the latest boondoggle caused by lack of Russian air competence, the Ukrainian military having a supply crisis yet again. Both sides want to be strong and to keep their operations on some kind of veil of secrecy while reporting on the other’s screwups.
Sure, but so have burning Russian tanks and captured Russian troops and frantic questions on how the economic war will play up.
Oh puhlease.
If there’s been one constant in Kremlin and Kremlin-sympathetic media, it’s been the degree to which they overstate the importance of outside actors and understate the importance of internal Ukrainian politics. There’s a rather bizarre kind of doublethink involved that talks about “ultra nationalists” in Ukraine “puppetting” Zelensky but at the same time assuming that the reason the war won’t end is due to “Neo-cons” or some other demonizable foreign target rather than the amply-demonstrable fact that Ukrainians have by and large rallied around the flag and even the demographics Putin expected to take advantage of were much less willing than the norm.
Now sure, I can only imagine the eye-watering amount of corruption and smuggling going on in Ukraine especially with Western largesse and with the accelerated pace of the war there’s less margin/fat for that sort of nonsense. But that corruption has only impaired the Ukrainian resolve and ability to fight so far.
Agreed, but frankly the US has had a problem of blithely sending money we don’t have and has for decades, if not more than a century. But particularly since the New Deal. If you want to weep, just look at the immense resources dumped into the rat hole of domestic entitlements (which we are told cannot be changed and so are “mandatory” spending).
Compared to that, I think the US is getting more for its money. If only because it’s harder to bullshit destroyed Russian vehicles (not IMPOSSIBLE but harder, and Oryx has been decent at keeping a conservative tally of that) compared to muh War against Moverty.
I agree, I also hope it does not.
But frankly the French Monarchy bankrupted itself on a more fundamental level that the American Revolution was only another notch on the belt of, and French insolvency went back more than a century (and a shifted Roman numeral) earlier, with Louis XIV[.
The fundamental problem is less with spending money or resources on any given cause or outflow than with how those outflows are financed, and THAT’S really where both Ancien Regime France and most of the world today suffer. Badly. But that’s a whole nother kettle of worms.
It’s also worth noting- and has been noted by countless people- that the war has been used as a convenient scapegoat by the Brandon Regime and its real masters for mistakes of its own making, particularly the gas prices.
https://news.yahoo.com/putins-price-hike-biden-inflation-090058439.html
(And when this appears in YAHOO of all places you know it’s bad and obvious).
Assuming the economic fiasco and hardship will happen because of US spending on aid for Ukraine while ignoring the gaping maw of Mandatory Entitlement Spending is kind of like that.
But it’s a whole nother can of worms that gets into how much of an idiot Keynes is and most of our modern economics.
@Leland
Agreed, which is why I agree with them there even if I might disagree with some of their issues. Retrospectives are important for a reason, particularly when done honestly, and for the very same reasons you mentioned. And it is a shame that it pops up.
Sorry to hear, and I’d ask- plead even- for you to reconsider on that front.
“But if I did, and if I were to become the victim of a crime there, the person who committed that crime is 100% responsible. I bear no responsibility at all.”
The above statement is erroneous. You bear no responsibility for the CRIME, you do bear responsibility for your own stupidity. This notion of “only one party can be responsible” for a bad event is bullcrap. YOU have a MORAL RESPONSIBILITY to protect yourself, to NOT BE A FOOL. The other party has a MORAL RESPONSIBILITY to NOT attack you. A failure by ONE is in no way exculpatory of the failure by the OTHER. Foolishness, the opposite of prudence, is a MORAL failing, and our society has been giving a pass for too long to FOOLS who are subsequently victimized because they acted foolishly.
Attempts to minimize the primary failure with the secondary failure is the root of the “you can’t blame the victim” stupidity. Yes, yes you can. And often you SHOULD. To repeat: A failure by ONE is in no way exculpatory of the failure by the OTHER.
Jiohn S.
It’s not a zero sum issue. Not like the traffic cop who thinks you’re seventy percent at fault and the other guy thirty percent. But then recalculating that you’re fifty percent at fault, the other guy MUST be fifty percent, since one hundred percent is the only total allowed.
The question is what is/was in Putin’s head. Endless discussions don’t tell us. And Putin may not, may instead be trying to sell a legitimate-seeming justification to cover for something far less marketable.
Putin came up through the KGB. Does that increase, decrease, or is irrelevant to feelings for Greater Russia or, at least, a healthy USSR?
Does it, instead, reward the lowest of morality and manipulation?
Or the second in pursuit of the first?
What impresses a westerner as important may or may not have much to do with Putin’s views.
I get the sense, some here, and some elsewhere, that there is an effort to excuse Putin in order to allow for not getting involved in something dangerous.
Point is, endless discussion is irrelevant. Interesting, relevant to other questions and issues going forward. But unless somebody has some super duper EKG thingy hitched to Putin’s skull, we don’t know. And that means we don’t know what it would take for him to quit. As a practical matter, the only way to get somebody like that to quit is to denude him of all conceivable means of accomplishing it.
What Putin should think is irrelevant.
He massed his forces for a year after the regime was installed, i think it was a stupid strategy to just redouble your resources and do little else, the afghan withdrawal proved we were a paper tiger to anyone watching why go after kyev in a climate it has never worked,
The war of 1877 (the setting for anna karenina btw) happened under the good czar alexander 2nd so did the suppression of the hromadas patriotic societies
Yes they make entirely too much of the azov what is maybe 900 men tops but since the media made special exceptions to excuse actions by that unit. Which has that annoying strangelove fixation,
Well blinken isnt a neocon neither is his handler malley (nod) nor sherman (wynken) i couldnt even gather what austin is, except bishop rooker is still pulling his strings. What is crystal clear is their agenda is not good for any of us
Why did yeltsins general grachev pound grozny for two monthes they were trying to exorcise the ghost of afghanistan from 6 years earlier the obahina was too much competion for the bratva (chechen and native mob outfits) these things develop a relentless logic of our own
Why nato didnt go away well its comvenient for europeans they dont want to spring for their own defense bosnia came along fairly quickly the kosovo, within a short interval once time being mostly mute to their orthodox brethren might have been accident the second time coincidence.
Brsides would amampour or robertson have careers if not for the balkans
So putin makes himself a villain too easily (he should grow a mustache so he twirl it,) but what of other player like the sultan erdogan who purged his countrys ranks twice who has an unhealthy fixation with the kurds and has given sanctuary to al queda on his border, they are passe now, coming up on the 11th anniversary of ubls dirt nap, thats who was the russian rival in syria through proxies of course
I have just scanned all the comments today.
om on April 25, 2022 at 10:37 pm said:
Mike K you might consider expanding your knowledge of WWI. Lectures by The Western Front Association on YouTube would be a start.
I have read quite a bit about it (I’m assuming you were not accusing me of being uninformed) and I do not like YouTube as a learning site. I guess we could compare bibliographies if you are serious.