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Since Russia knows that the US would never risk a
shooting war with it, NATO is largely toothless. Cutting the
US loose from Article 5 would seem to provide the
remaining members with more response options to
better respond to Putin.
Actually allowing more response flexibility for all member
states so that Putin has to juggle more balls and consider
more potential risks might make sense. Overwhelm him
with "6-way negotiation" challenges so to speak.
Or even providing just an appearance of more flexibility
might make sense.
Back when Putin didn't laugh at America.
https://www.newswee...mp-considers-883947
[doctorremulac3, Feb 12 2022]
hohohohoho
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gkTb9GP9lVI
Hahahahahaha [xenzag, Feb 12 2022]
Ahahahahahahahhaaa
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hI1nPd7hezM
Genius song [xenzag, Feb 12 2022]
The injecting bleach hoax.
https://www.politif...bout-disinfectant-/
[doctorremulac3, Feb 12 2022]
Beau of the Fifth Column
https://www.youtube...watch?v=EjnmLRDbRQE
Talks about the NATO charter. [RayfordSteele, Feb 12 2022]
Ex-acting tribute
https://www.reuters...-troops-2022-02-19/
[4and20, Feb 19 2022]
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Okay, but if you did that, here's a crazy idea, trade the US
membership for the Ukraine's. |
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Be interesting just to see the look in Putin's face. |
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Okay, but if you did that, here's a crazy idea, trade the US
membership for the Ukraine's. |
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Be interesting just to see the look in Putin's face. |
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Guess I felt so strongly about that I said it twice without even
knowing it. |
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Putin is running rings around everyone, and once again laughing his head off at the antics of America, just as he did in Syria. He watched America's humiliating defeat by the Taliban, and bided his time. No matter what happens he wins this one. His army has rightly terrified everyone as it's intended to. He has made his point. Russia is completely formidable, all powerful, and must be obeyed. China will simply negate all sanctions that follow Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and make them irrelevant. I can't see anything stopping him from invading now. I'm just glad I don't live in the Ukraine and feel very sorry for those who do as no one will risk coming to help them. |
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//once again laughing his head off at the antics of
America,// |
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This from someone who lives in a country that's
had two
world wars in the last couple of generations that
we had to
bail you out of. |
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My granduncle risked his life piloting a B24
Liberator in
dozens of missions bombing Nazis to protect you
guys. He
was squadron leader on several of them. Glad he's
not alive
to hear this disgusting anti American retoric
coming out of
the country he risked his life to protect. |
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And as far as Putin laughing at America in Syria,
was he
laughing when Trump bombed the crap out of a
couple of
hundred Russian soldiers there? |
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Xenzag, this will never change. You insult my
country I'm
going to respond. If that's the way you like to do
things, oh
well, but don't complain when you start it and
someone
stands up to you. |
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And let me add, I have people in England that I love, I would never insult an entire country because I don't like one group, or politician, or political party or person on the Halfbakery. I think that's vile. |
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The same is felt by me when you insult "lump of half
alive flesh now put up as a figurhead by the left
doing whatever he's told to by the countries who
bought him off. Including China and Russia." That's
the man I voted for, and you have him all wrong. He's
brought some sense of dignity back after the scurge
Trump left behind. |
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It's all trollish bullshit and you know it. |
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Your grandfather would likely recognize fascism and
a weak prick with a sad case of malignant
narcissism when he saw it. I doubt your grandfather
would respect the way Trump treated anyone else he
considered beneath his station. |
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//That's the man I voted for, and you have him all wrong// |
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And I voted for Trump. Now what? We see who can be
nastiest? |
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Look, I don't start these things, if you want to yell and
scream, sure. I think it's a waste of time. |
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If you want to get into specifics, that could be interesting,
as long as it's interesting. If it's just name calling that gets
boring pretty quick. |
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And by the way Ray, aren't you an American? Somebody
insults your country like that and you let it go? Even
further, attacking the person that's defending your country
from a nasty hateful attack? |
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Tell you what, I'll take down the Biden thing if it offends
you. There. Like that scene in Tombstone where Doc
Holiday puts his guns on the table as an act of good faith. |
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Like Doc says: "There, now we can be friends." |
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I don't think calling out the "antics of America" meant
he was insulting an entire country. |
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I'll put your obese, classified-document mishandling,
easily-manipulated, tax-cheating, mobbed-up,
functionally illiterate, twice-impeached anti-science
sore-loser fuckhead against Joe Biden in any
relevant contest you care to mention. |
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Stroke Trump's ego for a minute and you get
whatever you want out of him. |
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Yes, I'm an American. But I'm not going to go off
every time some wag mentions some poor moves
my government makes, especially during an
exceptionally stupid time in our history. |
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//I'll put your obese, classified-document mishandling,
easily-manipulated, tax-cheating, mobbed-up, functionally
illiterate, twice-impeached anti-science sore-loser
fuckhead against Joe Biden in any relevant contest you care
to mention.// |
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How about being able to complete a sentence without a
teleprompter? Or even WITH a teleprompter. |
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By the way, the "poor moves" she's referring to happened,
and are continuing to happen under your boy. |
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Seriously, your choice, you want to debate? Let's debate.
You want to see who can call the other guy's candidate the
most creative names? I'm totally down with that too. You
didn't accept my peace offering so
let me know how we're going to proceed. Either way, I'm
game. |
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Here, I'll give you a choice of where we're going. |
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A) Biden made a disasterous withdrawl from Afghanistan by
not having the military be the last to leave. He also didn't
continue Trump's withdrawl strategy of using force at any
time necessary if the Taliban got violent. Trump drove ISIS
from Iraq after it took over under Obama's watch showing
how it's done. All Biden had to do was copy that model and
he didn't leaving to us looking incredibly weak and opening
the door for Putin and China to see now is the time to
attack because there's no competent leadership in the US
right now. |
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B) Biden is a stinkybutt whose butt stinks and he smells like
a butt and his face is a buttfart. |
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So since we're not doing the be nice thing that I proposed,
pick A or B for how you want to proceed. |
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I sort of like B better myself but it's up to you. |
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Seriously, you're going to hold a lifelong issue such
as a lifelong stutter against a man? Are you going to
insult FDR's legs, too? Jesus man get some class. |
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I was writing that collective diatribe while you were
writing your edits, so I'll let it go. But if you seriously
cannot tell the difference between them then I've got
no help for you. |
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The Afghan withdrawal was set in motion by
Trump's deal with a withdrawal date, behind the
backs of the Afghan government, which completely
undermined what little respect they had. The
resulting loss of faith in the government in Kabul
among local and regional leaders quickly led to
deals to lay down their arms to the emboldened
mujahideen. Trump, like his circus of military
advisors, and, well, everyone, failed to realize how
compromised they were by that. The wheels were
already turning. |
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Mark Esper blamed Trump for continuing to
withdraw troops against the advice of his military
advisers and despite the Taliban not living up to its
end of the bargain. Esper explicitly tied the Doha
deal to the collapse of the Afghan government and
the resulting chaos. |
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What do you think an orderly exit with an advancing
military that can't be held to its word looks like?
Were you going to send thousands more troops
back in? |
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That was ISIS. None of them belong there. This was
the Taliban and their mujahideen buddies in tbeir
own country, some of whom switched sides. |
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Got it, it’s all Trump’s fault even though Biden was
in charge because Trump set a goal date
CONTINGENT on the Taliban not doing what they
did. And Biden HAD to follow Trump’s plan right?
He couldn’t change it. He was only the President,
Trump was the former president, need to do what
he says. Again, Trump showed how to do it in Iraq
and there’s no reason he wouldn’t have followed
that model. Biden’s cover story actually really is
“Trump told me to do it, what choice did I have?” |
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We didn’t need to send any more troops in, we had
control, we had an airbase that should have been
the last thing we gave up. We armed the Afghan
people with one of the biggest militaries on Earth,
we needed to assist them in taking up the job of
defending themselves, remember that plan? It was
agreed to by everyone, Biden included. |
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It was botched, Biden botched it. He was in
charge, not Trump. |
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Actually I do like the A) debate style better. The B)
style get a little dull pretty quickly. |
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Let me ask you this, in your opinion, has Trump
ever done ANYTHING right and has Biden ever done
ANYTHING wrong? I’ll start, Biden continued the
distribution of the vaccines that Trump made
possible with operation Warp Speed. Kudos. |
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Personally I think you guys should just admit you
screwed up and put Hillary in the Whitehouse. Put
Kamala in the Supreme Court, put Hillary in the VP
slot, Joe steps down, everyone would be happier.
Not a fan of Hillary, but at least she’s functional. |
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On the idea: for some bizarre reason, most people, even so-called alleged leaders, usually want to follow a leader themselves, no matter how bad. If the U.S. pulled out, who would people turn to? Germany? China? The UK? All bad. |
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On Ukraine: The solution, briefly is to give Ukraine nuclear weapons again. When the Soviet Union fell, Bush Sr. and Cheney convinced/forced Ukraine to give its nukes back to Russia. But Turkey has 20+ American nuclear weapons, which should really be moved somewhere else. Missiles in Turkey are probably the reason for the Cuban missile crisis in the 60's. |
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Rumours have put the missiles in Romania, but no, it appears that Turkey and that yo-yo Erdogan still have them, although only the U.S. has the double-secret launch codes. Still, though Russia and Turkey sometimes disagree, you never hear of Russia building up troops on the Turkish border. |
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You do realize that Ukraine isn't part of NATO, and its charter isn't to keep world peace, right? If Russia looked about to attack, say, Albania things would be different. NATO's teeth are reserved for those attacking NATO countries. |
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//Be interesting just to see the look in Putin's face.// |
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// His army has rightly terrified everyone as it's intended to. He has made his point. Russia is completely formidable, all powerful, and must be obeyed.// |
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Hahahaha I come to the halfbakery to have a
laugh, and there's plenty of great material in the
annotations on this idea. I'm not so sure I really
know what being serious means. It just seems so
uninviting. I'm told I'm quite good at making people
go "foamy" with the strategic placing of some
simple words. Extra marks if you can spot one of
them on my previous comment. Happy days all! |
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//Hahahaha I come to the halfbakery to have a laugh, and
there's plenty of great material in the annotations on this
idea. I'm not so sure I really know what being serious
means. It just seems so uninviting. I'm told I'm quite good
at making people go "foamy" with the strategic placing of
some simple words. Extra marks if you can spot one of
them on my previous comment. Happy days all!//
--xenzag |
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Okay, so now xenzag has flat out admitted that they come
here to troll, perhaps we should all just never respond to
them again. |
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As you wish. Have it all to yourself, (does your new
gang have a name? - The Bakery Bunch - who's in
it?) While you think of name, see if you can
learn the words of either of two of my favourite
songs. Take your pick. I challenge you to listen
without laughing. |
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Meanwhile doc, if you've calmed yourself, can you
answer this simple question about your Trump
hero?: Wasn't it Trump who said (inter alia) the
virus is a hoax, that can in anyway be cured with
bleach injections, and that global warming was
another hoax, as proved by the sudden appearance
of snowmen in winter? |
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Calm yourself Xenxag, I know Trump is the center
of your universe and gives your life its only
meaning, but he's not my hero, he's just a political
outsider who I thought was the lesser of two evils. |
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My main point to you is if you insult my country I'll
insult you. But since Trump is the center of your
life, I'll step into it for a brief moment, if only to
remind myself how lucky I am to not have an ex
politician from another country being the only
thing giving my existence meaning. |
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As for your allegations, you live in a fantasy world
with your cats. |
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1- He said the virus is a hoax while running project
Warp Speed to create in record time, vaccines for
this hoax and after shutting down travel from
China while everybody called him evil for doing so?
This
hoax is from an edited video. From Politifact: "The
video
makes it look like Trump called coronavirus “their
new
hoax.” In fact, there was nearly a full minute
between
when the president said “coronavirus” and “hoax”
during a
Feb. 28 rally in North Charleston, S.C." a month
after he
banned travel from China due to the virus which
he fully
acknowledged. The hoax he was referring to early
in the
speech was that he was racist for banning travel
from China
as that he was overplaying the threat, which
according to
the Democrats was no big deal witnessed by Nacy
Peloci
going to Chinatown and hugging people on the
street
before masks became virtue signals. |
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2- See link about him saying to inject bleach. |
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3- I don't follow him like you do to comment on his
every daily move. I have a life. |
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4- And again, he's not my hero, but when I see
people like you spreading lies to give their life
meaning, like the Russian collusion hoax, I'm going
to call them out on it. |
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So I understand trolls would rather anger people
and get attention than be nice, and if I were smart
I'd ignore it, but rest assured, you want attention
by insulting my beloved country I'm always ready
to fight back but if that's something you enjoy,
might want to seek help because that's very sad. |
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He said virus was a hoax as the world's first vaccine
was developed in the UK. He was of course acting
on Putin's order who got him elected in the first
place. If you really loved your country you would
be appalled at the lasting legacy of damage to it
inflicted by Trump. In my life time, Trump is the
living equivalent that Hitler was for my parents, so
I think it's right that he is opposed on every
occasion. |
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I know it's like telling a very religious person there is no
god, but Trump saying the virus was a hoax is a hoax. Don't
belive me, read the Politifact writeup on it. It was an
edited video to fool stupid people. Guess it worked. |
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As far as him being the modern Hitler, so you're so insane
you think 9 million Jews being
rounded up and slaughtered, women and children
murdered by the millions is the equivalent of some
guy tweeting some things you don't like. |
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And I'm talking to you? Who's the one who's insane
here? |
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Trump's global warming will result in entire species
being made extinct along with many more millions
of deaths than even the holocaust managed. This
mass extinction is the Global Warming deniers, like
Trump's, genocide. It's potentially the end of all
life forms on our planet, and Trump has
accelerated it by his lies, idiocy, greed, and feet
dragging. So of course I'm going to oppose Trump
and all his fellow destructive fruit cakes like
Bolsonaro. |
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Yea, you're a hero. Practically storming the
beaches
of Normandy here. How brave. |
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Since you think global warming started 6 years
ago,
I'm guessing you're also
against nuclear power. |
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There was a very interesting discussion here about
solar panels and their efficacy at fighting global
warming. Where were you? There was no mention
of Trump so you were nowhere to be found. |
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Let the adults talk here would you please? |
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Global warming started a long time ago, but Trump has taken ownership of the genocide it's causing by repeating the lie that it's a hoax. Meanwhile if you prefer to only listen to your own voice you can always connect a vacuum cleaner tube from your mouth to one ear and hammer a cork into the other one. I'm not easily silenced. If armed hooded men (with weapons paid for by collections made in your country to support sectarian terrorists in mine) couldn't shut me up, then you won't have much luck. |
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Who said anything about shutting you up? I'd defend your
right to say moronic stuff like that to the death. |
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The counter to stupid ideas in a free speech society is
smart ideas. Let stupid people talk, just make sure smart
people get to counter their dumb ideas as well. That's how
this should work. |
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I notice you have no opinion on nuclear power as one
important tool to fight global warming. Odd that I
asked you to speak on the subject instead of doing so
you decided to create a character of me who doesn't want
you to speak. You ignored my prompt to speak by saying I
don't want you to speak. |
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Actually, not odd at all. |
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But let's get back to grownup talk here. |
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Ray, you put up what I thought was an interesting
idea
that has relation with the current situation where
a war is about to start. I think THAT is an
interesting subject, binary mono-tribalism gets
very boring very quick. |
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So Ray, to get back to your idea, what do you think
of
this: |
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Tell Putin here's the deal. We will sign a treaty
saying the Ukraine will NOT join NATO as long as
you promise to NOT invade the Ukraine. If you DO
invade, the
Ukraine IMMEDIATELY becomes part of NATO. Hell,
maybe even put in a bonus (for a limited time
only) with your idea for
the US as well? Say, "Not only will we exclude the
Ukraine, but we'll throw in the US as a bonus." |
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Of course with the same caveat that applies if he
invades anyplace in Europe. (Because as much as
we don't get appreciation for all the lives lost
trying to stop Europeans from killing each other,
we'd probably do it again.) |
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I think THAT'S a comment in the spirit of this post.
I also went back and took out the Biden stuff that
offended you. It was meant to offend Xenzag but
caused collateral damage where none was
intended. Cheerfully withdrawn. |
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//it was meant to offend Xenzag// It just made me laugh, so you need to do some work on that offending me tactic. I just think you're funny Doc. (see my laughing posts) |
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So I ask you to comment on a complicated scientific issue and
instead you dodge the question and laugh hysterically like an
insane moron. Got it. |
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//Cheeefully withdrawan.// Thx. I'll respond in kind
later when I have some time. |
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Thanks Ray, I do think this is an important and timely subject.
We're staring in the face of WWIII here. I don't have the
solution but I almost lost my son in the last war to civilize the world, every morning when I shave and brush my teeth, on the shelf below the mirror I have that Dragunov sniper rifle bullet that missed him by a couple of feet to remind me of how lucky I am. (After they heard the shot they took cover and later dug it out of the wall they were standing on) But with that comes what I see as a lesson, don't let other people's kids be put in a position where the next sniper rifle is raised just a few degrees higher such that it ends a young life. |
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I
think we should all put our differences aside and try with
every atom of our beings to avoid this conflict. |
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Do I know exactly how to do that? Wish I did. |
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No. You tried your best to make a remark intended
to offend me and I laughed. Making another person
laugh is quite a compliment. Try listening to the
Laughing Policeman to dispel your anger and
aggression. |
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Like you're not angry and aggressive? Check who always fires
the first shots in these flame wars. You just admitted it in an
earlier annotation. |
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And you're boring me. Can we stop communicating now? |
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Still making me laugh. You can stop any time you
want. All you have to do is stop. You don't need to
explain this, as that's a form of continuation. |
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Back to the grownup talk thing, no idea if this is true or not
but the German news organization Der Spiegel reported Friday
that Russia is planning to invade Ukraine on Wednesday, Feb
16 according to German intel reports. |
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I have absolutely zero idea if there's any validity to that. |
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You're idea won't work at all because NATO doesn't
and can't
work that way. You cannot turn membership on and
off like
a lightswitch. Go read the charter or at least listen
to this
guy in my link sum it up. |
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NATO does a great job of protecting member states.
But
because it is an all-or-nothing proposition, it screws
those
without membership status as fodder for the taking.
It
needs some modernization and flexibility to offer
something to those states who are not a part of the
cool
kids club, or else risks becoming a perverse
incentive for
authoritarians like Putin to prevent potential member
states from ever joining. |
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We're not the world police. However, if we wish to
remain
an influential superpower we are its citizen patrol
watch by
default. We either accept that role or we cede the
world to
China or Russia or some other undesireable monied
middle-
aged middle-eastern monarch. |
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On Trump (read or skip, I care not). |
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Do you believe that the pen is mightier than the
sword? Yes
or no? If yes, then a tweet from a President is a
powerful
thing for good or evil. Whether or not it
potentially kills millions of people is just a matter of
scale.
He's a troll who was put in a position of authority.
And one who can't respect anyone else, or himself,
for that matter. Obama lived in his head for his entire
presidency. Sad. |
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But forget the tweets. You're either ignoring or
playing
down what he's been up to
by focusing on those activities of least
consequence,
tweets. I can think of at least three felonies he's
committed without even trying hard.
Trump attacked the foundations of democracy
itself, over and over and over again. He did so just
about
every day of his presidency because he couldn't ever
be
capable of being the bigger man, and normalized
such childish
behavior to his followers, worshipers, and cronies. |
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For that I deem him a villainous traitor of the worst
kind,
and whenever he is rendered incapable of passing
another
syllable to the media, whether it be by incarceration,
death by hitting his head on a gold toilet, choking on
a
hamberder, or otherwise simply dead and buried, I,
myself
and I venture a few other million Americans will
dance in
the streets. And he had better be buried in either an
unmarked grave or one that has capacity to handle a
large
volume of wastewater products. |
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Are we really going to bury our heads under the Trump
obsession pillow while WW3 starts? He's not president any
more, torture murder fantasies aside, exciting or comforting
as they might be to some, they have no bearing on
the current situation. |
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How about discussing something that matters now, like the
handling of this crises by the current president? |
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Crises? You mean there's more than one? |
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Go watch the video first. Then get back to me. |
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// If armed hooded men (with weapons paid for by collections made in your country to support sectarian terrorists in mine) couldn't shut me up // |
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This could be any number of countries, but the "collections" aspect suggests that you're describing (Northern) Ireland. |
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//Crises? You mean there's more than one? // |
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Now that you mention it, the Ukraine and Taiwan, yes. |
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But looks like you win the spell check portion of the
discussion. Feels good doesn't it? Mmmmm. Sweet sweet
victory. |
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Anyway, watched the video, I've suggested putting getting
something for withdrawing from NATO on the table and
making it clear
that agressor nations can cause us to re-unite by their
warlike actions. |
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So let me know if I spelled everything correctly because
that's
pretty interesting. |
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//Wasn't it Trump who said (inter alia) the virus is a hoax, that can in anyway be cured with bleach injections// |
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No. No he didn't. In an earlier conversation you told me you get your opinion of him straight from his own words. The fact that you believe either of these things about his words tells me in fact you get your opinions, as I had intimated, from the lie-dripping lips of a newscaster. |
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//Trump's global warming//
BWAAAAHAHAHAHAH hahahahah haaahahahahaaaa heheheeeeee ahhhh |
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Stupid spelling comments are for just a bit of levity. |
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Still smells like appeasement to me in some fashion, and I'd
worry about the Baltic states if we formally left. |
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Russia and India are buds. I wonder what sticks we can find
that involve them. Some arm-twisting of what agreements
with have with India could get interesting. Pressure India
to cancel or hold weapons contracts with Russia, perhaps.
Not that India could afford to buy our overpriced shit. |
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From this point forward I'm breaking out the delete button
on
any more Trump / anti-Trump nonsense. |
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So Ray, I'm still not sure where you stand, your idea as I
understood it was to get out of the mutual defense article
of NATO, but the guy in the video contradicts that. Says it's
more needed than ever. |
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If you're saying cutting the US out of the picture would
allow the remaining NATO states more flexibility to go to
war, well, that's getting above my paygrade to speculate
about. |
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Anyway, top priority for me is avoiding the current conflict
and I had suggested putting negoting points on the table to
try to achieve some kind of peaceful resolution to the
crisis. |
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We've established that you want to murder some ex
politician that has nothing to do with this, but back to the
subject at hand I'm curious what your opinion of putting
memberships of various countries on the negotiating table
in an effort to stave off war. Nevil Chamberlinesque?
Maybe, but that's the topic for discussion as I see it. |
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I really don't think it's possible to protect Ukraine from invasion without starting a war no one but Russia has the will and resources to win. On the other hand it is possible to make Ukraine too expensive to hold. |
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//From this point forward I'm breaking out the delete
button on any more Trump / anti-Trump nonsense.// |
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So as I was writing we did that cross over thing, so you
addressed my Nevil Chamberlin thing and yes, there's no
doubt a downside to appeasment. |
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But not sure if this has ever been suggested before, what if
Hitler HAD honored the Munich agreement? We now know
he never had any intention, but did we know that then? |
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Dhunno. I will say I don't trust Putin to honor anything, but
maybe offering peace with sort of an empty, instantly
revokable agreement just to make his cover story that he
just wants security and peace will have an impact on his
cover story of being agressive as an act of self defense. |
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And Voice, these are questions I'd like to see looked into
more. This isn't a simple time in history. I'm sure future
historians will look back and see what we SHOULD have
done, but right now there's an awful lot of "don't know"s. At
least from my perspective. |
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//his cover story of being agressive as an act of self defense.// |
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No one sane believes that cover story anyway. Proving it more clearly wrong won't have any effect. |
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Eh, probably right, but maybe making it clear that we can re-
engage our mutual defense at any time can have some
deterrence effect. Dhunno. |
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I'm searching for ideas that don't result in cratering to an
authoritarian, for the same reason that you don't feed the
animals at the zoo. I don't have any good answers but am
largely thinking out loud. I do think that the best way to
stop Vlad is to make him worry about more than a few
things at once; make him fight a hydra instead of a unified
head that can't act. Make it complicated. Too complicated
for his little two-player chess-brain to think. |
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Yes, I was suggesting cutting the US out of this particular
picture, or perhaps making the picture more of a nuanced
one where a member state could choose to engage or not
depending upon the situation. |
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They should parachute deliver tens of thousands of
Ronald McDonald clown suits in such a way as they
straddle the entire demilitarised zone, followed up
by thousands of inflatable giant letter "M"s. No
military person can resist dressing up as a clown,
and the "M"s will add to the total confusion that
results with the entire landscape being covered
with McDonalds "M"s and half the military running
around dressed as clowns. Let the "adults" discuss
that solution. |
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Ukraine has a number of reasonable excuses for not negotiating with separatists, but even admitting there was no excuse for Russia taking Crimea, ethnic Russians make up a large part of Donbas and Luhansk and some solution not involving war or negotations with Russia must be considered. Ukraine is not going to get those regions back with war. |
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In this part of the world it would almost seem to make
sense
to not have big nation-states but instead have simple
regional
city-states that are less focused on national borders but
more
subdivided. |
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I'm not entirely convinced that anywhere that contains
ethnic
Russians should become part of Russia; that's too easily
gamed
by the powers. But I don't see a path forward that doesn't
involve screwing Ukraine. |
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Russia has cash reserves to survive sanctions and efforts at
making Ukraine expensive. |
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Ukraine's official news agency (in English) has referred to a return of those regions to Ukrainian territory but with some degree of increased independence as a "poison pill" which Russia will use to control Ukrainian politics. This argument makes no sense to me. |
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//Make it complicated. Too complicated for his little two-player chess-brain to think.// |
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I don't have a problem with that. |
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My problem with my armchair general skills is I look back at past historical military blunders and being honest I would have in many instanced done the same thing that the leaders back then did. |
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Vietnam for instance, I would have looked at Korea and said "Hey, same thing, communist north invading the south, we drove them back to the 38th parallel so we'll just do that again here in Vietnam." We know how that turned out. Like I said, I probably would have tried to get a peace agreement with Hitler too. if it had worked, it would have avoided WW2. |
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So what's changed? The only thing that's changed is my perception of my ability to armchair general to any advantage until after the battle is over. |
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So I'll just hope the guys in charge know what they're doing over there. |
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(Well if that isn't a sentence that portends doom I don't know what is.) |
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//I'm sure future historians will look back and see what we SHOULD have done// |
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Maybe IN 2000 years, when all nuance has been smoothed over by the sands of time and it's once again easier to hand-wave a solution. |
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//Russia has cash reserves to survive sanctions and
efforts
at making Ukraine expensive.// |
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And what if we just drive them into a financial /
military
alliance with China? Pretty sure China would buy
all the
petroleum / natural gas they have, and that's an
alliance I'd
rather not have to contend with. Although it's
probably too
late at this point, I think it's already happened. |
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You also gotta wonder how much all this anti
Russia rhetoric
in the US has pissed off the Russians. Anybody who
doesn't
want war with Putin is his puppet, that sort of
thing. I'm
pretty sure they know about this. At some point
doesn't
poking the bear have consequences? A few years
back a
certain unmentionable political figure suggested
being
friends with Russia, we know how that worked out. |
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Well, we'll see won't we? Maybe this is all nonsense
posturing and we'll all look back at this and laugh. |
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Here's the post I'd like to see in a year:
"Hey, what ever happened to that whole WW3
thing?" |
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By the way Ray, looking at some of the other vids
from that
Beau guy. Some interesting stuff, thanks for the
tip. Don't
agree with everthing he says but he's got some
interesting
points and he's a thoughtful guy. |
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There aren't many active Cold Warriors so far as I know, so the idea that the U.S. should befriend Russia was an obvious point as far back as when the U.S. caudled Yeltsin. Seems to me that most Americans would be apathetic regarding a Russian alliance of one kind or another. Orange stupid man's METHODS were even a greater problem than his rhetoric. |
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LOL, oh well, the name won't be mentioned will just talk in code now. |
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Hey, this one's on me, I brought him up, guilty as charged, won't happen again. |
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But I'm a fan of detente, is there anybody else out there that's even suggested working towards friendly relations with Russia that includes working towards bringing them into the civilized family of nations? At what point do you turn the bully towards violence when you could have shown him the civilized way to do things? Or do we just assume some countries are irredeemable and give up on them? |
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I guess my point is, it's fine to carry a stick but should a carrot be considered as well? |
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And speaking of needing bad guys, maybe we need bad countries to give us something to hate. I'm certainly no fan of the CCP and North Korea, but I wouldn't mind somehow working towards turning them civilized. German and Japan turned out okay after their little experiment with evil empire building. |
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Although it could be said it's because we bombed some sense into them from twenty thousand feet so maybe that's not the best example. |
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Beau is a great guy to watch. Smart, humble, well-
informed, a bit unexpected in analysis by his
appearance. |
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Biden won't risk WW3 by any means. |
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I don't like offering carrots to saber-rattlers. It feels
like rewarding terrorists. |
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If you don't have enemies that are the real bad guys,
you start seeing them everywhere out of a need to
drive change I suspect. |
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We've spent decades showing them the civilized
way. They just need to internalize it. Can't do it for
them. |
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I hope you're right. I think it would be a dumb move on Putin's part but I thought invading Poland was a dumb move too. Sometimes maniacs have their own agenda. |
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//China would buy all the petroleum / natural gas they
have// |
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I researched this question back in 2014 (I had shares in
Gazprom), and it's only half true; yes, China will buy, but at a
much lower price than, say, Germany. |
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//maybe we need bad countries to give us something to hate//
There are no bad countries, only bad people. And maybe politicians like to portray them that way in order to deflect attention away from their own failings?
//We've spent decades showing them the civilized way.//
I'm no Putin apologist; he's a scumbag of the highest order. But this comment is laughable. |
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// But this comment is laughable. // |
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Indeed. I was just guffawing mirthlessly at some U.S. General saying that he knew exactly what Putin was doing because he'd been doing it himself recently. |
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Could you name that general, [4and20]? Or, better, provide
a link? |
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//showing them the civilized way.// |
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I don't know whether you remember this, [ray], but during the
period between the end of communism and the arrival of
Putin, "showing them the civilised way" consisted in large
measure of free-market ideologues going to Moscow and
explaining that government was the problem, and that,
once government had been swept out of the way, everything
would sort itself out. |
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So that was done, and the result was a nation of gangsters,
prostitutes and suddenly destitute retirees. |
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This makes it easy for Putin to point to that era, and say
"You remember what Western 'freedom' was like? Nobody
wants that!" |
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I was so hopeful for those guys when Boris Yeltsin was
in charge. Oh well. |
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Yes, I remember that. The unrecognized problem was that
they had no reliable institutions in place to act as guide
rails
and we had a failure of imagination to understand what
could
happen in that kind of corrupt scenario. |
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We have or at least had a few guide rails. People invest
over here because their money is seen as fairly safe and
there are a few laws that keep the wheels from completely
coming off under anything but 2008-ish scenarios. Those
should've
been what they took notice of as 'the civilized way.' But
just like the truth has
trouble with its zipper getting stuck while the lies do a
Barry
Allen impression, so does institutional development lag
unprincipled opportunists and criminals. |
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[pertinax] in the worst of the 90s they were better off than
in the best of the 60s or 80s (the two softest communist
regime) period -- and they're still better off than then. |
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More than anything, Putin cannot tolerate former Soviet
republics, particularly Ukraine and Belarus, having it better
than Russia itself, as that would put his entire regime at
risk. This is not about fantasies of reconstructed Russia --
it's about survival. So they'll push as hard as they can. |
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While the current admin's energy policy is helping Putin,
the threatened sanction regime will in the end almost
certainly make him back off from a direct attack -- but
nothing will stop him from doing everything he can to get a
puppet government there again. |
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[Ray] everything you say about Trump is true -- and yet
STILL I would venture more people actually read Trump's
books (though not written by him) then either Obama's or
Hillary's :) narcissism indeed |
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The 90's were a time of upheaval for Russia. Even if they
may
had it better economically, what they'll remember is the
fear
of instability due to the rapid change that exposed the
corruption that was largely always there to the naked eye. |
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Obama's book was a best-seller if I recall. People talked
about it here and there and everywhere. Remember how
much time Fox and company devoted to trying to decipher
his father and whether Obama was a closet Muslim? The
takeoff of that angle was partly because of his book I'll bet.
And this was against a backdrop where nobody really cares
about Presidential memoir books besides the politics-as-
pro-sports crowd. Because frankly, who actually read HW's
book? Or Bob Dole's? Or Bill's? They're usually as
consequential as the Oval Office curtain choices. |
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indeed. the point though is there's no one more narcicistic
than a forty something senator who'd done nothing to date
(and gets a Nobel Peace Prize for existing -- or is it for
correctly guessing Russia as a coming menace? oh no, that
was Romney),
or a seventy something wife of an ex president, who think
they deserve it. The big difference with Trump is his
toddler like inability (and utter lack of desire) to hide it. |
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with all that said, I think an expat who still had relatives
there in the 90s, and who talks to people from there (both
Ukraine and Russia, as well as Poland and the Baltics) on
some basis knows better than what you read on CNN. But
of course I'm biased by my knowledge of it. |
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You give me too little credit. I've been there, studied the
language, know a few
people as well. My prof, for example, who encouraged us to
become part of the post-Soviet Russian quasi-business
machine. |
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Quick: name a felony committed by an Obama staffer that
doesn't involve the words 'email.' |
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There may be some measures by which that's true, but I
don't think that's the way they remember it, [their]. |
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Kiev in the mid 1990s (I think it was 1994) was the angriest
place I've ever been. I'd been in other places where I
hadn't felt safe walking around alone, but there, I didn't
feel safe walking around in a group of six to eight people. I
realise this is a subjective measure, but almost everyone I
saw looked as if they'd had it up to here, and were just
about ready to go postal. Further west, I saw election
posters with a slogan which translated as "It's time to go
back into the woods and sharpen our knives". |
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Moscow, that I visited a few years later, was not quite so
angry; a lot of the money being sucked out of Russia made
a stopover in Moscow before reaching its final destination
in numbered Swiss accounts, or in the London property
market, but it would not have been to everyone's taste.
The English language Moscow Times contained a review of a
night club as follows: |
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"There is no gun check on the door of this club; if you ask a
girl to dance, you will be shot and killed". |
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I did not personally verify this claim, but it was consonant
with the general atmosphere of the city. |
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I'm not sure that per capita GDP figures quite capture this
sort of thing; great if you want to write picaresque stories,
but probably not a place where you'd want to raise a
family, or grow old. |
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nevertheless I'll stand by my assessment. yes there was a
period of lawlessness and nostalgia for Communism as
would
be inevitable. but the state had already collapsed prior,
and
real near starvation for pensioners was already an issue
(and
incidentally, their current state is not much better) |
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[pertinax] -- my friends and I frequently joke about retiring
in Sochi -- as the saying goes, if we have to live in a quasi
socialist country, could just as well be our country of birth. |
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it's a joke, mind you, I'd rather choose Portugal, and my
wife, who's from Latvia, can easily get an EU passport :) |
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and if I retire anywhere, it's much more likely to be Florida
or Texas... |
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Given the enormous difference in buying power is the US really more attractive? In Latvia couldn't you, with the same amount of money you could spend on a little cottage in Texas, have a large house with guards, maids, and a cook? |
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the weather is just not nice enough in Latvia, though it'd be
nice to have a summer home there |
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That's why they make Pacific islands. |
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Wouldn't it then be called the European Treaty Organization? |
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RayfordSteele - your arguments are nonsense. Biden had no
obligation to withdraw on any deadline set by Trump and then
blame him for it later. Biden made the decision to withdraw,
and should own it. Otherwise why did he run for office, if only
to spend his term blaming Trump? Biden had freedom of
action, and made the choice not to stay. The Buck Never Stops
With Biden, apparently. |
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it wanted to stop at Biden's but then realized he's going to
Delaware, and who wants that |
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sanman, you don't understand that Biden is not the only party
involved here in an international agreement. He can't just
snap his fingers and wish what Trump did all away. It doesn't
work that way. There are these people known as the Afghanis,
the Taliban, the ash heap of their government, etc. that were
all parties. |
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the eighties just returned that phone call Obama was talking
about in the Candy Crawley debate |
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