Ukraine
- Thread starter Silvanus
- Start date
The Budapest memorandum was first broken by the United States in 2013 when it imposed sanctions on Belarus and again when it targeted sanctions against Ukraine under Yanukovych. This was before the Euromaidan and before the annexation of Crimea with its disputed referendum. The Minsk agreements were constantly broken by Ukraine and the Donbas republics. I suppose you could say Russia finally buried them by accepting the DPR's and LPR's request for recognition and aid.
We're just going to ignore the impact of the long telegram and Truman doctrine in US and Canadian entry into the BTO, therefore leading to the eventual and formal creation of NATO, aren't we. Lest we forget, the long telegram was written first although it was not made public in Foreign Affairs, until after Truman's 1947 speech before Congress. Truman's speech was not just directly informed by it, it was the formalization of the policies proposed by it. The sole, exclusive reason North American states are in the NATO in the first place, and therefore the only reason NATO exists in the first place is domino theory -- otherwise, it would have remained a formal alliance between the UK, France, and the Benelux countries.
The USSR is not "a" key reason behind NATO's formation. It is "the" reason behind NATO's formation.
Here, you're talking at cross purposes. Before and after this post, you've gone on record stating your opinion the Russian Federation is an "extension of the USSR" implying that, on the geopolitical stage, the two countries are interchangeable and the distinction irrelevant.
That's actually not the case; the Russian Federation and its foreign policy are better comparable to pre-Soviet, imperial, Russia. The Russian Federation's interest is maximizing influence within what it perceives to be its sphere of influence, opposed to state-building on a global stage along predominantly ideological lines. Or to put it another way, Putin has more in common with Otto von Bismarck, than Stalin or even Khrushchev. And indeed, like the German statesman, Putin has proven exceptionally adept at manufacturing casus belli for the purposes of seizing territory or building suzerainties.
Which is why NATO and the UN are catastrophically failing to answer Russian foreign policy -- well, that and that half NATO and the UN have preemptively surrendered by making themselves dependent upon Russian fossil fuel imports.
But either way, "without a clear external threat" is a hollow and pointless statement. Clearly, you (and others) do perceive the continued existence of a "clear external threat". If not Russia, who? The sudden and inexplicable reemergence of a Fourth Reich? that's why NATO's predecessor, the BTO, was created. Egypt? Nasser's dead, there's enough Israeli and Saudi money thrown about to keep politically-motivated parties at bay, and the biggest threat to the Suez today are incompetent meteorologists and traffic controllers.
And, here we come to it. After all, the military-industrial complex must have its generational pound of flesh and bag of silver.
The irony of this being, "political stability" and "economic development" don't exactly seem to account for much. Putin didn't manifest himself directly from the luminiferous aether of ex-Soviet nationalists. We got to Putin through Yeltsin, shock therapy, and the mass deregulation and privatization that came as the strings attached to the billions in Western economic aid to Russia following the Soviet Union's collapse. "The West" wanted Russia transformed into the largest banana republic in human history, and instead we got Putin...an entirely predictable and avoidable circumstance.
It's also the largest country by square mileage on the planet, but 11th in GDP. #2 on the list of square mileage, Canada, clocks in at just over half the land mass and ranks tenth in GDP. The relevance of that other than it being a lot of country to defend which exacts a necessary toll in logistics operations (hint, there's a reason I've kept talking about Russia's apparent state of unreadiness for this current conflict), is with how many hostile countries does Russia share a contiguous land border?
If the last time the US went to war with Canada wasn't 210 years ago, its military budget would probably be three times higher than it currently is as well. And given the...heft...of your average US citizen, if the maple syrup supply was threatened we'd probably decide writ nothing Canada wasn't "democratic" enough, to say nothing of those stupid fucking tar sands.
I'm sure the countries in which Ukraine's economic and political elites -- whomever they are at any given time -- keep their money has nothing to do with it, right?
Is that why when Russia actually has had functioning mutual security agreements, such as Budapest and Minsk, it constantly breaks them?
Russia's actions make no sense from a purely defensive position. It has escalated, and broken faith, at every possible step. It has attained security guarantees from other countries, and then aggressively and repeatedly broken the terms of them.
The "self defence" line is just yet more window-dressing for imperialism, just as Bush and Blair insisted the invasions of the Middle East were essential to protect the US and UK security. Nevermind that in both situations, the countries who were attacked never actually presented a tangible threat.
Last edited:
The Budapest memorandum isn't a mutual security agreement and neither were any of the Minsk agreements. Also,
Couldn't get past the first five minutes of the video, the way the host in the white shirt talks about the situation was a wee bit off putting.
"It's getting crazy over there, even super models are picking up guns, it's crazy ... people love their country over there"
What's happening in Ukraine with people picking up arms to fight off an agressor who's out to oppress them is not something I would describe using the above words. Considering how the phrase is thrown around for random bullshit all the time, hearing an American mention how someone "loves their country" just rings hollow in my ears.
Try not to judge too much. Korey does and can get serious. He points out while what is happening to Ukraine is wrong, they're not exactly innocent and have a big racism problem. They're only letting white Ukrainians/Europeans on trains to escape. There is an Ethiopian family that was at a train station for 3 days, yet all of the white people or families came and left the same day. They're not letting anyone on that is African/Black, Latino, Indian, Arabic, etc. Don't get upset because they had a slight joke before getting serious. If that puts you off, than the heavy racism they mention and discuss should put you off even further. That is no laughing matter.
I have it time stamped to the important part. You want a serious discussion? You got it.
Last edited:
No, we're just going to have to read you spam a lot of info to make it sound like whatever shit you're into today sound deeper than it really is. Or not read, as the case is, because I just read that introductory sentence and my mind glazed over for the rest.
Thanks for the timestamp, contrary to the impression the introduction gave me, the rest of the video was a good watch.
We're just going to ignore the impact of the War of Austrian Succession and the Treaty of Paris in the formation of the US and Canada, therefore leading to the US and Canadian entry into the BTO, therefore leading to the eventual and formal creation of NATO, aren't we.
(Pretend I could be bothered to copy-paste the contents of the encyclopedia britannica entries for said events here)
Last edited:
You are welcome. Like I said before, try not to judge. I understand there is a lot of crap commentators out there on YT, but Double Toasted is one of the great ones on the site. No ones perfect, but they know when to get serious, and are not always about the laughs and reviews. Korey, Martin, and the others are not afraid to discuss social, class, and racial issues going on in the world. I've known these guys for a long time.
Greek City Times – Greek City Times
Greek NEWS. Breaking news about Greece its people, politics and economy from the Greek city times, the leading source of information for Greece. Greek City Times is the leading International Greek news portal and news agency.
greekcitytimes.com
It's OK, though; the fascists didn't win very many seats in parliament.
Who is abusing Ukraine here? The country that helps it or the one which invades it? You have yet to make any sense in this topic. How many roubles are you paid per post? or is it per sentence?
it could have fast tracked Ukraine into NATO and heavily armed it I guess.
Your proposals conflict with human decency.
Because countries have an excellent track record with respecting all the treaties they sign. I remember a certain Russia signing a treaty which involved safeguarding the territorial integrity of a certain Ukraine in exchange for its nuclear stockpile. Hmm... wonder how that ended up?
What you want is Eastern Europe to become Russia's playground again because you seem to love subjugating people to fascistic despots.
His illegitimate concerns you mean.
They keep popping up near Russia because Russia has a horrible track record in Eastern Europe. And who cares about the missiles they could be given when Russia develops missiles like the "Satan II". What you fail to realize is that to Eastern European Countries Russia is like a USA on Steroids would be to Russia. Why are you ignoring the legitimate concerns of Eastern European nations? Why should only the concerns of a fascistic despot matter?
That is Ukraine's choice. Letting Empires decide for them is so 20th century.
Easy: Putin took their land. Only solutions: Putin giving back Crimea and/or abdicating from his throne. But neither will happen so Ukraine will keep on desiring NATO protection. And the USA can't do jack shit about that. Except perhaps if they manage to assassinate Putin.
Global capitalism is global.
Capitalism is the economic framework on which all political structures in the world today exist. All nations, all governments, all national economies. There is no such thing as a "non-exploitative economy", and no nation is going to bring that into existence for you out of the goodness of their hearts, because while they are under pressure, they are all under the same pressure from the same source. Even an explicitly anti-capitalist nation would still need to contend with the actual reality of global capitalism, and would still need to organize its economy to fit into a global capitalist economy. While the USA has certainly sabotaged its share of anti-capitalist governments, that's not necessary for the continuation of capitalism. Capitalism continues because at this point there is no alternative. You fit into the global capitalist economy, or you don't have an economy.
There is not a secret room somewhere where all the
A weakened US wouldn't weaken capitalism. It wouldn't result in a world with less exploitation, especially not if Russia is next in the line of succession. Of course, Russia is not next in the line of succession because Russia, like all fascist countries, is a failure.
All of this argument is built on the assumption that Russia is a rival to the USA. It's not. They're not even close. Russia would struggle to be a rival to the UK. The only thing that arguably elevates Russia into this category of "world powers", and basically the only thing it has going for it, is its hilariously oversized army. Any attempts to assert Russia's status as a world power are going to be based on military force and coercion, because Russia isn't actually a world power. It's edgier Brazil (and given that Brazil is also run by fascists, that's pretty edgy).
Russia doesn't actually need the US to undermine it. Russia needs to pretend it is a rival to the USA because that's how fascism works. You build an oversized army, you play at strength and try to assert international dominance and you create imaginary external threats to justify internal repression. I don't think much of the political establishment in the USA really cares about Russia. This narrative of irreconcilable cultural war between the noble, manly, Christian East and the degenerate, godless homosexual West seems to be far more an invention of the Russian government and its supporters than anything else.
Yeah, they do. So what?
Probably.
Meanwhile, I'm sure all that Russian military hardware is produced by worker-organized syndicalist collectives rather than publicly listed joint-stock companies.
Also, you know most of the big EU countries are arms exporters right? There are plenty of war profiteers here, no need to go to the USA.
It could have been.
I think a lot of diplomats had those kinds of conversations with their governments. I'm certain Russian diplomats did. That's kind of what diplomats do.
It's an assumption.
The IMF's prospective loan to Ukraine, which Yanukovych's government actively asked for because that's how loans work, had absolutely nothing to do with Ukraine's debt to Russia. Fact check your own propaganda next time.
Last edited:
They both obviously hold provisions supposed to ensure the security of both parties. Don't be obtuse.
Oh, this reasoning is on the basis of not using "economic pressure" to change the politics of the country? You're stretching that beyond recognition if you think it was intended to prohibit sanctions as a response to rampant law-breaking, brutality, and the dismantling of democracy in that country.
Hah! No, Ukraine fighting separatist insurgents within its own internationally-recognised territory (including recognised by Russia!) does not constitute a break of Minsk.
EDIT: I mixed up Minsk & Budapest above. Ukraine (along with DPR, LPR and Russia) have all broken Minsk. Russia by far most severely, of course.
What does is Russia arming and financing the same insurgency. Then invading. Then annexing. And even if you'd consider the Belarussian sanctions to constitute a breach, you're utterly mad if you see that as an equivalent threat to a country's sovereignty than literal annexation.
Last edited:
Can you figure out one that isn't carving a sovereign nation up like a turkey against its wishes?
In 2015, Mongolia announced its intention to be permanently neutral. As far as I know its borders have not changed since then.