Ukraine

[ralfy]

Where to even start? The Holodomor? The partition of Poland? The Soviet conquest of Poland? The Prague Spring? Decades of being occupied and terrorized for just about all of Russia's neighbors.

What reasons to Russia's neighbor have not to be in NATO? Especially after Russia proved exactly what happens to neighbors who lack NATO protection.

According to Goodman, it was electioneering:

Bill Clinton’s Role in the Crisis Over Ukraine

The militarization of American foreign policy has evolved over the past thirty years. Ironically, this took place in the wake of the dissolution of the

www.counterpunch.org

Bush, Sr., was engaged in adventurism in the Middle East, and Clinton wanted to show that he was a macho man, too, and against Dole, so he began to use Ukraine as another American tool. He was warned about that by his own men, and those of Bush, Sr., and following what Kennan and others said about crossing red lines. But he pushed through with it, and followed by Dubya, all the way to Nuland reporting that they were providing support to Ukrainian police, military, and the government, and Graham and co. talking about taking the war to Russia by 2017. In short, they turned NATO into a sword, to the point that they even considered the Atlantic extending all the way to Japan:

Nato appears to shelve plans to open Japan liaison office in Tokyo

Progress expected at Nato summit thanks to attendance of Japan’s PM but no mention made in latest talks

www.theguardian.com

Meanwhile, that was the same Russia that Obama wanted to join NATO years earlier:

Russia, NATO to deepen ties

Russia and NATO, once wary and untrusting of each other, have decided to deepen their ties, with both agreeing Saturday to work closely on the crucial issue of missile defense.

edition.cnn.com

That was the clownshoe show that the U.S. and NATO were playing across almost three decades.

 

[Seanchaidh]

The reasons for the invasion are blindingly obvious, and we even have sources straight from the horse's mouth: from Putin giving his speech about how Ukrainian independence was a mistake and should be rectified, to the Russian soldiers who attested their goal had been to take Kyiv and depose the government.

Selective, unserious analysis. Don't waste your or my time with this crap.

 

[ralfy]

The NATO enlargement requires the unanimous decision of all members and the candidate.

Maybe the US consented because encirclement, maybe not. Honestly don't care much.

But the candidates joined because they feared Russia might change its mind and conquer/subjugate them again. And most of the already NATO Europeans agreed for the same reason : To continue being protected from Russia, to protect others from Russia, to have allied instead of hostile neighbors, because they shared strategic concerns with the newcomers and, at worst, to have a buffer between them and Russia.

The NATO expansion was defensive at its very core, giving new countries security and having more allies in case of being attacked. Of note is also that at the same time, as every member can veto any major NATO decision, the expansion makes it significantly harder to use NATO as an offensive tool.

It was encirclement, as Mearsheimer correctly pointed out, and following Kennan and others across the decades. The goal is to control Europe, East Asia, and the Middle East, with the intent of challenging Russia and China plus protecting oil supplies in the Middle East.

You don't care because it challenges the "Russian Empire" storyline. That same storyline was being pushed by the likes of Reagan with is "evil empire" bit, to Dubya and his "axis of evil," and so on. In order to justify military expansionism, the government has to show that Russia, China, and even countries like Iran and North Korea are considered threats to "freedom" and "democracy."

In reality, as these personalities correctly pointed out, it's all about protecting U.S. interests:

https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/opinions_222258.htm

And even the ones demanding more money from them know it, too:

Zelenskyy wants Ukraine to be ‘a big Israel.’ Here’s a road map.

By adapting their mindset to mirror aspects of Israel’s approach to security challenges, Ukrainian officials can tackle their own critical challenges with confidence.

www.atlanticcouncil.org

Meanwhile, the same storyteller was still buying uranium from Russia, making deals with China and Saudi Arabia, and playing both sides when it came to Israel and Taiwan.

At the very least, you need to stop wondering and start considering the possibility that the U.S. is no different from the countries that it demonizes, if not worse.

 

[ralfy]

Russia shills, some on this very forum love pretending Russia's actions are defensively but they never quite make a convincing argument about what Russia is defending itself from.

Vague complaints about NATO ''encirclement'' not only ignores the sovereignty of all Russia's neighbors but also completely misreads the geopolitical situation. What's the fear exactly? That NATO is going to outright invade Russia? Its just not going to happen. Even if America did have the intentions then Europe wouldn't go along with it. If it took this much for Europe to even consider sanctioning Russia for actual crimes, and even actual murder of European citizens then they would never join the US in an unprovoked attack on Russia.

Besides the age of a ground war between global powers is long over. A conventional invasion of the Russian heartland is impossible as long as Russia has its nukes. Sometimes the argument is made that if Ukraine is an independent nation then NATO nukes can be on Russia's borders but NATO already borders Russia.

The more likely fear of the Kremlin is that if a functioning democracy emerges in the ''Russian world'' then Russian citizen might demand change in their own government, and that this could lead to an uprising. But who's fault is that? This is only a reason for concern because the Kremlin refuses to behave as an actual government, and could be immediately fixed if they tried being one.

There are also grumblings of Russia being somehow humiliated and kept down after the cold war and that this would naturally create tension. But that's nonsense. For a former totalitarian state that collapsed under its own ineptitude they got off extremely well. Russia was allowed to grow rich and fat from lucrative gas deals, they were allowed total sovereignty inside their own borders and their pretensions of still being an empire was humored(as long as it was in Asia and not in Europe) despite Russia no longer having the resources and prestige to justify this unique status. For all the humiliation Russia supposedly endured the US still allowed them to have an Imperial status they allowed for no other nation.

Those "vague complaints" were raised by Kennan, Friendman, Goodman, Sachs, Mearsheimer, Pilger, Ellsberg, Chomsky and even former state officials of the Bush, Sr., and Clinton administrations across the decades, and now implicitly blurted out by the likes of Stoltenberg.

Meanwhile, the same U.S. that keeps talking about honoring the sovereignty of neighbors continues to attack Cuba and even non-neighbors, as part of a century of warmongering:

FROM WOUNDED KNEE TO YEMEN – Zoltán Grossman

leading to millions dead:

Costs of War

The Costs of War Project is a team of 35 scholars, legal experts, human rights practitioners, and physicians, which began its work in 2011. We use research and a public website to facilitate debate about the costs of the post-9/11 wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

watson.brown.edu

while selling arms to Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and others.

But for neocons and their fellow neolibs, these are all part of Russian (or Chinese, or North Korean, or Iranian, or Afghan, or Syrian, or Cuban, or Yemenese, or whatever) propaganda. And any connections made is "whataboutism" because the claim that the war machine that arms Israel is also doing the same from Ukraine is fake.

As one forum puts it, it's all tinfoil. Truth can only come from the U.S. government.

 

[Elijin]

Rally, you mentioned other forums moderators don't like you, is it because they think you're a bot?

You rarely reply meaningfully, just the same bit over and over. And the links. If I compiled your post history, how many links are there? How many of those links are the same ones, repeated constantly like a spam bot??

 

[Silvanus]

And that was in reaction to what one non-neighbor did. The latter, apparently, considers the whole world its neighborhood.

But it wasn't. Russia has manipulated and oppressed Ukraine since before the US even existed and throughout the centuries since-- while in the unequal, forced partnerships of the USSR and the Russian Empire.

Ukraine voted overwhelmingly for independence from Russia as soon as it was given the chance-- including Donbas. It then trusted Russia to respect its international boundaries in 1994, when it gave up its nuclear arsenal in exchange for security guarantees. It trusted Russia to maintain the only foreign military bases in the country. And what happened? Russia, and only Russia, declared openly that Ukrainian independence was unacceptable and betrayed its own international legal promises. Russia, and only Russia, invaded and annexed and slaughtered. Not in response to any credible threat to itself, for Russia has never been invaded or even truly threatened by Ukraine. But simply as the latest in a centuries-long list of Imperial abuses, stretching far earlier than the US.

 

[Silvanus]

Selective, unserious analysis. Don't waste your or my time with this crap.

Oh, the painful hypocrisy. You're more than happy to point to direct statements from leaders and soldiers when they show clearly the motivations of the US, UK, Israel etc. Half your posts about those countries' abuses are just gross statements from their politicians, soldiers or leaders, to show how they're 'not even hiding it anymore'.

....But as soon as its one of your favoured authoritarians directly stating that he wishes to remove sovereignty from another country, it's selective crap. Sure thing.

Of course, we also have their actions to judge them on, which also betray their motives clear as day-- much independent evidence of which has already been provided. But you refuse to acknowledge anything that doesn't come directly from the Russian government or its supporters, so you're in a comfortable position whereby nothing will be accepted that could challenge what you've already decided.

 

[Hades]

Eastern Europe is preyed upon by two sets of gangsters, and one doesn't consider itself so. Rather, it's the "hero" of the world:

No. For all the US's misdeeds the holodomor, the partitioning of Poland, the Soviet gulags, the Prague spring or the anexation of the Baltic simply aren't among them. Whatever its conduct in the rest of the world is eastern Europe simply have no reason to fear the US as a ''gangster'' on par of Russia.

The deal the US offers eastern European countries is ''You're an independent country''
The deal Russia offers eastern European countries is ''You're NOT an independent country and if you pretend otherwise we'll destroy every single one of you the moment we get the chance''
The historical behavior of the US towards eastern European countries is mostly unremarkable.
The historical behavior of Russia towards eastern Europe is to repeatedly invade and anex them, saddle them with decades of Russian misrule and treating the people living in those countries like trash.

That's hardly a situation of ''two gangsters''

According to Goodman, it was electioneering:

So we're supposed to pretend a country like Poland doesn't fear Russia because it has destroyed Poland twice and has ambitions to do it a third time, but just because of ''electionering''

That's a thoroughly unconvincing argument. Why would citizen of Poland be influenced more by whatever whims of the American president than by having lived trough Russian occupation and oppression? Why would a citizen of Ukraine overlook Russian poisoning of their president and then parading their next president around as a puppet but then ''suddenly'' turn on Russia just because Bush and Obama want it? Don't you think Ukrainians have their own opinions on Russian aggression? Don't you think Ukrainians might genuinely think they're an independent country and not a Russian vassal state, or outright Russian territory?

 

[ralfy]

Rally, you mentioned other forums moderators don't like you, is it because they think you're a bot?

You rarely reply meaningfully, just the same bit over and over. And the links. If I compiled your post history, how many links are there? How many of those links are the same ones, repeated constantly like a spam bot??

They don't like me because they support older forum members' views, which are mostly pro-American. Here's an example: in one thread about how the U.S. economy is doing "great," I pointed out that it's essentially been based on debt since the early 1980s because of deregulation, and that in turn was done in response to trade deficits starting in the mid-1970s. At some point, they began to talk about banks not being able to create more money, and I pointed out that they could, and even beyond the money multiplier, through endogenous money. I referred to an article that's a decade ago explaining that, two forum members laughed and said that the idea is outdated because the article is old, and one mod suspended me for posting outdated information.

It never occurred to them that endogenous money is to banking what gravity is to the planet. It's highly likely that forum members did not know what I was talking about, which meant that they didn't know what they were talking about, and the unthinking mod simply followed their lead.

It's similar to this issue: the war in Ukraine is seen in terms of moralizing, with the need to "protect" the "poor" Ukrainians from "tyrannical" Russians. Not only is that a rehash of the same Reaganite "evil empire" or Dubya's "axis of evil" storyline, but even the phony accusations of being Russian propagandists borrows from McCarthy's "red scare," if not Dubya's "either you're with us, you are with the terrorists". More are no longer fooled by that, especially given a U.S. that's been playing both sides for decades.

But even that point is considered "whataboutism," that is, the idea that the U.S. needs to "protect" the "poor" Israelis from "tyrannical" Palestinians while arming the "poor" Egyptians, Jordanians, and Saudis against the "tyrannical" Israelis are all not true. Apparently, all those Western media outlets that have been reporting on the same news for decades are part of Russian propaganda as well, if not "tin foil". How does one argue with forum members who can't think rationally and thus resort to things like labeling?

Add to this that the idea that if one writes well, then he's probably a "spam bot." In relation to that, a member of another forum accused me of even plagiarism because he thought all along that I was copying and pasting from published sources? Apparently, in his world, no forum anon can write that well.

Finally, I think that when we reach a point when forum members go off-topic can counter my arguments and start talking about me, then that's another reason why I should stop posting, especially in a forum that some consider have low levels of activity, anyway.

 

[Silvanus]

Add to this that the idea that if one writes well, then he's probably a "spam bot."

You don't write well. And I don't say this just because I disagree with you-- Seanchaidh writes a lot more coherently and doesn't regurgitate the same damn irrelevant link 12 times.

Finally, I think that when we reach a point when forum members go off-topic [...]

Absolute gold, for this to top off a post where you start talking about 70s American trade deficits and banking deregulation in this thread about Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

It's similar to this issue: the war in Ukraine is seen in terms of moralizing, with the need to "protect" the "poor" Ukrainians from "tyrannical" Russians. Not only is that a rehash of the same Reaganite "evil empire" or Dubya's "axis of evil" storyline, but even the phony accusations of being Russian propagandists borrows from McCarthy's "red scare," if not Dubya's "either you're with us, you are with the terrorists". More are no longer fooled by that

You mean like how Russia couched its invasion in faux justifications about how Eastern Ukrainians must be protected from the "Nazis, Satanists and drug addicts" in Ukraine? Or how Tankies accuse anyone who disagrees with Russian annexation of "Russophobia"? It seems quite a few people are still fooled by these lines when they're deployed as pretexts for war.

 

[Thaluikhain]

It's similar to this issue: the war in Ukraine is seen in terms of moralizing, with the need to "protect" the "poor" Ukrainians from "tyrannical" Russians.

The Russians invaded Ukraine. This is sorta a big deal. Yeah, you look bad when you invade another country, especially if it's for the purpose of annexing it.

 

[Satinavian]

It's similar to this issue: the war in Ukraine is seen in terms of moralizing, with the need to "protect" the "poor" Ukrainians from "tyrannical" Russians. Not only is that a rehash of the same Reaganite "evil empire" or Dubya's "axis of evil" storyline, but even the phony accusations of being Russian propagandists borrows from McCarthy's "red scare," if not Dubya's "either you're with us, you are with the terrorists". More are no longer fooled by that, especially given a U.S. that's been playing both sides for decades.

Why does it matter to the Russia-Ukraine wars what kind of nonsense US presidents said in the past ?

Dubya's axis of evil was incredibly eye-roll-worthy even at its time. The Invasion of Iraq was against international law and in many ways just wrong. I remember several posters here that take now a pro-Ukraine stance to have protested against it then.
But the US and past presidents there having done bad stuff or told stupid nonsense doesn't make Russias conquest of Ukraine even the slightest bit more agreeable.

You might also have noticed that the forum generally does not seem to be persuaded by US propaganda, when it comes to Israel. Why is there such a stark difference ? Well, obviously because other people don't see everything from the lens of pro/contra US and can actually evaluate topics on their own merit. Something you continuously fail to do. You can only see the US and that is your only reference for everything. And that is why you fail so hard and miss all the important stuff. Because if it is not linked to the US you just can't see it.

 

[Ag3ma]

Ukraine voted overwhelmingly for independence from Russia as soon as it was given the chance-- including Donbas. It then trusted Russia to respect its international boundaries in 1994, when it gave up its nuclear arsenal in exchange for security guarantees. It trusted Russia to maintain the only foreign military bases in the country. And what happened? Russia, and only Russia, declared openly that Ukrainian independence was unacceptable and betrayed its own international legal promises. Russia, and only Russia, invaded and annexed and slaughtered. Not in response to any credible threat to itself, for Russia has never been invaded or even truly threatened by Ukraine. But simply as the latest in a centuries-long list of Imperial abuses, stretching far earlier than the US.

There's also an interesting source here on Russia's attitude to Ukraine - essentially that ever since independence Russia has maintained tools to interfere with, constrain and destabilise Ukraine. Salient is Russia's refusal to broach clear discussion of borders, under a series of delays and smokescreens.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

It's similar to this issue: the war in Ukraine is seen in terms of moralizing, with the need to "protect" the "poor" Ukrainians from "tyrannical" Russians.

If Russia striking apartment buildings and hospitals with missiles doesn't seem to be a moral issue to you, then I very strongly question your morality.

Your view is "US bad, so everything that hurts US good" beyond even what Seanchaidh espouses.

 

[Hades]

Its funny Putin told the far right shill interviewing him that Russia has no reason to invade Poland and the Baltics. In part because his generals and politician keep threatening those places with destruction, but also because if they have no reason to invade those countries they have no reason to invade Ukraine either.

After all every single reason Putin pretends is a reason to invade Ukraine also exists in those countries
They were owned and oppressed by Russia in the past which according to Putin's ideology gives Russia the right to still own and oppress them.
They ''betrayed'' Russia by seeking closer ties with the west
They either border Russia or ensure nukes placed there can reach Moswcow
They all have Russian speaking minorities which apparently is to Russia akin to what oil is to the US. If you have to much of it they come ''liberate you''
And all those countries no doubt have neonazi groups so powerful that they can exactly zero seats in parliament.

All reasons for Putin to be convinced Ukraine needs to be destroyed exist in those countries.

 

[Seanchaidh]

....But as soon as its one of your favoured authoritarians directly stating that he wishes to remove sovereignty from another country, it's selective crap. Sure thing.

well for one thing he hasn't said that. Unserious analysis.

 

[Seanchaidh]

Its funny Putin told the far right shill interviewing him that Russia has no reason to invade Poland and the Baltics. In part because his generals and politician keep threatening those places with destruction, but also because if they have no reason to invade those countries they have no reason to invade Ukraine either.

After all every single reason Putin pretends is a reason to invade Ukraine also exists in those countries
They were owned and oppressed by Russia in the past which according to Putin's ideology gives Russia the right to still own and oppress them.
They ''betrayed'' Russia by seeking closer ties with the west
They either border Russia or ensure nukes placed there can reach Moswcow
They all have Russian speaking minorities which apparently is to Russia akin to what oil is to the US. If you have to much of it they come ''liberate you''
And all those countries no doubt have neonazi groups so powerful that they can exactly zero seats in parliament.

All reasons for Putin to be convinced Ukraine needs to be destroyed exist in those countries.

Poland and the Baltics all both have an integrated economy with Russia and a civil war in which one side is an ethnic Russian minority and the other is employing a Nazi military formation to destroy them? Are you sure?

 

[Silvanus]

well for one thing he hasn't said that. Unserious analysis.

While explaining his reasons for invading Ukraine, he's repeatedly ranted about how Ukrainian independence was a mistake, and that it doesn't have "real statehood" or a distinct identity. He did so again the other day, as one of America's most rabid right-wing pundits fawningly interviewed him. You know this.

His troops encircled Kyiv and attempted unsuccessfully to take it.

This is blindingly obvious to anyone watching objectively. But of course, you dismissed the possibility that Russia would invade in the first place as "hysteria", didn't you?

 

[Hades]

Poland and the Baltics all both have an integrated economy with Russia and a civil war in which one side is an ethnic Russian minority and the other is employing a Nazi military formation to destroy them? Are you sure?

The only reason there even was a ''civil war'' is because the Kremlin maliciously created one. Because of the above mentioned reason.

 

[Avnger]

The only reason there even was a ''civil war'' is because the Kremlin maliciously created one. Because of the above mentioned reason.

He's also entirely ignored that Russia literally invaded and annexed Ukrainian territory in Feb/March 2014, prior to any "civil war".