The difference between now and then is that you're reading this on a screen instead of on paper. That, and it's gonna be different factions fighting. But the ramp-up was in the news for several years then, too. I never thought I'd live to see this, I thought this only happened in history books.
I thought we were better. But it seems to me like people has been swapped out. I dunno if I am psychotic or "everyone" else is. But then again, stuff like this have a higher risk of happening with bad and impopular leaders I guess.
Just like western EU governments apparently. It turns out governing a country isn't just about balancing an excel spreadsheet of incomes and spendings, which seems to be the only thing our elites have bee trained for in the last 40 years
There was an incredibly stubborn post-Cold War "end of history" complacency in Europe that really should have ended after the annexation of Crimea in 2014. Instead it lasted until the full invasion in 2022.
What's been starkly revealed since is that Europe is woefully unprepared to respond to any kind of aggression, and aside from France's nuclear weapons, wholly reliant on America. At some point you have to get serious and live in the real world where threats still exist.
Sure. But the fundamental problem seem to be for the political gaist to be "defence friendly" while also not war mongering. The same few collegues I have that don't trust the politicians, the gov, collective endouvers etc with anything seem hell bent to project "we" want to die for them. It is beyond insane. If people want to lie in a trench led by Ursula ... well. Have fun.
Being "defence friendly" means also cultivating the mentality that lying in the trenches for your country/culture/values might be necessary.
Forget arms industry or military budget as a percent of GDP. The main problem is that Europe lacks the fighting spirit (with some exceptions like Poland). Countries like Germany will fold / capitulate to any demands if they suffer thousands of casualties.
> cultivating the mentality that lying in the trenches for your country/culture/values might be necessary.
That would mean cultivating the mentality that a country is more than just an economic platform, because that's not something anyone is willing to die for. It means cultivating the dreaded nationalism.
> That would mean cultivating the mentality that a country is more than just an economic platform
Is it just that, or does it perhaps protect also other rights? Is the economic prosperity the only reason one might prefer living in Germany over Russia?
Point taken. But what about in Germany over Canada? Or Italy? Or Spain, or Australia, or the US, or New Zealand, or UK, or Iceland, or Taiwan, or Japan or... there are lots of mostly free countries (so long as you don't engage in the growing category of hate-speech) one can run to, once freed from the concepts of homeland and nation.
Will your whole family and friends run too? Will you move your whole social life with you or are you ready to accept your life will be torn apart?
Once Germany gets submitted without a fight, how long will it take until Italy is attacked? I mean, with this "running away" philosophy it's pretty easy to take countries without facing a resistance now.
A small price compared to dying in war. I'm not saying it's the right choice, but if you have no attachment to your country and people beyond it being a comfortable place to live, that's the choice most will make.
Let me present you an alternative. Europe can build up a credible defense capability which will provide a strong deterrence to Russia. In that case you don't have to die in the trenches and you don't have to spend your life running away from the aggressor.
Nazi Germany did not invade Switzerland, USSR did not invade Finland (after suffering horrible losses in the Winter war), even though both had their own claims on them, because the costs of such an adventure were considered too high. A big part of this deterrence was a population willing to fight to defend their homeland.
> Nazi Germany did not invade Switzerland, USSR did not invade Finland
To be fair these aren't exactly the most relevant examples. On paper the balance of power economically (and military to a somewhat lesser degree) is certainly on the side of the EU/NATO. It would be relative pretty cheap to invest enough just to deter a second rate country (besides nukes) like Russia.
Is Italy threatening to nuke or invade Germany because the Germans won't let them annex Austria? I don't think so..
Or are you suggesting that people can just move to another place when their home country gets taken over by fascist imperialists? Because that doesn't really scale that well...
I lack fighting spirit, don't want to spend money for weapons and I'm not afraid of Russia (live in Germany).
There is a lot of fear mongering.
Ukraine should make a deal instead of sacrificing people without limits. So many people died, for loosing later. If they wait too long there won't be any deal.
> Ukraine should make a deal instead of sacrificing people without limits.
Imagine you're an Ukrainian. Is there a deal which you would not accept and rather continue fighting or would you accept literally any deal (including unconditional surrender)?
Finland faced way worse population odds in the Winter war, yet still managed to stop the Soviets. They had to concede some territory, but it was very far from a surrender.
When did Soviet troops parade in Helsinki? When did Finland join USSR as one of its republics? Because that's what would happen if Finland surrendered. Finland was part of Russian empire just 20-something years ago, Stalin wouldn't be happy with just sliver of the land unless he was forced to a compromise.
Make an experiment and try to predict what would happen otherwise. Or just read my prediction below.
Countries who don't force people to fight are:
- much weaker in the case of war,
- with such policies not being (a well hidden) secret, an attractive target for a hostile country.
So such countries are going to statistically be attacked more often, and statistically lose more often.
So if you don't counter those statistical downsides somehow, you should expect such human-rights-respecting countries to eventually be displaced by less human-righty countries.
With NATO, advanced technology and enough people willing to fight you indeed might not need to force a draft; but clearly not the case for Ukraine.
I don't have perfect solution, but "to avoid being defeated by evil we must become evil ourselves" is not really the point. There are things that are lose-lose, making war worse for both sides. For things like chemical weapons we have treaties banning it, while for conscription all politicians are quiet about while pretending to care about human rights.
I'd say balance is important. You can't just say: "I'll start a company, where if a consumer reports he's unhappy with a product, service, I'll just refund his money unconditionally, because that's the world I'd like to live in." Maybe such approach is achievable in the far future, but you can't ignore the harsh environment of your competition and go straight for the ideal approach.
And yes, I know you might not consider my example of an ideal approach, but there's plenty similar examples to make, like a sports team being completely fair: recognizing their errors when even the judge doesn't, recognize negative errors of the judge against their opponents (and e.g. allow the opponent to easily get a point to cancel out unfair judge's ruling), never pretend an injury even though an opponent does it etc. Such a team would quickly become irrelevant.
In other words, your attitude is naive and it stems from a false dilemma that you can be either good or evil, disregarding the smooth gradient, where you can try to climb up reasonably high - higher than average - and pull the rest up.
You can't say "How am I supposed to run a company if I can't catch random people on the street and force them to work at gunpoint?" either.
There is nothing naive or idealistic about his position. Forcefully catching unwilling civilians and sending to slaughter is a human sacrifice going against the very idea of human rights. It is pure evil, there isn't exactly a lot of room for shades of grey.
To be honest, when I see the sophistry designed to justify the relegating of citizens to the role of an animal in the butchery by their own state, it looks like a classic horror material. Scarier than the descriptions of atrocities in the warzone. It's like a a cabal of cannibalistic cultists trying to gaslight normal people into thinking that killing those people is (and always was) absolutely normal and it is their very purpose to be slaughtered and it is you a weird freak for pretending that you have some rights and can decide whether you want to die for something or not.
> There is nothing naive or idealistic about his position.
Assuming you can just ask people to risk their lives to defend the state is both. (Not that it can't work in some circumstances)
> Forcefully catching unwilling civilians and sending to slaughter is a human sacrifice going against the very idea of human rights.
No, and I already explained why not: if you arrest an innocent person (or even sentence an innocent person to life in prison), you're obviously harming that person's freedom, but the alternative is to either:
- be perfect and never make mistakes: here's the naivety and idealism again
- resign from the justice system and have anarchy (that's not an improvement by any stretch of imagination)
Similarly with wars and conscription: without it, most (all?) states are too weak to defend and fall. Guess who defeats those states? Competing states with worse human rights (forced draft) or perhaps much worse human rights.
So Ukraine could just allow everyone to run away and let russia win. I can see some hypothetical back and forth between us, where we would eventually agree on a scenario where russia takes Ukraine and maybe some more states outside of NATO but eventually the NATO border stops the advances, and so I won't make an argument that people will eventually no longer have a place to escape to.
Here's the thing, however: people could easily escape before the war. By staying in the country, they agreed to the rules: everyone knew, that in case of war (that was looming for quite a long while) conscription will happen.
Assuming you can just ask people to risk their lives to defend the state is both.
Only in the cannibalistic belief of men being disposable non-sentient material for blood sacrifices on the state altar rather than real humans with rights. It is a question of priorities, not naivety.
if you arrest an innocent person (or even sentence an innocent person to life in prison), you're obviously harming that person's freedom
This only happens as a mistake, which makes your analogy completely nonsensical. No one in their right mind argues in favor of a false dichotomy like "Yeah, we just imprison random bypassers en masse and hope that some of them happen to be criminals. Do you want complete lawlessness otherwise or what?"
Forced conscription is not a mistake, it is intentional and official violation of human rights.
Similarly with wars and conscription: without it, most (all?) states are too weak to defend and fall
This sophistry can be adapted for virtually any crime against humanity.
How states without slavery can defend against states with slavery? They don't have a significant pool of free labor.
How states without death camps can defend against states with death camps? Their traitors/potential collaborators/regime enemies are all alive and roaming free.
etc etc
In reality, however, we don't see complete extinction of states with human rights replaced by the most inhumane regimes possible, not even the prevalence of the latter. The reason of that is very obvious: normal sane people aren't exactly enthusiastic to live in, defend or otherwise support the state that doesn't even consider them humans. Specifically in Ukraine and Russia with strong animal protection laws, stray dogs right now have more rights than male conscripts.
Competing states with worse human rights (forced draft) or perhaps much worse human rights.
Yet another sneaky attempt to minimise the atrocity scale. The state strips you of all human rights and sends you to the slaughter. What much worse human rights can you imagine? The state slaughtering you directly? Is that much worse?
Here's the thing, however: people could easily escape before the war.
That's a nice try at victim blaming but they could not. Before the war Ukraine was a usual third world country and like with most countries moving somewhere else wasn't easy at all. Current refugee programs weren't available for Ukrainians back then.
> but "to avoid being defeated by evil we must become evil ourselves" is not really the point
Well the world is not black and white.
> For things like chemical weapons we have treaties banning it
There was a treaty Russia signed (along with US, UK etc.) which guaranteed Ukrainian Independance back in the 90s. All treaties are less than worthless if you can't enforce them.
> while for conscription all politicians are quiet about while pretending to care about human rights.
Would you rather have conscription and not live in Russia? Or have conscription and live in Russia? Realistically these are basically the only options some people have.
I find it interesting that it is always Ukraine that should surrender and not sacrifice their people. When Russia is sacrificing its people in pointless invasion that has been stuck in stalemate for a year.
They could end the war, and their suffering, tomorrow. They probably could even negotiate keeping Crimea.
It never ceases to amaze me how easy it is for people to tell an invaded nation, with countless atrocities commited against them, to just give up and move on.
It's incredibly patronizing. Those silly Ukrainians don't know what they're doing, let me explain them what they should do. What's so wrong living under Russian yoke anyway? Russian ballet looks nice, it can't be that bad.
You are now moving the discussion from practicality to idealism. Doesn't really matter what ideals they have when they have to consider getting destroyed or not.
The side with no idealism is bound to lose, because for individuals it's better to run than to fight. Tragedy of the commons.
But what you're doing is a category error. It's a completely different thing to ask your enemy to surrender from asking your ally (in a loose sense) to surrender.
Japan was facing a superpower with unlimited resources. Ukraine is facing a second-rate region power which has nothing going for them besides nukes and a large pool of servile and suicidal recruits (so a bit like Japan in that sense). Not exactly equivalent situations?
Everything Putin is doing is worsening Russia's security situation.
As a direct result of Russia's war, NATO has expanded and Russia is now very much in China's pocket. China is quite happy to have Russia as a vassal state.
Russia had a mini civil war with Prigozhin's rebellion. Russians have been killing Russians.
Russia's life expectancy was already lower than that of developed countries and this pointless war of choice is steadily killing off an entire generation of young Russians.
Oh BS it's security. Like they are threatened by a small peacefull country next door with a comedian elected as president to join the EU, when they have the largest nuclear arsenal in the world and a dictator skilled in mass murder.
The Russians were, as they made clear on multiple occasions, threatened by NATO moving into Ukraine and potentially placing missiles close to the Russian heartland.
So Putin's solution to this apparent dilemma was to start a war that has directly resulted in the expansion NATO? If NATO was a problem before then surely a bigger NATO is a bigger problem.
It sounds like Putin doesn't care much about Russia's security and he's only making things worse.
Why would NATO want to antagonize or threaten Russia directly? That's a serious question because neither the US nor Western Europe had any desire to start any direct or indirect conflict with Russia since 1991..
> missiles close to the Russian heartland.
Any factual evidence? In any case you do realize there are Russian missiles in Kaliningrad so following the same logic you would agree that Poland/Germany/Sweden etc. have a legitimate right to invade it to demilitarize and "denazify" it (in this case of course for real because Russia at this point is literally a fascist state, it ticks all the boxes after all) following the same "logic"?
>Why would NATO want to antagonize or threaten Russia directly?
Because the PNAC/CNAC plans for the economic survival of the USA and its western allies depends on the defeat of Russia and the balkanization of its resources?
Haven't you been paying attention? The PNAC/CNAC oligarchs and their military junta have made it quite clear for decades that they want what Russia's got...
> economic survival of the USA and its western allies
Don't be silly. Russia is a sidenote from the perspective of the west. Especially the US, they'd much rather focus on the pacific and their internal stuff.
I know Russians tend to be extremely paranoid about everyone being out to get them but that's more of an internalized issue due to historical reasons and the general tendency of blaming external powers for all of their domestic issues...
Tell me you haven't been paying attention to the oligarchs of the PNAC without telling me you haven't been paying attention to the oligarchs of the PNAC ..
The only ones installing missiles anywhere are Russians, most recently moving nuclear missiles into an unstable dictatorship in Belarus, right on EU and NATO border.
Are you aware of the Monroe doctrine? Cuban missile crisis? Can you imagine the US reaction if Russia placed missiles in Canada or Mexico?
Mearsheimer explains the perceived threat aspect very well: it doesn't matter what YOU, the Americans or any outside observer thinks. What does matter is what the Russians think,
and they've made their thinking on having Ukraine be part of NATO very clear.
Russia has bordered two NATO counties for decades. There were no Russia threatening missiles in Ukraine.
Putin is probably genuinely threatened by the prospect of Ukraine being a prosperous democracy and his own people saying why do we have to live under tyrany then, but that's a different thing.
No, Putin is actually bothered by the presence of NATO bases designed to attack and invade Russia being established directly on his borders, within minutes of flight time to Moscow. He also had huge issues with Ukraines' NATO-funded biological warfare program.
It's not 1939 (as if their invasion of Poland was justifiable or is that not what you're claiming?). Nobody has been threatening Russian security for decades. Even back in the cold war does there were no serious plans to invade Russia itself.
> Please try to raise the level of discourse beyond the boogyman
That's sounds rather absurd... You're the one who's using propaganda bullet points like "It's about Russian security"?
That "peace deal" would have required that Ukraine permanently recognize Russian sovereignty over Crimea and the Donbas (on top of other concessions).
This is why Russia is called "expansionist". Because it likes to expand its territory.
Before Boris arrived to scupper it.
That's not what happened. I know you read some snippet somewhere that made it sound like that's what happened. But simply put, you're being played. And that's not actually what happened.
That's the spin of those two observers. But there was a lot to more to the actual chain of events at the time.
And lo and behold, the fact of two guys stating a certain narrative about those events (then embellished up a bit by the publications quoting them) does not make it so. Even the article you're citing about Arahamiya's version of events isn't so clear-cut about the matter (it says Boris's advice was but one factor among many) as you're making it out to be.
Every link of yours is a well-known spin. For example, Bennett has clarified that his words have been taken out of context and misrepresented, and Arahamiya has said that no-one on Ukrainian side belived that Russian peace plan was genuine and not a stalling tactic.
Perhaps it would be a good idea to switch to sites that don't have "conservative" in their URL.
So Boris Johnson single handedly changed the course of Ukraine’s history ?
Or, equally likely, he just arrived with guarantees that weapon deliveries would be maintained ?
Whether Russia presented a so called “peace deal” is irrelevant. The propaganda claim is Boris Johnson came in and somehow mind warped the Ukraine side.
Which, like a lot of propaganda in this war, completely removes the agency from the Ukrainians. Funny how that works.
Whatever he arrived with, it changed the plans of the Ukrainian government. I don't see how it removes any agency from Ukraine, or why that would even be a meaningful statement.
> Whatever he arrived with, it changed the plans of the Ukrainian government
So you're claiming that Ukrainian government was willing to give up all the annexed regions including the territories they still controlled? Because that's what Russia was demanding.
Dude, I have lived next to russia most of my life, when I was born, my country was occupied by russians as soviet union.
I can see russian propaganda from far away.
If you would stop and think what a "peace deal" with a vicious-murderous aggressor means then you would not spew such bullshit. russia started the war, killed hundreds of thousands of people already and you call for Ukrainians to surrender under "peace deal" so they would be tortured and enslaved under russian occupation.
Also you could look into history to see whether there are any "peace deals" with russia that have held and not been just a pause for more aggression and atrocities.
On the basis of your moral imperative, there are no Western nations worthy of the peace, either.
Its not like NATO isn't responsible for wide-spread destruction of sovereign democracies, also ..
That's entirely besides the point. These entities should be making peace with each other in spite of each others crimes.
It is your propaganda which precludes peace, because you are convinced, without rational thought, that peace is impossible... whereas, there was actually a peace deal brought to the table, nix'ed by NATO ..
Ukraine invited NATO-aligned actors to set up bases along its borders with Russia. That has been considered by the Russians to be an aggressive act warranting a hostile response.
I don't agree with the invasion and destruction of Ukraine's eastern regions to be an appropriate response - but me, not agreeing with something, doesn't make it propaganda.
Propaganda is "NATO and Ukraine have done nothing wrong, Russia are just inventing reasons". This propaganda is designed to prevent you from having a rational look at the reasons. Propaganda shuts down continued thought on the subject - I invite you to consider that perhaps you have not thought enough about why the Russians are willing to sacrifice so much, on their own borders.
Just as you are inviting me to really, really think about whether Ukraines' actions warranted this heinous response. (Clue: I don't agree with any war, or that there is any such things as an honorable war these days. No nation state is worth the life of another human being, period. Both Russian and Ukrainian citizens as well as their ruling political classes should be reminded of this fact, repeatedly.)
> Beginning with the reign of Ivan the Terrible in the sixteenth century, Russia managed to expand at an average rate of 50 square miles per day for hundreds of years, eventually covering one-sixth of the earth’s landmass.
Maybe, just maybe, consider whether any of this expansion has not been active war and murder?
You are doing victim blaming by putting any fault on Ukraine for trying to protect themselves from invasion. They did not manage to protect themselves and now are somehow at fault for war.
In your opinion the victim has to make peace not the aggressor. What a twisted mind.
You say both need to be reminded but somehow only say NATO is bad even tho NATO is not even part of this conflict.
NATO is the #1 aggressor in the world today, bar none. It has demolished countless sovereign states in its quest to enact the plans for world domination made by the US and its ruling oligarch classes, as manifest in the CNAC/PNAC clique - which has set the US' disastrous foreign policy course for the last two decades.
The US - and its NATO allies, using NATO bases - murdered 5% of Iraqs population in cold blood, on the basis of outright lies.
Did you forget these details in your rush to study history? This is recent history - as in there are still millions of victims, who blame the NATO alliance, and the 5-eyes/12-eyes criminal superstate, for the murder, calamity and bloodshed delivered to them, on average, every twenty minutes for the last twenty years.
Yes, Ukraine has made a deal with the devil. Even if the American people aren't aware of it, the rest of the world has been watching NATO member states' war crimes tallies climb into the stratosphere. Far, far above and beyond anything that even Russia can deliver on the war fronts it fights - on its own border.
> NATO is not even part of this conflict.
That is utterly false, and the fact you would proffer this inane statement belies the truth that you are indeed, a victim of insane propaganda.
> Ukraine invited NATO-aligned actors to set up bases along its borders with Russia. That has been considered by the Russians to be an aggressive act warranting a hostile response.
The bases in Ukraine intended for training Ukrainian intelligence staff by US specialists were established two years AFTER Russian invasion, and did not lead to any hostile responses beyond the usual death and destruction that Russia has been sowing all over Ukraine since 2014.
The illegal bases which were being funded, built and used for biowarfare development by the CIA, specifically targeting Russian genotypes, were built and operational for years before Russia invaded.
This, from a country that gave itself carte-blanche to ruin any sovereign state its ruling classes deemed culturally inferior, kicking off World War 3 with the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003 and subsequent murder of 5% of its population.
So, sure. The USA's activities in Ukraine for the past 15 years have been utterly benign ..
> The illegal bases which were being funded, built and used for biowarfare development by the CIA, specifically targeting Russian genotypes, were built and operational for years before Russia invaded.
The article you linked makes no mention of such things.
There was no coup in Ukraine either. Ukrainian parliament unanimously voted to remove Ukrainian president from office after he gave an order to shoot at peaceful protesters, resulting in over 100 deaths, and fled the country fearing criminal prosecution. All members from his own party voted in favor of that too.
From where do you derive your propaganda - the same media organizations, owned by the bomb manufacturers currently reaping immense profit from Ukraines' dire situation, maybe .. ?
Follow the money. The only ones reaping any reward from the utter destruction of Ukraine and its people, are Western arms manufacturers, whose profits have skyrocketed since the CIA opened up the market for their weapons sales and deliveries ..
Its the politicians who put Ukraine into the dangerous position, by not employing diplomacy to ensure that peaceful relations were kept with their neighbors.
And its the bomb makers, and their willing media lackeys (whom are owned by the bomb makers), who are convincing the gullible American public that it is in their interests (it really isn't) to get involved in yet another heinously evil, disgusting war - this, after having also convinced their willful subjects to invade and destroy Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia .. exactly the same folks involved in Ukraine.
One bomb dropped every twenty minutes, for the past twenty years. We're almost running out of places for America's ruling oligarch classes to extract a profit through their war-mongering ...
russians are bombing Ukraine. No matter how much mental gymnastics you try to go through it does not change the fact that russians are doing it. They started it they are the ones operating the bombers and guns.
> Simply put, every statement you've made is false.
No. These are well-known facts, public record. On 22nd February 2014, the Ukrainian parliament voted 328-0 in favor of removing Yanukovych from office after what he had done. Even his own party released a statement condemning him. Elections for the new president were held in May of the same year. Which part of this is "CIA coup"? Is it a "CIA coup" every time a parliament holds a vote of no confidence to remove someone from a public office? If that's the case, then many countries in Europe have a "CIA coup" every few years as failed politicians are voted out of office, usually because of corruption or incompetence.
> From where do you derive your propaganda - the same media organizations, owned by the bomb manufacturers currently reaping immense profit from Ukraines' dire situation, maybe .. ?
No. I can't think of a single media outlet in my country connected to "bomb manufacturers" in any way. One media group is centered around an old newspaper publisher, another group is centered around a medical supplier that has branched into media and retail business, and the third major one is public broadcasting. So you have to somehow connect a dog food retailer to the war if you want to pursue the profiteering angle.
The CIA have been conducting clandestine operations in Ukraine from the beginning of the colour revolutions until present day. If your view of Ukraine begins on February 22, 2014, you're missing a huge chunk of the picture - either disingenuously, or through dire ignorance.
>many countries in Europe have a "CIA coup"
Yes, they do indeed, because the CIA views Europe as an enemy to the superiority of the American people, and performing these kinds of coups is entirely within its purposes as a counter-democratic, sovereignty-invalidating agency.
> Is it a "CIA coup" every time a parliament holds a vote of no confidence to remove someone from a public office?
Quite often, yes it is. The CIA conduct operations forcing the political change they want to see - and this definitely occurred in the case of Ukraine. See also, the Whitlam government in Australia, where they refined the technique.
> The CIA have been conducting clandestine operations in Ukraine from the beginning of the colour revolutions until present day. If your view of Ukraine begins on February 22, 2014, you're missing a huge chunk of the picture - either disingenuously, or through dire ignorance.
Indeed - speaking of clandestine operations, here's how Ukrainian president (2005-2010) Viktor Yushchenko looked before and after Russians poisoned him: https://i.imgur.com/H3R7yF8.jpeg
The poisoning happened two months before 2004 presidential elections. Russians poisoned the prime challenger to their puppet, and boosted their puppet further with widespread election fraud that was later overturned by Ukrainian supreme court.
This is how an actual coup attempt looks like.
> Yes, they do indeed, because the CIA views Europe as an enemy to the superiority of the American people, and performing these kinds of coups is entirely within its purposes as a counter-democratic, sovereignty-invalidating agency.
CIA is not the prime mover in the world and the only reason why anything ever happens. For example, last week the Estonia minister of justice resigned because he had used his personal allowance against established rules by renting an apartment from his wife's adult son from another marriage. While he was aware that he couldn't rent an apartment from a relative (anti-corruption rule), he didn't know that the son would qualify as a relative too under these rules. He fucked up and resigned. This had nothing to do with the CIA, nor do many other things going on in the world. To claim otherwise is to be ignorant of the complexities of the world.
When it comes to Eastern Europe, the CIA is not even in the top three most influential intelligence organizations.
There is no "one true way to coup" - what you are describing is the propaganda you have consumed that makes you believe your nation could never do something so heinous as poison its opponents, imprison them indefinitely without charge, etc - when in fact, it DOES do that - in spades - and you are really just projecting. What you are describing is how Hollywood protrays coups, lol.
Anyway.. Your straw man arguments are interesting, but this:
>When it comes to Eastern Europe, the CIA is not even in the top three most influential intelligence organizations.
Is curious. Its not through lack of trying!
Its just that there is MUCH resistance to American imperialism in that region. Thankfully!
True - but the poisoning of Yushchenko was a thing that actually happened, and it is not fiction like the story about 2014 CIA coup in Ukraine. By the way, the puppet that Russians backed then was Yanukovych, the same man who later successfully became the president of Ukraine and sabotaged EU aspirations under Russian orders, then shot protesters and fled the country when he lost all political backing that he had and was facing criminal charges. History didn't start in 2014 indeed.
> your nation could never do something so heinous as poison its opponents, imprison them indefinitely without charge, etc - when in fact, it DOES do that
I am not an American, and if you came here and told everyone how our government poisons opponents and imprisons people indefinitely, you'd get very strange looks and genuine concern about your mental health. :)
> Its just that there is MUCH resistance to American imperialism in that region.
You are so boxed in with the "CIA vs the world" narrative of the Anglosphere that you miss the fact that in our region, it's FSB, SVR and GRU against SÄPO, SUPO, KAPO, VDD, VSD, SB, SBU and others. How many of these abbreviations do you even recognize without googling? "American imperialism" is not a thing that people here have any reason to talk about. The modern western self-loathing is non-existent, found only on Twitter among teenagers who have consumed a little too much of American media and pop-culture. The imperialism that we are facing comes from Russia. We don't want to live under a Russian version of Jim Crow laws like 35 years ago. We don't want to see our cities destroyed, people murdered, women and children raped, language and culture wiped out.
Foreign dignitaries have often been struck by a gallery in our presidential palace. The gallery displays paintings of all former heads of state, with their birth and death dates and locations. There's a repeating pattern: almost everyone from the pre-WII period have names of remote Russian towns and dates from 1941 or 1942. They were sent into labor camps and executed there. The few who managed to avoid imprisonment and escape to the free world lived long lives and died much later in exile in places like Stockholm, London, Toronto.
The war in Ukraine gives us much more reason to talk about Russian imperialism than about American imperialism. You are very right that history didn't start in 2014, nor in 1776. The war is just the most recent example of a very old pattern of Russian behaviour that started well before the first settlers heading for America climbed into their boats.
I'm not 'boxed in' with anything except an extremely acute understanding of the magnitude of the crimes WE commit in OUR imperial wars, started by fascist oligarchs who have decided that cultures they deem inferior shall be met with our military might. You, on the other hand, do not seem to have an understanding of this magnitude, at all.
You can do nothing about Russia's war criminals, until you do something effective about YOUR OWN. Following OUR OWN war criminals into yet another facetious, illegal war on the basis of lies and propaganda, instead of DEMANDING justice for their victims, is just pure evil.
WE have been murdering millions of people in OUR illegal wars, fought far beyond our own borders, at a rate far, far more detrimental to world peace than anything Russia has been doing. Russia, fighting a defensive war on its own 2000-km long border with Ukraine, is in NO WAY comparable to the heinous human catastrophe we have caused, by way of the machinations of an out of control military industrial complex hell-bent on what are fundamentally racist wars in .. Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Somalia ... Yemen. And many, many more theatres beyond the range of civilian observation.
>We don't want to live under a Russian version of Jim Crow laws like 35 years ago.
The world does not want to live like Americans do, either. We've seen the bankrupt families living under the bridges. We've seen the addiction and the war crimes and the crimes against humanity. We've seen your for-profit prison-industrial slavery system. We've seen the weapons you drop on innocent people while ensuring your own children have no future.
We've seen the network - a thousand of them - of secret bases the American empire has built in order to give itself a place to torture and commit further heinous crimes against humanity.
We saw what you did to Julian Assange and the many others who came before him, attempting to right the heinous injustices of your military industrial complex and its vile, evil intelligence services, usurping sovereign nations across the globe for the purposes of the misanthropic oligarch class that rules you, through your military junta.
Your hatespew of Russia is noted as yet another form of cowardice. Spend a trillion dollars on diplomacy per year, instead of murdering innocent people every twenty minutes, as you have done for twenty years, and you might find that the rest of the world is willing to play with America, again. As it stands, the USA is losing the respect of a majority of the nations of the world, whose citizens do not cowardly shy away from observing the results of American war crimes, which are committed in your name whether you have the temerity to confront them, or not.
You are merely propagandizing for war. I demand you start making peace, American. The world tires of your excuses for the death of millions of innocent people. The moral imperative you claim is a dire fallacy.
I already told you that I am not an American. I am not even from the Anglosphere, so the self-loathing does not evoke any emotions from me.
Furthermore, I come from a country that already tried "making peace" with Russians during the Woodrow Wilson-inspired era of neutrality in Europe. We stayed neutral, trying to maintain good relations with everyone, even with Nazi Germany and the USSR. In the end, both invaded us, murdered national elite from politicians to doctors to lawyers to scholars to everyone else who could run the country and challenge the puppet government they installed, and sent sizable part of the population in entire families to die in remote prison camps. That was followed by a Russian military occupation, which lasted until 1991. The occupation was characterized by deep economic stagnation and systematic attempts to wipe out our nation by suppressing our language and culture and by mass resettlement of Russians into our country. By the time USSR collapsed, the average wage was less than 30 dollars per month and we were on the verge of becoming a minority in our own country.
Lack of strong alliances in Europe against totalitarian dictatorships is a key reason why this happened to so many countries in Europe. Western Europe successfully defeated Nazis and restored freedom in 1945. In Eastern Europe, defeating Russians took 50 years longer.
> Russia, fighting a defensive war on its own 2000-km long border with Ukraine
Nothing says defensive war like shooting 31 ballistic missiles, worth 400 million dollars, at a peaceful European city Kyiv, hundreds of kilometers from the frontline. Results of the attack that took place earlier today: all missiles shot down, but debris fell on a kindergarten and residential buildings. Shockwaves from air-defence missiles blew out windows in apartment buildings. A power substation and a residential building caught fire. Fortunately no deaths, but 10 people injured, including a child.
And this has gone on for more than two years, day after day, while apologists like you make excuses for this behaviour and lecture others about morals.
> The world does not want to live like Americans do, either.
Indeed. I want to live the way I choose, not the way Russians want to force me, with your approval.
Most certainly a serf-subject in one of its puppet states, then, perhaps an active member of NATO - already well known across the globe for committing decades of atrocity in states deemed inferior by a heinously racist oligarchic ruling class in the Western hemisphere.
>Furthermore, I come from a country that already tried "making peace" with Russians during the Woodrow Wilson-inspired era of neutrality in Europe.
The USSR is long gone.
Its the 21st Century. New diplomacy is possible. We just don't do that any more, though. We (Western nations) prefer to see trillions of dollars spent on war and calamity instead.
>Nothing says defensive war like ..
.. stating, repeatedly for decades, that the presence of NATO-aligned forces within km's of Russias borders was a red line and would be treated as an act of aggression against Russia, which reserved the right to respond - AS EVERY SINGLE NATION IN THE WORLD HAS THAT RIGHT. This was stated, countless times leading up to the calamity, but it was utterly ignored by NATO allies in their rush to Russia's border.
The victims of the Wests' imperialist aggression know full well that NATO is not a good force in the world. NATO has the blood of millions, and millions of peoples lives on its hands - maybe they are not European and therefore not considered as important as European victims, in your mind?
>And this has gone on for more than two years
Two years? This conflict begins in 2008.
Nobody wants this war, which is why it is such a travesty that it happened. It could have been prevented, had there actually been any diplomatic actions taken by Western nations, including Ukraine. However, the risk of war was taken instead, and now here we are - in spite of multiple repeated warnings.
>I want to live the way I choose, not the way Russians force me to, with your approval.
Then face the consequences for the way those actions are received by your enemies.
Would you be so willing to have your enemy build 10 bases along your border, all the while saying they "don't mean you any harm" while their military is busy actively demolishing countless sovereign states around the world, murdering millions of innocent people in cold blood, building 1,000 bases across the landscape for the purpose of torture and other highly illegal activities?
Because thats what the US and its allies had been doing, in the DECADES leading up to the Ukraine conflict. To a very significant portion of the worlds population, the US and its allies STARTED WORLD WAR 3 with the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the subsequent cold-blooded murder of 5% of its population. Were you not paying attention to this atrocity - because the Russians surely did.
Ukraine is just the latest in a long string of heinous atrocities that were called for by the US' military junta (PNAC) in its desire to refactor the ENTIRE WORLD according to their highly specious cultural imperative.
I highly doubt your country would tolerate having its enemies begin construction of hostile bases along its borders.
I understand, however, your lack of empathy for this point, since it counter-acts the war-lust with which you are clearly afflicted.
> Most certainly a serf-subject in one of its puppet states, then, perhaps an active member of NATO - already well known across the globe for committing decades of atrocity in states deemed inferior by a heinously racist oligarchic ruling class in the Western hemisphere.
It's infinitly amusing how you keep trying to pin Anglo-American obsessions on a person like me from a completely different culture. We don't have oligarchs, because Russians stole everything when they occupied the country and forced us into communism. Real estate, businesses, factories, even single-family farms deemed too big were confiscated. Economically speaking, the entire country had to start from scratch in 1991. Nor do we have much history with racism, because until the USSR collapsed and borders opened up, virtually no-one had ever met a black person. I was well into adulthood when I met a black person for the first time. Felt like meeting an alien. :)
As to serfdom, my grandfather's grandfather was born as an actual slave in Russian empire. Bought and sold like property. I don't find many similarities between my current situation and his life back then.
> The USSR is long gone.
The way Russian Federation treats its neighbours is no different from how the USSR or the Russian empire treated them. There was a glimpse of hope for change in early 1990s, but those were crushed when Russia launched an extremely violent war against Chechenya, and when Soviet hardliners managed to consolidate power and put their man in charge of Russia again.
> I highly doubt your country would tolerate having its enemies begin construction of hostile bases along its borders.
Nobody was building any bases anywhere before Russia invaded Ukraine. Europe saw unprecedented reduction of both domestic and foreign troops, down by 5-10x compared to Cold War levels. For example, German army went from 300k+ soldiers and 3800 tanks in 1980 down to 60k soldiers and 225 tanks in 2015. The US had 5000 tanks in Germany in 1989. By 2015, none were left. The story about "enemies building baseses along Russian borders" is complete nonsense. Have you not bothered to look up facts?
> Would you be so willing to have your enemy build 10 bases along your border, all the while saying they "don't mean you any harm" while their military is busy actively demolishing countless sovereign states around the world, murdering millions of innocent people in cold blood, building 1,000 bases across the landscape for the purpose of torture and other highly illegal activities?
That's the life I'm living right now, less than 200 km from Russian border. Russia has been modernizing, rebuilding and expanding their army since mid-2000s, and they started/are currently waging the largest war in Europe since the WWII on completely fabricated excuses. For three decades, Russians have been threatening that "the masters will be back". Should we bomb Moscow before that happens?
No, there isn't, the whole conspiracy theory lies on a few sentences taken out of context. Spend an hour vetting sources and you'll find that it's a Russian PR spin without any substance.
Anyone can "prove" with public statements from top officials that the US goverment is run by aliens from outer space, if they can take three sentences of their choice out of context and freely ignore everything else.
Well... the probably was option for a "peace deal" Ukraine just had to renounce all the territories Russia had occupied (and also parts of the annexed regions which Ukraine still controlled). They probably wanted other concessions as well...
Russian deals don't look like what reasonable people think they should look like. They are only ever made to serve propaganda needs, you have fallen for it.
Who are you to say what a "real" Russian deal is? Are you a Russian citizen?
If no: then you can do NOTHING effective about Russia.
Reign your own war criminals in and bring them to heel. Only after you have done that, are you going to be in a position to do anything effective about Russia - if, indeed, the "Russian threat" boogeyman still persists, long after you've actually sent your own war criminals to rot in chains in The Hague .. which is, admittedly, quite unlikely given that the very same war criminals you would have to confront and prosecute are the ones telling you boogeyman stories ..
> I lack fighting spirit, don't want to spend money for weapons and I'm not afraid of Russia (live in Germany).
Aren't those statements contradicting as at least two separate sets of ideas?
If you lack fighting spirit, you don't want to fight. So you should want more money spent on weapons, so that you don't have to fight. Aristotle said "if you want peace, prepare for war".
If you don't want to fight, you should be afraid of everyone who does: e.g. russia.
putin clearly said he wants to restore the old ussr borders. This means eventually taking eastern Germany. And then you just have to naively assume if he succeeds at that, he will stop at that. I mean, let's be honest, he can't possibly live that long to see his plan fully completed, but let's say he has successors continuing his work.
I know that there is this comfortable seemingly impenetrable boundary of NATO alliance: but recently Trump said he would invite putin to attack on NATO members that don't put enough GDP % into military spending (e.g. Germany), and new Slovakian government is significantly more prorussian (meeting with russia and Hungary).
In January 2022 experts almost unanimously said it would be ridiculous for russia to attack Ukraine.
Don't be afraid of russia, but also act to actually support your peace of mind.
There is no deal on the table, there never was. Putin wants them to surrender and more or less dissolve the army so he can take the rest without the fight.
Nobody wants to lie in the trenches to protect other people's wealth, but that's what usually happens. The poor are sent to fight and die, or to return home to poverty and disability if they survive.
I'm amazed anyone is willing to sign up to risk their life for $2K/month, even here in the US where military service has long been glorified.
This is why you need various manipulation* techniques: religion (to decrease the fear of death), patriotism, anger, glorification of war and heroism... I sometimes wonder if maybe the poor state of modern education is not just incompetence or a result of a cynical idea "stupid society is easier to control", but instead someone analyzed that an intelligent society would become atheist/cynical/pragmatic etc. resulting in severly decreased motivation to fight for the government.
* I think the word "manipulation" implies an intent to mislead someone, while some techniques influencing others are used by people unaware of the effects or (in)correctness of the propaganda; maybe rather than "manipulation" I should say "indoctrination".
If you look back at history mankind seems quite naturally inclined towards fighting wars. The manipulation techniques are more needed to maintain peace.
Indeed if you look at our closest animal relatives, the chimps, they are quite inclined to wipe out their neighbours without needing religion or cash payment.
I think it's seldom to protect other peoples wealth. I'm trying to think of an example where that was the case. More typically, as a Brit our last big war was fighting Hitler as we didn't like fascism and that. It was very costly for us wealth wise compared with say making a pact with him as he would have liked.
I'm sorry, but this is rubbish. For example, the UK citizenry was almost completely pacifist two years before world war II, much more than Germany is now, and for stronger reasons; having lost a huge number of men during world war I. It didn't take the population very long at all to change its ideas once it was clear what was going to happen.
People make shallow remarks. You can't use that to predict what they will do when the chips are down.
It s not that european nations arent aggressive (unfortunately nationalism is only sleeping in Europe, not dead). But the idea of collective european nation only appeals to the 3-4 core countries. Most eu nations have a different notion of national interests. Even with Ukraine which is supported by all, the level of support and expectations vary very widely
I don't agree with your comment. Unpreparedness is one thing, but you paint a picture of weakness and reliance. Why are there no Dutch F-35s or French warships in Ukraine? Where are the British special forces? Let alone the non-NATO countries of Switzerland Austria, Cyprus, Ireland, Malta, and Sweden. Some NATO members have huge militaries, albeit with many NATO commitments, i.e. not even close to being utilized to their full potential. Others like Ireland have enough resources to fund those of close allies. Think of all those taxes paid over decades into defense. Together we could have stealth bombers in Moscow within minutes and helicopters and troops soon after. Wagner could have done it by themselves had they had the self-confidence. But no one is doing anything at all, simply because Putin has threatened to nuke us all.
Dutch have contributed massively relative to gdp. The British special forces trained Ukraines special forces after the war started. Sweden is in NATO. And you can't bomb a nuclear state.
The NL have contributed massively. I never meant that they didn't, I was selecting some powerful, random countries with still untapped resources to counter your comment that implied weakness. It was not at all my intention to diminish their contributions (consider that I didn't even mention those of Poland and the Baltics; even though I hate using GDP for this, but that is another discussion...): Again, my point was that, relative to what I imagine Europe's real military might is, it has not even really gotten started compared to what we could be doing, if only we weren't so scared of nukes. Just think of how we could have annihilated the soft target that was the disorganized 64 km Kyiv convoy, back in 2022. A quick search yielded that we have 1703 fighter jets in the EU-28, let alone the large warships, and who knows how many other assets. If we declared war (I'm not a lawyer, but it would easy to prove casus belli, and have jus ad bellum, given Russia's literal aggression and genocide). We could be attacking them along their entire (gigantic) border all the way to the east that they couldn't possibly hope to defend being so spread out. It would look totally different than the "weak" image we are projecting now because we aren't at war.
Sweden is not yet in NATO. They are on the verge of it, with Orban signing approval today, but Hungary has not yet formally submitted their instrument of ratification. Details matter when correcting people.
Well, the nuclear threat is no small threat. It's possibly humanity-ending. Specifically the nuclear winter.
It's amazing and I attribute it largely to American intelligence, how much russia was damaged with "only" a 10s advance on the Doomsday Clock (we're at 23:58:30 now).
That's not complacency, that's a feature. The key to peace in Europe is the unified free trade zone on one hand, but on the other it's also disarmament while relying on NATO. Besides putting territorial questions aside, one of the main requirements of joining NATO was to discontinue the draft!
The entire security failure is by design, one that has been made a long time ago when the US force was way more capable and threatening in their stance. The annexation of Crimea was in a way calling that stance a bluff, and now everybody is juggling the question of rearmament like a hot potato.
Because we were all calm when the saying was that no two countries which had McDonalds would go to war against one another - and then they did, and now we all have McDonalds but we don't have standing combat capable armies besides NATO operable specialized arms for a good reason.
AFAIK small states are treated as exceptions because the conscription leaves you with the same amount of men as professional armies of bigger countries. But there has been a lot of talk in the past few years of changing this, but politically it would be immensely unpopular.
The majority of NATO members had conscription at the time they joined NATO. Also, the United States has been pressuring NATO members to increase defense spending for decades; Trump’s threats to withdraw from NATO were a hardball negotiating tactic towards this longstanding foreign policy goal.
> There was an incredibly stubborn post-Cold War "end of history"
It's hard to tell whether all these comments are part of online propaganda or people regurgitating propaganda they watched on youtube. Like clockwork, the same talking points with the same key words.
> What's been starkly revealed since is that Europe is woefully unprepared to respond to any kind of aggression
Europe is one of the largest arms manufacturers in the world. Maintains the largest armed forces in the world. And is one of the biggest aggressors in the world. Ask the north africans, middle easterners and sub saharan africans, etc.
> wholly reliant on America.
It's either be reliant on america or become our competitor. Besides, what's your point here? That europe wants a nuclear war with russia?
> At some point you have to get serious and live in the real world where threats still exist.
Europe is the threat. It's funny how the war in ukraine is between european military powers and yet you claim europe is unprepared for aggression. Most of europe is part of NATO, the biggest source of violence and aggression in the world.
Losing the UK's Royal Navy, special forces, and nuke force due to Brexit was also a strategic mistake, due to peacetime conplacency. It would have made more sense to be a bit more flexible with Britain.
Good point. I think, however, that there is still some validity in differentiating the two. Some NATO countries are outside the EU, and vice vetsa. Also, the US dominates NATO, and not the EU.
Too late to buy EU defence stocks, too late to buy real estate, too late to simply stop getting intimate with Russia (are Germans still smirking?), with current economy nobody is getting a new job either. What have you done, Europe.
Making crass jokes about school shootings, alienating regional powers (Israel, Turkey, Australia, most of the Sahel), and ignoring the first conventional war on the continent this century.
Turkey and Israel alienated themselves. There was way too much will towards Turkey, and they kept blowing it every single time. And Israel.. well.. is Israel.
I live close to the border with Ukraine and I have no idea what you're talking about. Beyond it being a little harder to get an apartament due to the influx of Ukrainian migrants, it's business as usual. And I've not heard of any job market woes. The worst thing right now, and since a while, is farmers getting shafted by cheap grain imports from Ukraine due to lax control at the border, no tracking, and no punishments for buyers.
> is farmers getting shafted by cheap grain imports from Ukraine due to lax control at the border, no tracking, and no punishments for buyers.
they say that and yet much larger traffic of grain from Russia somehow doesn't hurt those farmers?! maybe it's because a lot of it is stolen Ukrainian grain so everyone should be hush shush about it
Several of the farmers protesting at the Polish botder are borderline state actors on Russian behalf, with connections to government officials being proven. Make of that what you will.
For 2023, the grain imported from Russia to Poland amounts to 1.2% of the grain imported from Ukraine. Should be 0%, but it's definitively not "much larger". How are you comforable with just making things up like that.
This is an outdated statistic. The EU as a whole is spending above the 2% and if you include broader items like railway improvements to facilitate moving US tanks, the number more than doubles. Some EU countries have given more than 2% to Ukraine on top of this
While this might be true now, this has not always been the case.
And there are still some individual NATO members that want to make excuses instead of pay their fair share for the nuclear umbrella we are providing them, among many other things.
You can play games with numbers all you want to make things look less bad, but many of the major EU economies have significantly neglected military spending. Not only is there a huge lack of munitions across the continent, there's a huge lack of ability to make any. Sure the invasion of Ukraine made these countries scramble to start fixing decades of neglect, but the damage has already been done.
The numbers are about where the EU is now, not where it was 2+ years ago. The EU has increased spending and is increasing production capacity. They are doing something about it. The US seems unable to do anything right now because of politics
The EU has had a very significant change in attitude
- 2 years ago about defense spending
- 2 months about defense independence, after hearing Trump's comments about NATO and House Republicans unwillingness to pass foreign defense aid
Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea have taken note as well
Maybe they will build out their own military industry causing the US to no longer have a much larger technological capability than it actually pays for from its own GDP and face more competition in weapon sales.
Your comment is probably sarcastic, but I think this new world disorder we slipping into will necessitate a more muscular Europe working in tandem with the US to counter our common enemies.
I would welcome a Europe that takes what is going on more seriously instead of hoping another pansy-ass raft of sanctions will make Putin or Xi shudder in fear.
This is already happening. Poland & South Korea entered into a significant deal last year. SK is working with Poland to build SK mil hardware in Poland, which iirc, is a first for them. There are speculations that this is SK breaking into the EU market for tanks & spg.
Drones are reshaping conventional war at unprecedented speeds. Many things need to be rethought. Big ticket items and air defense are notable examples.
Porcupine defense is likely the best strategy for deterrence. Taiwan and her allies should take note of what Ukraine has accomplished in the Black Sea.
NATO funding is in the realm of a few million per year for administrative costs, and all members make these payments.
Perhaps you are referring to the requirement for NATO members to spend minimum 2% GDP on their own Military? In which case other responses explain that, on average, this is already occuring.
Further to that, percentage of GDP is a problematic metric to measure spending, as a member could in fact increase their military spending year on year, but if their spending increase doesn't keep up with their GDP increases then it can appear that they are spending less.
Sure, we will hire a few thousand contractors to form a network of committees and prepare multiple sustainability plans and guidelines for the next seven years. We will also declare war illegal and fine violators with 70% of their gdp.
Whoever dares to challenge european sovereignty will be met with the collective wrath of our cookie prompts
The EU is not only materially incapable of war mode (too many second rate career politicians) but also strategically unaligned. One of its members is occupied by a nato country, and hasn't been supported when threatened. Eastern countries, particularly poland are understandably pushing hard for armament but they will be sorely disappointed when national vetoes start arriving
On the other hand, when Albania was attacked by Iran in 2022 their prime minister didn't invoke Article 5 because he has "too much respect for our friends and our allies to tell them what they should do."
NATO is just as seemingly unfair to its smaller members as is the EU. This is not because of any incompetence per se but rather just a phenomenon in any organization with differently powerful members. Places like US, Germany and Albania will never really be equal due to their respective bargaining powers - no matter what a charta says.
I think it's more reluctant to go into war mode. Europe did plenty of war in the not too distant past.
It was interesting doing a tour of Ypres where my grandad did artillery in WW1. It was really rather similar to the current war in Ukriane - largely static trenches with people lobbing shells at each other. Bigger though - approx 1bn shells fired and 14 million dead.
No one really wants to repeat that expect perhaps Putin. I suspect the current slowness in making 1/1000th as many shells is more down to a lack of enthusiasm for the whole business than being less capeable than a century ago. Indeed I thought we were over that stuff but I guess if Putin wants to go retro and roll tanks into the neighbours territories we are forced to respond.
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[ 15.7 ms ] story [ 311 ms ] threadJust like western EU governments apparently. It turns out governing a country isn't just about balancing an excel spreadsheet of incomes and spendings, which seems to be the only thing our elites have bee trained for in the last 40 years
And they seem quite bad at it, considering the state of the various balances they are supposed to maintain (or at least those in France where I live)
What's been starkly revealed since is that Europe is woefully unprepared to respond to any kind of aggression, and aside from France's nuclear weapons, wholly reliant on America. At some point you have to get serious and live in the real world where threats still exist.
Forget arms industry or military budget as a percent of GDP. The main problem is that Europe lacks the fighting spirit (with some exceptions like Poland). Countries like Germany will fold / capitulate to any demands if they suffer thousands of casualties.
That would mean cultivating the mentality that a country is more than just an economic platform, because that's not something anyone is willing to die for. It means cultivating the dreaded nationalism.
Is it just that, or does it perhaps protect also other rights? Is the economic prosperity the only reason one might prefer living in Germany over Russia?
Once Germany gets submitted without a fight, how long will it take until Italy is attacked? I mean, with this "running away" philosophy it's pretty easy to take countries without facing a resistance now.
A small price compared to dying in war. I'm not saying it's the right choice, but if you have no attachment to your country and people beyond it being a comfortable place to live, that's the choice most will make.
Nazi Germany did not invade Switzerland, USSR did not invade Finland (after suffering horrible losses in the Winter war), even though both had their own claims on them, because the costs of such an adventure were considered too high. A big part of this deterrence was a population willing to fight to defend their homeland.
To be fair these aren't exactly the most relevant examples. On paper the balance of power economically (and military to a somewhat lesser degree) is certainly on the side of the EU/NATO. It would be relative pretty cheap to invest enough just to deter a second rate country (besides nukes) like Russia.
Or are you suggesting that people can just move to another place when their home country gets taken over by fascist imperialists? Because that doesn't really scale that well...
There is a lot of fear mongering.
Ukraine should make a deal instead of sacrificing people without limits. So many people died, for loosing later. If they wait too long there won't be any deal.
Imagine you're an Ukrainian. Is there a deal which you would not accept and rather continue fighting or would you accept literally any deal (including unconditional surrender)?
And I'm fine with all the Ukrainians in Germany who do not want to fight.
(and I would welcome Russians who do not want to fight)
Ukraine has no good options. Mearsheimer predicts a territorial loss of 40% and no NATO membership for the rest of Ukraine.
Losing 40% is much better than losing 100%.
(Also it's Mearsheimer, what a joke)
many predicted Kyiv will fall in 3 days in 2022.
Countries who don't force people to fight are:
- much weaker in the case of war,
- with such policies not being (a well hidden) secret, an attractive target for a hostile country.
So such countries are going to statistically be attacked more often, and statistically lose more often.
So if you don't counter those statistical downsides somehow, you should expect such human-rights-respecting countries to eventually be displaced by less human-righty countries.
With NATO, advanced technology and enough people willing to fight you indeed might not need to force a draft; but clearly not the case for Ukraine.
And yes, I know you might not consider my example of an ideal approach, but there's plenty similar examples to make, like a sports team being completely fair: recognizing their errors when even the judge doesn't, recognize negative errors of the judge against their opponents (and e.g. allow the opponent to easily get a point to cancel out unfair judge's ruling), never pretend an injury even though an opponent does it etc. Such a team would quickly become irrelevant.
In other words, your attitude is naive and it stems from a false dilemma that you can be either good or evil, disregarding the smooth gradient, where you can try to climb up reasonably high - higher than average - and pull the rest up.
There is nothing naive or idealistic about his position. Forcefully catching unwilling civilians and sending to slaughter is a human sacrifice going against the very idea of human rights. It is pure evil, there isn't exactly a lot of room for shades of grey.
To be honest, when I see the sophistry designed to justify the relegating of citizens to the role of an animal in the butchery by their own state, it looks like a classic horror material. Scarier than the descriptions of atrocities in the warzone. It's like a a cabal of cannibalistic cultists trying to gaslight normal people into thinking that killing those people is (and always was) absolutely normal and it is their very purpose to be slaughtered and it is you a weird freak for pretending that you have some rights and can decide whether you want to die for something or not.
Assuming you can just ask people to risk their lives to defend the state is both. (Not that it can't work in some circumstances)
> Forcefully catching unwilling civilians and sending to slaughter is a human sacrifice going against the very idea of human rights.
No, and I already explained why not: if you arrest an innocent person (or even sentence an innocent person to life in prison), you're obviously harming that person's freedom, but the alternative is to either:
- be perfect and never make mistakes: here's the naivety and idealism again
- resign from the justice system and have anarchy (that's not an improvement by any stretch of imagination)
Similarly with wars and conscription: without it, most (all?) states are too weak to defend and fall. Guess who defeats those states? Competing states with worse human rights (forced draft) or perhaps much worse human rights.
So Ukraine could just allow everyone to run away and let russia win. I can see some hypothetical back and forth between us, where we would eventually agree on a scenario where russia takes Ukraine and maybe some more states outside of NATO but eventually the NATO border stops the advances, and so I won't make an argument that people will eventually no longer have a place to escape to.
Here's the thing, however: people could easily escape before the war. By staying in the country, they agreed to the rules: everyone knew, that in case of war (that was looming for quite a long while) conscription will happen.
Only in the cannibalistic belief of men being disposable non-sentient material for blood sacrifices on the state altar rather than real humans with rights. It is a question of priorities, not naivety.
if you arrest an innocent person (or even sentence an innocent person to life in prison), you're obviously harming that person's freedom
This only happens as a mistake, which makes your analogy completely nonsensical. No one in their right mind argues in favor of a false dichotomy like "Yeah, we just imprison random bypassers en masse and hope that some of them happen to be criminals. Do you want complete lawlessness otherwise or what?" Forced conscription is not a mistake, it is intentional and official violation of human rights.
Similarly with wars and conscription: without it, most (all?) states are too weak to defend and fall
This sophistry can be adapted for virtually any crime against humanity.
How states without slavery can defend against states with slavery? They don't have a significant pool of free labor.
How states without death camps can defend against states with death camps? Their traitors/potential collaborators/regime enemies are all alive and roaming free.
etc etc
In reality, however, we don't see complete extinction of states with human rights replaced by the most inhumane regimes possible, not even the prevalence of the latter. The reason of that is very obvious: normal sane people aren't exactly enthusiastic to live in, defend or otherwise support the state that doesn't even consider them humans. Specifically in Ukraine and Russia with strong animal protection laws, stray dogs right now have more rights than male conscripts.
Competing states with worse human rights (forced draft) or perhaps much worse human rights.
Yet another sneaky attempt to minimise the atrocity scale. The state strips you of all human rights and sends you to the slaughter. What much worse human rights can you imagine? The state slaughtering you directly? Is that much worse?
Here's the thing, however: people could easily escape before the war.
That's a nice try at victim blaming but they could not. Before the war Ukraine was a usual third world country and like with most countries moving somewhere else wasn't easy at all. Current refugee programs weren't available for Ukrainians back then.
Well the world is not black and white.
> For things like chemical weapons we have treaties banning it
There was a treaty Russia signed (along with US, UK etc.) which guaranteed Ukrainian Independance back in the 90s. All treaties are less than worthless if you can't enforce them.
> while for conscription all politicians are quiet about while pretending to care about human rights.
Would you rather have conscription and not live in Russia? Or have conscription and live in Russia? Realistically these are basically the only options some people have.
They could end the war, and their suffering, tomorrow. They probably could even negotiate keeping Crimea.
It's the same spirit, Ukrainians don't know what they're doing, they just mindlessly obey orders to die for their NATO overlords.
Don't you see some major differences between the role of the two in their respective wars?
But what you're doing is a category error. It's a completely different thing to ask your enemy to surrender from asking your ally (in a loose sense) to surrender.
Ukraine made lots of deals with Russia about all kinds of cease fires since 2014, they didn't help with anything.
Putin will collect more strength, and grab whatever he decide and will be allowed to grab.
Russia will find your submissiveness very helpful.
It isn't theory. It's a practical understanding of who and what Putin and the Russia state are.
The practical reality is that Russia has been expanding by increments. First Georgia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Georgian_War
Then Crimea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_occupation_of_Crimea
And now they're trying for more of Ukraine.
Submission and appeasement don't lead to good outcomes.
> why did they offer Ukraine a peace deal
Russia can end the war tomorrow. All Russia needs to do is get out of Ukraine. All of it. Simple to do, easy to achieve.
That's the best peace deal Russia can offer.
Russians are dying every day too. Putin can save many Russian lives with a simple order to get out of Ukraine.
Putin plainly values his vanity over the lives of the Russian people.
This is serious, deadly serious, and seeing it treated so lightly is painful.
As a direct result of Russia's war, NATO has expanded and Russia is now very much in China's pocket. China is quite happy to have Russia as a vassal state.
Russia had a mini civil war with Prigozhin's rebellion. Russians have been killing Russians.
Russia's life expectancy was already lower than that of developed countries and this pointless war of choice is steadily killing off an entire generation of young Russians.
Also why do you feel the need to make such pointless contributions?
> boogyman propaganda so beloved of Hollywood.
not hollywood, they say it on Russian state tv, if you take your head out of your arse and manage to watch and listen you'll see it loud and clearly
>Western historians have calculated that, over the last 400 years of its existence, the Russian Empire expanded at an average rate of 50 square kilometers per day. (https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2014/09/10/putins-nationalism...)
Could it instead just be that they are just doing what they have habitually done?
It sounds like Putin doesn't care much about Russia's security and he's only making things worse.
> missiles close to the Russian heartland.
Any factual evidence? In any case you do realize there are Russian missiles in Kaliningrad so following the same logic you would agree that Poland/Germany/Sweden etc. have a legitimate right to invade it to demilitarize and "denazify" it (in this case of course for real because Russia at this point is literally a fascist state, it ticks all the boxes after all) following the same "logic"?
Because the PNAC/CNAC plans for the economic survival of the USA and its western allies depends on the defeat of Russia and the balkanization of its resources?
Haven't you been paying attention? The PNAC/CNAC oligarchs and their military junta have made it quite clear for decades that they want what Russia's got...
Don't be silly. Russia is a sidenote from the perspective of the west. Especially the US, they'd much rather focus on the pacific and their internal stuff.
I know Russians tend to be extremely paranoid about everyone being out to get them but that's more of an internalized issue due to historical reasons and the general tendency of blaming external powers for all of their domestic issues...
The USA is nothing without enemies.
Mearsheimer explains the perceived threat aspect very well: it doesn't matter what YOU, the Americans or any outside observer thinks. What does matter is what the Russians think, and they've made their thinking on having Ukraine be part of NATO very clear.
Putin is probably genuinely threatened by the prospect of Ukraine being a prosperous democracy and his own people saying why do we have to live under tyrany then, but that's a different thing.
Haven't you been paying attention?
It's not 1939 (as if their invasion of Poland was justifiable or is that not what you're claiming?). Nobody has been threatening Russian security for decades. Even back in the cold war does there were no serious plans to invade Russia itself.
> Please try to raise the level of discourse beyond the boogyman
That's sounds rather absurd... You're the one who's using propaganda bullet points like "It's about Russian security"?
This is why Russia is called "expansionist". Because it likes to expand its territory.
Before Boris arrived to scupper it.
That's not what happened. I know you read some snippet somewhere that made it sound like that's what happened. But simply put, you're being played. And that's not actually what happened.
Watch the interview if you don't like the source.
Ukrainian negotiator David Arahamiya: https://europeanconservative.com/articles/news/official-john...
Video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lt4E0DiJts
More than snippets
And lo and behold, the fact of two guys stating a certain narrative about those events (then embellished up a bit by the publications quoting them) does not make it so. Even the article you're citing about Arahamiya's version of events isn't so clear-cut about the matter (it says Boris's advice was but one factor among many) as you're making it out to be.
Perhaps it would be a good idea to switch to sites that don't have "conservative" in their URL.
Or, equally likely, he just arrived with guarantees that weapon deliveries would be maintained ?
Whether Russia presented a so called “peace deal” is irrelevant. The propaganda claim is Boris Johnson came in and somehow mind warped the Ukraine side.
Which, like a lot of propaganda in this war, completely removes the agency from the Ukrainians. Funny how that works.
So you're claiming that Ukrainian government was willing to give up all the annexed regions including the territories they still controlled? Because that's what Russia was demanding.
Do you have any evidence to back your claims?
Come on, really? You can't be this naive.
I can see russian propaganda from far away.
If you would stop and think what a "peace deal" with a vicious-murderous aggressor means then you would not spew such bullshit. russia started the war, killed hundreds of thousands of people already and you call for Ukrainians to surrender under "peace deal" so they would be tortured and enslaved under russian occupation.
Also you could look into history to see whether there are any "peace deals" with russia that have held and not been just a pause for more aggression and atrocities.
On the basis of your moral imperative, there are no Western nations worthy of the peace, either.
Its not like NATO isn't responsible for wide-spread destruction of sovereign democracies, also ..
That's entirely besides the point. These entities should be making peace with each other in spite of each others crimes.
It is your propaganda which precludes peace, because you are convinced, without rational thought, that peace is impossible... whereas, there was actually a peace deal brought to the table, nix'ed by NATO ..
One side is murdering and the other side should make peace by being murdered?
What is my country guilty of?
I don't agree with the invasion and destruction of Ukraine's eastern regions to be an appropriate response - but me, not agreeing with something, doesn't make it propaganda.
Propaganda is "NATO and Ukraine have done nothing wrong, Russia are just inventing reasons". This propaganda is designed to prevent you from having a rational look at the reasons. Propaganda shuts down continued thought on the subject - I invite you to consider that perhaps you have not thought enough about why the Russians are willing to sacrifice so much, on their own borders.
Just as you are inviting me to really, really think about whether Ukraines' actions warranted this heinous response. (Clue: I don't agree with any war, or that there is any such things as an honorable war these days. No nation state is worth the life of another human being, period. Both Russian and Ukrainian citizens as well as their ruling political classes should be reminded of this fact, repeatedly.)
Maybe, just maybe, consider whether any of this expansion has not been active war and murder?
You are doing victim blaming by putting any fault on Ukraine for trying to protect themselves from invasion. They did not manage to protect themselves and now are somehow at fault for war.
In your opinion the victim has to make peace not the aggressor. What a twisted mind.
You say both need to be reminded but somehow only say NATO is bad even tho NATO is not even part of this conflict.
The US - and its NATO allies, using NATO bases - murdered 5% of Iraqs population in cold blood, on the basis of outright lies.
Did you forget these details in your rush to study history? This is recent history - as in there are still millions of victims, who blame the NATO alliance, and the 5-eyes/12-eyes criminal superstate, for the murder, calamity and bloodshed delivered to them, on average, every twenty minutes for the last twenty years.
Yes, Ukraine has made a deal with the devil. Even if the American people aren't aware of it, the rest of the world has been watching NATO member states' war crimes tallies climb into the stratosphere. Far, far above and beyond anything that even Russia can deliver on the war fronts it fights - on its own border.
> NATO is not even part of this conflict.
That is utterly false, and the fact you would proffer this inane statement belies the truth that you are indeed, a victim of insane propaganda.
Now name one at least (besides maybe Serbia which isn't exactly demolished however you look at it).
> The US - and its NATO allies, using NATO bases - murdered 5% of Iraqs population in cold blood
That's actually a pretty outright lie...
The bases in Ukraine intended for training Ukrainian intelligence staff by US specialists were established two years AFTER Russian invasion, and did not lead to any hostile responses beyond the usual death and destruction that Russia has been sowing all over Ukraine since 2014.
The 2014 Maidan coup? Another CIA operation.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/25/world/europe/cia-ukraine-...
This, from a country that gave itself carte-blanche to ruin any sovereign state its ruling classes deemed culturally inferior, kicking off World War 3 with the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003 and subsequent murder of 5% of its population.
So, sure. The USA's activities in Ukraine for the past 15 years have been utterly benign ..
The article you linked makes no mention of such things.
There was no coup in Ukraine either. Ukrainian parliament unanimously voted to remove Ukrainian president from office after he gave an order to shoot at peaceful protesters, resulting in over 100 deaths, and fled the country fearing criminal prosecution. All members from his own party voted in favor of that too.
From where do you derive your propaganda - the same media organizations, owned by the bomb manufacturers currently reaping immense profit from Ukraines' dire situation, maybe .. ?
And its the bomb makers, and their willing media lackeys (whom are owned by the bomb makers), who are convincing the gullible American public that it is in their interests (it really isn't) to get involved in yet another heinously evil, disgusting war - this, after having also convinced their willful subjects to invade and destroy Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia .. exactly the same folks involved in Ukraine.
One bomb dropped every twenty minutes, for the past twenty years. We're almost running out of places for America's ruling oligarch classes to extract a profit through their war-mongering ...
No. These are well-known facts, public record. On 22nd February 2014, the Ukrainian parliament voted 328-0 in favor of removing Yanukovych from office after what he had done. Even his own party released a statement condemning him. Elections for the new president were held in May of the same year. Which part of this is "CIA coup"? Is it a "CIA coup" every time a parliament holds a vote of no confidence to remove someone from a public office? If that's the case, then many countries in Europe have a "CIA coup" every few years as failed politicians are voted out of office, usually because of corruption or incompetence.
> From where do you derive your propaganda - the same media organizations, owned by the bomb manufacturers currently reaping immense profit from Ukraines' dire situation, maybe .. ?
No. I can't think of a single media outlet in my country connected to "bomb manufacturers" in any way. One media group is centered around an old newspaper publisher, another group is centered around a medical supplier that has branched into media and retail business, and the third major one is public broadcasting. So you have to somehow connect a dog food retailer to the war if you want to pursue the profiteering angle.
>many countries in Europe have a "CIA coup"
Yes, they do indeed, because the CIA views Europe as an enemy to the superiority of the American people, and performing these kinds of coups is entirely within its purposes as a counter-democratic, sovereignty-invalidating agency.
> Is it a "CIA coup" every time a parliament holds a vote of no confidence to remove someone from a public office?
Quite often, yes it is. The CIA conduct operations forcing the political change they want to see - and this definitely occurred in the case of Ukraine. See also, the Whitlam government in Australia, where they refined the technique.
Indeed - speaking of clandestine operations, here's how Ukrainian president (2005-2010) Viktor Yushchenko looked before and after Russians poisoned him: https://i.imgur.com/H3R7yF8.jpeg
The poisoning happened two months before 2004 presidential elections. Russians poisoned the prime challenger to their puppet, and boosted their puppet further with widespread election fraud that was later overturned by Ukrainian supreme court.
This is how an actual coup attempt looks like.
> Yes, they do indeed, because the CIA views Europe as an enemy to the superiority of the American people, and performing these kinds of coups is entirely within its purposes as a counter-democratic, sovereignty-invalidating agency.
CIA is not the prime mover in the world and the only reason why anything ever happens. For example, last week the Estonia minister of justice resigned because he had used his personal allowance against established rules by renting an apartment from his wife's adult son from another marriage. While he was aware that he couldn't rent an apartment from a relative (anti-corruption rule), he didn't know that the son would qualify as a relative too under these rules. He fucked up and resigned. This had nothing to do with the CIA, nor do many other things going on in the world. To claim otherwise is to be ignorant of the complexities of the world.
When it comes to Eastern Europe, the CIA is not even in the top three most influential intelligence organizations.
There is no "one true way to coup" - what you are describing is the propaganda you have consumed that makes you believe your nation could never do something so heinous as poison its opponents, imprison them indefinitely without charge, etc - when in fact, it DOES do that - in spades - and you are really just projecting. What you are describing is how Hollywood protrays coups, lol.
Anyway.. Your straw man arguments are interesting, but this:
>When it comes to Eastern Europe, the CIA is not even in the top three most influential intelligence organizations.
Is curious. Its not through lack of trying!
Its just that there is MUCH resistance to American imperialism in that region. Thankfully!
True - but the poisoning of Yushchenko was a thing that actually happened, and it is not fiction like the story about 2014 CIA coup in Ukraine. By the way, the puppet that Russians backed then was Yanukovych, the same man who later successfully became the president of Ukraine and sabotaged EU aspirations under Russian orders, then shot protesters and fled the country when he lost all political backing that he had and was facing criminal charges. History didn't start in 2014 indeed.
> your nation could never do something so heinous as poison its opponents, imprison them indefinitely without charge, etc - when in fact, it DOES do that
I am not an American, and if you came here and told everyone how our government poisons opponents and imprisons people indefinitely, you'd get very strange looks and genuine concern about your mental health. :)
> Its just that there is MUCH resistance to American imperialism in that region.
You are so boxed in with the "CIA vs the world" narrative of the Anglosphere that you miss the fact that in our region, it's FSB, SVR and GRU against SÄPO, SUPO, KAPO, VDD, VSD, SB, SBU and others. How many of these abbreviations do you even recognize without googling? "American imperialism" is not a thing that people here have any reason to talk about. The modern western self-loathing is non-existent, found only on Twitter among teenagers who have consumed a little too much of American media and pop-culture. The imperialism that we are facing comes from Russia. We don't want to live under a Russian version of Jim Crow laws like 35 years ago. We don't want to see our cities destroyed, people murdered, women and children raped, language and culture wiped out.
Foreign dignitaries have often been struck by a gallery in our presidential palace. The gallery displays paintings of all former heads of state, with their birth and death dates and locations. There's a repeating pattern: almost everyone from the pre-WII period have names of remote Russian towns and dates from 1941 or 1942. They were sent into labor camps and executed there. The few who managed to avoid imprisonment and escape to the free world lived long lives and died much later in exile in places like Stockholm, London, Toronto.
The war in Ukraine gives us much more reason to talk about Russian imperialism than about American imperialism. You are very right that history didn't start in 2014, nor in 1776. The war is just the most recent example of a very old pattern of Russian behaviour that started well before the first settlers heading for America climbed into their boats.
You can do nothing about Russia's war criminals, until you do something effective about YOUR OWN. Following OUR OWN war criminals into yet another facetious, illegal war on the basis of lies and propaganda, instead of DEMANDING justice for their victims, is just pure evil.
WE have been murdering millions of people in OUR illegal wars, fought far beyond our own borders, at a rate far, far more detrimental to world peace than anything Russia has been doing. Russia, fighting a defensive war on its own 2000-km long border with Ukraine, is in NO WAY comparable to the heinous human catastrophe we have caused, by way of the machinations of an out of control military industrial complex hell-bent on what are fundamentally racist wars in .. Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Somalia ... Yemen. And many, many more theatres beyond the range of civilian observation.
>We don't want to live under a Russian version of Jim Crow laws like 35 years ago.
The world does not want to live like Americans do, either. We've seen the bankrupt families living under the bridges. We've seen the addiction and the war crimes and the crimes against humanity. We've seen your for-profit prison-industrial slavery system. We've seen the weapons you drop on innocent people while ensuring your own children have no future.
We've seen the network - a thousand of them - of secret bases the American empire has built in order to give itself a place to torture and commit further heinous crimes against humanity.
We saw what you did to Julian Assange and the many others who came before him, attempting to right the heinous injustices of your military industrial complex and its vile, evil intelligence services, usurping sovereign nations across the globe for the purposes of the misanthropic oligarch class that rules you, through your military junta.
Your hatespew of Russia is noted as yet another form of cowardice. Spend a trillion dollars on diplomacy per year, instead of murdering innocent people every twenty minutes, as you have done for twenty years, and you might find that the rest of the world is willing to play with America, again. As it stands, the USA is losing the respect of a majority of the nations of the world, whose citizens do not cowardly shy away from observing the results of American war crimes, which are committed in your name whether you have the temerity to confront them, or not.
You are merely propagandizing for war. I demand you start making peace, American. The world tires of your excuses for the death of millions of innocent people. The moral imperative you claim is a dire fallacy.
I already told you that I am not an American. I am not even from the Anglosphere, so the self-loathing does not evoke any emotions from me.
Furthermore, I come from a country that already tried "making peace" with Russians during the Woodrow Wilson-inspired era of neutrality in Europe. We stayed neutral, trying to maintain good relations with everyone, even with Nazi Germany and the USSR. In the end, both invaded us, murdered national elite from politicians to doctors to lawyers to scholars to everyone else who could run the country and challenge the puppet government they installed, and sent sizable part of the population in entire families to die in remote prison camps. That was followed by a Russian military occupation, which lasted until 1991. The occupation was characterized by deep economic stagnation and systematic attempts to wipe out our nation by suppressing our language and culture and by mass resettlement of Russians into our country. By the time USSR collapsed, the average wage was less than 30 dollars per month and we were on the verge of becoming a minority in our own country.
Lack of strong alliances in Europe against totalitarian dictatorships is a key reason why this happened to so many countries in Europe. Western Europe successfully defeated Nazis and restored freedom in 1945. In Eastern Europe, defeating Russians took 50 years longer.
> Russia, fighting a defensive war on its own 2000-km long border with Ukraine
Nothing says defensive war like shooting 31 ballistic missiles, worth 400 million dollars, at a peaceful European city Kyiv, hundreds of kilometers from the frontline. Results of the attack that took place earlier today: all missiles shot down, but debris fell on a kindergarten and residential buildings. Shockwaves from air-defence missiles blew out windows in apartment buildings. A power substation and a residential building caught fire. Fortunately no deaths, but 10 people injured, including a child.
And this has gone on for more than two years, day after day, while apologists like you make excuses for this behaviour and lecture others about morals.
> The world does not want to live like Americans do, either.
Indeed. I want to live the way I choose, not the way Russians want to force me, with your approval.
Most certainly a serf-subject in one of its puppet states, then, perhaps an active member of NATO - already well known across the globe for committing decades of atrocity in states deemed inferior by a heinously racist oligarchic ruling class in the Western hemisphere.
>Furthermore, I come from a country that already tried "making peace" with Russians during the Woodrow Wilson-inspired era of neutrality in Europe.
The USSR is long gone.
Its the 21st Century. New diplomacy is possible. We just don't do that any more, though. We (Western nations) prefer to see trillions of dollars spent on war and calamity instead.
>Nothing says defensive war like ..
.. stating, repeatedly for decades, that the presence of NATO-aligned forces within km's of Russias borders was a red line and would be treated as an act of aggression against Russia, which reserved the right to respond - AS EVERY SINGLE NATION IN THE WORLD HAS THAT RIGHT. This was stated, countless times leading up to the calamity, but it was utterly ignored by NATO allies in their rush to Russia's border.
The victims of the Wests' imperialist aggression know full well that NATO is not a good force in the world. NATO has the blood of millions, and millions of peoples lives on its hands - maybe they are not European and therefore not considered as important as European victims, in your mind?
>And this has gone on for more than two years
Two years? This conflict begins in 2008.
Nobody wants this war, which is why it is such a travesty that it happened. It could have been prevented, had there actually been any diplomatic actions taken by Western nations, including Ukraine. However, the risk of war was taken instead, and now here we are - in spite of multiple repeated warnings.
>I want to live the way I choose, not the way Russians force me to, with your approval.
Then face the consequences for the way those actions are received by your enemies.
Would you be so willing to have your enemy build 10 bases along your border, all the while saying they "don't mean you any harm" while their military is busy actively demolishing countless sovereign states around the world, murdering millions of innocent people in cold blood, building 1,000 bases across the landscape for the purpose of torture and other highly illegal activities?
Because thats what the US and its allies had been doing, in the DECADES leading up to the Ukraine conflict. To a very significant portion of the worlds population, the US and its allies STARTED WORLD WAR 3 with the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the subsequent cold-blooded murder of 5% of its population. Were you not paying attention to this atrocity - because the Russians surely did.
Ukraine is just the latest in a long string of heinous atrocities that were called for by the US' military junta (PNAC) in its desire to refactor the ENTIRE WORLD according to their highly specious cultural imperative.
I highly doubt your country would tolerate having its enemies begin construction of hostile bases along its borders.
I understand, however, your lack of empathy for this point, since it counter-acts the war-lust with which you are clearly afflicted.
So an Australian living in Austria keeps gaslighting Eastern Europeans about their experience with russia.
Then keeps telling them to eat russian shit or face consequences.
Then keeps spewing flat-earth level conspiracy shit with extreme conviction, arrogance and aggression.
Completely ignores the plight of current or previous russian atrocities.
Then accuses others of lacking empathy.
It's infinitly amusing how you keep trying to pin Anglo-American obsessions on a person like me from a completely different culture. We don't have oligarchs, because Russians stole everything when they occupied the country and forced us into communism. Real estate, businesses, factories, even single-family farms deemed too big were confiscated. Economically speaking, the entire country had to start from scratch in 1991. Nor do we have much history with racism, because until the USSR collapsed and borders opened up, virtually no-one had ever met a black person. I was well into adulthood when I met a black person for the first time. Felt like meeting an alien. :)
As to serfdom, my grandfather's grandfather was born as an actual slave in Russian empire. Bought and sold like property. I don't find many similarities between my current situation and his life back then.
> The USSR is long gone.
The way Russian Federation treats its neighbours is no different from how the USSR or the Russian empire treated them. There was a glimpse of hope for change in early 1990s, but those were crushed when Russia launched an extremely violent war against Chechenya, and when Soviet hardliners managed to consolidate power and put their man in charge of Russia again.
> I highly doubt your country would tolerate having its enemies begin construction of hostile bases along its borders.
Nobody was building any bases anywhere before Russia invaded Ukraine. Europe saw unprecedented reduction of both domestic and foreign troops, down by 5-10x compared to Cold War levels. For example, German army went from 300k+ soldiers and 3800 tanks in 1980 down to 60k soldiers and 225 tanks in 2015. The US had 5000 tanks in Germany in 1989. By 2015, none were left. The story about "enemies building baseses along Russian borders" is complete nonsense. Have you not bothered to look up facts?
> Would you be so willing to have your enemy build 10 bases along your border, all the while saying they "don't mean you any harm" while their military is busy actively demolishing countless sovereign states around the world, murdering millions of innocent people in cold blood, building 1,000 bases across the landscape for the purpose of torture and other highly illegal activities?
That's the life I'm living right now, less than 200 km from Russian border. Russia has been modernizing, rebuilding and expanding their army since mid-2000s, and they started/are currently waging the largest war in Europe since the WWII on completely fabricated excuses. For three decades, Russians have been threatening that "the masters will be back". Should we bomb Moscow before that happens?
No, there isn't, the whole conspiracy theory lies on a few sentences taken out of context. Spend an hour vetting sources and you'll find that it's a Russian PR spin without any substance.
Anyone can "prove" with public statements from top officials that the US goverment is run by aliens from outer space, if they can take three sentences of their choice out of context and freely ignore everything else.
This is just propaganda for the rubes.
> This is just propaganda for the rubes.
Perhaps let's keep language like that on reddit?
If no: then you can do NOTHING effective about Russia.
Reign your own war criminals in and bring them to heel. Only after you have done that, are you going to be in a position to do anything effective about Russia - if, indeed, the "Russian threat" boogeyman still persists, long after you've actually sent your own war criminals to rot in chains in The Hague .. which is, admittedly, quite unlikely given that the very same war criminals you would have to confront and prosecute are the ones telling you boogeyman stories ..
Aren't those statements contradicting as at least two separate sets of ideas?
If you lack fighting spirit, you don't want to fight. So you should want more money spent on weapons, so that you don't have to fight. Aristotle said "if you want peace, prepare for war".
If you don't want to fight, you should be afraid of everyone who does: e.g. russia.
putin clearly said he wants to restore the old ussr borders. This means eventually taking eastern Germany. And then you just have to naively assume if he succeeds at that, he will stop at that. I mean, let's be honest, he can't possibly live that long to see his plan fully completed, but let's say he has successors continuing his work.
I know that there is this comfortable seemingly impenetrable boundary of NATO alliance: but recently Trump said he would invite putin to attack on NATO members that don't put enough GDP % into military spending (e.g. Germany), and new Slovakian government is significantly more prorussian (meeting with russia and Hungary).
In January 2022 experts almost unanimously said it would be ridiculous for russia to attack Ukraine.
Don't be afraid of russia, but also act to actually support your peace of mind.
There is no deal on the table, there never was. Putin wants them to surrender and more or less dissolve the army so he can take the rest without the fight.
East or West? :)
But you have a point. East Germans are much more sceptical of supporting the war. They are tired of propaganda.
(it seems to be different in Poland: Sikorski is a crazy war hawk, don't know about ordinary polish people)
I'm amazed anyone is willing to sign up to risk their life for $2K/month, even here in the US where military service has long been glorified.
[1]:https://www.wavy.com/news/military/u-s-military-sees-record-...
* I think the word "manipulation" implies an intent to mislead someone, while some techniques influencing others are used by people unaware of the effects or (in)correctness of the propaganda; maybe rather than "manipulation" I should say "indoctrination".
Indeed if you look at our closest animal relatives, the chimps, they are quite inclined to wipe out their neighbours without needing religion or cash payment.
Took the Russians quite a while to get their act together.
Are the aggressors usually caught on the hop?
Dutch have contributed massively relative to gdp. The British special forces trained Ukraines special forces after the war started. Sweden is in NATO. And you can't bomb a nuclear state.
Sweden is not yet in NATO. They are on the verge of it, with Orban signing approval today, but Hungary has not yet formally submitted their instrument of ratification. Details matter when correcting people.
It's amazing and I attribute it largely to American intelligence, how much russia was damaged with "only" a 10s advance on the Doomsday Clock (we're at 23:58:30 now).
It's hard to tell whether all these comments are part of online propaganda or people regurgitating propaganda they watched on youtube. Like clockwork, the same talking points with the same key words.
> What's been starkly revealed since is that Europe is woefully unprepared to respond to any kind of aggression
Europe is one of the largest arms manufacturers in the world. Maintains the largest armed forces in the world. And is one of the biggest aggressors in the world. Ask the north africans, middle easterners and sub saharan africans, etc.
> wholly reliant on America.
It's either be reliant on america or become our competitor. Besides, what's your point here? That europe wants a nuclear war with russia?
> At some point you have to get serious and live in the real world where threats still exist.
Europe is the threat. It's funny how the war in ukraine is between european military powers and yet you claim europe is unprepared for aggression. Most of europe is part of NATO, the biggest source of violence and aggression in the world.
Making crass jokes about school shootings, alienating regional powers (Israel, Turkey, Australia, most of the Sahel), and ignoring the first conventional war on the continent this century.
they say that and yet much larger traffic of grain from Russia somehow doesn't hurt those farmers?! maybe it's because a lot of it is stolen Ukrainian grain so everyone should be hush shush about it
The Data on NATO Responsibility Sharing - CSIS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YihXoQjnYc
And there are still some individual NATO members that want to make excuses instead of pay their fair share for the nuclear umbrella we are providing them, among many other things.
https://www.youtube.com/live/6YihXoQjnYc?t=488
The vast majority of NATO countries are now above 3%
14 countries are above 4%
11 countries are between 3-4%
4 countries are between 2-3%
The countries under the 2% mark
1. Iceland - 1.72
2. Montenegro - 1.57 (incomplete data)
3. N. Macedonia - 1.66 (incomplete data)
The numbers are about where the EU is now, not where it was 2+ years ago. The EU has increased spending and is increasing production capacity. They are doing something about it. The US seems unable to do anything right now because of politics
The EU has had a very significant change in attitude
- 2 years ago about defense spending
- 2 months about defense independence, after hearing Trump's comments about NATO and House Republicans unwillingness to pass foreign defense aid
Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea have taken note as well
I would welcome a Europe that takes what is going on more seriously instead of hoping another pansy-ass raft of sanctions will make Putin or Xi shudder in fear.
Drones are reshaping conventional war at unprecedented speeds. Many things need to be rethought. Big ticket items and air defense are notable examples.
Porcupine defense is likely the best strategy for deterrence. Taiwan and her allies should take note of what Ukraine has accomplished in the Black Sea.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8kJrQ8TO2g
Perhaps you are referring to the requirement for NATO members to spend minimum 2% GDP on their own Military? In which case other responses explain that, on average, this is already occuring.
Further to that, percentage of GDP is a problematic metric to measure spending, as a member could in fact increase their military spending year on year, but if their spending increase doesn't keep up with their GDP increases then it can appear that they are spending less.
Whoever dares to challenge european sovereignty will be met with the collective wrath of our cookie prompts
The EU is not only materially incapable of war mode (too many second rate career politicians) but also strategically unaligned. One of its members is occupied by a nato country, and hasn't been supported when threatened. Eastern countries, particularly poland are understandably pushing hard for armament but they will be sorely disappointed when national vetoes start arriving
Can you explain?
NATO is just as seemingly unfair to its smaller members as is the EU. This is not because of any incompetence per se but rather just a phenomenon in any organization with differently powerful members. Places like US, Germany and Albania will never really be equal due to their respective bargaining powers - no matter what a charta says.
I think it's more reluctant to go into war mode. Europe did plenty of war in the not too distant past.
It was interesting doing a tour of Ypres where my grandad did artillery in WW1. It was really rather similar to the current war in Ukriane - largely static trenches with people lobbing shells at each other. Bigger though - approx 1bn shells fired and 14 million dead.
No one really wants to repeat that expect perhaps Putin. I suspect the current slowness in making 1/1000th as many shells is more down to a lack of enthusiasm for the whole business than being less capeable than a century ago. Indeed I thought we were over that stuff but I guess if Putin wants to go retro and roll tanks into the neighbours territories we are forced to respond.