Russian Ukraine shenanigans

[ClearedHot]

6 hours ago, Pooter said:

If only we had trump back he'd be playing 4d chess. 
 

And by 4d chess I mean being such an egotistical, erratic lunatic that he'd likely get roped into this pissing contest and we'd have Afghanistan 2: electric boogaloo, with near peer threat systems. 

Treasonous to speak of a former President that way.

[SocialD]

38 minutes ago, ClearedHot said:

Treasonous to speak of a former President that way.

 

 

No no, its only treasonous to poke fun at the "enlightened" one in office right now.  

[FLEA]

8 hours ago, DVT said:

There should not be a second of what's going on that isn't being captured for intel purposes.  Interesting that the AF just flew an E-8 to the desert.  Meanwhile the Army is flying the wings off their Artemis jet.

Because the US wants NATO to be the lead on this, and they are. So everything is being watched closely but by a multi-national force, not by a US exclusive force. We have contributing forces there but it is largely NATO, and national missions of the European border states that are undertaking the labor at the moment, which is what we want. We don't want to frame this as US vs. Russia. This has to be framed as Russia vs. the world. 

[FLEA]

9 hours ago, DVT said:

At the beginning of your usual self-projecting far left post your forgot to add.

 

"From the viewpoint of a very left leaning US Citizen, who worked with Europeans, I internalized the following without any discussion with others."

Honestly, I could have written your post for you after reading your prior enlightening comments over the past several years.

Tip of the cap to the guys that served at Snake Island.

I... I dont even know how to respond to this. This is....  so many levels of stupid man....

I'm just going to recommend a book to you. Please check out Super Power by Ian Bremmer. Here's the Amazon link for you in case you don't know how to navigate an online book store. 

https://www.amazon.com/Superpower-Three-Choices-Americas-World/dp/0143109707

 

Edit: I like.... seriously can't grasp your train of thought here? HTF do you think  I'm far left. FFS I've only ever voted Republican so I would be a terrible leftist thinker if that was true. Maybe you're just incapable of understanding not everyone thinks in one of two political paradigms? I mean hell dude, as a conservative even you should be bright enough to recognize that MOST Europeans are SIGNIFICANTLY more left than the American political average. That's like high school European studies 101. But aside that, my post reflects views that are commonly promoted in the Defense Security Cooperation community and taught at the university, as well as views taught within NATO's own training schools. 

Edited February 25, 2022 by FLEA

[ecugringo]

So how does this differ from the Gulf War?  You have 2 sovereign nations invaded by an aggressor. 

Bush rallied the international community to free Kuwait.  What is Biden going to do?  Sanctions?  China is already buying Russia exports to alleviate that pressure.  Russia/Belarus controls a massive amount of components for fertilizer going into the growing season.  Factor that Ukraine will not be able to export wheat as well and it could set up a global crisis. 

[Lord Ratner]

8 hours ago, Pooter said:

If only we had trump back he'd be playing 4d chess. 
 

And by 4d chess I mean being such an egotistical, erratic lunatic that he'd likely get roped into this pissing contest and we'd have Afghanistan 2: electric boogaloo, with near peer threat systems. 

He was president for four years after the Russians took Crimea, and Putin did nothing but wait. Biden steps in and Afghanistan turns into a national disgrace and in less than a year Putin moves.

 

Trump was a clown, but he was a clown who understood power and narcissism.

 

Biden is a dunce, surrounded by a bunch of Obama staffers who have never once stepped outside of their elite Georgetown/Harvard/Yale undergrad study groups long enough to realize the rest of the world doesn't think like they do.

[FLEA]

6 minutes ago, Lord Ratner said:

He was president for four years after the Russians took Crimea, and Putin did nothing but wait. Biden steps in and Afghanistan turns into a national disgrace and in less than a year Putin moves.

 

Trump was a clown, but he was a clown who understood power and narcissism.

 

Biden is a dunce, surrounded by a bunch of Obama staffers who have never once stepped outside of their elite Georgetown/Harvard/Yale undergrad study groups long enough to realize the rest of the world doesn't think like they do.

This may be the most elegant way I've seen this put. 

[hockeydork]

25 minutes ago, Lord Ratner said:

He was president for four years after the Russians took Crimea, and Putin did nothing but wait. Biden steps in and Afghanistan turns into a national disgrace and in less than a year Putin moves.

 

Trump was a clown, but he was a clown who understood power and narcissism.

 

Biden is a dunce, surrounded by a bunch of Obama staffers who have never once stepped outside of their elite Georgetown/Harvard/Yale undergrad study groups long enough to realize the rest of the world doesn't think like they do.

Almost nailed it. 

Trump was a clown, but he was a clown who understood power and narcissism, and he also was a narcissist who liked power. 

which is why people like me would rather the dunce at the helm...easier to kick out when they screw up. 

[Lord Ratner]

33 minutes ago, hockeydork said:

Almost nailed it. 

Trump was a clown, but he was a clown who understood power and narcissism, and he also was a narcissist who liked power. 

which is why people like me would rather the dunce at the helm...easier to kick out when they screw up. 

Yes, I've noticed that about the Democrats for my entire adult life (with the exception of Hillary), they tend to prefer people who say the right thing over people who do the right thing. Words over results.

 

This phenomenon seems to be a manifestation of the character-trait differences between liberal-minded people and conservative-minded people. Both traits are vital to a vibrant and successful society, but only when working in concert. The hyper polarization of the past decade seems to have broken the symbiotic relationship.

 

So now we have liberals like yourself, happy to idly watch the world burn around them so long as they feel good about the people leading them. And conservatives who no longer feel the need to communicate or "war-game" their status-quo-preserving policies with differently-thinking people before implementation. The policies are weaker as a result, and often misunderstood. I'm talking voters here, not politicians. There is a huge difference in motive between the two.

 

And with trump, conservatives finally broke and chose a president based on the same math that Democrats have used for years... Say what I want to hear, even if you won't do it and especially if it isn't true.

 

The great tragedy of the modern age seems to be that Democrats have completely abandoned liberal values (freedom of speech, limited government, etc) and Republicans have abandoned objective truth. And each side has convinced themselves that they have taken over the other side's former values, but in truth, no one has. 

[dream big]

10 hours ago, Pooter said:

If only we had trump back he'd be playing 4d chess. 
 

And by 4d chess I mean being such an egotistical, erratic lunatic that he'd likely get roped into this pissing contest and we'd have Afghanistan 2: electric boogaloo, with near peer threat systems. 

Are you trolling bro? If we had Trump, Russia would not be invading Ukraine right now.  We’re you not around when ISIS went running for the hills immediately after 2017? Guess that doesn’t matter because mean tweets are triggering. 

[Prozac]

Ughhh. Can we not turn this into another political pissing contest. I understand why many here aren’t enamored with Biden. I even get the sentiment that he projects a less than strong image. Go ahead and criticize all you want. It’s a free country. It’s certainly not treasonous to criticize a sitting or former president. What IS troubling to me are the number of people seemingly willing to get down on their knees and fondle Putin’s balls in order to make their point. At that point, you’ve crossed a line and are actively making your country look weak while making Russia look strong. Putin is not playing chess. He’s essentially smashed the chess board into a thousand pieces. I’m tired of hearing how smart he is and how he’s out maneuvered the West when all he’s really done is make Russia a pariah state that’s even more of a joke than it already was. 

[uhhello]

https://liveuamap.com/

Great all around actual current events map based site.  

[hockeydork]

17 minutes ago, Lord Ratner said:

 "happy to idly watch the world burn around them so long as they feel good about the people leading them."

Or maybe I can just look three moves ahead and understand that the short term gains from Trump weren't worth his long term side effects, especially since I was in favor of a decent number of his policies. Happy to discuss this in another thread if you wanna start one, "Trump vs Biden Ukraine" or something. Agree we should hash this out somewhere else, keep this thread on topic about the current situation in Ukraine, not everybody's personal opinions about how the world would be in an alternate world with such and so in office. 

[Shakermaker]

The chair is against the wall.. the chair is against the wall.

John has a long mustache.. John has a long mustache.

[Lord Ratner]

18 minutes ago, Prozac said:

I even get the sentiment that he projects a less than strong image.

That's not the sentiment at all, and it's incredible that you could delude yourself into thinking it.

[ClearedHot]

1 hour ago, Lord Ratner said:

He was president for four years after the Russians took Crimea, and Putin did nothing but wait. Biden steps in and Afghanistan turns into a national disgrace and in less than a year Putin moves.

[Tank]

[FLEA]

26 minutes ago, Prozac said:

Ughhh. Can we not turn this into another political pissing contest. I understand why many here aren’t enamored with Biden. I even get the sentiment that he projects a less than strong image. Go ahead and criticize all you want. It’s a free country. It’s certainly not treasonous to criticize a sitting or former president. What IS troubling to me are the number of people seemingly willing to get down on their knees and fondle Putin’s balls in order to make their point. At that point, you’ve crossed a line and are actively making your country look weak while making Russia look strong. Putin is not playing chess. He’s essentially smashed the chess board into a thousand pieces. I’m tired of hearing how smart he is and how he’s out maneuvered the West when all he’s really done is make Russia a pariah state that’s even more of a joke than it already was. 

Putin is smart though. And this is where people keep fucking up foreign politics because they want to believe their rivals are stupid and don't know what's good for them. Russia doesn't have the same interests as we do and they don't even have the same interests we think they have. Only Russia knows what Russian interest are. 

When you refer to another government as stupid, or crazy, or sociopathic you are basically shutting off any possibility of a diplomatic solution because you can't conduct diplomacy with someone who is irrational. Diplomacy didn't fail because Putin is irrational, it failed because western powers failed to understand some or all of Russia's interests. 

I would not count Russia as a pariah state until they are cut off from Swift and other major economic isolation mechanisms. But as of right now dozens of European and western markets are poised to buy a shit ton of oil and gas from Russia this week. 

Heres the thing about these limited economic sanctions.... They go away or become leasing meaningful over time. When you sanction, say, bank accounts to Russians sitting foreign minister, how effective is that sanction in 4 years when that dude retires and a new foreign minister replaces him? All the leverage it applied was lost. We know, and it is taught in security cooperation, that sanctions are less effective on Russia than say Iran or North Korea. Lots of reasons for that but they generally hit softer there. So in order to make an impact we need to ensure those sanctions are sharp and fast. 

I wouldn't place the blame purely on Biden, I think Europe largely slept on this too, and in actuality I think the US made a good move to air blast the Ukraine troop build up for the last few months. This did two things. 1.) It removed any implications that the US or the west was going to be taken by surprise like what happened in Afghanistan. 2.) It placed the onus on Europe to rally effort to turn this. They have more trade tied in Russia than we do and more of a capability to make an effect than we do. 

That said, Joe's diplomacy efforts were laughable at best. He wouldn't entertain what Russia said it's security interest were and instead wanted to entertain our security interest with offers like renegotiating the INF, something Russia really doesn't feel strongly about but we do. My diplomacy hopes were fully saddled in France and the UK but they were not able to close either. 

Great comments by Macron recently though reminding Russia we have nuclear weapons as well. 

All and all, whether or not this conflict was avoidable is hard to predict. The US Russian relationship took a massive hit during Obama's presidency. (Remember the disastrous Russian reset campaign? Or Obama publicly supporting Russia's colored revolution to overthrow Putin, something Putin was convinced the CIA was backing) I think of anything Trump came in with fresh ideas that were unconventional, and for the most part those ideas got headway. Biden's election though was a return to conventional foreign policy which could also be synonymous with Biden foreign policy. It wasn't working before so not sure why Biden thought it would work now. 

[Sim]

2 hours ago, Lord Ratner said:

Biden is a dunce, surrounded by a bunch of Obama staffers who have never once stepped outside of their elite Georgetown/Harvard/Yale undergrad study groups long enough to realize the rest of the world doesn't think like they do.

 

Example 

Quote

JUST IN - Biden admin presented China with intelligence on Russia's troop buildup in hopes Xi would step in. Chinese officials rebuffed the U.S. and apparently shared the information with Moscow.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/25/us/politics/us-china-russia-ukraine.html

[ClearedHot]

1 minute ago, Sim said:

 

Example 

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/25/us/politics/us-china-russia-ukraine.html

Stunning isn't it.  Meanwhile Hillary was on MSNBC trying to blame Trump for this, actually saying he gave comfort and aid to the enemy...all the while Biden is giving our intel to China.  Nothing surprises me anymore.

[FLEA]

3 minutes ago, ClearedHot said:

Stunning isn't it.  Meanwhile Hillary was on MSNBC trying to blame Trump for this, actually saying he gave comfort and aid to the enemy...all the while Biden is giving our intel to China.  Nothing surprises me anymore.

Ah yes.... Speaking of the genius behind the Russian reset. 

[ecugringo]

4 minutes ago, ClearedHot said:

Stunning isn't it.  Meanwhile Hillary was on MSNBC trying to blame Trump for this, actually saying he gave comfort and aid to the enemy...all the while Biden is giving our intel to China.  Nothing surprises me anymore.

Wasnt Hillary's deputy SOS on video marching in Kiev with anti Putin demonstrators?

 

[FLEA]

Edited February 25, 2022 by FLEA

[Prozac]

5 minutes ago, FLEA said:

Putin is smart though.

Really? What are his goals here? He want’s to weaken NATO on his borders and ensure the alliance makes no more gains in Ukraine of course, but also countries like Finland and Sweden. How’s that working out so far? NATO is more United in purpose now than it has been in 30 years. The US is moving troops back into Europe and I’d be willing to bet that their presence will be permanent. Countries that have been hesitant to spend defense dollars will now be rethinking their priorities. The Finns are going to be thinking long and hard about where their allegiances lie. Instead of weakening NATO, the only thing Putin has managed to do is get the West’s hackles up and further fortify ex-Soviet NATO countries. And while I agree that cutting Russia off from Swift should’ve happened yesterday, other measures taken are not trivial. Most importantly, NordStream II has been shelved and the Europeans are actively discussing how to wean themselves off Russian energy long term. 
 

So yes, Putin is about to gain a satellite state on the Black Sea, albeit one filled with angry citizens who will likely mount an insurgency that will be killing Russian soldiers and sympathizers for many years to come. But he is loosing virtually all of his other strategic goals. And we haven’t even begun to discuss how these developments will affect his regime’s hold on power as Russians become annoyed by the body count, by their inability to travel, by their economy tanking, and by their security deteriorating. I fail to see how this is a win for Putin. In fact, it looks more like a colossal mistake and about the dumbest move he could’ve possibly made. 

[uhhello]

3 minutes ago, Prozac said:

Really? What are his goals here? He want’s to weaken NATO on his borders and ensure the alliance makes no more gains in Ukraine of course, but also countries like Finland and Sweden. How’s that working out so far? NATO is more United in purpose now than it has been in 30 years. The US is moving troops back into Europe and I’d be willing to bet that their presence will be permanent. Countries that have been hesitant to spend defense dollars will now be rethinking their priorities. The Finns are going to be thinking long and hard about where their allegiances lie. Instead of weakening NATO, the only thing Putin has managed to do is get the West’s hackles up and further fortify ex-Soviet NATO countries. And while I agree that cutting Russia off from Swift should’ve happened yesterday, other measures taken are not trivial. Most importantly, NordStream II has been shelved and the Europeans are actively discussing how to wean themselves off Russian energy long term. 
 

So yes, Putin is about to gain a satellite state on the Black Sea, albeit one filled with angry citizens who will likely mount an insurgency that will be killing Russian soldiers and sympathizers for many years to come. But he is loosing virtually all of his other strategic goals. And we haven’t even begun to discuss how these developments will affect his regime’s hold on power as Russians become annoyed by the body count, by their inability to travel, by their economy tanking, and by their security deteriorating. I fail to see how this is a win for Putin. In fact, it looks more like a colossal mistake and about the dumbest move he could’ve possibly made. 

Yup.  I'm not a smart man but I struggle to see the long term of this for Russia.