Basic_GnR_Fan

6 minutes ago, downzy said:

 

That's why it's just not worth it to risk WWIII over Ukraine (and cooler heads are prevailing in the west right now). The likelihood of Putin have some grand ambitions of conquering all of Europe are nill. This isn't 1945.

7 minutes ago, dontdamnmeuyi2015 said:

Yeah, like I said Ukraine will be fucked no matter what while the West talks about how horrible Putin is and China is and watch and wait becuse they know putin has the man power and the weapons and he won't give up until Ukraine is his. Next up will be the other nations that once belonged to the USSSR. It's what Putin wants and after seeing how the US and Europe just talk and do nothing, he'll get what he wants.

China will get Taiwan too. Short of starting WWIII nothing will get done to save Ukraine. This is bullshit.

Ukraine is fucked, but I doubt Putin will be going after countries actually in NATO right now as that would actually trigger an article 5 response.

China will take Taiwan though. Probably not soon, as time is on their side, but eventually. They consider Taiwan as important to them as Russia considered the Ukraine to them.

8 minutes ago, PatrickS77 said:

That is not negotiating. That is extortion.  This is the small kid giving in to the much taller schoolyard bully.

Yes it is, and that is the way world works and always has worked. The strong bully around the weak. I'm not saying it's right, I'm just saying how it is. Here are the options on the table:

1, The Ukraine can fight on and hope they somehow exact enough losses on Russia to make them quit, but at enormous costs to themselves as the Russians consider Ukraine an important part of their sphere of influence.

2, The west can get directly involved, but then now it's a shooting war directly between the west and Russia. Better hope no one gets an itchy trigger finger on those nukes. And what does China do in that chaos? Take Taiwan and dare the west to do something about it when they are already in a shooting war with Russia?

3, Ukraine can try and negotiate the best deal they can get from Russia, which may mean loss of just the Eastern republics and a promise of neutrality, if they are lucky.

I personally prefer number 3.

2 hours ago, downzy said:

Nobody is asking them that.

If Ukraine had decided to capitulate from the moment Russian troops crossed the border I think most would have understood it.  You can’t really judge until you yourself are in that same position. Do you want to stand and fight at enormous costs or do you want to accept foreign occupation and/or having your sovereignty and society dictated by a foreign power. 

The Ukrainians chose to fight.  So the West is helping the best it can without provoking a larger conflict.

 

Yes, they should have started negotiating right from the beginning. My personal opinion is that the west should have said from the beginning we are not supplying you with arms, you are on your own and that might have caused them to just negotiate right away. By arming them, this just encourages them to fight on in a losing conflict. The longer this goes on the more Ukrainians will die and the more Putin is going to ask for because his own citizens are whipped up too (his approval rating apparently went up 11 points since the invasion).

Quote

You mean almost fifty years later?

Are you going to tell me with a straight face a weakened Poland should have taken on the USSR alone in 1945? That would have been national suicide and Churchill rightly talked them off the ledge.

Quote

Imagine a much more powerful China tried to do the same to the US. Do you think most Americans would sit around and say, “let’s game this out long term.”

If China was as much more powerful as Russia is to Ukraine, yeah eventually Americans would realize this was a hopeless cause and negotiate something. More likely though (let's be honest), this country is so divided China wouldn't even have to invade, they would just arm one side to kill the other and then come in and take the rest.

1 minute ago, downzy said:

He also said two weeks ago that Russia wouldn’t invade.

But that’s not really up to EU and NATO. It ignores what the people of Ukraine have been asking for.   In essence the only solution would have been for the West to tell Ukraine that it will ignore and rebuff any effort by Ukraine to free itself from Russia’s influence. That was never going to happen.  There was never any real invitation to join the EU or NATO prior to Russia’s invasion.

Some people prefer to die on their feet than to live on their backs.  It’s not our place to tell the people of Ukraine how to respond to outright aggression. Considering you live in a country where that embraces a “live free or die” motto (an actual state motto), I would think you would be a bit more understanding of Ukraine’s actions the last ten years and their response the last week. 

Again, I'm not seeing any actual solutions proposed other than asking untrained Ukrainians to somehow successfully fight a guerilla war.

I know my history, people don't always fight. At the end of WWII, what was left of the Polish resistance (non Communist stooge side) wanted to take on the Soviet Union. Churchill said after talking to their leader he felt he was in an insane asylum and if they wanted to do that they'd be doing it alone. They had some really hard years under communism but eventually threw them out by means other than war. If they took on the Soviet Union alone the entire country would have been slaughtered and replaced.

1 minute ago, downzy said:

So Ukraine's actions in 2014 were at the behest or urging of Europe and North America?  The will to rid itself of Russian interference was solely a western-devised plot promoted and pushed by the EU and the U.S.?  That what happened in 2014 was the result of Ukraine being "led" by western powers and not from domestic forces within Ukraine?

This is where Measheimer's argument feels far to U.S. - EU focused.  He seems to want to discount the interest of the Ukrainian people and suppose that their interests to integrate with the larger continent is nothing more than the whims of misguided foreign policy coming from the EU and the U.S.

He also said that Russia wouldn't invade because the costs would be so high.

So what was he right about?  That Ukraine's move away from Russian interference would provoke Russian military aggression or that Russia wouldn't invade because the costs would be too high?

Please.  There were a lot of scholars suggesting the same thing.  Meeasheimer gets credit for his suggestions that China would arrive where it's at sooner than others have suggested.  But he wasn't exactly an outlier in the suggestion that China would eventually supplant the US in terms of economic clout.  And China's military potency in terms of challenging the US is still far way.  

Except he's contradicted himself and places the blame on the wrong forces.  Predicting the rise of China isn't something that no one else saw coming.  Blaming the current Russian invasion on the West ignores the domestic forces within Ukraine and how Russia has not responded to previous NATO expansion and how it has responded to bordering states seeking its independence from Russia.  

He came out and said the Ukraine was going to get wrecked, how is that saying an invasion wouldn't happen? This is his most famous statement on the matter.

What solutions did you or other analysts posit to have avoided this current situation? Mearsheimer posited one, an independent Ukraine and renounces aspirations to the EU and NATO. The only thing I'm hearing from your side of the argument is Ukrainians ought to fight to the death, I'm seeing it all over twitter, it's insane. Ukraine is in the process of getting wrecked, just as Mearsheimer predicted.

10 hours ago, downzy said:

What I don’t understand is this notion that NATO expansion into Ukraine was real.  Other than the gesture 13 years ago that has largely gone unanswered at best or disavowed by some of the key states in Europe, what serious steps since then has the US or the West taken to bring Ukraine under the NATO umbrella?  

Other than Montenegro in 2017 and North Macedonia in 2020, there hasn’t been any real expansion of NATO in over 13 years. 

I don’t argue that NATO expansion hasn’t flustered or bothered Moscow, but it simply doesn’t track in comparison to Russia’s reactions to neighbouring nations embracing democracy and/or rebuffing Russian dominance.

There is no previous example of Russia using force as a result of impending NATO expansion (or because of NATO expansion). There is, however, multiple examples of Russia lashing out at neighbouring states when they have sought their independence or voiced their opposition to Russian subjugation, usually through democratic means.

We can keep referring to the old geopolitical thinkers to support this theory and blame the US or Europe for what’s happening in Ukraine, or we can take a good faith assessment of the pattern of behaviour Russia has exhibited for the past twenty years.

And even if we want to conclude that NATO expansion is the key reason why Russia has become more hostile and aggressive, it still in no way justifies Russia’s actions or shifts the blame to the West.  There is still zero need for Russia’s actions.  

You're leaving out the EuroMaidan in 2014, which was a year before Mearsheimer gave his famous talk warning of exactly what we're dealing with now and was essentially saying "Ukraine is being led down the primrose path, and is going to get wrecked if no negotiations with Russia occur." So he was right in his predictions about this, and he was right about China becoming a military power and eventual threat to the US empire (he was warning about this in the 90's when everyone else was still drunk on the end of the cold war and the end of history).

So Mearsheimer's thinking has predicted the two biggest geopolitical events of the current day, well 3, if you count all the warnings about how terribly the middle east interventions would go. The proof is in the pudding, either an analyst is proven right over time, or they're proven wrong, and Mearsheimer has been proven right. 

And it wasn't just Mearsheimer warning against US policy in regards to Russia and Nato expansion. Here is a good thread which goes through predictions from George Kennan, Kissinger, Mearsheimer, Jack Matlock (former US ambassador to Soviet Union), William Perry (Clinton Defense Secretary), Chomsky, Stephen Cohen, Vladimir Pozner, Jeffrey Sachs.

My thing with foreign policy guys is, how accurate are your predictions or system of thinking to real life. So if anyone is interested in Mearsheimer's actual opinions and has the time, here are two great intro videos. The first talks about his realist approach (within a talk about China), and the 2nd is the one he did on the Ukraine in 2015 where he basically predicted what is happening now and gave his own solution (Ukraine renounces NATO, is declared independent of both spheres but is still built up economically).

So Kherson has fallen, Mariupol is under siege, and strategic targets in Kharkov and Kiev are being hit. At some point Zelensky will have to admit he has a losing hand and negotiate.

BTW, what happened to that "Marshall Zhukov" poster? That poor guy has to be twisted in knots over all of this.

53 minutes ago, downzy said:

And as an uber-realist, he's also not very consistent.  On the one hand he wants to argue, as realists do, that large powers deserve to have their own spheres of influence respected by other great powers with respect to Russia and Ukraine.  And on the other he's also on record with saying that the U.S. should use everything at its disposal (including a full-on military intervention) against China should it make any real effort to take Taiwan. 

Mearsheimer shows the limits of the realism-school of thought.  It would have never accounted for the level of Ukrainian opposition we're seeing today.  It would have viewed a fractured EU and NATO as incapable of serving as a backstop against this level of Russian aggression.  Realism certainly has its place and deserves to be considered.  But professors realism in its purest form, for me at least, is far too limited and in some cases too amoral.  Actions are not weighed by their morality but solely based on power politics.  It would be foolish to ignore those aspects, but we're not going to progress any further if all calculations are considered only within a realism framework.

I'm a fan of Mearsheimer and I think you have him slightly wrong. He doesn't say great powers 'deserve' to be regional hegemon's, he only says they all 'desire' to be regional hegemons, and that great powers will do whatever they can to prevent other great powers from becoming regional hegemons. Because if another great power becomes a comfortable regional hegemon, they will feel free to roam, potentially into your sphere of influence. That's why he's saying it would be wise for the US to limit Russian or Chinese attempts to be regional hegemons. In his analysis, he sees China as the only potential long term rival for the US on the global stage so he says preference should be given to limiting them. He also says it would be good for NATO and Russia to have an independent Ukraine in between each as a buffer state.

I don't think he would have underplayed Ukrainian resistance because he accounts for nationalism being an important factor, and the nationalism of the Ukrainians (non Russian speaking) is very strong against Russia. 

I can see how a realist position may come across to someone as 'being an apologist' for another power. But he simply asks the question, what if China was threatening to add Canada or Mexico into on their defense pacts/sphere of influence? The US would go ballistic and do whatever they could to throw China out of it's sphere of influence. And if China ever becomes a comfortable regional hegemon, they just might try to pull this in the future.

I guess the upside here, if there is one, is that the EU is going to get a few million refugees to help out with the aging workforce, and they'll probably assimilate quite well.

8 minutes ago, SoulMonster said:

Maybe that's what he is aiming for now but not initially?

That could be the case as well. That article could have just been one of many they had ready and that was just the best case scenario where the Ukrainians of all stripes welcome them as liberators type of scenario. I'm sure they wargamed out all potentialities.  

2 minutes ago, SoulMonster said:

Quote from the article, but translated from Russian to Norwegian and then to English, so something could be lost:

"Russia is reviving its historical greatness by uniting the Russian world and the Russian people in one unity with big Russians, white Russians and small Russians".

Anyway, it suggests that Putin aims to return to the Russia of old.

Could be, I'll put this in the 'interesting, but not a slam dunk' category. I still think getting the Russian speaking part of Ukraine back and getting a guaranty of the rest of Ukraine being independent is what they're really aiming for here. But again, we can't know what's in Putin's mind.

20 minutes ago, SoulMonster said:

I read that a Russian state-controlled newspaper published an article a few days ago which they quickly deleted. Apparently, the article was meant to be published after Ukraine had fallen, as a victory piece, and one must assume it was published by accident after the war didn't go so well but then quickly subtracted. Anyway, what is interesting about the content in this article was that it allegedly shed light on Putin's objectives: He wants to restore a grand Russia that includes Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, or "big russians", "white russians" and "small russians". That's the extent of his current ambition. In Putin's mind, these three countries belong together controlled from Moscow. And it fits with the reports that Putin expected Ukraine to fall quickly because of what he assumed would be substantial support from the Ukraine people. The fact that Ukraine has leaders oriented towards the West, have developed a fledgling democracy, and could become part of the EU or NATO, is barriers to Putin's ambitions and would make it harder to realize his union of these three countries, hence he had to act now to topple the Ukrainian politicians and bring the people of Ukraine back to the Russian fold where they belong. Obviously. he exaggerated the extent of support for Russia in Ukraine, and the prolonged war just increases the divide between the two countries, making his goal even harder to achieve. Not only has he failed, because he he can't win Ukrainian hearts with missiles and bombs, but he has also fucked up Russia through sanctions that were likely much harsher than he anticipated.

What's his exit strategy now? He can retreat and admit he miscalculated and ask for forgiveness. Haha. Or he can bullheadedly continue to take Ukraine, annex the country and hope eventually Ukrainians will accept being controlled from Moscow and being a part of the new Russia.

I would have to see hard evidence this article exists. But we can't know for sure what's going on in Putin's mind. It's very possible he only wants the eastern half of Ukraine, but for the rest of Ukraine he wants that independent. That would actually be better for Russia because then they don't have to occupy the non Russian speaking part of Ukraine (which would be bloody and costly). The Russian military is controlling a sizable part of the southeastern part of the country, is starting to take the gloves off and use heavy firepower on their second largest city in Kharkov. So they aren't really losing and he's in way too deep to pull out now. If he pulls out this whole exercise will have been a waste of time for him and only gotten more sanctions on his country. Also Ukraine is up to 660,000 refugees and counting. How many of those people aren't going to come back? This is another factor Ukraine leadership has to take into account, how many people can they really afford to lose this way vs giving up the Russian speaking areas. 

Edit: Putin is also allegedly up to 71% approval in Russia(from 60%) since the invasion. I expect the sanctions in Russia will rally the Russian people around him. People in the west still don't understand how sanctions and human psychology work. As long as Putin has China's blessing on this, Russia will be fine. I was actually surprised to see India not come out against them, that's big for Russia too. And eventually the Germans will want that gas from Nordstream 2.

2 minutes ago, grouse said:

In each and every war that Russia has fought throughout the years it has always been the same. little to none tactical prowess just let the sheer numbers make up for it. Who cares if a 1000 young men die or 10.000. As long as goal is achieved all is well. 

That certainly was the Soviet tactic, but this doesn't appear to be human wave attacks. 

3 hours ago, zombux said:

while I get what you mean, but there are a few other things to consider. 

1. Putin cannot win in Ukraine. even if he levels the big cities and murders all the civilians, the country and nation will never bow to him - at this point the Ukrainians hate russians more than anything else imaginable and will rather die fighting with bare hands than surrender

2. economic sanctions soon start crippling the economy of Putlerland

3. western companies are running away from their business in there as well - even if the sanctions wouldn't hurt THAT much, this in the long term will mean brutal economic depression, as without foreign capital the local businesses will just collapse and general folks will be fucked even more than we could possibly imagine

4. that bastard will likely get shot by someone from his inner circle, because the current situation is a free fall without any bottom

5. nuclear attack... yeah, whatever, you terrorist. they know very well that if they tried that, the western response would wipe them out from Earth's face. they are evil and mad, but they are not interested in their own certain death

(yeah, and if they really do it... I'm not afraid, it will be quick... still miles better than live in/under Russia)

I'm not so convinced the Ukraine is going to fight to the death like Poland in 41 vs Germany and the USSR. There's so much fog of war right now where the western press is saying the invasion is going terribly for Russia but Russia does seem to be at the gates of the largest cities and is taking impressive amounts of territory without large scale bombing. Eventually the rubber will hit the road and we'll see what the real truth is/was.

On 2/25/2022 at 3:58 PM, downzy said:

Forget SWIFT expulsion, shit just get real…

 

As a social conservative this almost tips me over to the Russian side 

23 minutes ago, zombux said:

Germany reportedly would consider cutting off the horde from SWIFT, but "first they need to count how much would it cost them and that the cost wouldn't be so high".

FUCKING CUNTS!!!

meanwhile, Ukraine is slowly being murdered and idiot western politicians only care about what to do to not make Putler angry.

You do realize they rely on Russian gas. Do you expect them to have their own people freeze over Winter? C'mon people, you can't just die (literally!) on your principles all the time.

53 minutes ago, downzy said:

Molyneux openly promoted eugenics.  Are we know saying that people who are openly hostile have a legal or god given right to promote such nonsense on YouTube?

I don't remember that specific video or what he was claiming there. But yes he did have some videos that were incendiary politically. My point is that censorship absolutely smashed him (and he had something like 700,000 subs if I remember correctly). So he was big, but not big enough to survive. I'm sure there other examples of more mild (but still not PC) political commentators losing such privileges. 

1 hour ago, downzy said:

Clinical research doesn't give a shit about "cultural power."  It only cares if a causes b at the risk of c.  The data doesn't lie here.  If tomorrow it came out that the vaccines proved to be dangerous and we should stop taking them, then I think most people, regardless of partisanship, would stop taking them.  I know I would.

The issue is that there is a strong willingness by some to ignore what the data says and push an agenda for either tribal reasons or for personal profit and fame (like Robert Kennedy Jr., who is certainly not a conservative when it comes to his political partisanship).

People like to think that every position has two opposing sides.  And some times there are.  But until the data says otherwise, there is no opposing take on vaccines that is valid and holds up to scrutiny.  Continuing to push nonsense about them for the sake of "expressing a different opinion" is more about the person making it and less about the point they're trying to make.  

I actually agree in the case of the vaccines, the science says what it says. I was trying to make a larger political point that censorship does in fact work. And if one side of a debate (use any example you like) has institutional power, they have no incentive to allow a free and open debate.

19 hours ago, downzy said:

Trump claiming he’ll pardon the Jan 6th protestors should he win in 2024.

Wait?  Why would Trump want to pardon members or Antifa?

There are so many conspiracy theories in that crowd it's hard to keep them straight.

Although it would be hard to even take him seriously on this because, well, he actually was President and he didn't lift a finger to pardon any of those people on his way out. He instead pardoned rappers and criminals like Shalom Rubashkin.

On 1/26/2022 at 2:46 PM, downzy said:

It's a response to a build up of Russian forces on the eastern border of Ukraine.  Russia could easily draw down its troop numbers and stop the sabre rattling and those weapons stop flowing to Ukraine.  Moreover, most of the weaponry is defensive in nature.  

I actually feel for the Ruskies a little bit because they were promised way back when that NATO wouldn't be expanding. Well, it has and they don't want to be encircled by hostile powers. If you don't want the bear to rear his head, don't corner him.

1 hour ago, Tom2112 said:

Neil Young and Joni Mitchell are bullying Spotify into a corner "We're quitting and we're gonna get all our friends to quit unless you do what we tell you". That's an abuse and it's completely censoring Joe Rogan. 

I know! boo hoo! poor old spotify getting bullied by musicians. Well I agree that Spotify are money grabbing assholes, I disagree with Neil Young fighting this particular fight and then roping in "oh Spotify has crap sound and pay poorly" these things are separate arguments. For Neil Young to say "I'm all for free speech, but I want to censor Joe Rogan" is laughable. Fact of the matter is that there is a lot of people with opposing views on covid. The best way to deal with them is engage the conversation, not say "we're not talking about this, what we say is fact, end of story, ban all who say otherwise".

From a power politics perspective, people with social leftwing views or in this instance, the point of view that vaccines are good and masks are a good idea, have all the cultural power. Why should they allow opposing views? It's actually very effective to censor your opposition, that's why it's done. People that are really big like Rogan or Alex Jones can still survive, although their reach will be lessened. People that aren't as big get crushed by censorship. I remember the youtube personality Stefan Molyneux was fairly big but nowhere near an Alex Jones or Rogan. He got censored and tried to make it on alternative platforms and now he gets miniscule views in comparison. Censorship just crushed him because hew wasn't big enough to survive it.

1 hour ago, janrichmond said:

You think that's normal behavior for a kid??

Your profile says you're from the UK. I don't think you understand how strong the gun culture is for about 25-30% of Americans. It wouldn't be that abnormal for someone in that demographic (even a kid) to look at different types of guns and ammo online.