Another question: why is the media freaking out over the recent Russian attack in western Ukraine? What was unclear about Russia’s stated intentions to “demilitarize” Ukraine, or their obvious intentions to reabsorb the country?
Cheers to the first part. Toxic gaslighting shithead.
IMO Ukraine is not an ally, and entering a war not forced on us (by attack or treaty) with Russia is far to much risk. Russia gives notoriously little fucks about human life and is more likely than anyone except maybe DPRK to use a nuke if pushed. The risk is unacceptable at this time. I would like to see a 15-20 mile demilitarized zone on Ukraines western border to prevent accidental/mistargeted attacks on NATO, and a hard, very public line taken on no fucking with NATO countries. Strangle Russia with sanctions, extending to Chinese companies (not govt though that can be blurry) if neccessary. This should be a proxy war, not a hot war.
I wish I could call you a crack pot conspiracy theorist, but I cannot. NATO’s reason for being end with the fall of the USSR, but instead of contracting, they expanded. And it appears to me to be a cabal of globalists wanting to issue in ‘a new era’, where they are in control of everything and dole out rights and benefits as they see fit.
The stupidity of this was, they seemed to want this war. They damn sure didn’t do anything to try and prevent it and pretty much dared Putin to invade. The natives were getting sick of covid, so they needed a new crisis to strike fear into the proletariat so they could retain power. But I think they have missed their guess and bit off a bit more than they could chew. This has the opportunity and fairly high probability of going sideways, real fast.
Ultimately it doesn’t matter. No really, it doesn’t. Hear me out here.
There is no technical solution to the basic problem of mankind. We are tribal creatures with a deep sense of separation. We feel separated from each other, alienated from our environment, fearful of “the other.” That makes it easy for the few to control the many.
Let’s say we let one of these competing empires win. Let’s say we all convert to Islam and proclaim Erdogan to be King of Earth. Would the fighting stop? What if we let Xi be World Emperor and everyone learns Chinese and have QR codes stamped on their foreheads? World peace? How about the Zionists, or Wall Street, or the UN? Hell, we can’t even argue our points on a bodybuilding message board with good faith, we always assume the worst about the guy behind the other screen.
It doesn’t matter how tight they turn the screws or how the power players decide to divvy up the globe between them. There’s no grand conspiracy waiting to be uncovered. Hard power politics is overt and in plain sight, and technology is the driving force behind the trajectory our species will take, not ideology. In this latest iteration of the eternal struggle, a Russian autocrat got the go ahead from a Chinese autocrat for a quick and clean “special operation” in Ukraine. It turned into a quagmire since the whole premise for the operation was incorrect. This shifts the balance of power even more towards China. Meanwhile, some cosplaying asshole in Davos and a bunch of western oligarchs have designs on how they are going to get the sheep in line behind the Chinese model of governance. Color me surprised.
It really doesn’t matter. Forget the names and the faces and the rhetoric. Hard power wins, people lose, eventually civilization will be wiped out. Go out and try to get laid in the meantime.
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They were open to, but NATO backed down in 2008. Immediately after that fateful NATO summit in Bucharest in which the door was effectively shut for Ukraine and Georgia, Russian invaded the latter. And Ukraine never benefitted from a “brotherly” discount on either oil & gas. If a “discount” for gas was officially provided, Russia would demand from Ukraine to sell it to Europe and reimburse them the full costs.
Invasions of both Iraq and Afghanistan were not covered by the NATO charter, as NATO is a defensive alliance and US allies sent their forces voluntarily. The non-US Coalition forces suffered 1/10th and 1/3rd of total casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan respectively.
They’ve launched a shitload of rockets onto a location that’s less than 10 miles from the Polish (and therefore NATO) border.
That was in WW2 when Russia commanded and Empire double the size that included (among others) Ukrainians. I personally think that Russian capacity to absorb casualties is rather limited. They aren’t banning Facebook, TikTok and Instagram for no reason.
Then send a bunch of weapons like in all previous confrontations with the USSR. Without tweets how Biden is “considering” this-and-that.
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It was my understanding that the pipelines going from russia to the EU crossed much of Ukraines land, and they profitted off that. Is that not the case?
I also heard that it wasn’t uncommon for Ukraine to ‘tap’ these pipelines and skim a little off the top, but I haven’t looked/found evidence of this. Still, it wouldn’t surprise me at all.
… And how do you know we aren’t doing just that? Those ATGMs didn’t come from nowhere.
If we are supplying them in general secrecy, we wouldn’t know about that yet, right? Gotta say we aren’t supplying the UA, to keep it proxy, not hot.
Nope, that’s a pretty ludicrous Russian invention. They’re running a transit system of pipelines from Russia to Europe and were charging fees accordingly - I think somewhere around a billon USD yearly. The Ukrainian system was (still is), cheap, efficient and reliable and when Russia started investing billions (all the way back in 2006) into new, redundant pipelines that bypassed Poland and Ukraine it should have been obvious to everyone that it was driven by geopolitical reasons.
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I wasn’t faulting Ukraine for doing so! lol
Thank you for the information - still learning about this rather complicated geopolitical area
Maybe its because i am from a small country also, but i see this simmilary to being someone with shit genetics.
If everyone who is big by default would bully everyone who is not, the world would be a shit place. So we dont think its ok that someone naturally big beats up small kids, but we frown when a country the size of an average american supermarket is not ready to battle Russia?
I know it sucks to be the country towards which everyone looks for help, but that is kind of how the world has become historically. There cant be only 3 big countries. Thank god for Alliances like NATO and shit. Then again - why is US in the NATO, can anyone explain? As far as i know, US is like the biggest part of NATO, isnt it? Whats in it for you guys?
I agree that mistakes were made. But you have to understand that joining NATO was not a refferendum(i hope i wrote it right). People have nothing to do with it. Its the elite. But now, its NOT the elite that suffers. Its thousands of regular people.
Its the same as imagine the world where Trump would just shit on China and Russia and you guys get bombed from the sky for something you didnt do.
My problem with war is not the fact of the war, its the fact that 3 people make decissions, but thousands die, who never stood close to making those decisions.
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I think you kind of answered your question. Trump wanted other countries to start pulling their weight because we were effectively the only part of NATO with any teeth. It is asinine to think that Estonia would come offer the US help if China started invading the mainland, but if the roles were reversed - the whole world would frown on the US for not helping Estonia.
I agree with this sentiment entirely.
I am not against the US being the ‘savior’ of all the little guys around the world, but if our house is on fire - maybe we should start by putting that fire out first, instead of putting out our neighbors’ fire. I know these are not the same thing, but we, as a country, are losing our soul and fracturing at all the seams - bleeding money out of all the working class’ pockets and giving empty promises to the disenfranchised.
Agreed
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It’s not that simple. A close family member of mine, an army officer, was involved in some mid-level NATO operational planning and told me that during the Obama years there was pressure on smaller European countries to turn their forces into “boutique” one-trick armies designed to integrate into the wider NATO framework, believing that the concept of conventional war in Europe is “obsolete”. Meaning that for example Estonians would orient on engineering and bridge laying, Latvians on bio/chem warfare and Lithuanians on mining/mine clearance and so on with each country retaining a small special forces contingent (I’m pretty sure I mixed up the responsibility of each Baltic army).
The general expectation was that these small armies would be deployed as specialist support troops in far-flung theaters of war, supporting US efforts. I know that the Lithuanians were ridiculed as “hysterical” and “irrational” when contemplating buying new howitzers a decade or so ago while the Yanks were only interested how much spec ops people could they field and keep in the field in Afghanistan.
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This actually could work and be beneficial to everyone.
I have no info on this tho, nor do i think my country specialises in anything besides folk dancing, lmao.
Nice edit! That wasnt there this morning.
I can understand if there is some misunderstanding, iin that I was directing the thrust of the statement that “You want me to send my son, but you wont send your own” toward Europe, so sorry that was left unstated.
Otherwise, What the fuck?
Toxic gaslighting shithead?
I expect some kind of substantiation of that kind of remark.
I think that was directed at Tucker Carlson
No, no, no. In reference to Tucker, not you. I think it’s an accurate description.
Stable democracies as trading partners and strategic allies, also denying the USSR those places and people. Most of the planet continues to benefit from this ongoing security situation.
The USSR was still largely mobilized from WW2 in 1949. Edit: NATO countries and the USA in particular were rapidly de-mobilizing their conventional forces at this time. BUT… we had the bomb, and they didn’t (for now).
War-hardened Soviet forces pouring through the Fulda Gap in the 1940’s wouldn’t have been like Russia invading Ukraine today.
NATO has, in my estimation, been quite successful over the long term.
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I’m just waiting for things to jump off for real in another part of the world, as everyone tries to figure out what this latest shift means for them. In the Middle East, India/Pakistan, China/Taiwan… who knows.