US has no good options in Ukraine
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Anonymous
I am not ignorant, and you saying so to comfort yourself is fairly sad. |
Anonymous
So, what’s your game plan? Let Putin take Ukraine? Ok. Then what? Does Putin stop there? Why would he? The world has given Putin the green light by standing down and making clear we only protect nato countries…even when you commit war crimes and create a refugee crisis that impacts Europe, and even when Americans are impacted by gas prices. So, your plan is to just let Putin takes what he wants and kill whomever gets in the way? To hold the world hostage with nuclear weapons? Ok. Quick question: why do you trust Putin not to go nuclear and not to invade other countries as long as we stand down while he takes Ukraine? |
Anonymous
What is your understanding of why troops are there? |
Anonymous
I just listened to a podcast called the Ezra Klein Show where he interviewed Masha Gessen. His "best senario" goes like this: Putin takes Ukraine at least to Keiv, carpet bombs the rest and kills Zelensky. If he himself survives this, he'll then take another country and another. The way to stop that is stop him now or have him not living anymore. His worst case is that Putin uses a nuke in Ukraine and the world responds. |
Anonymous
No clue why the worst case scenario is limited to Ukraine. There’s nothing stopping Putin from launching bombs over here. Or anywhere. |
Anonymous
Masha (she) and Fiona Hill are both recent guests on that pod, and I think Hill said a lot to enlighten the posters here screaming about “standing up to bullies” as their effective game plan. She emphasized that to avoid global catastrophic involvement, Putin needs to score some kind of advancement, likeofficial recognition of Donbas and Crimea as Russian, no-NATO pledge for Ukraine. This is what we’re really arguing about on this thread. A lot of people seem to think it’s “brave” to rub Putin’s face in a pile of shit and put him in stockades til the end of time and let ordinary Russians read the Federalist Papers and that will bloodlessly end this, and that’s insane. This isn’t a Hallmark movie about moving on after a cad dumps you. There will be something that he is granted in order to end this. |
Anonymous
If Putin is a crazy maniac because he invaded Ukraine, what does that make us, after our invasion of Iraq that led to nearly a million deaths? Was the invasion of Iraq more or less justifiable than Putin's invasion of Iraq? The underlying problem here is not crazy leaders, but rather distrust -- distrust of other countries, and of other peoples. Our distrust of Saddam, in the case of Iraq. Putin and the Russian government's distrust of NATO, which they believe is gradually encircling Russia and may ultimately aim for regime change in Moscow. Our distrust of Putin, who some Americans believe is a crazy maniac (although he seems quite intelligent and better behaved in interviews than most of our own leaders). This distrust among nations and great powers is legit, in my view. It is not a sign of madness. Putin truly does have reasons to distrust NATO; NATO truly does have reasons to distrust Putin; the US did indeed have some legit reasons to distrust Saddam. It takes decades for nations to gradually move from distrust to trust. NATO and Russia have failed, over the last 20 years, to build a better relationship with each other. I blame both sides. The US and NATO must share in some of the blame -- not blame for invading Ukraine, but blame for staying trapped in a Cold War mentality towards Russia, and for failing to listen to Russia's repeated concerns about a potential NATO membership. We dismissed these concerns as absurd, but they are broadly shared throughout Russian government and society. It is so frustrating, this situation, given that the average American, Russian and Ukrainian can function perfectly together, and enjoy each other's company. There are no huge cultural barriers between us. If only we could rewind the last 15 years and try again. I feel like we could do better if we only had a second chance. |
Anonymous
They miscalculate. The Russians, not just Putin, cannot stomach a loss to a small, weak country that they don’t even consider a country. Russia already had control of Donbas and Crimea, hard for Putin to sell this. Also, Putin not signing anything before turning Kyiv into ash, because it is personal. |
Anonymous
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I had NO IDEA that Masha was a she and I truly listened to the entire podcast. Thanks! I also listened to Hill's and yes, she did say that the world needs to play to Putin's ego or the world looses.
People with nothing to loose do very terrible things. |
Anonymous
We can’t rewind, and while I’m with you in part, we did not invade Iraq because of distrust of Saddam or reasonable belief in him possessing WMD. This was about resources and storming in to steal a pie off of another nations windowsill, and to issue payback for the temerity Iraq showed in the Gulf War. Our country was run by the innately entitled, militaristic and corrupt, and we killed probably at least a million innocents because it was a day ending in Y, and so e of our garbage children committed war crimes. Can we all grow up about this at last? This isn’t about trust - it’s about money. We’ve let Russians who stole their national assets come and wash money through properties here. One of our political parties let itself be bribed and honeypotted into complicity with Putin’s worldview, because it dovetails beautifully with their own nationalism. We get out of this by listening to the Fiona Hills of this world. |
Anonymous
Putin’s ego cannot handle this stunning debacle. Nothing but annihilation of Ukraine will appease Putin at this point. |
Anonymous
PP who refers to the news story and calls the actions it describes a provocation, I want to be clear - you are criticizing the US for “loading troops” in a town inside Poland which is 60 Miles away from the Ukraine border (further away than Baltimore is from DC). You call this a “provocation”. Poland is a NATO member since 1999. The US has a mutual defense obligation under Article 5 of the NATO Treaty. Deploying US troops near the border is a way of showing Putin that NATO members take mutual defense seriously and will respond at the first incursion into Polish territory. (BTW, NATO’s first-ever invocation of Article 5 was on behalf of the US after 9/11.) The only reason the US or other NATO troops were not deployed so close to the Polish border prior to the Russian invasion is That NATO was complying with the terms of the 1997 NATO Russia Founding Act - under the terms of this Act, Russia agreed to abide by a variety of norms (norms of international conduct in the UN Charter and OSCE Helsinki Final Act and explicit commitments, such as respecting the sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of states and settling disputes peacefully - obviously violated by Russia’s invasion of and conduct in Ukraine). Under this Act, NATO agreed to conduct mutual defense by, “that in the current and foreseeable security environment, NATO will carry out its collective defense and other missions through interoperability, integration and capability for reinforcement rather than by additional permanent stationing of substantial combat forces on the territory of new members.”. NATO adhered to that pledge not permanently station new forces on territory of new members. See - https://1997-2001.state.gov/regions/eur/fs_nato_whitehouse.html Until, that is, Russia broke the treaty by invading Ukraine. One could say that they broke the treaty in 2014 when they invaded Ukraine in te Donbas and Crimea, but still NATO continued to support agreements that would prevent the conflict from widening. But, now that Putin has further invaded and considering that he has positioned Russian troops inside Belarus very close to the Suwalki Gap - threatening Poland, Lithuania and the Baltics - NATO considers that Russia’s action make their obligations under the Act moot. When you consider the facts, who is provoking whom? It is not a “provocation” for the Poles to defend themselves or invite allies in to help defend themselves nor for the US to fulfill its NATO mutual defense obligations. Especially when these defense acts occur entirely within Polish territory - it is an exercise of sovereignty. |
Anonymous
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https://www.newsweek.com/trump-says-lot-love-behind-putin-wanting-make-his-country-larger-1687555?utm_term=Autofeed&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1647200464
For those of you who think Trump was "hard" on Putin. Why would he put himself in the news so much now and say these things? Why? |
Anonymous
He and Tucker Carlson are pumping Putin's propaganda in the US: "US and the West are pathetic", "Putin is smart",... down with democracy, hail to the dictators. https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/03/exclusive-kremlin-putin-russia-ukraine-war-memo-tucker-carlson-fox/ |