Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Now is a good reminder of Robert Gates famous quote... "Joe Biden has been on the wrong side of every major foreign policy in his 40 plus years as a public servant".

And this:

"Don't underestimate Joe's ability to f- things up."
-Obama

- via a single media outlet that cited some alleged unnamed Obama aide, with no context given, never confirmed by anyone else

You just described the entire “Russia Collusion” hoax and half of the New York Times pieces on Trump. I love how NOW journalistic integrity is important.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Now is a good reminder of Robert Gates famous quote... "Joe Biden has been on the wrong side of every major foreign policy in his 40 plus years as a public servant".

And this:

"Don't underestimate Joe's ability to f- things up."
-Obama

- via a single media outlet that cited some alleged unnamed Obama aide, with no context given, never confirmed by anyone else

You just described the entire “Russia Collusion” hoax and half of the New York Times pieces on Trump. I love how NOW journalistic integrity is important.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No one has offered any ideas for what US can do to prevent invasion. Is this something the US just can’t stop?

The US should stop saying it’s happening and that they will prevent it.
Russia wasn’t going to invade, it was just some run of the mill saber rattling. Now of course they can’t back down because the US is just provoking them with all the rhetoric.
It’s all very Russian. Too bad there are no cross cultural communicators who can adjust the WH rhetoric

100,000 troops isn't run of the mill saber rattling. Putin knew the signal he was sending with the escalation and it was intentional. Cross cultural communication only matters when there is a miscommunication. The communication sent by Putin when he placed those troops there is unambiguous.

But I agree that we need to be responding in language Putin understands. Send ships through the dardenelles, put troops in north and eastern Poland, prepare to cut off Konigsburg and put defensive weapons in northern Romania. Make it clear that war will be a bloodbath that nobody wants. Show unity in NATO. Putin's whole gamble is based on his theory that the NATO alliance is fractured and dying. Meanwhile have some random Greek politician put out a statement opposing Ukraine's NATO application and let the Bessarabian irredentist movement loose. Send the signal that if Ukraine gets annexed then Odessa and Moldova join with Romania.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s odd to me that if Trump was Putin’s Puppet, as we’re constantly told, then why does Putin only seem to invade other countries when Dems are president? First time with Obama, and now this time with Biden. When Trump was in office, Putin didn’t invade anything.

Can someone explain that to me?

Why does that seem odd? It makes complete sense. Trump was not a threat.

That makes ZERO sense. None.

If Trump was no threat, Putin should’ve been running rampant through Ukraine and possibly other places, knowing that he’d be unchallenged in doing so since “he had his puppet in the whitehouse”.

That’s what you do if you’re a Putin. You make your moves when you know you won’t be challenged. Because that’s the path of least resistance. Waiting - as you suggest - until you have a perceived threat in your opposition would be stupid. Wouldn’t you rather time your invasion for when you won’t experience any pushback?

Your answer is cognitively implausible. Putin is a lot of things, but stupid isn’t one of them. He, like all bullies, will always choose a time of vulnerability to strike. It is completely absurd to imagine that he’d wait until the times when his chief adversary is stronger to make a move.


So again, explain it to me.

1. He didn't need to do much while Trump was in office. Trump gave him our bases in Syria, tried to get the sanctions lifted, exposed some of our intelligence, accepted the Crimea grab and put pressue on Ukraine himself. But most importantly Trump damaged NATO and the European Alliance. There was no need for Putin to do anything when Trump was doing it for him. Had there been a second term the job would have been complete.

2. Putin's goal isn't territorial expansion, Crimea excepted, it's the weakening/destruction of NATO and the Western alliance. What Putin wants from Ukraine is compliance. It is quite happy with Ukraine and Belarus as client states. In fact that is his preferred outcome. The cost and lack of defensible ground make Belarus and Ukraine hard to defend. A much better solution for him is that he controls them without being in day to day control. As our dear cross cultural communication Russophile friend keeps pointing out, invasion is not Putin's goal for the troop buildup. Crimea though was different. That was about Ukraine's Black Sea energy deposits which further solidified Russian control of the European gas market.

3. You are right though that he views Biden and the US as weak though. He knows the divisions that have been sowed. He knows how toxic our internal dynamic is. Meanwhile Germany has a new government, Turkey has Erdogan, France will always be French, and Poland/Romania/Baltics have questions about NATO resolve. He knows that NATO was on the brink under Trump and that Ukraine has the potential to irreparably destroy the alliance.

BlueFredneck wrote:Would Putin settle for a relationship with Ukraine similar to that which the USSR had with Finland during the Cold War?

Putin, I would hope, has no stomach for occupying Ukraine from Kiev on west, outside of some small area in SE Ukraine where pro-Russia sentiment runs strongest. Quite frankly, once he gets past Kiev, it will be a fight for national survival for the Ukrainians, and even east of Kiev, there's enough anti-Russian sentiment to make any wide-ranging occupation damned near impossible.

Would Lviv (heartland of the anti-Russian forces in Ukraine) be willing to accept a partition where the eastern part joins Russia/becomes like Kazakhstan and the western part goes down the NATO road that Albania and North Macedonia have chosen?

Likewise, I hope Biden doesn't want Ukraine as it is currently constituted to join NATO. Ukraine's per capita GDP is 70% that of Albania (the next-poorest NATO member) and under half that of Turkey. Its corruption is near-endemic, and domestic opinion is really and truly split.

Albania has historically been more supportive of the US than the US (a class in which I'd put Poland and the Baltic Republics, and in Asia Vietnam and the Philippines.) Ukraine on the other hand is split between a western half that's in the more supportive of the US than the US, and an eastern half that wants to be like Kazakhstan or part of Russia itself.

In the 2004 election, Yanukovich got over 85% of the vote in the currently occupied zones, and Yushchenko got a similar percentage in far western Ukraine. I have my doubts that sentiments have really changed.

A lot of left-establishment and right-establishment Westerners express shock that people around the world would prefer alternative leadership models. A lot of left-populist and right-populist Westerners express shock that other people around the world would prefer Western-style liberal democracy.

Anonymous wrote:Russia is about to make an “incursion” to Ukraine, mark my words.
Probably within 2 days.