Russia says Ukraine talks hit 'dead end', Poland warns of risk of war
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Re: Russia says Ukraine talks hit 'dead end', Poland warns of risk of war
#2I fully support the sovereignty of Ukraine, but I understand the Russian position from watching Prof. John Mearsheimer lectures, particularly this one:
Why is Ukraine the West's Fault?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrMiSQAGOS4
John Mearsheimer
John Mearsheimer is an American political scientist and international relations scholar, who belongs to the realist school of thought. He is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago. He has been described as the most influential realist of his generation.
Re: Russia says Ukraine talks hit 'dead end', Poland warns of risk of war
#3It's funny when the aggressor is "negotiating" to attack or not. The biggest bully in the region feeling "threatened" by its neighbours seeking any possible way to protect themselves from it.
Like a government-level "Why are you hitting yourself?"
Re: Russia says Ukraine talks hit 'dead end', Poland warns of risk of war
#4I don't blame Russia's stance. I blame the cold war and the US's two pronged approach to most diplomacy matters. NATO was formed to halt the power of the soviet union. once the soviet union fell. NATO should've been disbanded. anyone with a pea of a brain would've seen the consequences of not abandoning nato, and now we're about to pay for those mistakes.
Re: Russia says Ukraine talks hit 'dead end', Poland warns of risk of war
#5I fully support the sovereignty of Ukraine, but I understand the Russian position from watching Prof. John Mearsheimer lectures, particularly this one: Why is Ukraine the West's Fault? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrMiSQAGOS4 John Mearsheimer John Mearsheimer is an American political scientist and international relations scholar, who belongs to the realist school of thought. He is the R. Wendell Harrison Distingui…
You can't support the sovereignty of Ukraine while also supporting Russia's hegemony over Ukraine. Ukraine has the right to defend itself against Russian aggression and to seek alliances which can help to that end. The Russian autocracy views democracy as a threat. This is really no different than Germany, prior to WW2, seeking to dominate the countries around it. Some of those countries had ethnic Germans living there, and that was part of the justification used at that time, as it is by Putin today.
Russian security assurances aren't about trying to defend the country against an encroaching NATO, but rather trying to restore as much as possible the domination of Russia over former USSR states.
Re: Russia says Ukraine talks hit 'dead end', Poland warns of risk of war
#6I don't blame Russia's stance. I blame the cold war and the US's two pronged approach to most diplomacy matters. NATO was formed to halt the power of the soviet union. once the soviet union fell. NATO should've been disbanded. anyone with a pea of a brain would've seen the consequences of not abandoning nato, and now we're about to pay for those mistakes.
Absolutely. and this is a view shared by prominent US national security officials, that it is the United States that has caused this crisis.
https://theanalysis.news/is-nato-for-security-or-aggression-...
Remember, it was the United States that broke the promise to not expand NATO after the fall of the Soviet Union.
> Paul Jay
>Crazy! Larry, how much of this is driven essentially, really by what domestic politics, that you get this saber-rattle and look all huff and puff on both sides, not just the American and west side, but the same thing goes for Putin, satisfying the nationalist fervor in Russia. And two, and maybe this is the most important thing, continuing this rationale of enormous arms purchases, and NATO helps keep all these countries within at least the Western arms market and mostly the American arms market, but they can’t be serious about actually fighting? They know what a shitstorm that leads to.
> Larry Wilkerson
>I hope you’re right. The history of warfare, especially major warfare in the last 200 years or so, doesn’t support that logic. Let me go back to something Yves said. I think one of the greatest travesties of US foreign policy in the last 25-30 years, and that’s a lot of things, including the invasion of Iraq, was the violation of Jim Bakker and Eduard Shevardnadze, and ultimately Reagan and Herbert Walker Bush, and Gorbachev’s promise that NATO would not go one step further East if Germany were allowed to reunify and remain in NATO.
Re: Russia says Ukraine talks hit 'dead end', Poland warns of risk of war
#7It's funny when the aggressor is "negotiating" to attack or not. The biggest bully in the region feeling "threatened" by its neighbours seeking any possible way to protect themselves from it. Like a government-level "Why are you hitting yourself?"
Crazy idea of the day: why not offer NATO membership to both Ukraine and Russia? Then if either side attacks the other, all the other members are obligated to defend against the aggressor.
Entangling alliances are like abstraction. The only thing that solves it is more of it.
Re: Russia says Ukraine talks hit 'dead end', Poland warns of risk of war
#8It's funny when the aggressor is "negotiating" to attack or not. The biggest bully in the region feeling "threatened" by its neighbours seeking any possible way to protect themselves from it. Like a government-level "Why are you hitting yourself?"
> Like a government-level "Why are you hitting yourself?"
Putin has been a steady hand over Russia, but it's been at the cost of standards of living [1]. That's threatening neighboring regimes, which are only standing thanks to Moscow's support.
Putin isn't dumb. He sees the writing on the wall. The bet is likely that the wave of nationalism that would accompany a war will outweigh its massive costs, directly and indirectly, for long enough for Putin and his cronies to ride out the decade.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-05-17/russian-r...
Re: Russia says Ukraine talks hit 'dead end', Poland warns of risk of war
#9It's funny when the aggressor is "negotiating" to attack or not. The biggest bully in the region feeling "threatened" by its neighbours seeking any possible way to protect themselves from it. Like a government-level "Why are you hitting yourself?"
Crazy idea of the day: why not offer NATO membership to both Ukraine and Russia? Then if either side attacks the other, all the other members are obligated to defend against the aggressor. Entangling alliances are like abstraction. The only thing that solves it is more of it.
> why not offer NATO membership to both Ukraine and Russia?
NATO is a mutual defence pact. Russia is the most militarily aggressive country in Europe. Agreeing to defend the bully when their chickens come home to roost is a tough sell.
Re: Russia says Ukraine talks hit 'dead end', Poland warns of risk of war
#10The bigger question is "why now". Ukraine is not joining NATO or the EU any time soon. Russia has de facto annexed Crimea and its ongoing support for separatists in Donbas keeps the region unstable to its advantage.
I suspect two reasons: Putin's flagging domestic support and Russia's (and to be honest, the world's) perception that America is currently so divided and weak it will be unable to offer much resistance than token sanctions (nor will the EU, given Germany's self-flaggelating energy policy). The danger is that this might snowball into a larger conflict - if Russia thinks the US is no longer a threat, what's stopping the Chinese from going into Taiwan, or the North Koreans causing mischief?