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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

#161

Post by uejfiweun »

reducesuffering wrote: post #139
uejfiweun wrote: post #118

Posted elsewhere, but there seems to be good discussion going on here: I hate to say it, but the US is clearly the provocateur here. There is no real reason that the US needs Ukraine, a state that has historically been part of Russia, in NATO. Having Ukraine in NATO does approximately jack shit to benefit a person like me, a regular peasant in the US. Imagine if the US lost the cold war and the USSR decided to invite…

Ukraine's defense is about helping people who are being actively invaded by bigger foreign powers. Of course it doesn't directly benefit you. By your logic, donating to charity "does approximately jack shit to benefit a person like me." Also the US has done literally nothing to "provocate" anything. Euromaidan happened in 2014, Crimea was annexed, and Donbass separatists supported by Russia. Status quo is changing in…

See, I think this is just wrong. I think that we specifically shouldn't be getting involved in costly international conflicts to "help people". I think charity is pretty different, as there isn't a risk of a huge pushback when donating to charity. Whereas getting involved with this Ukraine situation could potentially result in a war.

I don't think the US should be willing to go to war over this country that has historically been a part of Russia and is so far from our borders that it practically is geopolitically insignificant.

Re: Russia says Ukraine talks hit 'dead end', Poland warns of risk of war

#162

Post by mrguyorama »

Drunk_Engineer wrote: post #159
mrguyorama wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you name an example of one of these invasions?

Is that a serious question? World War 2 for starters...

I guess I hadn't considered Nazi Germany as a "western power".

I'm a code monkey, not a political scientist. The question was as genuine as could be. I figured I didn't know the history of the former soviet union very well and was missing something.

Re: Russia says Ukraine talks hit 'dead end', Poland warns of risk of war

#163

Post by tymofiy »

remarkEon wrote: post #148
somedude895 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The US is basically saying we don't care and we are going to do it despite your objections By framing this whole thing as a hostility by the US towards Russia, you're saying that Ukraine isn't a sovereign nation, which can choose to ally with whomever and join whichever organization they want. So yeah that's Putin's narrative: Ukraine is a part of Russia and doesn't get to make those choices. That's the Russian per…

>So yeah that's Putin's narrative: Ukraine is a part of Russia and doesn't get to make those choices. That's the Russian perspective. Ukraine choose Yanukovych and what it got in return was a western-backed revolution to oust him. If we're keeping score, only one side has actually done a color revolution in this country and it isn't Russia.

Yes, it was Ukraine doing the revolution. Yanukovich lost elections in 2004, and his win in 2010 was marginal. His corruption and brutality made him quite unpopular with the people by 2014. His attempts to consolidate power made him quite unpopular with half of Ukrainian oligarchs as well.

Re: Russia says Ukraine talks hit 'dead end', Poland warns of risk of war

#164

Post by scottLobster »

dirtyid wrote: post #143
scottLobster wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Difference, at least with regard to China/Taiwan, is timeline. Russia could likely steamroll much of Ukraine in a short period of time, and the US/NATO has few assets available for immediate response to hundreds of thousands of Russian troops. The conflict could potentially be over before any meaningful military response could be mounted outside of what Ukraine can muster (which compared to the Russians only goes so…

US has 2x more troops forward deployed in East Europe for Russian contingency and decades worth of equipment stocked piled as result of cold war. There's also all of NATO. Versus TW where PRC concentration of forces overwhelm US air/naval assets and reinforcement is far away in time and logistics and there's no US allies in region willing to credibly contribute to TW defense. The entire current TW defense strategy is…

2x what? The total US deployments in Europe are https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/9/10/infographic-us-mili...

As for Taiwan, barring immediate Taiwanese surrender China will have to suppress Taiwanese naval and air defenses and then put substantial boots on the ground. The Chinese airborne is not large enough to do the latter on its own, that means amphibious assaults and contested landings. Though they would ultimately succeed were Taiwan left to defend itself, it would take time. Realistically they'd have to do that while dealing with the immediately deployable US carrier groups and air/naval/marine forces from land bases in Guam/Japan/etc.

I agree the whole "losing large amounts of only sons" bit is speculation in terms of what impact it would have. Golden parachutes might go a long way.

I would say time isn't on China's side at all. It's making more enemies in the world while losing former would-be friends, and is in severe demographic decline, much like Russia. Plus dealing with China is the one thing that currently unites Americans politically, and has lead to the creation of and near universal support for AUKUS, as well as the current trade war. If China keeps upping the confrontation it will only provoke a more severe response from the rest of the world, and if it dials down the confrontation it will eventually be hobbled by demographic decline and other factors. Realistically there's no good option for China to take Taiwan, but the CCP can't admit that. So one way or another there's going to be a show.

Re: Russia says Ukraine talks hit 'dead end', Poland warns of risk of war

#165

Post by tablespoon »

elcritch wrote: post #34
baal80spam wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's one of the oldest tricks in the book. Remember that Russia invaded and annexed Crimea "to save Russian citizens".

To be fair Crimea does have a majority ethnic Russian inhabitants. Wikipedia lists Crimea's demographics as 65% while others were lower at 58% or thereabout. Given many of those Russians were there from the Soviet era or direct descendants, it doesn't seem too crazy of a claim. The US and NATO countries have done worse for less. Now invading Ukraine? Thats another thing altogether.

> To be fair Crimea does have a majority ethnic Russian inhabitants. Wikipedia lists Crimea's demographics as 65% while others were lower at 58% or thereabout. Given many of those Russians were there from the Soviet era or direct descendants, it doesn't seem too crazy of a claim. The US and NATO countries have done worse for less. Now invading Ukraine? Thats another thing altogether.

What do you mean "now invading Ukraine"? Russia already did that, when they invaded Crimea, which is Ukraine.

Re: Russia says Ukraine talks hit 'dead end', Poland warns of risk of war

#166

Post by temp12192021 »

nickpp wrote: post #3

It'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?"

> It's funny when the aggressor is "negotiating" to attack or not.

"funny", but standard

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Stick_ideology

Re: Russia says Ukraine talks hit 'dead end', Poland warns of risk of war

#167

Post by labrador »

float4 wrote: post #102
labrador wrote: post #2

I 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…

Thanks for sharing the video. I think the downvotes you got are unfair, as you're just linking to a talk from a, from the looks of it, very distinguished professor, so I upvoted you. However, I would like to inform you that there's a good article that was written in response to Mearsheimer's talk: https://archive.is/6vdRf

That's a very interesting article that I encourage interested observers to read. I always like hearing from McFaul.

It includes a rebuttal by John J. Mearsheimer at the end:

It is not surprising that Michael McFaul and Stephen Sestanovich disagree with my account of what caused the Ukraine crisis. Both the policies they helped frame and execute while in the U.S. government and their responses to my article exemplify the liberal foreign policy consensus that helped cause the crisis in the first place...

Re: Russia says Ukraine talks hit 'dead end', Poland warns of risk of war

#168

Post by scottLobster »

tomjen3 wrote: post #151
scottLobster wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Difference, at least with regard to China/Taiwan, is timeline. Russia could likely steamroll much of Ukraine in a short period of time, and the US/NATO has few assets available for immediate response to hundreds of thousands of Russian troops. The conflict could potentially be over before any meaningful military response could be mounted outside of what Ukraine can muster (which compared to the Russians only goes so…

>Difference, at least with regard to China/Taiwan, is timeline. Russia could likely steamroll much of Ukraine in a short period of time, and the US/NATO has few assets available for immediate response to hundreds of thousands of Russian troops. The conflict could potentially be over before any meaningful military response could be mounted outside of what Ukraine can muster (which compared to the Russians only goes so…

The Russians have a bunch of planes as well, not to mention sophisticated land based air defenses already in Eastern Ukraine.

Poland recently ran a bunch of military exercises simulating a Russian invasion through Belarus, and in the words of one Polish general the results were "worse than 1939" https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/11/09/pola-n09.html

If NATO declares war on Russia, that also immediately expands the front line from Norway, down into the Baltics, all of which would have to be defended from Russian retaliation. Doing that and fighting a full scale invasion of Ukraine would be the largest European Conflict since WWII.

Re: Russia says Ukraine talks hit 'dead end', Poland warns of risk of war

#169

Post by shashurup »

nullifidian wrote: post #125
shashurup wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> b) to fullfill the imperialistic need that has been propagandized out of every hole for the last 15+ years I honestly cannot grasp where does this narrative come from. I live in Russia and read local media and I don't see the idea being pushed. Putin himself once considered USSR disbanding as catastrophic but nothng beyond that.

So the idea of "Russkiy mir", USSR falling apart being a "_geopolitical_ catastrophe" (only an imperialist would say something like that), USSR in general being viewed positively by the media, its every act of imperialism like Prague Spring, or the attempt to keep Latvia in the USSR viewed exclusively positively in "documentaries", even positive coverage of the imperialism of the Russian empire (the Great Game) and s…

The reason why any state tries to present its history in a positive light is a different question. Good things are exaggerated, bad things are smoothed over. The states doing the opposite just doesn't live long.

Being positive about USSR and Russian empire and pushing the idea of restoring it are pretty different things. There are no ideas such as rebuilding USSR (or Russian empire) pushed by local media.

> even positive coverage of the imperialism of the Russian empire (the Great Game)

What is wrong with empires by then? This was the way thing worked in 19th century. Are we supposed to condemn that? If yes, was, for instance, feudalism any better?

Re: Russia says Ukraine talks hit 'dead end', Poland warns of risk of war

#170

Post by type0 »

danjac wrote: post #10

The 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 th…

> The bigger question is "why now".

Because the energy crisis in Europe creates a good opportunity

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