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U.S. pauses all military aid to Ukraine

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Re: U.S. pauses all military aid to Ukraine

#591
post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not even about “basic needs.” How much support is there in fat and happy Europe for putting boots on the ground? It sounds like UK and France would go it alone? https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2025/03/04/which-european... And it’s not lost on me that both Starmer and Macron represent a minority of the electorate in their respective countries—having won due to a deeply fractured electorate.

Well, it seems that at least according to the article, Finland, Scandinavia, the Baltics, Poland etc. weren't even asked for our opinions. Unfortunately typical that we just get ignored here in the eastern flank. One can only hope that we weren't mentioned because it's obvious that we'd back these operations, since an ascended Russia is an existential threat to everyone here, but alas. Of course there are ideas like…

It occurred to me that backstabbing is a common tactic of war historically, and increasingly of a certain group of power-seeking individuals specifically. A trait that The Apprentice and it's similar ilk of reality TV shows like Survivor invariably promoted.

My comment today on a YT video;

"Trump never apologizes or shows contrition (Roy Cohn's 'always deny' doctrine) as it shows weakness, similar to Putin perceiving appeasement as weakness. He then sets up a scenario (he called it "great television") where he expects Zelenskyy to apologize and say thankyou for the 100th time. He told Zelenskyy he had no cards, so apologizing or showing appreciation-on-demand (for nothing in exchange) would be submitting to being a loser in Trump's own mindset, which is the point of the whole fake deal on offer. No different to the "deal" he made with Afghan government for natural resources, before he sided with the Taliban to withdraw US troops in betrayal of that very agreement. When Zelenskyy pointed out that Putin can't be trusted for any ceasefire, Trump then raised his voice cos his own betrayals (nearly everyone who worked for him that wasn't paid, or went to prison by following instructions, or was summarily fired as per his catchphrase) are viewed as his favorite playing card."

Treachery has been his default modus operandi throughout his personal life (cheating and divorce) as well as in business and politics ("hang Mike Pence"). Reality TV then normalized it to the level of mass-entertainment as he suggested.

Re: U.S. pauses all military aid to Ukraine

#593

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That poll in isolation means nothing. A person who "does not trust Putin" but nevertheless subscribes to Russian propaganda is still doing his work. I see plenty of people in social media (enough to be convinced that they aren't all bots) who appear to believe that continuing to support Ukraine with aid would bankrupt the US, would be equivalent in effect to fighting Iraq or Vietnam again, would lead to WW III, and s…

Right. They don’t Trust Putin but they trust Trump. If Trump acts on Putin’s agenda, they will vote for it and call it smart.

They might not even trust Trump, but being driven to hate Biden and/or Harris so to vote against them was enough.

Re: U.S. pauses all military aid to Ukraine

#594

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good method is to make predictions based on an assumption. A month ago, a CRAZY prediction of actions if Trump was a Russian agent would be: Active attempts to remove Zelinsky. Stop all aid. Remove sanctions on Russia. Stop are cyber activity and planning of such against Russia. Trump has done all of the above (well he's only ordered the removing of sanctions as of today).

Would Russian oil, which I seem to remember is heavy in grade, replace Canadian oil, which I hear is similarly heavy, in US refineries, explaining the 25% tariff on Canada which is implausibly supposed to be about fentanyl controls?

It would need to be transported by ship which presents some problems. Canadian oil has pipelines which are very cheap.

Re: U.S. pauses all military aid to Ukraine

#595

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You're in the wrong place to spread Russia propaganda, here we go: > After its dissolution in 1991, Ukraine became the third largest nuclear power in the world and held about one third of the former Soviet nuclear weapons, delivery system, and significant knowledge of its design and production. Ukraine inherited about 130 UR-100N intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) with six warheads each, 46 RT-23 Molodets ICB…

Lol using wikipedia as a source. Either way, the fact remains that there was no set of events in which Ukraine would have been allowed to have nukes. If Ukraine has said no, either the new government would be replaced or Ukraine would have gotten invaded by US and Russia simultaneously.

It's nice that people say Ukraine and the other countries owned the nukes or whatever and have them sign an agreement to "hand over" something they didn't own, but that's just optics. Reality is Ukraine never could use those nukes and didn't have a military force or access to the nukes to keep them.

Re: U.S. pauses all military aid to Ukraine

#596
post #561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point, is NATO still alive [1]? I don't think any other NATO country still trusts the US to help when a country has to invoke Article 5. NATO in its former shape has pretty much been dismantled over the course of last month. [1] NATO minus the US is still alive, of course.

There are a lot of regional frameworks within NATO. The US doesn't lead all of them. But some of them are probably just paper (not all). I'd also find it hard to imagine the US not providing enablers like satellite targeting, etc. Or the US being unwilling to sell ammo.

That might have been true last week.

Re: U.S. pauses all military aid to Ukraine

#597

While I find the Russian invasion of Ukraine appalling, as a counterpoint to all the "Trump is destroying the US' reputation" mono-point that I've read so far (although I agree with that, too): John Maersheimer [1] gave a great explanation and prediction (~10 years prior) of why the whole thing happened. The US saw Russian weakness, decided to expand NATO to Ukraine, and the Russians said "no way will we let NATO be…

Just one problem with that amongst many:

Russia has bordered NATO for years. Estonia and Latvia both do and if you count Kaliningrad as Russia then Poland and Lithuania do too.

In common with much stuff Russia comes up with it's just lies to justify their bad behaviour.

Re: U.S. pauses all military aid to Ukraine

#599

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't know of any other latent nuclear states. Japan is sometimes described as a "screwdriver turn away from a bomb". They've got the materials, the know-how, the civilian nuclear program, and the rockets... and the geopolitics to be interested.

That's a good point. Both the ROK and Japan though are cases where the US "pivoting to Asia" from Europe would make them less, not more, likely to pursue such a breakout. And in both cases, their incentives has existed prior to Ukraine.

The ROK and Japan must both factor in the possibility of America not coming to their aid in a similar fashion.

That wasn't a super realistic consideration until a few weeks ago.

Re: U.S. pauses all military aid to Ukraine

#600

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not equivalent, but the USA is in violation as of today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum

The USA is not in violation of that. All of points 1-6 have been complied with. Russia is in clear violation of it, but it never promised US military intervention. All it promises is we'd go to the Security Council about it. The memorandum didn't really anticipate one of the signatories with a UN veto being the aggressor.

The UK, France and China also signed that same agreement.
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