Let's take a break from Thatcherlad arguing with Marxlad and talk about geopolitics. So what do we reckon about this year's bi-annual lurching forward of the doomsday clock?
Standing back from the situation it seems obvious that US led brinkmanship and almost psychopathic foreign policy only makes a bad situation worse. The extent to which the media portrays Russia as the unambiguous bad guys while NATO continues to push them borders on completely delusional, like saying the sky is green or the sea is made of sand. Russia and Putin are no saints by any means, but what did we (the West) expect by constantly encroaching on their security interests?
The UK and EU badly need to distance themselves from America, I feel like they are going to become dangerous friends to have if moments like this and China's overtures on Taiwan play out as their own Suez crisis.
1 I mean that ISIS didn't exist until we started shipping weapons to the region. Don't try memory hole that. I remember it.
2 You might be right here, I don't claim to understand much of Russian politics, but the point stands. There's a parallel timeline out there where their places are swapped and nothing would be substantially different.
>>41363 ISIS existed years before the Syrian Civil War. Come on, lad, it's a textbook example of the regular extremists in Al Qaeda (extremism classic) getting supplanted by a hip new offering of extremism (cherry extremism) that pissed off the Iraqi tribes so much you got the awakening and caused much handwringing from Bin Laden himself.
Plus there's the whole business with whatever the fuck the US was doing when they did lock up extremists if you want to go that route.
>There's a parallel timeline out there where their places are swapped and nothing would be substantially different.
This is the interesting one for me because it underlines just how catastrophically bad Putin is for his own foreign policy. Navalny is part of the broad church movement of the opposition that would have threatened to send things back to the Yeltsin era where Russia would still act in surprising ways but you wouldn't have Russia managing to reinvigorate fucking NATO when the alliance was clearly on the wane. It would mostly chill and wait, the most effective strategy to adopt when facing off against the west.
Imagine it, the US would gladly support some form of European security architecture and France and Germany were more than accommodating to make it happen for their own ends. Russia could even play the West and China against each other while reaping the benefits of its enormous natural resources.
>>41361 >>41362 It's true that Nalavny isn't some sort of liberal reformer, but in those early days he was talking to whoever would listen. The impression I get is that he was more in it for the means rather than the end.
Navalny put it best in the 2022 documentary: Given how Russia has developed since the fall of the Soviet Union, politics has had to descend to basic levels, and there's little point in focusing on sophisticated policies when you don't have the freedom to advocate for them and freely elect representatives who will enact them. His point is that "normal politics" has to wait until the fascists are out.
>>41365 That was my impression too. Perhaps we saw the same programmes. All he cared about was getting rid of Putin. If he could get closer to that by appealing to neo-Nazis, that is exactly what he would do, right until they were out of the room and then he would agree with Putin-hating leftie hippies instead. Anything to get rid of Putin. I confess I have no idea what he would have done if he ever got rid of him, but I don’t think his comments about immigrants from the -stans ever counted as him telling us.
>>41365 >>41366 Let me get this straight just so we're clear: he did a comedy sketch wherein he called eskimos cockroaches and shot one in the head all as part of some elaborate scheme to oust Putin?
You are both proving the original point yet again. Completely short sighted. How many times does it need to be demonstrated that using a despot to take down a despot just leaves you with another despot before we learn the lesson?
The one thing the USA fears more than Putin invading and dominating Europe, is a co-operative peace between Europe, Russia and China that would economically displace them.
I'm absolutely no supporter of people like Putin but US interference is just all over every event that led up to this war and I guarantee you, they are just going to leave us up shit creek when push comes to shove.
>>41366 The Oscar-winning documentary is currently on iPlayer. He has a message for the Russian people at the end. About two-thirds of the way through he basically says that had be been allowed to run for President and win, his efforts would be focused on dismantling and rebuilding the apparatus of the state, because you can't really achieve any other meaningful change without doing that.
>>41373 Given that Navalny more or less committed suicide by dictator to prove a point, his words carry a little more weight than a two-bit Bullingdon Tory who likely can't order in a restaurant without fibbing to the wait staff.
I really can't interpret it as being that principled, honestly. It's more like how high level gangsters know they run the risk of being shot in the back any time they leave home. Mother Russia is a mafia state, and I'm sure all her political figures know the stakes they are playing with.
>>41375 I genuinely don't think you know what you're talking about. After Navalny was poisoned and taken to Germany for treatment, something I suspect the Russians allowed in the hope that he'd remain outside the country like a lot of Russian dissidents, he did indeed reenter Russia once he was well enough. He was immediately arrested, as he surely knew he would be, and now being totally in the grasp of people who had already tried to kill him once, he can't have had many illusions about how this whole thing was going to play out. You're painting an act of total self-sacrifice sound like he was just "married to the game".
It's a funny situation you've put me in, as I was the one who originally took issue with the over the top nature of the Navalny reporting that started this whole conversation. But while I don't think he achieved much of anything, it certainly wasn't for lack of want.
I'll admit it's possible I am just too cynical, but I mean. Even if he hadn't gone back to Russia, his days were numbered, and he'll have known that. This way at least he gets to look like a martyr.
>Harald Kujat (born 1 March 1942) is a German retired General of the Luftwaffe. He served as Chief of Staff of the German armed forces, the Bundeswehr, from 2000 to 2002, and as Chairman of the NATO Military Committee from 2002 to 2005.
>Since July 2016, Kujat is a member of the Supervisory Board of the Berlin-based Research Institute Dialogue of Civilizations[4] (DOC), allegedly financed by Vladimir Yakunin,[5] until 2015 CEO of the Russian Railways and by some sources considered a member of the Russian president Vladimir Putin's inner circle[citation needed].
>By some conservative German media (Bild-Zeitung, Die Welt) Kujat was criticized for his pro-Russian views in German TV talk shows,[6][7][8] allegedly being considered with misgiving by the German Federal Government.[9]
tl;dw one of America's greatest fears is a strong Europe guided by the industrial and technological might of Germany, supported by the resources of Russia. Ukraine has been used to drive a wedge between Germany and Russia to prevent this from happening. A very old talking point that has also been planned out in depth by the RAND Corporation in a paper titled Extending Russia: Competing from Advantageous Ground:
>>41380 Damn, I can't believe in order to weaken Germany in 2022 the United States tricked Russia into invading Crimea and Eastern Ukraine in 2014. In the Summer of 2021 the CIA even managed to get Putin to write and publish an entire essay called On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians, in which he outlined his ideological opposition to Ukrainian sovreignty. To think of how powerful these people are, that they can trick a president and Command-in-Chief of the second army of the world [citation needed] into openly admitting why he's invading another country, and not so much as blinking as he condemns western aggression in the same breath, it's truly frightening. Still, even after all this, generous Uncle Putin is still so kind as to demand absolutely everything he ever wanted in return for "peace" with Ukraine. If only there were more brave truth tellers like yourself and General der Luftwaffe Harald Kujat the Nobel committee would be tapping up Putin already.
>>41380 >Ukraine has been used to drive a wedge between Germany and Russia to prevent this from happening
So, Russia invading its neighbour, destroying cities and killing tens of thousands of people alongside many other atrocities could have been totally cool and fine with us if it weren't for those meddling Americans? Hmm I think these guys are right.
The Soviet Union installed KGB personnel and political and ideological institutions in East Germany following WWII that meant that the GDR was much more closely tied to the Soviets than many of the other eastern European satellite states. To Stalin, this was important to both punish half of Germany for WWII and to ensure that at least that part of Germany was never going to attack the Russians again. A lot of these old Communist Bloc loyalties persisted after the Iron Curtain came down, and Putin as a former KGB field liaison officer in East Germany whose job it was to ensure Stasi compliance with Soviet or KGB directives knows Germany intimately.
Add to that the general feeling of guilt by all Germans towards their former war enemies and the Russians in particular, and you'll see how Putin exploited the growing friendship between the two countries in the last 30 years. Putin knew early on that unified Germany wasn't just going to be a force to be reckoned with in the upcoming formation of the EU, but that it was also going to continue being a key NATO member at the heart of Europe. And so he knew he needed to ensure Russian influence on German foreign policy and decision making, under the cover of bolstering peaceful relations. The Germans have just now in the last two years been realising that they've pretty much been had.
Also, nobody "tricked" Putin into invading Ukraine. Putin's lifelong dream since the fall of communism has been to rebuild the Soviet Union, and to do so by means of covert influence wherever possible, and at gunpoint if necessary. Just look at numerous invasions and skirmishes with former Soviet, Central Asian countries in the last 20 years. And especially with NATO's eastern expansion, which saw all the old eastern European satellite states essentially switch sides, Ukraine was always going to be the last straw on Russia's western flank. So now here we are.
>>41387 The issue is that the articles quoted by >>41380 presents the idea that because a lot of powerful Germans cultivated relations with Putin, as you explain, it means that it's in Europe's interests to be friendly with Russia, but the Americans have taken away our opportunities to be more autonomous by turning us against Russia. It suggests that Russia would be our natural and better partner if we weren't being played by the Seppo imperialists. In an abstract sense that's not implausible, some European countries have a history of good relations with Russia, but in the world we live in we can see that Russia is very happy to butcher Europeans who stand in the way of their own imperialist goals. So claiming that Russia could have been the key to Europe's autonomy is a load of hooey. Of course the people behind this don't really care about that as you probably know, it's just a shoddy disguise for justifying Russia's imperialism.
Someone securing the world island is absolutely bloody not in Britain's interest. Having some authoritarian nutter do it doubly so. I don't know what your argument is here, 'wouldn't it be smashing if Russia was a nice liberal democracy' yes. But it's not. The American political establishment would even love it if they could leave Europe and focus on other areas but they can't.
Maybe we'll just have to find out what happens when Russia collapses again and the west has to reintroduce civilisation.
My argument is that Russia isn't actually our friend, despite what the article I responded to claims, where did you get this stuff about me saying Russia should be a liberal democracy? I think you might be getting confused about who is posting what.
>>41387 >Also, nobody "tricked" Putin into invading Ukraine.
Yeah, no way, you complete wally. How sarcastic do I have to be? I thought I was over-egging it by suggesting Putin get a Nobel Peace Prize, but my only other option was to end the post with "/s", but I'd sooner top myself. Not that that's saying much.
>>41391 Not him, but I think we have overdosed on sarcasm. Ever post since >>41380 has resulted on several guys who seem to basically agree on the issue having a cunt off with each other.
>The Kremlin has suggested that conflict between Russia and the US-led Nato military alliance would become inevitable if European members of Nato sent troops to fight in Ukraine, Reuters reports.
>Sweden, Poland and the Czech Republic have distanced themselves from Emmanuel Macron saying on Monday that there was “no consensus” on sending western troops to Ukraine but “nothing should be excluded” (see post at 10am).
There is a definite risk that it could escalate into a bigger conflict between NATO and Russia, but on the other hand, two years of fighting have shown that while taking Ukraine hasn't been a slam dunk for Putin, the Ukrainians despite receiving shedloads of weapons and other aid haven't succeeded at driving the Russians out, and it doesn't look like they will anytime soon.
The Ukrainians can't win a pure war of attrition, even with unlimited access to Western weapons and other aid. They've only got a fraction of the population of Russia. So at some point, Ukraine will inevitably run out of military manpower of its own.
This isn't like the 1980s nuclear arms race or Russia's ten-year invasion of Afghanistan. The West's hope is probably that Russia will spend itself into bankruptcy similar to the way the Soviet Union did when it could no longer keep up the West's pace and had to sink untold billions of rubles in Afghanistan. But it won't work out like that this time. The Soviet Union was crumbling from the early 80s with or without Afghanistan and the nuclear arms race. Even if there is a lot of inequality in Russia today, it still has enough resources to wear down Ukraine for years to come.
>>41393 >There is a definite risk that it could escalate into a bigger conflict between NATO and Russia, but on the other hand, two years of fighting have shown that while taking Ukraine hasn't been a slam dunk for Putin, the Ukrainians despite receiving shedloads of weapons and other aid haven't succeeded at driving the Russians out, and it doesn't look like they will anytime soon.
This is a thing a lot of people are missing. I've had crusty types try and tell me that less defence spending would be a good thing actually and that Russia isn't a threat because they can't even win Ukraine properly. They miss that the current operation has been going on for almost two years, and the overall war for almost a decade, and Ukraine is no closer to getting its territory back. They miss that at least part of that has only been achieved through continued support, and that while Russia's grunts may be useless, their elites are proving highly effective. They have done a great job of fomenting unease in the support for Ukraine, working some cracks in the solidarity, and have come very close to getting some states to drop their support, including the US. There's a tendency amongst some, frequently on the left but also increasingly among isolationists on the right, to fall into the trap of thinking that if we just stopped doing shitty things people would stop trying to attack us, which is very much not the case when it comes to Russia under Putin.
>>41393 >The Ukrainians can’t win a pure war of attrition, even with unlimited access to Western weapons and other aid.
Perhaps you only meant hypothetically, but the access they have to Western weapons is in no way unlimited. They lost Avdiivka because we stopped sending them artillery shells so they ran out. I don’t think they have any F-16 fighter jets even now.
The question still is, what's the endgame going to be. Looking at other conflicts in eastern Europe and the Mideast the last 30 years, it's possible that both sides will just spend the next eight to ten years bombing the shit out of each other, and the country of Ukraine and its infrastructure and population. But at what point, and under what circumstances will the matter eventually be settled.
Putin knows that he's got his political career riding on a victory in Ukraine. But he's enough of a 4D chess player to have entangled the West and NATO in a way that they, too, can't afford to lose. Because losing Ukraine would set a precedent and could jeopardise the safety of other countries along Russia's and Ukraine's border. And even if the Baltic states are NATO members, they'll be difficult territory to defend once Ukraine falls to Russia.
So then what do you do when neither side is willing to cut their losses and back down. The last time NATO/America and Russia/the Soviet Union were staring each other down in Cuba, in the end cooler heads prevailed and the Russians agreed to withdraw their missiles from Cuba, while the Americans in turn dismantled their nuclear missiles in northeastern Turkey that were pointed right at Moscow. But this was while you had a youngish American President in power who was able to rein in his military command who were urging a first strike, while Khrushchev eventually also came to his senses and realised that their whole game of nuclear chicken was only going to end badly.
If Trump regains power this autumn, and that's not as unlikely as many on the Left still hope, then you'll have a doggedly determined madman in Moscow paired with an erratically unstable geriatric U.S. President who has said that under him, Russia would have carte blanche to attack NATO members who don't pay their dues. Even assuming that that's all just talk at this point, there is no denying that the last thing that's needed now is a U.S. President who's as harrowingly inept at statecraft as Trump. But I digress.
I don't think that either side has the endurance to drag this out for more than another year or two. The rate of attrition is just too high. Ukraine is running out of manpower and international support. Russia has firmly established a war economy, but at enormous cost to the living standards of the civilian population and the financial interests of the oligarchs.
Someone is going to reach the point of exhaustion and sue for peace. If it's the Ukrainians, they're probably going to have to accept handing over Donbas and Crimea, in the knowledge that Putin will still have ambitions on Kyiv. If it's the Russians, it could go two ways - either Putin will need to find some way of selling it as a victory, or there will be some kind of regime change.
>Ukraine is running out of manpower and international support.
But that's just it. With that prospect, Putin isn't just going to accept the consolation prize of Crimea and Donbas, which are, even though not internationally recognised, already Russian territory. He has his eyes firmly set on the grand prize of claiming Ukraine proper, and either turning it into a puppet state or incorporating it into Russia whole.
> Russia has firmly established a war economy, but at enormous cost to the living standards of the civilian population and the financial interests of the oligarchs.
>or there will be some kind of regime change.
It won't happen so easily this time. Czar Nicholas II overestimated his people's support in WWI, and believed that whatever hardship he'd put Russians through, they would remain loyal to him no matter what. He was oblivious to the fact that there was a strong and growing opposition that was increasingly a real threat to his power. Putin, on the other hand, knows that he needs to suppress the opposition and dissent wherever he can to keep them from challenging his power, now that the war economy is demanding a good bit of sacrifice from many ordinary Russians. If just to keep himself from ending up like Nicholas after all.
>>41399 I have no idea. That's really shocking. I guess most people are just sick of the war happening. There also haven't been any big wins for Ukraine in the news lately, so perhaps it now just feels like they're prolonging the inevitable and should just hurry up and lose now. Russia are losing over 1000 soldiers a day, but it really does feel like nobody cares about this and they aren't even missing them.
>>41399 I think wanting to pull the plug on Ukraine is an easy and (seemingly...) risk-free "fuck you" to unpopular governments determined to support Ukraine's fight. Sadly, I also think many people probably don't care about what happens to countries on former USSR territory, and I don't underestimate Russia's ability to influence people.
I don't think it is. This war has impoverished millions of people and it's no surprise at all they want it to end. It doesn't matter who the good guy or the bad guy is, people don't care about that when they're struggling to pay the heating bill and do the weekly shop, and it's really, genuinely that simple.
The countries lowest on that chart are the ones most economically affected, Italy's manufacturing, which was behind only Germany's, has been totally kneecapped by energy hikes, for instance. When you add in the fact that this looks like it'll drag out into another forever war like last decade's Middle Eastern adventures, nah, I don't think it's surprising at all.
>>41400 >>41403 >>41404 I think the key thing to grasp is the wording. The blue option is "taking back the territories occupied by Russia", while the red option is "negotiating a peace deal with Russia". When pollsters ask their questions, they ask the question on the card, maybe define a couple of words, but don't elaborate, so you were to ask them what they mean by "negotiating a peace deal with Russia", they'll just tell you it's exactly as it says. The problem here is that these aren't semantic opposites, even though they're effective opposites, so some people might be attracted to "negotiating a peace deal with Russia" without realising that this basically means telling Ukraine to give up territory in exchange for ... well, it's not exactly clear. The conflict has been going on for almost a decade, and Putin has already gone back on undertakings made during that time, what makes anyone think that if Ukraine just gives him four provinces he won't come back for more in a couple of years?
>what makes anyone think that if Ukraine just gives him four provinces he won't come back for more in a couple of years?
Exactly. It's not just about Ukraine. His mission is to reclaim former Soviet Union territory any way he can. Or at least install Russia-friendly puppet governments.
If we let him keep parts of Ukraine, then there's nothing stopping him from coming back for more. And it will set a precedent for the West's inability to stop his expansionism.
To the kind of person who is feeling the impact directly on their wallet, it's very difficult to explain why exactly having Europe taken over by a revived Neo-Oligo-Soviet Union is any worse than what they have currently. Same shit different name.
If America wanted Europe to back this war indefinitely, it should have been spending the money to prop up European industries, shield European economies from the energy impact, and keep the public in jobs and warm houses. But instead, the US has taken this opportunity to weaken Europe as well as Russia (while China watches and pisses itself laughing.)
You can say "but why should they", and I will just point you right back to >>41399
Also, wishful thinking. A lot of people are saying that it's ridiculous to suggest that Russia, China and Iran are taking us ever-closer to the brink of a third world war, but a lot of those people asserted that Russia would never be stupid enough to invade Ukraine and all those tanks he was lining up on the border were just a bluff.
It's easy to imagine that the war in Ukraine is just a regional conflict that has nothing to do with us. It's easy to imagine that Putin will be satisfied with the Donbas and Crimea, or that he'll be satisfied if he takes Kyiv, or Warsaw. It's easy to imagine that China would never actually invade Taiwan. It's easy to imagine that Iran is just making trouble for Israel. It's hard to accept that the world is a lot more chaotic and the western-dominated order is a lot more fragile than it was a few years ago.
Its really very simple. This is about the Rules Based International Order. If we don't do our utmost to uphold the status quo then line may very well go down, and you don't want line go down do you? Can you even begin to comprehend what it would be to live in a world where line go down?
>>41442 >Has he invaded Britain? No. So it's not my problem.
Yeah, as we all know continental wars are neat little affairs with no spill over or unforseen consequences, you moron.
>Has he invaded Britain? No. So it's not my problem.
I've got a three grand gas bill that says otherwise - and that's after the government spent £78bn on subsidising it.
There's no such thing as an isolated regional conflict any more. Any major conflict is going to have a direct but unseen impact on your daily life. The war in Ukraine had massive repercussions for the entire EU energy market. The current Israel-Gaza conflict is having significant impacts on global trade due to the Houthis buggering about in the Red Sea. Any war involving China would have catastrophic effects on the global economy.
Even if you don't give a toss about things like mutual security pacts and our role in maintaining the stability of the western order, you can't avoid the effects of global conflict in a globalised world. Militarily and economically, our existence depends on our allies.
Lad, I know the point that you're trying to make but this isn't making it. Your gas bill would be cheap as chips if we just let Putin have Ukraine and kept buying it from Gazprom. After all what's a bit of imperialism between friends? We're all at it.
That's when you have to start getting into the real reasons, but you don't want to talk about the real reasons, because they are more complicated.
>>41446 >due to the Houthis buggering about in the Red Sea
This part is easy: just bomb the cunts back to the Stone Age and be done with it.
>>41449 >Your gas bill would be cheap as chips if we just let Putin have Ukraine and kept buying it from Gazprom
Would it, though?
>That's when you have to start getting into the real reasons
Well, quite. Then we have to do things like acknowledge that going with appeasement is going to work about as well as it did over 80 years ago. Unless you somehow think that simply letting Putin have Ukraine would be the end of it, in which case I've got a couple of bridges and some seaside property in Derby for you.
