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>> No. 36687 Anonymous
21st January 2022
Friday 7:58 pm
36687 Ukraine Crisis
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?

I think this is a pretty sensible breakdown.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/01/19/ukraine-russia-nato-crisis-liberal-illusions/

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.
Expand all images.
>> No. 36688 Anonymous
21st January 2022
Friday 8:12 pm
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It is none of Russia's business whether or not Ukraine wishes to join NATO. If Canada wanted to join the EU, America wouldn't have to like it but it would not be acceptable for them to try and stop it. And America hasn't committed any genocides against Canada in the past century that have left Canadians understandably touchy.
>> No. 36689 Anonymous
21st January 2022
Friday 8:13 pm
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UVB-76 (The Buzzer) numbers station has been broadcasting Gangam Style and spectrograph trollfaces since the 15th.
>> No. 36690 Anonymous
21st January 2022
Friday 8:15 pm
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Forgot the image. >>36689
>> No. 36691 Anonymous
21st January 2022
Friday 8:25 pm
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>>36688

Imagine if there were a small island just of the coast of America, which allied with the Russians and the Russians proposed to put missiles on. How do you think the Americans would react to such a situation? It's not like they'd have a massive meltdown that almost caused nuclear war over the mere prospect, I'm sure.
>> No. 36692 Anonymous
21st January 2022
Friday 8:58 pm
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>>36691
If such a thing happened, which obviously it never would, I would disapprove of that too. Because you're not meant to tell other countries how to run their business.
>> No. 36693 Anonymous
21st January 2022
Friday 9:13 pm
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>>36692

Unfortunately, countries are a lot like neighbours. You might want them to mind their own business, and you might not give a fuck what they're doing in their own property. But sometimes, you have no choice but to confront them over how they keep leaving their bins at the end of your drive. Only the bins are nuclear missiles.
>> No. 36694 Anonymous
21st January 2022
Friday 9:42 pm
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>>36688
>It is none of Russia's business whether or not Ukraine wishes to join NATO

This. Russia's recent ultimatum to NATO involves an effective sphere of influence in not only Ukraine but even Poland where the US is perceived as in need of grand bargain to counteract China and the European security alliance as faltering thanks to the vanity of France and Germany. But despite the limp-wristed attitude of Biden the West has already seen off one pressure tactic where Belarus attempted to force a refugee crisis.

Its threat that we know from the long-term predictions of the Russian economy will be used in future to bully economic concessions and as we see from the Caucasus and history of Ukraine itself will still seep in to sow internal conflict or even outright annexation. There's a reason even the Swedes are going mental at the moment and its not good at a time when Russia has spent year building up foreign currency reserves while the west is perilously sensitive to Russian gas diplomacy.

On the broader realist perspective; the problem the school has is it too often presumes a state (that you're in at time of writing) to have free-will. NATO expansion was an inevitability and the weight of Poland alone will pull the west deeper into conflict. EU expansion couldn't have been stopped by the US despite Moscow's view that it's a stalking horse and Ukraine fell into the western orbit because the people living in Ukraine (now run by a Jewish fascist president as Mendeleev recently went to point out) threw their puppet government out of power. What the West could've done to avoid all this was to integrate Russia into the west during the 90s and avoid the country becoming a basket case but we didn't so there we go.
>> No. 36695 Anonymous
21st January 2022
Friday 9:49 pm
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>>36693
Or in the case of Eastern Europe, anti-ballistic missiles. Or in Ukraine, the red-line recently moved to having any sort of western military presence such as training a countries military to defend itself against a neighbour that illegally occupies 7% of the country. Whataboutism doesn't really work in this situation.
>> No. 36696 Anonymous
21st January 2022
Friday 10:13 pm
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>>36687

>Standing back from the situation it seems obvious that US led brinkmanship and almost psychopathic foreign policy only makes a bad situation worse.

The problem with almost all of U.S. foreign policy has always been that Americans have a hard time admitting when they are wrong. Their world view is that they are the beacon of freedom and democracy, that they are the most compassionate and generous nation on Earth, and that they must spread those values across the globe, much in the same way that evangelists think they have to proselytise their religious faith. It's also maybe no complete coincidence that much of the Ukraine kerfuffle that still persists today happened under Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, who is a devout Methodist, a Christian fundamentalist denomination that is particularly known for its proselytism and the belief in its own moral superiority and the urge to spread its gospel.

Then again, when it gets down to down-and-dirty power politics, there are enough realists in the American government who know they are only doing it to further and cement the sheer power that the U.S. wields over the rest of the world. There is no room for idealism at that level, it's all about dominance, strategic influence, and access to critical resources and raw materials.

NATO's Eastern Expansion, then, wasn't as much an act of wide-eyed liberalism as the linked article suggests. I'm very sure there were at all times enough hawkish realists in the American government who simply spotted a chance to weaken their old adversary of Russia by diminishing and geographically reducing its sphere of influence. It was probably a welcome side effect that the former Communist satellite states transformed into Western-style capitalist parliamentary democracies that opened up to international trade, but the real Great Game the hawks in the American government and in NATO were playing was a different one.
>> No. 36701 Anonymous
22nd January 2022
Saturday 10:33 am
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Funny actually isn't it, there wasn't really any bickering at all with Russia under evil orange anti-christ man, but now a Real Politician is back at the helm, we're back on the doorstep of nuclear annihilation almost immediately.

I feel quite bad for the people of Ukraine. The way they are being played as pawns here is really disgusting, Nobody ever thinks of the human cost of bullshit like this. What does the ordinary Ukrainian citizen gain from two crumbling superpowers having a slap fight over them?
>> No. 36702 Anonymous
22nd January 2022
Saturday 11:50 am
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>>36701

I think your memory might be failing you, lad.
>> No. 36703 Anonymous
22nd January 2022
Saturday 11:51 am
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>>36701
It's absolutely correct that the man who was actively supported by the Russians was much less confrontational with the Russians.

I still don't expect this to be a real Armageddon, though. The only reason everyone is so afraid is because Russia is lining up a 100,000-strong invasion force on the border of Ukraine, but countries often put soldiers in places without starting wars there. The Americans, and we, certainly do. But if there is a war, we're going to fight back primarily with pathetic wimpy sanctions, and Russia will retaliate by switching off all their natural gas pipelines, and then our heating bills will go up even more than they currently are doing. If it came down to it, the rest of the world could beat Russia quite effectively, but paying electricity bills won't be much fun for a while.
>> No. 36704 Anonymous
22nd January 2022
Saturday 12:15 pm
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>>36703

>But if there is a war, we're going to fight back primarily with pathetic wimpy sanctions, and Russia will retaliate by switching off all their natural gas pipelines, and then our heating bills will go up even more than they currently are doing

This is the daft bit about it. We could have been mates with Russia years ago after the fall of the USSR and none of this would ever have happened, but America insists on penalising Russia for making them look bad 70 years ago and won't ever let it go.

What is the US offering us? We could do with Russian gas but what are the Yanks giving us in return for all this bollocks? The "global security" argument is totally invalid at this point because the whole thing is demonstrating they simply don't have the cajones for it any more. If Russia invaded us tomorrow, nevermind Ukraine, I seriously have my doubts if the Americans would come rushing to our aid.
>> No. 36705 Anonymous
22nd January 2022
Saturday 1:28 pm
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>>36704

>We could have been mates with Russia years ago after the fall of the USSR

Russia doesn't really have "mates", only allies of convenience. A rekindling of the cold war was almost inevitable after the rise of Putin. A strong man without enemies isn't a strong man.

>>36701

>What does the ordinary Ukrainian citizen gain from two crumbling superpowers having a slap fight over them?

Nothing, but they have even less to gain from being invaded by Russia. Before giving Trump any credit, it is worth noting that the ceasefire in Donbas collapsed in the first months of his presidency. Ukraine are continuing to fight the war in Donbas, they will fight as hard as they can against any further Russian incursions, but they're massively outnumbered and outgunned. Ukraine want military support and they're asking for our help.
>> No. 36706 Anonymous
22nd January 2022
Saturday 1:45 pm
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>>36705

>Russia doesn't really have "mates", only allies of convenience

Do you think that's somehow different to any other country? Do you think America really gives the slightest fuck about Britain?

There was always a way to prevent this. Russia should have been brought into NATO and possibly even the EU.
>> No. 36707 Anonymous
22nd January 2022
Saturday 2:04 pm
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>>36706
>Do you think that's somehow different to any other country?

It's interesting how so many countries talk about having a "special relationship" with the US. All of them have a slightly different way of saying it but it's the same.
>> No. 36708 Anonymous
22nd January 2022
Saturday 2:10 pm
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>>36706

>Do you think that's somehow different to any other country?

It's no different to the US, but plenty of other countries have deep and lasting alliances.

>There was always a way to prevent this. Russia should have been brought into NATO and possibly even the EU.

Do you think that Russia at any point wanted to be part of NATO or the EU? The Yanks believe that they have a god-given right to run the world, the Russians believe that they're a global superpower rather than a washed-up dictatorship with a smaller GDP than Italy. They both have a continual desire to expand their spheres of influence and those spheres will inevitably intersect somewhere in Europe. Wishful thinking or appeasement can't stop global conflict.
>> No. 36709 Anonymous
22nd January 2022
Saturday 2:35 pm
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>>36708

>Do you think that Russia at any point wanted to be part of NATO or the EU?

Um, yes, actually, in the early 90s they very much did. After the fall of the USSR, Russian capital certainly wanted to be part of the global free trade and financial party. Our rejection and refusal to integrate Russia into the west is part of the reason Putin rose to power at all.
>> No. 36710 Anonymous
22nd January 2022
Saturday 3:43 pm
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>>36696
>It's also maybe no complete coincidence that much of the Ukraine kerfuffle that still persists today happened under Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, who is a devout Methodist, a Christian fundamentalist denomination that is particularly known for its proselytism and the belief in its own moral superiority and the urge to spread its gospel.

What are you implying here?

>>36704
It's Yankee ignorance that if anything that caused this. Russia was ignored when the missile shield was first proposed and it was ignored when the West started to interfere in the Caucasus during the War on Terror. This is what absolutely infuriates Russia because its a dead empire that wants to restart the Concert of Europe.

The argument of a decepticon conspiracy to destroy Russia was nonsense in the 2000s because everything was focused on terrorism and Iran.

>The "global security" argument is totally invalid at this point because the whole thing is demonstrating they simply don't have the cajones for it any more. If Russia invaded us tomorrow, nevermind Ukraine, I seriously have my doubts if the Americans would come rushing to our aid.

They would, stop being a retard. It's in the West's interest to maintain the stable and rules based international order against the new revisionist powers, not least owing to our level of economic integration. We actually even know from the leaked diplomatic cables that the US is unusually fluffy with us beyond any material gain and from Syria (and Iraq) that the US looks to Britain for a thumb up owing to the scars from Vietnam.

That doesn't mean we should be naïve on US interests but the reason the West's security alliance remains so strong is because if how aligned our collective interests are and how useful the components are. Ukraine is outside this umbrella but the reason much hand-wringing is going on compared to Kazakhstan is the threat this poses to the Baltic states and the way that Russia has undermined the fundamentals of the Post-WWII international order by stealing territory.
>> No. 36711 Anonymous
22nd January 2022
Saturday 4:45 pm
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>>36706
There is talk of suspending voting rights for Poland and Hungary because their democratically-elected (in Hungary's case, that's debatable) leaders are mad fucks who just want to ruin everything. I don't think the rest of the EU would be very happy to welcome Russia into the fold. And Russia knew this; the only really valid argument they have here is that they very clearly asked NATO not to approach their borders in 1990, and that promise has been broken repeatedly by ex-Soviet countries looking to get away from the bear outside the tent. If Russia hates NATO that much, inviting them to join is unlikely to have succeeded.
>> No. 36712 Anonymous
22nd January 2022
Saturday 6:57 pm
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>>36709

>Um, yes, actually, in the early 90s they very much did.

Russia is a member of the EAPC and the PfP. It has the option of applying for NATO membership via the PfP, but it has never exercised that option. 14 members of the PfP have successfully joined NATO via the PfP; Russia actively opposed their membership, regarding it as a threat to their national security.

Russia was a member of the G8 until it decided to invade Crimea. There are a substantial number of EU-Russia cooperation agreements, but EU membership has never been a serious option given Russia's active opposition to many of the Copenhagen Criteria.

The door has always been open for Russia to join the club, but they are unwilling to play by the rules. A NATO that allows its members to go to war with each other is utterly pointless.
>> No. 36713 Anonymous
22nd January 2022
Saturday 10:36 pm
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>>36711

>the only really valid argument they have here is that they very clearly asked NATO not to approach their borders in 1990, and that promise has been broken repeatedly by ex-Soviet countries looking to get away from the bear outside the tent

The fatal flaw of post-Soviet transformation in Eastern Europe was then that Gorbachev didn't ask to get that promise in writing. In the negotiations to redraw the European map in 1990, assurances were limited to verbally telling the Russians, oh yeah, don't worry, NATO will stay put where it is. Gorbachev in the end accepted what the Russians assumed was a gentlemen's agreement. But as with anything you don't have in writing, it's difficult to then hold somebody, in this case NATO and the Americans, to their promise. They are now saying, well no, that was never actually part of the deal. And it wasn't, because it wasn't codified in the treaties. The Americans knew what they were doing though, and that a verbal promise was never going to be binding, and you could even say it was a ruse to sucker Gorbachev into agreeing to relinquish power over those satellite states.

It's also imprecise to say that the former Soviet satellite states simply joined NATO of their own volition because they were somehow scared of the big bad wolf Russian bear. What is true is that during the Communist Bloc era, Soviet political and ideological dominance over those countries often left them severely short changed. But on the other hand, the U.S. in particular has by now a 30-year history of intense influencing and outright meddling with domestic politics and public opinion in those countries. It operates NGOs, think tanks and other organisations whose sole purpose at least tacitly it is to foster pro-American political elites in those countries who will be loyal to the U.S. and NATO. There has been a lot of talk about Russian government-sponsored NGOs in the West in recent years. And they exist, and they often do damage in undermining and destabilising the political system and public opinion in countries like Germany or indeed the UK. But pound-for-pound and in terms of the kind of budget the Russians set aside to finance those NGOs, it's simply dwarfed by what the Americans spend a year on supporting pro-U.S. NGOs worldwide. We're talking on the order of 20 times the kind of money the Russians dedicate to it.
>> No. 36714 Anonymous
22nd January 2022
Saturday 11:28 pm
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>>36713
Why do you seem to always show the Americans as being the only ones with any agency? For starters the Visagrad group emerged before any consensus was agreed by the US, who instead acted from fear of displacement by a new European security architecture, and Russia's actions in its near abroad during the 90s already fuelled the opinions a population who saw European integration as they key to future prosperity. Even today when Poland's Kaczyński talks about a Polish strategy autonomy to survive a Russian attack it cleaves from NATO doctrine.

The Americans bumble about on the world stage, they're not a smart people or hivemind.
>> No. 36715 Anonymous
23rd January 2022
Sunday 1:52 am
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>>36710
"Rules based international order" is one of my least favourite phrases. The most charitable way I can interpret it is that Russia is objectionable because it's a destabilising force, which is a perfectly legitimate view. Yet tipping it over into "they break the rules" becomes a step too far. I immediately want to point to Iraq, or to the nicked Chagos Islands, or god knows what little example that invariably invites dismissal with "whataboutism" even though the specifics of any example aren't quite as important as a general idea that we'd never let the rules get in the way of our perceived interests (I might say: 'damn right too!') and that I can't stomach pretending otherwise. Making the cynics case for doing so seems easy: it's much easier to keep all the little countries on-side if they think they might be able to catch you out by appealing to the rules. But as individual human beings rather than institutions it seems unnecessary to play along with such a game. It's not likely any countries that lose out from it are going to find out via a post from an idiot like me.
>> No. 36716 Anonymous
23rd January 2022
Sunday 2:46 am
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>>36714

>Even today when Poland's Kaczyński talks about a Polish strategy autonomy to survive a Russian attack

Why would Russia attack Poland then?

It's this kind of thinking that prevents any kind of levelheadedness.
>> No. 36717 Anonymous
23rd January 2022
Sunday 3:04 am
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>>36716
>Why would Russia attack Poland then?
Why wouldn't Russia attack Poland?
>> No. 36718 Anonymous
23rd January 2022
Sunday 3:12 am
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>>36717

You just proved my point. Well done, you.
>> No. 36719 Anonymous
23rd January 2022
Sunday 3:44 am
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It's funny how so many of you are repeating things that the OP's article already clearly went over. It's as though none of you read it.

I mean you're not wrong, most of you, but it does go to show how on the internet, we just start talking directly out of our arse without even acknowledging the information presented.

Anyway carry on, this is one of the more interesting threads we've had in a while. I think you might all get a sticker on the fridge.
>> No. 36720 Anonymous
23rd January 2022
Sunday 11:10 am
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>>36719
I did worry briefly, "What if the link I didn't read disproves everything I'm about to say?" But then I would dismiss it as fake news and consider my time wasted for reading it. I will read it now (unless it's boring).
>> No. 36721 Anonymous
23rd January 2022
Sunday 11:33 am
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It's a much better article than I was expecting. It's not pro-Russian propaganda, I don't think. It still doesn't give any reasons why NATO could be framed as an evil force, aside from equating it with America and listing all the bad things America has done. But then maybe I'm just too passionate about liberalism.

Ukraine declaring itself to be neutral, and refusing to get too close to either Russia or NATO, would perhaps work for a bit, but I think they have too much history with Russia, of getting invaded and massacred over and over again, for the Ukrainians to do such a thing and just hope Russia chills out for the first time in history. All the arguments that Russia is just bracing itself against potential attacks, just in case, can also be made for Ukraine, which would get its shit pushed in by Russia without a larger alliance.
>> No. 36722 Anonymous
23rd January 2022
Sunday 4:18 pm
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>>36715
Your argument is that the rule of law law isn't valid because of abuse by the powerful so we should throw out the concept of law altogether. International law is challenged by the lack of global policeman but even the US suffers a cost for breaking the rules through community feedback, hence why states avoid launching wars of aggressive conquest because it has become completely taboo post-Kellogg–Briand Pact.

>>36716
>Why would Russia attack Poland then?

Russia has attacked Poland multiple times through hybrid-warfare, recently demanded that NATO cease the deployment of weapons in Poland, simulated an nuclear attack on Warsaw during Zapad exercises in Belarus and in more broad terms the Poles have every right to be distrustful of the bear to their east which they're wholly unprepared to counter. It's not like the Poles have been busying themselves since the 90s or don't have better things to spend their money on, they have an aggressive power to their East whose regime carries a geopolitical ideology bent on dominating their state.

To top it off there is absolutely no reason for Putin to fear NATO expansion, other non-NATO neighbours are ambivalent because they have no interest in bullying other countries quite like Russia has when it whinges about the Baltic states.

>>36719
The problem with FP is they've started aggressively pay walling their articles so it can be a roll of the dice whether someone can read it. The problem with Stephen Walt is that he's a realist windbag whose only trick is to talk about the 90s and American decline.
>> No. 36723 Anonymous
23rd January 2022
Sunday 6:17 pm
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>>36722

>To top it off there is absolutely no reason for Putin to fear NATO expansion

Because it never happened, right?

Just imagine if the Russians started a new international military alliance and incorporated one country after another into it, in the Western Hemisphere, no less. Wouldn't we here in the UK or the Americans get a smidgeon nervous? Wouldn't that be considered a blatant act of "Russian aggression"?

And don't give us the whole "But NATO and the Americans are the good guys". Well, not entirely so, if you look at history. And while the Warsaw Pact was completely dissolved and Russia never reversed its geographical retreat, NATO was assimilating former Soviet satellite states left, right and centre.

Just because somebody says they're the good guys, doesn't mean they're not going to pull the trigger of the gun they've got pointed at your head the whole time.
>> No. 36724 Anonymous
23rd January 2022
Sunday 6:25 pm
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>>36723

>Just because somebody says they're the good guys, doesn't mean they're not going to pull the trigger of the gun they've got pointed at your head the whole time.

Pretty much.

What we're essentially asking Russia to do is get their bollocks out, and put their bollocks on the table, which we are stood on the opposite side of, holding a hammer.

Obviously we're not going to do anything with the hammer, we just so happen to be holding it, complete coincidence. Absolutely no reason to be concerned at all, you're just paranoid if you think so. But nevertheless, would put your bollocks on the table?

It really doesn't matter who's the good guys and who isn't, that's the thing. It's that we're expecting Russia to submit, and Russia is not, nor has it ever been, a sub.
>> No. 36725 Anonymous
23rd January 2022
Sunday 6:50 pm
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>>36724

It's the old double standard of good versus evil and war propaganda. These days, it's pretty much Russian aggression when Putin lets off a fart during Easterly winds. While nobody among the Western political elite even permits the question, without branding you an enemy of the system anyway, if the country-by-country eastward advance of NATO in the last 30 years could be construed by Russia as a latently hostile act.

The old mantra always goes that the other side does everything they do because they're evil, and "our" side only does essentially the same things because we're good, and you've got to break some eggs to make omelette.

This tactic is probably as old as warfare and all geostrategic jostling itself. Except since the mid-20th century, it has essentially been a game of nuclear chicken that almost turned ugly a few times, with no side really having been able to claim moral high ground. And just because nobody got hurt the first time around during the 1946-1990 Cold War, doesn't mean it won't happen in Cold War II. Can we really take that chance?
>> No. 36726 Anonymous
23rd January 2022
Sunday 7:04 pm
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>>36723

A number of Eastern European countries made the decision to join NATO, because they believe it to be in their own best interests. Russia has repeatedly aggressed against many of those countries and is currently illegally occupying large parts of Ukraine.

There is no moral equivalence here. Russia has absolutely no legitimate grounds to oppose NATO expansion. Eastern European countries have every right to join NATO if they so wish. There is zero evidence that the expansion of NATO poses a threat to Russian security or territorial integrity, but it does pose a clear threat to Russia's expansionist aims.

There was no provocation in 2014; Russia simply assessed that the West would not support Ukraine to defend against an invasion. We cannot de-escalate this situation by appeasement. The international community needs to stand firmly in support of Ukraine's right to territorial integrity and self-determination.
>> No. 36727 Anonymous
23rd January 2022
Sunday 7:18 pm
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>>36726

>Russia has absolutely no legitimate grounds

This is the part you don't seem to understand. There's no such thing as "legitimate". It's in their interests not to have NATO on their doorstep, and that's all the legitimacy they need to act in their own self interest.

It's delusional not to expect a country to act in its own self interest just because you've convinced yourself of some artificial construct on what it is and isn't okay to do.
>> No. 36728 Anonymous
23rd January 2022
Sunday 7:19 pm
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Jeremy Kyle was a cock, wasn't he?

He had his own TV series, where he would invite dysfunctional people on, many of whom needed help, and he would berate them. What a twat. He was the rich millionaire TV celebrity, getting rich off the back of Callum and Chantal from the local council estate, and then they barely saw a sniff of the profits. Prick. But at the same time, Callum was a prick too. He kept getting invited onto the show because he was an alcoholic who would get blackout drunk and beat the shit out of Chantal. And Chantal hated this, but she never left, not even when Jeremy Kyle told her to. And two months later, they'd both be back on the Jeremy Kyle, being chastised for being worthless basket cases.

We are Jeremy Kyle. We're rich and we hold all the cards, ultimately. Chantal is the abused, barely-literate Ukraine. That poor woman. And finally, she has taken a stand and said she is dumping Callum for good. She's moving in with Jeremy Kyle, because he has a big house, and she's taking the kids. No more violent beatings from Callum after a weekend vodka bender.

Now Callum is in the street, shirtless and yelling for Chantal to come out. He has been insulted by Jeremy Kyle so many times that he really can't accept that Chantal would rather live with him than with Callum. That's the only reason Callum is so angry. He hasn't changed, and he will definitely abuse Chantal again while drinking even more vodka, reading unendingly miserable 19th-century literature, and sleeping around with Belarus and Kazakhstan. Chantal's still a hopeless thicko, but she looks at you, and asks, "Should I get back with him?"

Obviously fucking not. Come on.
>> No. 36729 Anonymous
23rd January 2022
Sunday 7:47 pm
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>>36728

(Let's assume you, the reader, are Jezza, that makes it more personally relatable.)

But also, in this analogy, Callum is actually part of a quite serious gang on the estate, and if you don't let him in to see Chantal, him and his 'ard mates are going to break in at night and beat the shit out of her and the kids. They'll look at you and go "Well, gonna stick up for 'er are you mate?" and you'll just shake your head.

You know she's not worth a black eye over, and you always did. Deep down inside yourself you know you never actually intended to look after her, stand up for her, protect her. You were just using her for the council slag blowies, and you had only temporarily convinced yourself otherwise, you think to yourself, as a single tear rolls down your cheek and into your glass of Famous Grouse.
>> No. 36730 Anonymous
23rd January 2022
Sunday 8:10 pm
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>>36729
>Famouse Grouse

You mean High Commissioner, Lad. That's your brown equivalent of Glen's Vodka.
>> No. 36731 Anonymous
23rd January 2022
Sunday 8:13 pm
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>>36730
>Famouse

FUCK. Proof that even something as "posh" as Glenfiddich Solera 15 doesn't stop yu making a clown of yerself on the interwebs.

But I never punched a Lass. I have that going for me.
>> No. 36732 Anonymous
23rd January 2022
Sunday 9:04 pm
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I fear we've left analogy behind and are just writing out sublimated fantasies.
>> No. 36733 Anonymous
23rd January 2022
Sunday 10:33 pm
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>>36723
No. It would be considered a strategic failure of the west but by definition a defensive alliance shouldn't be regarded as an offensive act, you certainly wouldn't have even the Yankees annexing 7% of said country for smiling in the wrong direction. Not that anyone would ever be keen to host Russian soldiers of course.

That's the thing, it is perfectly legitimate for Ukraine to enter into an economic agreement with Europe and it's perfectly legitimate for sovereign states to enter into a defensive alliance. It says so in the UN Charter and and national sovereignty has been THE fundamental precept of international law for at least 100 years. On the other hand invading a country because they've frankly had enough of you and stealing territory is absolutely outrageous and may have even raised heckles in the 19th century. You only have to look at the limited number of countries that have accepted Russia's annexation of Crimea and the actions of even non-NATO members to know which side of history Putin is operating on.

Now you have to ask yourself what 100,000 Russian soldiers are going to invade for, what pretext are they going to use here when the limited equipment Ukraine has had delivered from NATO consist of anti-tank rockets and Turkish drones. Are the "fascists" coming to kill all the Russians or is it the Jews this time?

>>36728
>Chantal's still a hopeless thicko, but she looks at you, and asks, "Should I get back with him?"

ARE Chantal would never say this. She's made repeatedly clear she's going to fight back and if she ends up too broken then she won't be able to tend her ganja farm which is going to send prices for green rocketing across the estate.

>>36729
You wouldn't go in swinging against a group of chavs who have broken into your home and are looking to beat a woman and her children?
>> No. 36734 Anonymous
23rd January 2022
Sunday 10:35 pm
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>>36726

>The international community needs to stand firmly in support of Ukraine's right to territorial integrity and self-determination

Would've been nice if the West had applied that same high moral standard to countries like Syria, or indeed Afghanistan or Iraq.


>There was no provocation in 2014

Except there was. The 2013 revolution in Ukraine was bought and paid for by Western shell NGOs. Whose operatives were literally giving protesters in the streets cash money handouts, and the opposition movement as a whole also received generous funding from countries including, but not limited to the United States.

Crimea's problem admittedly was that it has been home to one of (Soviet) Russia's most strategically important military bases on the planet since before the Cold War. A new pro-Western Ukrainian government could have simply evicted the Russians at some point, which would have weakened Russia's military posture as a whole.

Ultimately, just declaring Crimea a part of Russia was without a doubt a rarely before seen violation of international law and multilateral treaties. But what are you going to do. There is no feasible way of returning Crimea to Ukraine, without very literally risking an all-out nuclear war. Eight years of intense political pressure and sanctions have yielded absolutely no results, and the West is still deluding itself that yet anoter round of new sanctions over and over again is somehow at some point going to be the straw that breaks the camel's back.
>> No. 36735 Anonymous
23rd January 2022
Sunday 10:42 pm
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>>36733

>You wouldn't go in swinging against a group of chavs who have broken into your home and are looking to beat a woman and her children?

Well, no, because the point of this analogy is that we (The West and Are Jezza) are absolutely just going to sit on our hands and watch Chantal get beaten up.

We can yammer on at length about what Russia has done wrong and how NATO hasn't done anything to provoke them, but at the end of the day what are we going to do? We don't want a fight with Russia, certainly not over a shithole like Ukraine. We don't give a fuck.

We're just acting like bigmen, but if we get called on it, we'll have to back away, and then we're going to look like right dickheads, and the whole estate will know we're not hard like we used to be. Past it. Has been. Next thing you know all these other upstarts are selling baggies down the Lion, and when you confront them, they just laugh. Get out of here, old geezer, you're done with.

That's the greater issue with all this. We've painted ourselves into a corner and we've fucked up. This is a moment of reckoning for the future, and the US is looking absolutely impotent right now.
>> No. 36736 Anonymous
23rd January 2022
Sunday 11:04 pm
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>>36735

>We're just acting like bigmen, but if we get called on it, we'll have to back away, and then we're going to look like right dickheads, and the whole estate will know we're not hard like we used to be

It's all about how far you want to take a bluff.

As you said, ultimately, despite all the huffing and puffing, the West isn't going to start a nuclear war over a shithole country like Ukraine, and all the territorial pissing that both sides are doing isn't going to change that. Putin knew that the West wasn't going to send troops to pry Russia's most important European naval base from him at gunpoint to return it to Crimea. So he got away with it by successfully gambling on Western governments not being bigger lunatics than him. As far as our governments were concerned, it was better to just accept that Putin had made the West look like complete fools, and not risk global nuclear stability over a speck of land in the Black Sea that ultimately wasn't worth it.
>> No. 36737 Anonymous
23rd January 2022
Sunday 11:12 pm
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>>36734
>Except there was. The 2013 revolution in Ukraine was bought and paid for by Western shell NGOs. Whose operatives were literally giving protesters in the streets cash money handouts, and the opposition movement as a whole also received generous funding from countries including, but not limited to the United States.

Goodness, it's amazing how much money we must have considering the past 8 years the Ukrainian people have rejected pro-Russian candidates.

>>36735
>but at the end of the day what are we going to do?

Supply weapons, training and the like to Ukraine, you may have seen it on the news. Maybe kick Russia out of Swift and whatever other sanctions are needed to cripple the Russian economy as it was in Russia's last financial crisis. Your entire argument hinges on the assumption that "just let Russia do whatever it wants" is some viable option like it's not equally Russia that is skating on thin ice and isn't likely scrambling to save face.
>> No. 36739 Anonymous
24th January 2022
Monday 12:43 am
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>>36737

We've been trying to cripple the Russian economy for the best part of the last decade, and by the looks of it, it hasn't done much.

Probably because most of the people who would feel the pinch of those sanctions don't actually have many financial interests in Russia itself, instead they own half the real estate market in London and fund the Tory party.
>> No. 36796 Anonymous
30th January 2022
Sunday 6:08 pm
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The Russian war plan for this is insane (from 6:10 on):


Cities with millions of people under siege and a pincer movement cutting along and probably through the Chernobyl exclusion zone, Transnistria pulling Moldova in and Russia facing an insurgency that puts Iraq to shame. I can't imagine there's much margin for error.

>>36739
>We've been trying to cripple the Russian economy for the best part of the last decade, and by the looks of it, it hasn't done much.

It has. So much so that Russia has now stockpiled foreign reserves to avoid a repeat of the 2014-16 financial crisis where the majority of the economy fell into state ownership and millionaires fled the country despite targeted sanctions. Most of Russia's exports flow to the EU and the alternative once that dries up is falling into China's orbit as a low-wage economy for primary goods.

The one's coming next are suggested to be brutal, cutting even Sberbank alone off would cripple the Russian economy:
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/01/21/russia-sanctions-stop-putin-energy-markets-us-invasion-527524

>Probably because most of the people who would feel the pinch of those sanctions don't actually have many financial interests in Russia itself, instead they own half the real estate market in London and fund the Tory party.

I don't get why you would think that oligarchs holding assets outside of Russia, who made their fortune in the chaos of the 90s, would be pro-Putin. Nor why you assume the UK is in any way Russia's largest trading partner or the anchor that Germany is. Russian = Foe is a dumb way of looking at it even if a few MPs are pretty regular bought off by anyone who wants a slice.
>> No. 36935 Anonymous
11th February 2022
Friday 10:10 pm
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ITZ, or not?

Can only imagine the smug grin that Putin has right about now.

For some reason, I'm reminded of that passage from Illuminatus:

>He was, in fact, characteristic of the best type of dominant male in the world at this time. He was fifty-five years old, tough, shrewd, unburdened by the complicated ethical ambiguities which puzzle intellectuals, and had long ago decided that the world was a mean son-of-a-bitch in which only the most cunning and ruthless can survive. He was also as kind as was possible for one holding that ultra-Darwinian philosophy; and he genuinely loved children and dogs, unless they were on the site of something that had to be bombed in the National Interest. He still retained some sense of humor, despite the burdens of his almost godly office, and, although he had been impotent with his wife for nearly ten years now, he generally achieved orgasm in the mouth of a skilled prostitute within 1.5 minutes. He took amphetamine pep pills to keep going on his grueling twenty-hour day, with the result that his vision of the world was somewhat skewed in a paranoid direction, and he took tranquilizers to keep from worrying too much, with the result that his detachment sometimes bordered on the schizophrenic; but most of the time his innate shrewdness gave him a fingernail grip on reality. In short, he was much like the rulers of Russia and China.
>> No. 36954 Anonymous
12th February 2022
Saturday 4:57 pm
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Invasion on Wednesday, apparently.

https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/krise-in-osteuropa-cia-rechnet-mit-russischem-angriff-kommende-woche-a-2e10a45f-b6eb-4b1a-b692-2edc64c04adf
>> No. 36955 Anonymous
12th February 2022
Saturday 6:12 pm
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>>36954

Good to know Gerry is taking notice.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but so far, we've only got the West's thoughts on all that. While Russia still maintains that it's just a military exercise and that there are no plans to invade at all. It'd be a bit anticlimactic if the Russians actually don't invade and at some point just call off their "exercise". Like back in school when rumours went around that the school bully was going to kick the wimpy kid's arse behind the gym after school one day, but he never even showed up.

On the other hand, maybe the Russians just think that what goes around, comes around. They paid bitterly for believing Hitler's assurances as part of the Hitler-Stalin Pact. And then look what happened. Which also led to the Seven Days To The River Rhine strategic plan during the Cold War, whose aim it was that in the event WWIII broke out, the Warsaw Pact would push westward and overrun West Germany with all their available ground forces in seven days to make sure that NATO wouldn't do the same to Russia with their troops moving eastward.

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

So it could be part of their strategy to completely go pokerface with it until the first Russsian MiGs or tanks cross into Ukraine.

The problem that the West has is that Biden has said very firmly that the U.S. is not going to send its own troops into Ukraine in the event of a Russian invasion, because it would trigger WWIII. While that's a somewhat prudent decision on Biden's part, one we in the West should probably thank him for out of sheer self interest and the fact that it means we won't be waking up to mushroom clouds in the sky next week, it also means that Putin will get away with invading Ukraine. He knows the worst he is going to have to endure from the West is a lot of huffing and puffing in diplomatic and political circles and a few more toothless sanctions that Putin can't be arsed to care about, but ultimately, the West will settle into the reality again, like with Crimea, that what Russia is doing is a grossly illegal act under international laws and treaties, but that there isn't anything you can really do to kick the Russians back out. Again, short of kicking off WWIII.
>> No. 36958 Anonymous
12th February 2022
Saturday 6:45 pm
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>>36955
This is one of those situations where because I don't know what will happen, I try to take a smug intellectual approach and scrutinise everyone's real motivations to predict how it will go. But Putin wants to portray the outside world as evil to his people, to cement his position in the face of existing sanctions, so he could well go to war for that.

Meanwhile, Joe Biden has very low approval ratings, which would be hugely helped in the midterms by a war with Russia. Our own government is mired in scandal, and saying Keir Starmer loves pederasts and hates justice didn't work, so they too stand to gain from a war. All across Europe, other NATO governments are finding themselves unpopular in a way that a war with Russia would really help with.

The war itself, of course, if it happened, wouldn't really benefit anybody except the politicians. Nobody is defending freedom and justice; both sides are just telling themselves they'd be putting a bully in their place for illegitimately trying to claim Ukraine. Based on what I've seen, Russia is going to try and cheat and invade Ukraine while claiming they're not really invading Ukraine. Then we'd look like the bad guys for fighting them when they never really invaded anywhere. So fuck Russia. But I don't know if that's what Russia is really planning, because I read all those reports in the dreaded m-m-m-mainstream media, which cannot necessarily be trusted.

I guess the ideal outcome would be cyberwarfare, with everyone switching off each other's power stations and Sky Sports but nobody actually dying. If we could remove Putin simply through filling Russian infrastructure with Goatse and Billy Herrington, I'd sign up today. But all governments everywhere have spent far too much on real weapons not to use them, so even that would probably ultimately kill us all.
>> No. 36960 Anonymous
12th February 2022
Saturday 7:51 pm
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>>36958

>Meanwhile, Joe Biden has very low approval ratings, which would be hugely helped in the midterms by a war with Russia. Our own government is mired in scandal, and saying Keir Starmer loves pederasts and hates justice didn't work, so they too stand to gain from a war. All across Europe, other NATO governments are finding themselves unpopular in a way that a war with Russia would really help with.

Except this time it wouldn't be a proxy war over which Western governments could do the usual circle jerk in telling each other, and their people, how much they condemn the barbaric acts of the enemy. This time, they're really running around with matches inside a dynamite factory. And the approval of your voters doesn't mean much if they all get vaporised by a Russian ICBM as a result of your gung-ho decision making.


>Based on what I've seen, Russia is going to try and cheat and invade Ukraine while claiming they're not really invading Ukraine

You can do that with a handful of military trucks in the vast expanses of the rural Donbas. You can even show footage of some nondescript landscape with Russian tanks in it and with the possible exception of undeniable landmark features in shot, nobdy will be able to prove from those images that the Russians aren't on their own territory, But once you've got eyewitness mobile phone video popping up on social media of entire formations of Russian jets laying fire on Kyiv, you'll know the Russians are right in the middle of Ukraine, and Putin won't bother denying it.

My guess is that because Kyiv is only about 120 miles from the Russian border and also not far from where Russia and Belarus are currently holding a joint military "exercise", the first wave of attack is going to be by air right on Kyiv. They'll do a decapitation strike and then take it from there as strategic targets will continue to be bombed by air and ground troops begin their advance into Ukrainian territory. While the West and NATO in particular will shy away from direct counteraction in order not to invoke Article 5.
>> No. 36961 Anonymous
12th February 2022
Saturday 8:02 pm
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>>36935
It's too late now.

In practical terms, Russia has started up drills that will be a ball ache to now quickly untangle into fighting and in particular amphibious operations aren't known for a quick turnaround. It also has no element of surprise and what is more the full attention of Europe focused upon it which is normally the point in any conflict when it opts for a negotiated settlement.

In strategic terms even NATO members have expressed doubt, Russia has a limited cost tolerance where intervention in Syria was defined by mercenaries and air-strikes (and involved backdoor guarantees that the Coalition would not supply anti-aircraft weapons), Georgia wasn't destroyed because the diplomatic cost was viewed as too great and Azerbaijan was allowed to humiliate Armenia because there was no open route to send aid. A war now would cut Russia from it's largest export market, dooming it to China's orbit and be a ruinously expensive conflict that would certainly cost some advanced equipment Russia can't afford to lose.

The whole thing has been sabre-rattling to see how the West reacts and it's probably sussed us as a little wanting. Same thing will now become a regular occurrence to undermine western confidence following the formula that began to emerge from Zapad and simulated strikes on Warsaw. Soon we'll have a similar display in the Baltics to test American resolve where Russia knows the NATO can't prevent them being overrun and where they might come to seek some accommodation.
>> No. 36964 Anonymous
12th February 2022
Saturday 8:39 pm
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https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60361983

>More than a dozen countries have urged their citizens to leave Ukraine amid warnings from Western powers that an invasion by Russia could be imminent.


Nice knowing you, otherlads.

Time to pack your rice and wellies.
>> No. 36968 Anonymous
12th February 2022
Saturday 8:51 pm
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I watched that Lukashenko BBC interview the other day and what he said about NGOs was quite interesting, went something like that
>Yeah, all those NGOs you've set up? We've liquified them and they're all Western propaganda hubs
or something to that effect and it made me wonder if Lukashenko has tipped Russia off about similar things happening in Ukraine.
Not to sound like a Russian bot or anything but the way Ukraine was slowly being taken into the fold of the West and NATO made me wonder whether we have, oh let's be honest, we HAVE been nudging them closer and closer to NATO but perhaps Putin wasn't looking in the right places whilst it was happening. Now he's had a word with Lukashenko and Lukashenko has clued him in on it.
It does sort of feel like the West has been caught doing something it shouldn't have been doing and is now getting all defensive about it.
sage for absolute schizophrenic, rambling bollocks
>> No. 36984 Anonymous
15th February 2022
Tuesday 11:42 am
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My white knuckle ride of investing in Ukraine is paying off. Feels weird to be making money on peace for a change when everyone else has been throwing money at defence companies.
>> No. 36985 Anonymous
15th February 2022
Tuesday 2:01 pm
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>>36984

How did you do this? As in, who did you invest through?
>> No. 36986 Anonymous
15th February 2022
Tuesday 2:14 pm
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>>36964

This really does seem like an absolute reversal of the truth. Isn't Russia seeking a legally binding agreement to stop NATO expansion to the east?

It really seems like we're being geared up for war, primed to see Russia as the enemy.
>> No. 36987 Anonymous
15th February 2022
Tuesday 3:14 pm
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>>36985
HL, FXPO wasn't a bad punt either for a smoother ride. Third largest iron ore pellet exporter in the world and a lot less risk of Green men, Kiev setting a price ceiling or corruption.

>>36986
Russia has openly signalled it's ​deescalating and it was always just a military exercise despite the Americans and media screaming. The Russian demands were always a bullshit high-ball ask if the west wanted to strike a grand bargain.

Ukraine gave some mixed signals that it won't be joining NATO anytime soon but they'll probably just apply once they feel they can credibly deter a Russian attack. Nothing ever happens.

>It really seems like we're being geared up for war, primed to see Russia as the enemy.

Annexing a chunk of a country like it's 1938 and running a low-intensity conflict in another nation's borders that has created 1.5 million refugees will do that
>> No. 36988 Anonymous
15th February 2022
Tuesday 3:42 pm
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>>36984
I admire your brass balls ladm9.
>> No. 36989 Anonymous
15th February 2022
Tuesday 4:05 pm
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>>36986
How do you expect sovereign nations to stop being sovereign and applying to join NATO? Agreeing with Russia's demands essentially means eastern Europe is part of Russia.
>> No. 36990 Anonymous
15th February 2022
Tuesday 4:55 pm
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>>36989

I think your question is very much based on a false premise. It makes about as much sense as saying those countries in NATO are part of the US.
>> No. 36991 Anonymous
15th February 2022
Tuesday 5:24 pm
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>>36986

>It really seems like we're being geared up for war, primed to see Russia as the enemy.

Russia have already invaded Ukraine. They might strenuously deny it, but there is irrefutable evidence that Russian special forces and mercenaries have been acting in Crimea and Donbas since 2014.

NATO rules specifically disallow membership to countries with an active territorial dispute, making Ukraine ineligible to join. However you slice it, Russia are the aggressor in this situation and acting unlawfully.
>> No. 36992 Anonymous
15th February 2022
Tuesday 6:19 pm
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>>36987

>Annexing a chunk of a country like it's 1938 and running a low-intensity conflict in another nation's borders that has created 1.5 million refugees will do that


Maybe, but in this case, so far at least it has all just been a big hyped up nothing. Putin does a little flex on Ukraine's doorstep, and the West's intelligence and media completely run with all kinds of horror scenarios which, in fairness, don't seem all that likely to materialise. It may be good for newspaper and TV readership and viewership numbers, and to reinforce the image of Russia as the evil empire, but it really borders on mass delusion by now.

And Putin isn't actually going to send his 100,000 men to invade Ukraine because he knows there is a high risk of it ending up like Afghanistan. The reason why the Soviet-Afghan War played an instrumental part in the Soviet Union's demise was that the Soviets spent themselves to death trying to gain the upper hand, while the U.S. was secretly supplying wholesale weaponry to the Mujahideen the whole time, thus dragging out a conflict that should have lasted no more than a year or two to last ten years.

The Ukrainians today also wouldn't go down without a fight, and they would likely receive oodles more weapons than they'd ever need from NATO and the U.S., without the two getting directly involved, resulting in the exact same kind of quagmire for the Russians as Afghanistan.

And not wanting to slip into too much Putinsplaining here, but NATO has quite openly a geographical containment strategy against Russia. Which isn't limited to NATO's eastern expansion in Europe, but also extends to increased military presence in recent years and decades in southern Eurasia and East Asia. Imagine if the Russians did that. They're already painted as the scourge of world peace by gathering 100,000 soldiers on their own soil near a neighbouring country's border, so far with no stated intent but to hold a large-scale military exercise. While the U.S. sent half its Navy down to the Caribbean and openly threatened nuclear war when the Soviets shipped missiles to Cuba. And it should not be forgotten that the Russian missiles in Cuba were a direct response to NATO having Jupiter ballistic missiles stationed in Turkey and Italy, each equipped with a 1.5 Mt warhead targeted at Moscow and many other cities in western Russia. These missiles were all very quietly taken down, as part of the agreement to remove the Russian missiles from Cuba. But you don't ever hear much about that in History Channel documentaries.
>> No. 36993 Anonymous
15th February 2022
Tuesday 6:38 pm
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>>36992
I would argue that annexing thousands of square miles of a neighbouring country, in violation of international law, is actually quite a large flex. It's certainly a bigger flex than anything NATO has done to Russia lately.
>> No. 36994 Anonymous
15th February 2022
Tuesday 6:55 pm
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>>36993

Nicking a small corner off someone else's country is still not a large flex. Not a small one either, but it's not a large flex.
>> No. 36995 Anonymous
15th February 2022
Tuesday 7:00 pm
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>>36994
Has anyone done that since WW2 other than Russia (multiple times by the way)? Are you a RussianBot by any chance?
>> No. 36996 Anonymous
15th February 2022
Tuesday 7:03 pm
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>>36994
I also find it funny that you call nicking an area larger than Wales, just a minor flex.
>> No. 36997 Anonymous
15th February 2022
Tuesday 7:14 pm
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>>36996
Even England could nick an area the size of Wales. It needs to be at least several times that to be a proper flex.
>> No. 36998 Anonymous
15th February 2022
Tuesday 7:23 pm
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>>36995
Israel.
>> No. 36999 Anonymous
15th February 2022
Tuesday 7:47 pm
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>>36996

I called it "not a large flex. Not a small one either".

The Ukraine is also a lot bigger than the UK in relation to Wales.


Total land area of Ukraine: 233,062 sq mi

Land area of Crimea: 10,000 sq mi (~4.2%)


Total land area of the UK: 93,628 sq mi

Land area of Wales: 8,023 sq mi (~ 8.5%)
>> No. 37000 Anonymous
15th February 2022
Tuesday 9:03 pm
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>>36999
Is that how far you want to go to justify the annexation, RussianBotLad?
>> No. 37001 Anonymous
16th February 2022
Wednesday 12:47 pm
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>>36954
Are they doing it yet? Or have we been betrayed by the duplicitous Western media? Or even, were the Russians really going to invade today, then called it off to make our media look stupid, so we no longer trust them when they [I]do[I] invade?
>> No. 37002 Anonymous
16th February 2022
Wednesday 3:14 pm
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>>37001
I'll reply to myself again, since my post seems more sarcastic and aggressive than I meant it to. There are now videos of tanks leaving Crimea, and pulling away from Ukraine, but NATO and the Americans are saying that this is all fake, and that actually, if anything, Russian troop numbers are increasing on the border with Ukraine. I really am very confused right now.
>> No. 37003 Anonymous
16th February 2022
Wednesday 3:14 pm
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I dunno, I kind of feel like there was never any real intention to invade, but simply an attempt to make the West look like charlatans.

I mean it doesn't really cost anything to have a bunch of tanks and soldiers sat there on the border looking like they could invade at any minute, and sit back to watch as America loses its shit for months on end while at the same time displaying complete impotence to do anything about it.

Both sides are playing a pretty cynical game here- The west wants Russia encircled, Russia wants a sphere of inbendsence to retain some global heft. But the West is definitely the one coming out of this looking like our towel fell down.
>> No. 37004 Anonymous
16th February 2022
Wednesday 3:23 pm
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>>37002
There were reports about a week ago about Russia potentially deploying fake footage. Of course, we didn't get to see what that footage was or what it depicted, for good reason. For the same reason, NATO aren't going to confirm or deny whether what we're seeing is that fakery.
>> No. 37005 Anonymous
16th February 2022
Wednesday 3:28 pm
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>>37003
>I dunno, I kind of feel like there was never any real intention to invade, but simply an attempt to make the West look like charlatans.
You should probably stop watching RT.
>> No. 37006 Anonymous
16th February 2022
Wednesday 5:03 pm
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>>37005
I don't know; he could be right. Putin certainly has a track record of manipulating foreign media and.spreading the message that they can't be trusted. If he can make the West look like a bunch of mugs, that's great news for him. And remember that if he does want to invade, he's effectively inviting the entire world to treat his government like that of Afghanistan in terms of how unwelcome they would be, all in exchange for some space, which they have plenty of already, in one of the poorest and most corrupt countries in Europe. Eastern Ukraine is hardly prime real estate for any government other than the Ukrainian one.
>> No. 37007 Anonymous
16th February 2022
Wednesday 5:09 pm
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>>37006
>If he can make the West look like a bunch of mugs
For what? Responding to a credible threat of invasion?
>> No. 37008 Anonymous
16th February 2022
Wednesday 5:22 pm
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>>37007
A credible threat of invasion can easily look like incredible hysteria when the invasion doesn't materialise, especially when the government that found it credible has a record of getting it horribly wrong before (credible evidence of WMD in Iraq) to stain its own credibility.
>> No. 37009 Anonymous
16th February 2022
Wednesday 5:28 pm
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>>37003

Putin is expanding his sphere of inbendsence, but not in the way the news would suggest.

It's all a charade and the audience are Orban, Duda and Erdoğan. Putin has no intention of a full invasion of Ukraine, because it'd be far too costly for far too little gain. The point of the exercise is to send a message to populist leaders (and their electorates) in Eastern Europe - that the major NATO powers consider them to be expendable and that their future security depends on closer ties with Russia, not the west.

If Putin can gradually turn Poland and Hungary into Belarus-esque puppet states, then dominating Ukraine is a fait accompli. Russia get to punch a massive hole in NATO's eastern frontier without a shot being fired.
>> No. 37010 Anonymous
16th February 2022
Wednesday 5:50 pm
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>>37008
>(credible evidence of WMD in Iraq)
My calendar says it's 2022. What does yours say?
>> No. 37011 Anonymous
16th February 2022
Wednesday 6:11 pm
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>>37010
I'm not sure, I can't read it because my bastard 6 year old has written "people can remember things and make inferences from them in the future" in black ink over the entire calendar part, leaving it as nothing but a collection of poorly framed shots of Australia's four landmarks.
>> No. 37012 Anonymous
16th February 2022
Wednesday 7:28 pm
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>>37011
>"people can remember things and make inferences from them in the future"

Is this a wordfilter, or do you have a really precocious kid?
>> No. 37013 Anonymous
17th February 2022
Thursday 8:02 am
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>>37008
This situation is completely different. Russia doesn’t deny it has troops surrounding Ukraine and no country, anywhere, has said it will send forces to protect them if an invasion did take place. That second point is also why talk of WW3 is so silly too, you’re going to need more than two countries for a world war.
>> No. 37016 Anonymous
17th February 2022
Thursday 4:23 pm
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>>37007

Well yes, duncelad. It wouldn't be much of a gambit if the West just immediately sussed "nah, he's bullshitting" would it? Christ.
>> No. 37020 Anonymous
18th February 2022
Friday 9:53 am
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>>37016
I don't get it. There's a credible threat of invasion, and every indication that Putin means it. Do the fire service look like mugs when they turn up to a hoax call?
>> No. 37021 Anonymous
18th February 2022
Friday 11:27 am
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>>37020

This is a faulty analogy because the fire service would at least show up to a hoax call.

That's the point you're missing. The west (or at least the Americans) look like mugs over this because of how much noise they're making despite expressly ruling out even the possibility of showing up, because they know they can't.

The longer it goes on, the more of a floppy dick we look.
>> No. 37022 Anonymous
18th February 2022
Friday 1:42 pm
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>>37013

> Russia doesn’t deny it has troops surrounding Ukraine

Yes, but that isn't the point, is it. The point is if Russia will attack Ukraine or not.

So far, all we have to go on is the West carrying itself like a bunch of headless chickens in reiterating over and over again the alleged imminent threat of a Russian invasion, while Russia denies such plans. We're not talking about Russian troops that are already in Crimea and with some degree of probability in the Donbas, but a full-scale hostile military invasion.

If the Russians actually end up not invading Ukraine and withdrawing their troops because it all really was just a large-scale exercise, then NATO and Western governments will all end up looking like right twats.

Let's just see how everything unfolds. Part of me believes that the West just wants to goad Putin into an invasion. They're essentially presenting the Ukraine to Putin on a silver platter by saying look, we've flown out all our diplomats and other local personnel, and we won't send in NATO troops if you attack.
>> No. 37024 Anonymous
18th February 2022
Friday 2:26 pm
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Would Russia look like twats if NATO didn't attack them? Because NATO isn't going to. So perhaps looking like a twat isn't the end of the world in terms of international diplomacy.
>> No. 37025 Anonymous
18th February 2022
Friday 2:40 pm
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>>37024

What I meant was, what's missing from the narrative of an unstable rogue leader threatening world peace is that Putin hasn't made any open threats to attack Ukraine. He has spoken out vociferously against NATO's eastern expansion and has said that Russia would be prepared to defend its interests both with diplomacy and its military might. But that isn't the same as a direct threat to attack and invade Ukraine. And in the absence of that, all we ever hear is warnings from Western governments and NATO that an attack is directly at hand in the next few days. So far, with no results. Which leads me to believe that the West is really overdramatising the situation because it hopes to achieve political gain from it.
>> No. 37026 Anonymous
18th February 2022
Friday 2:44 pm
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>>37025
That's exactly what Putin wants you to think.

He hasn't made explicit threats against Ukraine, but he has, repeatedly, said the equivalent of "Nice country you have there, it would be a shame if anything happened to it."
>> No. 37027 Anonymous
18th February 2022
Friday 2:56 pm
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>>37026

In the end, the proof of the Putin pudding is still in the eating. The West is placing its bets on a Ukraine invasion, but it will still make itself look stuipid if that invasion never happens. And to paint over the fact that NATO and Western governments incorrectly predicted an invasion, they'll probably reframe it as their diplomatic success that it didn't happen. Which would be more than a little bit dishonest.
>> No. 37029 Anonymous
18th February 2022
Friday 3:03 pm
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>>37027
Mate, just take your 5 rubles and fuck off already.
>> No. 37032 Anonymous
18th February 2022
Friday 5:16 pm
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>>37020
This hinges on the credbility of the threat, which can always be contested in hindsight. People aren't probability computers, there's a reason they're lazy with seatbelts.

>>37024
The domestic politics of looking like a twat differs from country to country. In NATO countries, by and large, if nothing happens things look like unwarranted panic. In Russia, it's much easier to steer it to look like unwarranted hostility from NATO, even if you started it.

>>37026
>>37029
If, no matter what happens, "that's what putin wants you to think", why is it so implausible that he could set up another win-win situation for himself? Set up a probable invasion, judge the reaction, then either back down (making the reaction look like an overreaction), or, if there's no reaction, invade and grab a nice chunk of land.

It's bizarre that we can imagine posters and politicians are in his pocket, uncritically repeating lines practically penned by himself, but the moment you suggest the man might actually have had a clever strategy going into this that's proof you're on his side.
>> No. 37033 Anonymous
18th February 2022
Friday 5:44 pm
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>>37025

>Putin hasn't made any open threats to attack Ukraine

Putin has already attacked Ukraine. He has invaded and annexed Crimea. Donbas has been taken over by a Russian-backed separatist army that calls itself "New Russia". The leader of that separatist government is a card-carrying member of Putin's party. 13,000 people have died in the conflict. There's fighting happening right now.

The troops massing on the border aren't threatening to start a war, they're threatening to escalate a war that has been going on for nearly eight years.
>> No. 37034 Anonymous
18th February 2022
Friday 5:49 pm
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Regardless of how the fervent Yank-wankers ITT want to feel about it, it already is a win win for Putin.

He doesn't have to do anything. He just puts his tanks and artillery and loads and loads of soldiers on the border, when goes "What? I can put my soldiers wherever I want, it's my own country isn't it?" and in technical terms, he's absolutely right.

Every minute he leaves them there without invading when the Yanks keep saying "Invasion TUESDAY!" is a propaganda victory for him, essentially. "Me? Invade? Oh, would you just look at how impolite these Americans are! My army is just minding it's own business, completely harmlessly, six inches from the Ukrainian border. It's like the US wants me to invade!"

Meanwhile day after day we do nothing, continue to do nothing, and explicitly broadcast to the world our intention to do nothing. But if he does! if he does! Why, we'll... We'll... We'll huff, and we'll puff, and we'll... Impose economic sanctions! Thus reassuring all the countries we want to remain friendly and allied to us in eastern Europe that we're definitely going to stick our necks out for them if it ever comes to it. Because they're in NATO, so that's totally different, isn't it. We'd definitely start WW3 over them, just not Ukraine.

Will some of you take off your red vs blue sports team glasses for a minute and stand back to look at the bigger picture?
>> No. 37035 Anonymous
18th February 2022
Friday 6:00 pm
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>>37034
See, this is like the "casus belli" wankery you can find elsewhere. It's herd insanity at a grand scale, nothing more and nothing less. The dress up game people who cannot accept that humans are fucked play doesn't change that. Just like that prince's death didn't kick off a war, if bullets start flying it's psychos leading psychos inexplicably following orders given by psychos.
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