Posted on 04/11/2022 8:40:54 AM PDT by JonPreston
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Monday that Russia's unprovoked war with Ukraine is "meant to put an end" to US-led global domination and the expansion of NATO, according to a report.
"Our special military operation is meant to put an end to the unabashed expansion [of NATO] and the unabashed drive towards full domination by the US and its Western subjects on the world stage," Lavrov told the state-owned television news channel Rossiya 24, according to a translation from Russian state-run media outlet RT.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Your map dropped Greenland from NATO in 1986. Greenland is still in NATO, as it is a Danish autonomous dependency.
As the despotisms of Russia and China have become more aggressive, the alliance of North America, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Japan grows closer. That's 60% of the world's GDP. The others can play by our rules or get cut out of the game.
That map forgets to include Turkey.
So that’s why Turkey doesn’t show up on it. The NATO expansion map would include even more nations though.
You make some good points. Especially relating to India. I’ve noticed in the last several weeks that Indian customer service employees, especially at on site stores, etc., have become rather surly. Perhaps it is just anecdotal; but it is very noticeable.
I foresee an alliance among Russia, China, and India against the West. Yes, India and China on the same team. I’m not suggesting it would be a long-term alliance, just one specifically designed to kneecap the West.
The notion of "Slavic brotherhood" was and is a staple of Russian propaganda. Ask the Poles or Czechs how much "Slavic brotherhood" they feel for the Russians.
Russia’s nukes are probably as well maintained as their tanks and radios.
Sweden and Finland now want in on NATO, isn't that considered expansion?
And the stinking Germans pushed for acceptance of Minsk while doing everything possible to stop European support of Ukraine and to hobble Europe to make it dependent on Russia. Luckily the Russkies wouldn’t keep their part of Minsk anyway so Ukraine didn’t have to.
The EU didn't exist in 1957, War Groomer.
Is Jones on the Putinist bandwagon? Did not know that but it’s expected.
“There is no “Slavic” group,”
Tell that to the ethnologists.
“The notion of ‘Slavic brotherhood’ was and is a staple of Russian propaganda.”
It is indeed.
But politically it doesn't imply any unity or fellow-feeling any more than the Germanic or Romance groups do.
“But politically it doesn’t imply any unity or fellow-feeling any more than the Germanic or Romance groups do.”
I never said it did. You need to take your complaints to Russia, not to me.
By no means a Putin supporter, but I think part of the blame for this situation lies with Biden and his administration’s attitudes, clearly none of this was going to happen while Trump was president and possibly in part because there may have been some constructive dialog occurring behind the scenes to address Russian concerns as they have expressed them on several occasions. Whether we totally agree or not is not the point, sometimes you have to accept that a (potential) military adversary has wrong-headed views and assess what would be the impact of various alternative responses to those.
Putin probably calculated that his red lines had been crossed and that Biden and company knew this yet were not prepared to make any concessions. Ukraine thought they were under some sort of security umbrella and acted perhaps with (in hindsight) rashness and impunity in their approach to security questions in the eastern enclaves. This led to a situation where Putin and some of his inner circle came to this conclusion that they had to go in and dismantle Ukraine before Ukraine was used as a staging ground to dismantle them. How that might have happened seems obscure to me, I think the worst challenges to Russian sovereignty had already been made by 2019 even before Zelensky and there was only a slight change of tone and commitment perhaps, but in reality whatever NATO countries thought they might accomplish in terms of regime change in Moscow, it wasn’t going to happen via Ukraine anyway, unless there was some fantasy saying “things will be so rosy in Ukraine that ordinary Russians will want a woke globalist like Zelensky running things in their own country.” Maybe that was the fear in the back of Putin’s mind, that Ukraine would outperform Russia and appear to be a better option to his own people. So then his ego would also become a factor in this (since he clearly thinks he is the only man suited to rule Russia, having changed the constitution twice to make that possible for the rest of his life).
I think what’s needed is something that probably cannot happen, namely a change of thinking in NATO capitals especially Washington but also London, Paris and Berlin, to restart the Minsk process with more realistic goals and structures, and give Putin some of what he wants while working in as much protection as possible for Ukraine in the post-conference future. Probably the transfer of sovereignty in the eastern enclaves would go some distance towards this and we might as well recognize de jure the already de facto takeover of Crimea.
If all of that but some reasonable sovereignty guarantees for Ukraine could be combined, then perhaps this trigger event for nuclear war could be wound down and the global economy could be set back to a more positive point also. It seems like a big ask but somehow if one end result of this is where western voters come to see globalism as inherently unstable and threatening to potential adversaries, and some different order more like what Trump had in mind appeared safer and better, that would be a good thing also. We have enough problems without trying to extend our own form of government into places where nobody wants it and nobody can understand its principles. I would say that includes large parts of our own countries minus perhaps the larger urban areas which ironically have the most to lose from their globalist fantasies.
Map is not NATO. Turkey and Norway are members of NATO. Sweeden and Finland are not.
When did I ever support Putin?
My position from the start has been that it’s none of our business.
Not a criticism. You are obviously correct about the linguistic & ethnographic affinities. Just trying to make myself clear.
“Not a criticism. You are obviously correct about the linguistic & ethnographic affinities. Just trying to make myself clear.”
If Stalin thought he’d be able to bring the Slavic peoples together under a Russian-dominated union, old Joe was suffering from syphilitic dementia.
As an aside, I wish the Americans really did lead the world. It would be a better place.
Instead, the liberals have sold us out to the “international community.”
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