Posted on 10/22/2022 6:49:53 PM PDT by AndyJackson
The U.S. has the largest GDP in the world. China is second, followed by Japan, Germany, the UK, India, France, and Italy. If you agregate the EU, it's second.
Russia isn't even in the top 10, and it is going to be sliding for awhile. Yes, they have natural resources. But first and second world countries creat welath by processing those resources into far more valuable goods. It's generaly third world countries who depend on selling their national resources to others for their wealth.
A few countries in the Middle East managed to leverage their oil wealth into developing the rest of their economies. Russia's just flat-out selling it, with the biggest problem being that the excess wealth that should be used to develop the economy has been siphoned off by kleptocratic oligarchs.
But if you think Russia is going to surpass Europe economically, fine. I just don't agree.
i am convinced at least some of the flak is from people who are paid to do it. too organized, too consistent and predictable. effectively turns every russian/ukraine thread into a name-calling and shouting match.
*** if we continued down the same path
It was not WE.. it was biden, paying back for the millions he got while VP
But it’s Trump they want....
If we don’t get those old people out of congress... we are gonna sit and rot or be involved...mcconnell and the like do not know how to anything but use the old habits ... and we will sink into trouble ....
“Russia isn’t even in the top 10, and it is going to be sliding for awhile.”
If that were the case, why didn’t the sanctions work, as we were PROMISED they would work. Perhaps our prejudices prevent us from fully understanding Russia?
Ukraine had 20 years to acquire nuclear weapons. That’s what they needed to do. But they were recovering from communism and they were resisting political manipulation from Russia. So easier said than done.
I don’t think anyone is paid around here to shill for Ukraine. They aren’t good enough. I’ve given all sides a good listen, but I still ain’t buying what the angry words are selling. +1 to your previous post.
The impact of the sanctions is going to be long-term, not short-term. Anybody who expected economic sanctions alone to get the Russians to stop their invasion was dreaming.
The primary adverse effect on the Russian economy is going to come when their economy, which relies heavily on European and U.S. allied technology, cannot get spare parts. When that capital infrastructure starts breaking down, and they have to consider unaffordable wholesale replacement rather than much cheaper repairs, the economic impact is going to be devastating.
But they can certainly grind through that in the short-term if they so wish.
there was an article recently about a US DoD unit that does just that, apparently.
My basic premise is that creating the impression of blind support for ukraine in online environments is exactly one of the things being done, and we all know the usual suspects here that might fit that category.
as with most things the government is up to, the truth is doubtless much worse than any of us wants to imagine.
Doubling down on a short term disaster for a long term win is often the ruin of foolish men. Sooner or later the house odds adds up to a win for the house, and biggly when fools are betting against it.
Least amount of cities vaporized?
“Anybody who expected economic sanctions alone to get the Russians to stop their invasion was dreaming.”
They all did, and they proved they were CLUELESS.
As to long-term, that’s a fall-back position, kind of like blaming Climate Change for every heat wave, hurricane, and blizzard. Meaningless because, technically, they can never be proven wrong...as the response will always be - “just you wait”.
...and in the meantime, Europe freezes and the rest of the world starves, while we wait for that Russian ‘collapse’ which no one knows when it will hit.
I've read your linked source, as well as many other positions on US involvement in this mess. Over the years I have come to believe the reality of what is to be risked versus the gains expected from involvement in these matters is the central consideration. I don't trust NATO to play a substantive role in the event of escalation, thus making US involvement even more risky. Putin will continue to up the ante. IMO, Russia must take the first steps to at least limit Putin to justify US involvement beyond sanctions.
This assessment goes against the JFK "pay any price" doctrine that led so many in my generation to the killing fields of Vietnam, but this is my take at present.
We don't "owe" them support, and we should always act in our own best interest.
You may feel any way you wish about my position.
Where we end up will not be determined by "expectations."
Passions are high. And there's something else. There is something askew on FreeRepublic.
It's not something major, but a tiny thing, a subtle imperfection in the mechanism, as if one of the valves wasn't sealing as tight as it should. The engine roars, the car accelerates brilliantly, but when you're waiting at a traffic light, and it's quiet, because the the car vents and media system are turned off, and you can actually feel and hear the powerplant, even though insulated and at idle, you sense something, something so illusive that you're not quite sure it even exists, something so close to the edge of reality that it mocks you for faith in it and mocks your skepticism: a misfire, or rather a hint of a misfire.
Yeah, this place has been off kilter since Covid.
[[Next] is John Mearsheimer - probably the leading geopolitical scholar in the US today - in 2015:
“The West is leading Ukraine down the primrose path and the end result is that Ukraine is going to get wrecked [...] What we’re doing is in fact encouraging that outcome.”]
wow
Ukraine poised to join NATO was the domino too far.
“Passions are high. And there’s something else. There is something askew on FreeRepublic.
It’s not something major, but a tiny thing, a subtle imperfection in the mechanism, as if one of the valves wasn’t sealing as tight as it should. The engine roars, the car accelerates brilliantly, but when you’re waiting at a traffic light, and it’s quiet, because the the car vents and media system are turned off, and you can actually feel and hear the powerplant, even though insulated and at idle, you sense something, something so illusive that you’re not quite sure it even exists, something so close to the edge of reality that it mocks you for faith in it and mocks your skepticism: a misfire, or rather a hint of a misfire.
Yeah, this place has been off kilter since Covid.”
I sense that too... I have a tingling on the back of my neck when I am here now. I see a completely lack of concern for some of the ideology shared here to the outside public. Things that should get the domain in a lot of legal hot water and harassed yet nothing, nada, not even warnings from the domain.
I find it odd that in such heated times of extreme legal scrutiny against domains and domain content there is not so much as even a reminder that some are putting the whole community and domain at extreme high risk. There is some reason they are allowing everyone to hang themselves with their own lack of prudence.
The spirit of free speech? Or something other? I often remind myself that this place is a business first and foremost over all causes and something doesn’t smell right. For some reason the domain feels absolutely no risk at all.
if we take a slogan consistent with INGSOC’s in 1984, it would be something like ‘death is victory.’
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