Posted on 01/24/2023 1:50:07 AM PST by Sunsong
"Why does the world need a Ukrainian victory?
1. To halt atrocity. Russia's occupation is genocidal. Wherever the Ukrainians recover territory, they save lives, and re-establish the principle that people have a right not to be tortured, deported, and murdered.
2. To preserve the international legal order. Its basis is that one country may not invade another and annex its territory, as Russia seeks to do. Russia's war of aggression is obviously illegal, but the legal order does not defend itself.
3. To end an era of empire. This could be the last war fought on the colonial logic that another state and people do not exist. But this turning point is reached only if Russia loses.
4. To defend the peace project of the European Union. Russia's war is not directed only against Ukraine, but against the larger idea that European states can peacefully cooperate. If empire prevails, integration fails.
5. To give the rule of law a chance in Russia. So long as Russia fights imperial wars, it is trapped in repressive domestic politics. Coming generations of Russians could live better and freer lives, but only if Russia loses this war.
6. To weaken the prestige of tyrants. In this century, the trend has been towards authoritarianism, with Putinism as a force and a model. Its defeat by a democracy reverses that trend. Fascism is about force, and is discredited by defeat.
7. To remind us that democracy is the better system. Ukrainians have internalized the idea that they choose their own leaders. In taking risks to protect their democracy, they remind us that we all must act to protect ours..."
(Excerpt) Read more at snyder.substack.com ...
What a bunch of rubbish!
Right, all the arguments from poverty are pure nonsense.
Our Southern border is not defended, not because we can't afford to, but rather because Democrats believe those illegal immigrants are essential to future Democrat election victories.
So money has nothing to do with it, it's about political power.
Likewise with EVERY other "we can't afford to help Ukraine because we can't afford to... [fill in the blanks].
All of it is because of Democrats' policies, not because of what we can or cannot afford.
Nathan Bedford: "Whether we should defend Ukraine's border is a matter of America's national interest quite apart from the internal politics of converting America's electorate into a Democrat slave state."
Exactly right.
I am not about it. I mean that its texts are redacted by interest groups and in many politically sensitive entries do notbcorrespond to reality.
Yes, like trying to convince Americans we should continue to waste our tax dollars and spend our great-grandchildren’s prosperity on servicing debts for every foreign war in which we can stick our noses!!
Oh, like so many are doing here on Free Republic!
CAN YOU EXPLAIN WHY YOUR ACCOUNT WENT DARK YEARS and now you're back trolling for Ukraine?
Then you tongue-bathe the Bushes in your profile...GTFO.
What these left wingers don’t get in their utopian world is “All power comes out of the barrel of a gun.”
Sorry, but political corruption is a matter of local country law enforcement, which waxes & wanes depending on election results.
In the grand scheme, normal political corruption is the equivalent of jaywalking, compared to murder in an unprovoked invasion and war of extermination against a weaker nation.
When Russian soldiers set foot invading Ukraine, they become moral orcs, beasts, only fit to die, or surrender or get the h*ll back to Russia, as soon as possible.
If such beasts are allowed to conquer and rule over Ukraine, it will be a crime against humanity of Hitlerian proportions.
None of this has anything to do with how many western politicians are, or are not, "corrupt".
Is this unique to the ‘orcs’ or other soldiers from other countries deserve the same? Are US Marines illegally present in Syria deserve killing?
That’s the perils of being the hegemon.
However note that even at the heights of the supposed dislike that French, English or Germans had for America, it was never the hatred that they had for Nazis or Napoleonic french or Soviet Russia etc.
Thank you!!!
And, the answer is to keep the money laundering operation to the our political class, their financial backers, the defense industry and the WEF going.
We intervened in Ukraine, fomented an ILLEGAL COUP that setoff an eight-year civil war.
The "legal international order" has one standard for Kosovo and other for Donetsk and Lugansk. Why should ethnic Russians being persecuted and killed by a government formed illegal of Ukrainian neo-Nazis and nationalist not have the same right to independence that we supported for those in Kosovo?
We were running biolabs in Ukraine with deadly pathogens in them that would never be allowed within our borders.
We went to war in Iraq under the claim that Iraq and WMD and was a national security threat. But, we claim arming Ukraine, training its soldiers and teasing NATO membership for it isn't a national security threat to Russia.
Just like with Democrats and the left, the legal international order is nothing but self-serving double standards.
It's comical to hear these complaints about a Russian "invasion" from people who live in a country that has invaded more foreign nations in my adult lifetime than I can count on two hands.
Those reports are from Russian propaganda
There are no Polish military fighting in Ukraine. I'm here in Poland and can tell you that my brother in law in the military isn't in Ukraine, neither are his buds, nor anyone else he knows in the military
If even one Polish soldier was in Ukraine, there would be lots of news about it
Most of the corruption I am talking about is AMERICAN CORRUPTION interfering in foreign affairs!! We would not have half the world’s wars and conflicts if the corrupt western politicians would keep their hands out of the pockets of dummy government puppets!!
Holy Mother Of God are you all completely STUPID or just WILLFULLY IGNORANT?!?
What amazes me is, all you bleeding heart jack-wads who were okay with Zelensky bombing and killing the people of Donbas, but you are willing to spend my money to not allow Putin to kill those same people? Great morals you have there...unfortunately, my great-grandkids will be servicing the debt of your chaotic, malleable morals!!
Do me a favor, and get down off your cross...I’m sure the wood could be better used elsewhere!!
here you go
Those weren't "Russia stepping back" but Russia losing ground - lots of it
And "they're giving it back" -- you really want to compare Russia winning 5 sq km on the blood of thousands of Russian convicts and soldiers to Ukraine gaining 10,000 sq km of land?
That why we no longer want to save the ingrateful people of the world. In addition, we no longer want to be hegemons either. Time for countries to have to spend their money to create their safety with militaries of their own.
If Europe wants to assist Ukraine, by all means do so, but we do not want to assist a country that is an ATM for the corrupt people in our country use as a laundry mat to launder the U.S. citizens money to enrich themselves and destroy this country & freedom as well.
Sorry, but we no longer want to be your crutch that you lean on in a crunch.
The source was a Polish guy interviewed on the Redacted YouTube channel. I can’t confirm what his connections are but it’s clear that mainstream media is deliberately trying to portray a story that Ukraine is winning.
Ursula Von Der Leyen let slip about a month ago that 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers had died. The clip was quickly removed and re-released with that part removed. Why?
It’s because governments are trying to sell us on the idea of keeping the conflict going. If we only send a few more tanks or another $40 billion dollars then the Urainians will surely kick the Russians ass. It’s bullshit.
I take your point about provoking the war in Ukraine, which means provoking Russia to invade Ukraine. I do. But I question whether that helps us decide whether it is in our national interests to pursue our policy, such as it is, in Ukraine now that we are in this mess. In other words, does the "provocation" constitute a national interest upon which to base policy?
There are some historical lessons:
Roosevelt arguably provoked Japan to wage war against the United States. Roosevelt had effectively cut off Japan's vital supply of oil without which it could not wage war nor could it effectively survive as an industrialized nation in 1941. Roosevelt was acting to discourage Japan's barbarous invasion of China but the record should also note that China was a nation at least as corrupt and probably a lot more corrupt than present day Ukraine, yet we imposed these sanctions on Japan fully aware that it would likely lead to war.
In 1938 Britain carefully avoided provoking Germany over the invasion of the Sudetenland and the subsequent overrunning of the rest of Czechoslovakia. That appeasement did not prevent the overrunning of Czechoslovakia nor the invasion of Poland in 1939. The lesson? Appeasement did not avoid World War II. Britain's about-face and warning to Germany that it would declare war if Germany invaded Poland, did not avoid war either.
Perhaps provocation and appeasement were not the triggers either way. Perhaps it was the Ribbentrop/Molotov pact that so rearranged the balance of power in Europe that Hitler, feeling free of the threat of a two front war, invaded Poland simply because he could.
Absence of provocation did not deter Hitler from invading the Soviet Union in 1941 even though he was receiving all of the food, fuel and raw materials he could wish for from the Soviets. I believe he invaded the Soviet Union not because he was provoked but because the Soviet's conciliatory actions were irrelevant to Hitler. He invaded the Soviet Union because he could and because he thought he would win.
So one turns to Putin's invasion of Ukraine and asks, why did he do so? Well, he has a history of invading other countries such as Georgia, Crimea as well as his war in Chechnya and his adventures in Syria. Was he provoked on these occasions?
People who find that Putin was provoked cite the encroachment by NATO ever closer to Russia's homeland. They say that his invasions were in response, seriatim, to individual accessions of Eastern European nations to NATO, contrary to express promises. This assertion is disputed as a matter of fact but let's accept it for the purposes of analysis.
We ask ourselves, is Putin's reaction reasonable? We live in an age of hypersonic missiles when the travel time from anywhere in Europe to Moscow is now down to single digit minutes. What difference does it make to Russia's national security if Ukraine east of the Donbos, but not west of the river, is under his control or NATO's?
Does the balance of power in the nuclear age really change? Does it change in the conventional military sense? Does it change enough to say that it constitutes a "provocation" justifying an invasion?
We might also ask, was the alleged "provocation" of moving NATO ever closer to Russia an actual Causes Belli or, given Putin's aggression and belligerence in places like Chechnya, was the provocation justified? After Putin's invasion of Crimea and eastern Ukraine, was the provocation justified as one could argue that Roosevelt's provocation of Japan for it's invasion of China was justified?
Which is the higher value, or which value is it in the national interest of the United States to support, avoiding provocation because provocation is imprudent or upholding the principle that thou shalt not invade thy neighbor?
The real question here is to identify the national interest of the United States. I don't think provocation as the pivot gets us very far. On the one hand, good arguments can be made that the mess we are in an Ukraine is bleeding us white and exposing us to nuclear war but on the other hand one can argue persuasively that our international defense posture with our allies and neutrals depends on the principle of supporting sovereignty.
My point is that we will do almost anything except the excruciating work of actually identifying our national interest. And that more than the issue of provocation tells us why we are in the mess we are in.
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