Posted on 09/25/2022 3:58:12 PM PDT by AndyJackson
You are very naive if you believe Russia gives a flip about Donbas other than stealing land and resources. Russia threatens the USA now more than in 1982. The Speaker of the Duma even talks of reversing the “illegal” transfer of Alaska. They brag constantly of their ability to “win” a nuclear war. The Donbas takes no military “hits” from Ukraine. The Donbas is Ukraine as my friends and family there can tell you. Russian crimes in the Donbas are unspeakable and precede 2014.
As for the US being broke, that raises an issue that intersects with the Ukraine war in one respect that is little mentioned: the role of the dollar as the global trade and reserve currency. That is what permits the US to finance its massive public debt with foreign borrowing.
No small part of the reason for the dollar's value is that the US is a global military and political power. Maintaining that role and the dollar's value implicitly requires that we act as the global policeman against economically disruptive aggression. And, contrary to what you seem to think, the cost of helping Ukraine is a pittance compared to the value to the US of the dollar's role as a trade and reserve currency.
Why not enter into peace talks in good faith and find out, instead of trying to read Putin’s mind? Why does Biden obstinately refuse peace talks every time? What’s the harm? Is what Russia is asking for, in a final negotiation, any threat to the US homeland in the slightest? Is it worth risking the end of civilization?
And what part of your homeland would you negotiate away to criminal invaders? Seized resources will only strengthen and embolden the 22-year dictator. If you want to deter nuclear war then show strength not weakness.
“No small part of the reason for the dollar’s value is that the US is a global military and political power. Maintaining that role and the dollar’s value implicitly requires that we act as the global policeman against economically disruptive aggression.”
That is precisely the problem, and the source of the impending decades-in-coming economic collapse and, quite possibly, the deaths of hundreds of millions of souls in a nuclear war - which would’ve been driven by madmen like Biden, Putin, and Zelensky and their own unmoderated guesses and assumptions about “disruptive aggression” and intent. But thanks for the candor, boomer.
“And what part of your homeland would you negotiate away to criminal invaders?”
Huh? What of the US homeland could possibly be negotiated away in Russo-Ukrainian peace talks? I’m not following.
The question is: what is Russia demanding in peace negotiations? Has Biden or Blinken ever even listened to a first request? Has any neocon?
Is it out of concern over nuclear war? Or do you regard Russian claims as legitimate? And on what basis do you regard the unprovoked Russian invasion of Ukraine as legal?
Moreover, if Russia is justified in such measures, then why would you criticize far less provocative actions by the US and NATO in assisting the defense of Ukraine by the supply of arms and equipment? After all, Ukraine borders NATO members.
Putin demanded Ukraine agree to never join NATO, a de-militarized Ukraine, recognition of Crimea as being Russian, recognition that Luhansk and Donbas Oblasts are independent, giving evey Oblast the right to leave Ukraine and recognition of Russian as an official language. Its a de-facto end to Ukrainian independence and existence as a country.
There’s clearly a difference of opinion in the central USA to that if eastern Europe and the UK.
I wonder if Alaskans view the threat from Russia tge same way. When Sarah Palin said she could almost see Russia from her window, maybe she meant in a good way.
Oh it was a tiring weekend - I guess I wasn’t keeping up Thanks
“When Sarah Palin said she could almost see Russia from her window”
If you were informed with sources than the msm, you’d know that was a myth. https://checkyourfact.com/2018/03/14/fact-check-did-sarah-palin-say-i-can-see-russia-from-my-house/
And remember I DO speak from precisely the “Central USA” perspective. Let the U.K. and EU deal with these border skirmishes and get their energy sources cut off. Would love to help, but WE ARE BROKE.
(1) You see no US security interest as to Ukraine. I see it in the threat to NATO members Poland, the Baltic republics, and others. I also see the Putin regime, its aggressive nature, and effort to reassemble a Russian sphere of influence in Eastern Europe as direct threats to US security interests.
(2) The risk of nuclear war. You see it as a reason to accommodate and appease Russia in its attack on Ukraine. But where would you draw the line? At NATO's borders? Yet Russia, under control of madman Putin, has demanded that NATO member Poland have no NATO troops or facilities on its territory and that, as a former member of the Warsaw Pact, it must accept Russian influence and political demands. Would you agree to that because Russia has threatened nuclear war?
And how would you expect to discourage nuclear proliferation against the obvious lesson that a nuclear state run by a madman who issues nuclear threats always gets his way?
Ukraine would not be in its current fix as a victim of Russian aggression if it had kept its nukes after the Soviet Union collapsed. Notably, as the price for giving up nuclear weapons, Ukraine received assurances against aggression from Russia, with the US pledged to hold Russia accountable for those assurances.
(3) We disagree on the legitimacy of Russian claims. There was never a formal, long-term pledge not to expand NATO, and efforts to negotiate one foundered on excessive demands by Putin and menacing behavior toward Russia's neighbors.
Neo-Nazis are not a significant political force in Ukraine, but Russia has sent elements of the Russian Imperial Legion to fight in Ukraine, the Legion being the paramilitary arm of the ultranationalist Russian Imperial Movement.
The United States designated that group as a terrorist organization in 2020, and the German BND classifies it as neo-Nazi based on its ideology and use of Nazi symbols and Hitler pictures. Germany has rejected Russian claims that the Ukrainian government has neo-Nazis.
In sum, Russia is using its own neo-Nazis to assist in the invasion of a neighbor on the false pretext that it has neo-Nazis in postitions of power. I do not see that as providing a valid reason to attack a militarily weak neighbor.
Russia has not made any formal claims to the UN that its attack on Ukraine was provoked or justified under international law. Doing so would be a major blunder because no one who knows the facts takes such claims seriously and submitting them to UN jurisdiction would result in an investigation and formal disapproval. Putin has even declined to submit his claims against Ukraine to a vote in the normally acquiescent Russian Duma for a declaration of war or its equivalent.
(4) Why no US negotiations with Russia? In fact, there have been diplomatic discussions with Russia, but no sound basis for peace talks has emerged. As the politically dangerous mobilization demonstrates, Putin wants victory by dismembering and subjugating Ukraine. Any talks would be as to the schedule on which that would be accomplished.
“You see it as a reason to accommodate and appease Russia in its attack on Ukraine”
Stopped reading there. Done, sorry, gotta move on.
Yes, having nukes matters. Call it what you want. We “appeased” all thru the Cold War. Think Afghanistan, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and the entire postwar start of the Warsaw Pact. The line was NATO’s borders, which, as a US “security concern”, never moved east of Berlin when the USSR existed, unlike now for reasons neocons never, ever articulate.
Having hypersonic missiles and nukes and the likely ability to wipe out humanity has consequences.
Also decades of “world policing” and getting to 1.3X debt-to-GNP ratio has consequences. You boomers simply cannot accept that the unipolar world is over.
More than that, along with military power, the US alone has a unique combination of other attributes that reinforce the dollar: a massive domestic economy; honest accounting; the rule of law; stable democratic government; powerful international lending institutuions like the IMF and World Bank; cultural attractiveness; and a lack of a credible rival currency as a global alternative.
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