Posted on 01/27/2023 6:38:57 AM PST by Chunga85
Until it decided to confront Moscow with an existential military threat in Ukraine, Washington confined the use of American military power to conflicts that Americans could afford to lose, wars with weak opponents in the developing world from Saigon to Baghdad that did not present an existential threat to U.S. forces or American territory. This time—a proxy war with Russia—is different.
(Excerpt) Read more at theamericanconservative.com ...
I lived through that era, and the US defeat in Southeast Asia was a disaster, leading to major Soviet and Soviet allied advances all over the world. Whether the facts justified US intervention before that intervention took place is a good question. But US intervention changed those facts. The major problem in SEA was the same that has bedeviled all US interventions since WWII- overly ambitious political goals due to the need to “support democracy” even when that was impossible to do and the timid pursuit of military action due to fear of escalation.
Ukraine is not, nor has ever been a member of the common family of nations.
It has always been a corrupt regime put in place and supported by immoral and corrupt people like yourself.
Next to his handle it says what?
It is an absolute shame that brave men and women had to die so that critters like that can breed.
“May they continue to get mangled in the Ukraine.”
Wait..I thought you said you had no dog in the hunt.
Would you say the same about Russia?
We are about to be force fed a dose of humility so *massive* that it will kill a lot of us. And it should.
Please point me to one treaty which binds the US to the defense of Ukraine.
Certainly:
https://www.congress.gov/treaty-document/106th-congress/16/document-text
Until there is a war, all activities against the determinations of a country is considered criminal. You’ll notice in the body of the treaty:
“Mutual assistance available under the Treaty includes: taking of testimony or statements of persons; providing documents, records, and articles of evidence; serving documents; locating or identifying persons; transferring persons in custody for testimony or other purposes; executing requests for searches and seizures; assisting in proceedings related to restraint, confiscation, forfeiture of assets, restitution, and collection of fines; and any other form of assistance not prohibited by the laws of the requested state.”
So the providing of information against people who violated their laws is the same, and has included, providing information on people that were moving munitions and information for the violent attacks of Ukraine people. The telling part of the treaty on this is “and any other form of assistance not prohibited by the laws of the requested state.
Also, the US is a strong member of NATO which has been in a partnership with the Ukraine since the early to mid 1990’s with their joining the North Atlantic Cooperation Council (1991) and the Partnership for Peace program (1994). It was in February 1994 that Ukraine was the first post-Soviet country to conclude a framework agreement with NATO in the framework of the Partnership for Peace initiative, supporting the initiative of Central and Eastern European countries to join NATO. That treaty signed into NATO from the Ukraine was signed in in December 1994 and Ukraine was the first post-Soviet country to conclude a protection framework agreement with NATO in the framework of the Partnership for Peace initiative, supporting the initiative of Central and Eastern European countries to join NATO.
If you tack the P for P initiative along with the criminal treaty between the US and the Ukraine above mentioned, signed by Clinton in 1999, I’d say we were under treaty agreement with the Ukraine for almost anything resembling a criminal and military attack upon the country.
I am in direct disagreement with the arming of the Ukraine with anything but defensive weapons, but the comedian in charge over there is going to push the envelope on their uses especially when the determination of what belongs to who is blurred so bad. And it appears we’re stuck with previous mismanagement at our location as much as theirs.
wy69
Silent enim leges inter arma
Aggression against whom? A NATO member country? Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014 after the US/NATO engineered coup of the duly elected Ukrainian President and annexed Crimea. The coup also spawned the separatist movement in the Donbas.
But another is that another power might decide that precipitating a wider war is in its interests: China invading Taiwan in the face of Western weakness, or Poland acting to drag NATO into the conflict. Like the Russians, many of those here on the other side seem to think Washington is the only power with agency.
What about the botched and ignominious bug out from Afghanistan? What kind of signal did that send not only to China, but Russia? The US is the primary funder of the proxy war in Ukraine. We supply most of the weapons and munitions along with paying the salaries of the government, including the pay of the military and government pensions. We are the 500 pound gorilla who runs the war and NATO. Poland won't do squat without approval from the US.
And tac nukes to turn the tide of battle won't work. First off, they won't work on dispersed military forces. Even if a hole is knocked in Ukrainian defensive lines, Russia lacks the mobility to take advantage of it.
Tactical nukes would be a game changer in Ukraine just as two nuclear weapons ended the war against Japan. Beyond the military impact is the psychological effect it would have on the Ukrainian military, government, and populace. We have tactical nukes as well. In the bad old days of the Cold War when we had over 500,000 troops in Europe, tactical nukes were an option should the Russians come thru the Fulda Gap.
Secondly, any WMD use would bring almost immediate US and NATO intervention.
LOL. Do you have a source for that assertion? Nowhere in NATO Doctrine and the NATO treaty does the use of WMD against a non-NATO member trigger an automatic intervention. How would we intervene? Launch a full scale nuclear attack against Russia or a limited nuclear strike against Russian forces in Ukraine? I seriously doubt NATO would approve of an all out nuclear war that would plunge the West into pile of ashes. What happens to Russia is really irrelevant. No one wins a nuclear war.
If the US simply makes it plain that this is simply a war about Ukraine and not regime change in Moscow or about seizing actual and not claimed Russian territory, the war is not an existential threat to Russia and the Russians know that.
The US has made it quite clear that this is a war against Russia and regime change. Biden is on record of saying that. SECDEF Austin said our objective is to remove Putin and weaken Russia militarily. The new German Foreign Minister proclaimed recently that we are at war with Russia. Others have declared Putin a war criminal.
And indeed we are at war with Russia asymmetrically. We have declared war on the Russian currency and economy. We are doing everything in our power to isolate Russia and make it a pariah. We are targeting not only Russian leadership, but also, the Russian people. It will be very difficult to walk all this back. The actual effect has been a global political realignment with most countries ignoring Western sanctions, including NATO members Hungary and Turkey. And we put at risk the dollar as the world's reserve currency. It is also clear that the West is also suffering from the impact of the sanctions, which have backfired in many ways.
Russia considers Crimea as much a part of Russia as Moscow. It will never agree to ceding it back to Ukraine. And the Donbas region is almost as sacrosanct as Crimea at this point after over 8 years of civil war. Ukraine could have avoided this if they had observed the Minsk Agreements, which gave greater autonomy to the separatist regions.
I disagree with your statement that the war is not an existential threat to Russia. They certainly believe that is the case based on the sanctions that have been placed on it. And who blew up the NordStream II pipeline? NATO expansion after the fall of the Soviet Union was a mistake.
Gotta eliminate carbon somehow... a few hundred million people out to do it.
“It has always been a corrupt regime put in place and supported by immoral and corrupt people”
You mean like the Russians who ran the place until 2014?
There was no coup, it was the duly-elected Rada who removed Yanukovych from power. It is Russia who is now using military force to remove the duly-elected president of Ukraine under the spurious claim of “denazification.”
It was also Russia who spurred the civil war in the Donbas by funneling weapons and foreign fighters to ethnic Russian separatists, who are a minority in both Luhansk and Donetsk.
When the Russians “ran it” there was no war. Once Victoria Nuland and the Bidens (Joe and Hunter) got involved running the place, we have widespread death and destruction. In order to save the village, we had to destroy it.
“In order to save the village, we had to destroy it.”
Russia started the war.
You mean like the scum who promised the Russians they would not expand NATO beyond the eastern border of Germany in the early 90s?
“You mean like the scum who promised the Russians they would not expand NATO beyond the eastern border of Germany in the early 90s?”
What treaty said this, exactly? And when was it ratified by the US Senate in accordance with the Constitution?
Your hero BJ Klintoon.
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