Zelensky Declares it Is ‘Absolutely Fair’ For Ukraine to Attack Targets Inside Russia

Russia isn’t a threat to Europe.

Excuse me, Ukraine is in Europe.

Russia invaded Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968, Poland in 1989 and Romania in 1991. It invaded Georgia since then, and supports separatists in Moldova. Its puppet at the time Armenia invaded Azerbaijan. All of these were attacks in Europe. Russia has been making one after another attack in Europe, and you’re blind to it.

You and Mr. Kennan have the right to your opinion, but your opinion that Russia isn’t a threat to Eureop is wrong. Germany said don’t fast track Ukraine for NATO membership because this will provoke Russia. We followed Germany’s advise, and we wound up in this war. Germany was wrong. Doesn’t mean Germany was evil, nor Kennan, nor you, just wrong. Appeasement is taken as a sign of weakness by aggressors and causes war. Only peace through strength deters war and, moreover, is a winning strategy because freedom and democracy will eventually win. Just be patient.

Your idea that NATO is weaker because it has expanded is simply ludicrous. Yes, obviously, as Germany falls away from the front line of confrontation with Russia, it will feel safer and its natural tendency will be to let its guard down. This is a tendency we should resist. Now that Russia’s aggressiveness is again manifest, we have an opportunity to rethink NATO’s internal structure.

Regarding the Cuban Missile Crisis, I also once thought what you thought (that it was not merely the closest we came to a nuclear war, but was actually close). There’s been new scholarship that questions as to whether we were actually close. On the possibility you’re not aware, I’ll review this new scholarship.

In real time, we Americans were told (I was a politically-conscious boy, and so I too was told) that Russia did NOT have nuclear warheads on the island. They DID have nuclear warheads on the island. And, what is more, Castro asked Khrushchev to launch a nuclear attack on the U.S. That’s pretty close, isn’t it? Maybe closer than you might’ve thought given the misinformation disseminated by the administration to the American people.

But Khrushchev said no. We’re not going to risk our eventual ideological victory. He said I have to get my missiles off that island and away that crazy man Fidel Castro. Khrushchev believed communism would bury us in refrigerators, automobiles, and other middle class indulgences, not with bombs.

If you would stop and think about it, why would Xi over in China have a nuclear war with us? Then to whom would he sell his cheap manufactured goods? (Or, from whom would he steal technology?) Besides, he thinks the Chinese people won’t succumb to the personal-level corruption of us in the west. So, as long as China plays within the rules regarding military adventure, intellectual property theft, slave labor, etc., as tough as enforcing these rules are, we can work with China.

But, Russia, I don’t know. Russia is going the way of North Korea. Isolated and paranoid, aggressive and potentially very dangerous given its nuclear arsenal.

I would ask you why you think its its not fair, but then I see you have already heard from several others on the issue.

Nothing of your most recent post is at all responsive to anything I said or anything remotely connected to this thread.

I accept your concession.

While I believe we should have no part in this fight, why should Russia be able to bomb the crap out of Ukraine but Ukraine not be allowed to respond in kind?

You mean you will take our hundred or so drones a day leveling your towns and you'll like it, is not acceptable policy?

We are in the process of isolating ourselves. Most of the world is ignoring the sanctions on Russia including two NATO members, Hungary and Turkey.

40 More Countries Want to Join BRICS, Says South Africa

The BRICS group of fast-developing economies — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — has positioned itself as an alternative to the Western-dominated global order. BRICS officials say that spirit has sparked the interest of some 40 countries in joining as the bloc gears up for a summit in August.

Current BRICS chair South Africa is hosting the three-day meeting in Johannesburg next month and says BRICS expansion will be high on the agenda.

Argentina, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are among the countries looking to join, South Africa's BRICS ambassador, Anil Sooklal, told journalists, adding that it demonstrated the confidence Global South nations have in the organization.

"Twenty-two countries have formally approached BRICS countries to become full members. There's an equal number of countries that has been informally asking about becoming BRICS members," Sooklal said.

BRICS is seen as "a powerful force," said Sooklal, who added that measured by purchasing power parity it now accounts for 31.7% of global GDP, having overtaken the G-7 — a forum of advanced democracies that includes the U.S.

Except for Russian President Vladimir Putin, who can't travel to South Africa because he's wanted by an international court for war crimes in Ukraine, all the BRICS heads of state will be attending the summit in person next month.

"I accept your concession."

How noble of you. And here I was thinking that you were just retarded but now I know that you are pompous too.

These latest drone attacks are not targeting military targets but random civilian targets. I believe that’s a war crime.

You should include Slovenia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and Chile, on the list of wealthy, democratic, capitalistic countries of the world. Others are coming on board all the time. I expect Romania. Costa Rica, Panama, Dominican Republic, Malaysia, Mauritius and Botswana to join us soon. There were antecedents, but I believe we, the U.S., got this movement to democracy and free markets started in 1776.

Oh, and thanks for pointing out that each of these countries retains its sovereignty in spite of free trade agreements and military alliances. Hungary and Turkey, like every other country in the alliance, makes its own foreign policy.

As for the BRICS, there was a time India and other countries sought to be non-aligned. Now, what are they doing? Picking sides? Maybe. But I don’t think so. I think they’re exploring possibilities. I don’t think, for example, that India is going to stop holding elections. In any case, we’ll see.

What? Moscow can attack Kiev but Kiev can’t attack Moscow? Tokyo can bomb Pearl Harbor, but Washington can’t bomb Tokyo? So long as they do it on their own steam without US money or kit, it’s only fair.

“They tend to hate Muscovites”

I hope you’re right.

Wrong again money whore douchebag

No, Zel the Clown is right. It is absolutely proper for the slavs to hit back at the other slavs. They can make peace or keep killing each other until nobody is left.

This internecine war is none of our business.

Russia isn’t a threat to Europe. Excuse me, Ukraine is in Europe.

Ukraine is one country in Europe. Russia doesn't have the conventional military power to invade and occupy Europe. It is having a hard time doing that in Ukraine. Biden and his supporters like to use the Domino Theory that was first employed in Vietnam. If we don't stop Putin in Ukraine, then Poland and the Baltics are next, conveniently ignoring that they are NATO countries and that Russia doesn't have the capability to project such power.

Russia invaded Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968, Poland in 1989 and Romania in 1991. It invaded Georgia since then, and supports separatists in Moldova. Its puppet at the time Armenia invaded Azerbaijan. All of these were attacks in Europe. Russia has been making one after another attack in Europe, and you’re blind to it.

We were smart enough not to get militarily involved in those "invasions" recognizing the Soviet's sphere of influence. The Soviets/Russians did not invade Poland in 1989. And they wisely stayed out of Poland during the Solidarnosc' movement. All of those countries listed are now independent after the fall of the Soviet Union.

You and Mr. Kennan have the right to your opinion, but your opinion that Russia isn’t a threat to Eureop is wrong. Germany said don’t fast track Ukraine for NATO membership because this will provoke Russia. We followed Germany’s advise, and we wound up in this war. Germany was wrong. Doesn’t mean Germany was evil, nor Kennan, nor you, just wrong. Appeasement is taken as a sign of weakness by aggressors and causes war. Only peace through strength deters war and, moreover, is a winning strategy because freedom and democracy will eventually win. Just be patient.

Kennan was right. We missed a real opportunity to incorporate Russia into Europe after the collapse. Instead, we expanded NATO. We are now living with the consequences in much the same way that we are dealing with the consequences of Carter's actions in Iran.

Your idea that NATO is weaker because it has expanded is simply ludicrous. Yes, obviously, as Germany falls away from the front line of confrontation with Russia, it will feel safer and its natural tendency will be to let its guard down. This is a tendency we should resist. Now that Russia’s aggressiveness is again manifest, we have an opportunity to rethink NATO’s internal structure.

I would posit that NATO is weaker and that Ukraine will divide the alliance, which has outlived its usefulness. NATO is a great deal for the former Warsaw Pact countries as well as others like Finland and Sweden. It is an insurance policy where the US acts as the guarantor of their sovereignty up to and including nuclear war and pays most of the premiums. The US is the world's biggest debtor nation. We can't afford these endless wars, which only weaken us.

Poll: Less Than Half of Germans Support Defending NATO Allies

A new opinion poll has revealed that two-thirds of German citizens now fear being drawn into a direct military conflict with the Russian Federation, with only 45% saying that they want Germany to come to the aid of another NATO member state if it were attacked.

The polling data, which also indicates the German population fears war and inflation more than all other issues facing the country, emerges from the results of the “Security Report 2023,” carried out by the Allensbach Institute on behalf of the Center for Strategy and Higher Leadership, the daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reports.

Regarding the Cuban Missile Crisis, I also once thought what you thought (that it was not merely the closest we came to a nuclear war, but was actually close). There’s been new scholarship that questions as to whether we were actually close. On the possibility you’re not aware, I’ll review this new scholarship.

From Amb Jack Matlock, a career FSO, and trhe last US Ambassador to the Soviet Union. Ukraine: Tragedy of a Nation Divided

"When I hear comments now such as, “Russia has no right to claim a ‘sphere of influence,’” I am puzzled. It is not a question of legal “rights,” but of probable consequences. It is as if someone announces, “We never passed a law of gravity so we can ignore it.” No one is saying that Ukraine does not have a “right” to apply for NATO membership. Of course it does. The question is whether the members of the alliance would serve their own interest if they agreed. In fact they would assume a very dangerous liability.

I point this out as a veteran of the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. At that time I was assigned to the American embassy in Moscow and it fell my lot to translate some of Khrushchev’s messages to President John Kennedy. Why is it relevant? Just this: in terms of international law, the Soviet Union had a “right” to place nuclear weapons on Cuba when the Cuban government requested them, the more so since the United States had deployed nuclear missiles of comparable range that could strike the USSR from Turkey. But it was an exceedingly dangerous move since the United States had total military dominance of the Caribbean and under no circumstances would tolerate the deployment of nuclear missiles in its backyard. Fortunately for both countries and the rest of the world, Kennedy and Khrushchev were able to defuse the situation. Only later did we learn how close we came to a nuclear exchange.

If you would stop and think about it, why would Xi over in China have a nuclear war with us? Then to whom would he sell his cheap manufactured goods? (Or, from whom would he steal technology?) Besides, he thinks the Chinese people won’t succumb to the personal-level corruption of us in the west. So, as long as China plays within the rules regarding military adventure, intellectual property theft, slave labor, etc., as tough as enforcing these rules are, we can work with China.

No one wants a nuclear war if they are sane. But events can escalate and go out of control or there is an accident. I don't share your views of China, which is not playing by the rules now. China has a long term strategy to defeat the US, its main global rival. We have a compromised President and many "captured" elites who have been taking money from China and have investments in China. It is no coincidence that we just had a parade of US leaders going to China to meet with Xi, including Musk, Bill Gates, Jamie Dimon, and Kissinger. They all want decoupling off the table. China continues to run huge trade surpluses with the US. We have become dependent for so many items including pharmaceuticals, consumer goods, solar panels, rare earth metals, etc. Biden's Greemn New Deal is a boon for China, which stands to profit the most.

But, Russia, I don’t know. Russia is going the way of North Korea. Isolated and paranoid, aggressive and potentially very dangerous given its nuclear arsenal.

The West is becoming isolated. Putin just hosted a meeting with African countries and Russia will be a big player at the BRICS meeting in South Africa in August. Russia has a major role as an exporter of needed global commodities. It has 8.9% of the world's oil exports; 10.3% of the wheat exports; and 15.5% of the world's fertilizer exports (number 1 in the world). A global political realignment is underway sparked by the war in Ukraine. It is a realignment detrimental to the US.

I see we agree on some things and have some probably irreconcilable differences on other things:

1. We agree that Russia has been invading one after another country in Europe.

Where we disagree is that you say Russia invading other countries isn’t a threat to “Europe” (meaning whatever part Russia doesn’t invade) and, that the countries Russia invades should just surrender. I, in contrast, believe in Peace Through Strength.

2. We agree that it was pragmatic to not defend the countries Russia invaded back when there was a Warsaw Pact.

Where we disagree is: now that we are six times the size of Russia in population, and twenty times the size in GDP, the calculation is different.

3. We agree that most people would rather somebody else fight. Germany felt a lot more obligated to join into the defense of NATO when five Russian army groups were on the other side of the Fulda Gap than when Poland stood between it and Russia. There are challenges to military alliances.

4. Still a matter of disagreement. You say you translated some documents at an embassy back during the Cuban Missile Crisis when you were, what?, 30 years old. That would make you 91 years old today.

Possibly because of your advanced age, you can’t process recent scholarship on the Cuban Missile Crisis, nor the logic of Mutual Assured Destruction (and why that worked overall as well as worked in particular during the Cuban Missile Crisis). Let me simply repeat that MAD worked because both the Soviets and the west were rational.

“[Mutual Assured Destruction] is based on the theory of rational deterrence, which holds that the threat of using strong weapons against the enemy prevents the enemy’s use of those same weapons. The strategy is a form of Nash equilibrium in which, once armed, neither side has any incentive to initiate a conflict or to disarm.” from the wikipedia entry

HOWEVER for this equilibrium, the players need to be rational (which the Cuban Missile Crisis reveals that Castro wasn’t). Rogue states, terrorists, and so forth, pose a different challenge. There is also the problem of miscommunication. The argument can be made that nuclear war is more probable now than it was during the Cold War.

5. You think it’s swell that Putin likes to surround himself with communists, left-wing radicals, military dictators, and the like; and, I wonder what’s India doing in that mix. I, on the other hand, like the U.S. hanging out with countries that are prosperous and democratic.