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If you think the American people want another nation building exercise far away from us (while Germany busily buys Russia gas through Nord Stream 2 and dems blo

If you think the American people want another nation building exercise far away from us (while Germany busily buys Russia gas through Nord Stream 2 and dems block sanctions on it) think again. A few quick points. The US has a lot to lose here. This area is in russia's back yard, not ours. If we fight on the ground (without speaking the local language - Russian) we are back into our afghan / syria stuff. Russia has nuclear weapons. If you say you can blow russia away think again. And again, the US has a LOT to loose, I suspect the russian populace would be able to deal with casualities etc better than the US. When we say we are going to cut them off financially, realize that a huge amount of energy flows from Russia to Europe. And especially if they go after Ukraine then, they would have enormous control over EU energy markets. Again, not saying EU couldn't handle it, but do they have the stomach for this? Germany BTW has shut DOWN a lot of their zero carbon nuclear power (to be "green") so they are now more dependent then ever on natural gas. Does President Biden have the popularity and support of his caucus to start a war? Bernie Sanders is on board with this? The US did this huffing already with Crimea. They did this with Afghanistan where we were assured repeatedly that NO evacuation was underway while we literally watched an evacuation. The confusing thing to me in all this is, where is Europe? France always want to be a bigger player internationally - this is a chance for the EU to demonstrate some soft or hard power if they wanted. If there was something going on with mexico in our backyard, I can't even imagine us not getting involved (or cuba - we'd def push back on Russia putting stuff there).

bluGill 5y ago
The US and western Europe. While everyone blames the US, there are a lot of countries in Europe that prefer the US to Russia and are doing their own thing. They have a lot of lose if Russia takes over Ukraine.
- onphonenow 5y ago
  Explain to me why this is not a European led effort? The US is thousands of miles away from this Russian border dispute. France is always banging on about how Europe should be more respected / have a stronger defense story. Russia has a much much BIGGER trade relationship with Europe. Where is the EU? They literally are not even in the meetings, it's kind of comical. So the countries that are a) close, b) have economic relationships that matter etc are silent and the US administration is strutting around saying they are going to put a gun to Russia's head or whatever. The parallel would be if Russia was going to put a missile system in Cuba, and the US just sat around, and Turkey or some country thousands of miles away started negotiating over it with Russia. Hell no - the US would be front and center in that negotiation And BTW - this happened - the Cuban missile crisis. And the US WAS front and center there. Russia seems to have gotten clean away with Crimea. Are there similar underlying divisions in Ukraine? Ie, a russian speaking portion and a more western half? That is exactly the type of thing they are good at exploiting, and the on the ground support for the US in part of the country may not be robust. That's a bad mix for foreign policy intervention. I'm really hoping Biden has is head screwed on straight for this one.
  - bluGill 5y ago
    That is a great question. I doubt Europe was out of the loop, but nothing more is clear. They could be a bystander only informed of things (which brings up your questions). They could be letting/making the US lead for their own reasons. The following come to mind: they don't want to be seen as in charge - the US is drawing any negative attention. They can't agree on leaders and the US is better than "the other country". They want to make the US look good for reasons. Russia could be giving all credit to the US for various reasons. I have no idea what the truth is. It might be one of the above, it might not (my guess).

bluGill 5y ago

The US and western Europe. While everyone blames the US, there are a lot of countries in Europe that prefer the US to Russia and are doing their own thing. They have a lot of lose if Russia takes over Ukraine.

onphonenow 5y ago
Explain to me why this is not a European led effort? The US is thousands of miles away from this Russian border dispute. France is always banging on about how Europe should be more respected / have a stronger defense story. Russia has a much much BIGGER trade relationship with Europe. Where is the EU? They literally are not even in the meetings, it's kind of comical. So the countries that are a) close, b) have economic relationships that matter etc are silent and the US administration is strutting around saying they are going to put a gun to Russia's head or whatever. The parallel would be if Russia was going to put a missile system in Cuba, and the US just sat around, and Turkey or some country thousands of miles away started negotiating over it with Russia. Hell no - the US would be front and center in that negotiation And BTW - this happened - the Cuban missile crisis. And the US WAS front and center there. Russia seems to have gotten clean away with Crimea. Are there similar underlying divisions in Ukraine? Ie, a russian speaking portion and a more western half? That is exactly the type of thing they are good at exploiting, and the on the ground support for the US in part of the country may not be robust. That's a bad mix for foreign policy intervention. I'm really hoping Biden has is head screwed on straight for this one.
- bluGill 5y ago
  That is a great question. I doubt Europe was out of the loop, but nothing more is clear. They could be a bystander only informed of things (which brings up your questions). They could be letting/making the US lead for their own reasons. The following come to mind: they don't want to be seen as in charge - the US is drawing any negative attention. They can't agree on leaders and the US is better than "the other country". They want to make the US look good for reasons. Russia could be giving all credit to the US for various reasons. I have no idea what the truth is. It might be one of the above, it might not (my guess).