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What diplomatic off ramp does Russia need? There is a simple first step towards redemption and that is get out of Ukraine right now. Better yesterday. Western

by bhaak 4y ago

What diplomatic off ramp does Russia need? There is a simple first step towards redemption and that is get out of Ukraine right now. Better yesterday. Western Europe just learned a painful lesson that you can't trust Russia. Eastern Europe tried to hammer that point into the brains of the other European politicians but it didn't work until now.

roenxi 4y ago
There were a bunch of people making a deal about how we'd gone out and done piracy to Russian yachts, legal questions be damned. If there are any options people are not looking for them. There'll be something. > Western Europe just learned a painful lesson that you can't trust Russia. Do you recall what happened to people who trusted the British? A lot of them died. And they were almost the nice Europeans. Trusting the Americans is foolish, trusting the Chinese is insane. The Indians will turn out to be perfidious in time. Everyone is untrustworthy. There should be more serious grappling with why the Russians did this (and Crimea in 2014) than "Putin bad". The last time a president started trying to calm the situation down he was hounded for it - the whole strategy here is mad and stupid. If the West can deal on good terms with China and the Middle East then we can be friends with Russia too. We need serious attempts and ongoing discussion about how to stop military escalation.
- junofan 4y ago
  > There should be more serious grappling with why the Russians did this (and Crimea in 2014) than "Putin bad" There won’t be. We are being lied to.
- jeromegv 4y ago
  > There should be more serious grappling with why the Russians did this (and Crimea in 2014) than "Putin bad". Why don't you give us your explanation? It's just very odd to advocate for an appeasement policy when the aggressor keeps wanting more (first Crimea, then tried to take the whole Ukraine by going straight for the capital). It wasn't just Eastern Ukraine with Russian-speaking population, they went straight to the capital. I'd say the west is perfectly fine with ignoring a lot of their principles for the sake of peace and money, China and Middle East are very good examples of it as you just said. The west was even perfectly happy to roll over their principles just to get the gas they needed from Russia. It looks like it's Russia that self destroyed all those economical agreements for the sake of wanting to expand their borders.
  - roenxi 4y ago
    - stoltzmann 4y ago
      The US has not been marching NATO towards Russia. It's ex-eastern bloc countries willingly joining the alliance to be protected from Russian aggression. If Russia did not have a long history of invading their neighbors, there would be no need or will to join the alliance.
      - roenxi 4y ago
        If, say, Cuba joined a Russian military alliance of their own free will and started setting up a military installation with a couple of Russian missiles of uncertain providence, would the US tut-tut quietly or would it be a war situation? Because as I recall it was considered a major crisis that nearly doomed us all. And Cuba is further from the US than Ukraine is from Russia. Those countries should have been vetoed out of NATO after considering the look of the situation to Russia. There should be no countries aligned with the US military within a very wide margin of Russia, and the alliance should have stopped expanding north-east when the USSR fell. Militaries deal in present realities, not how voluntarily people signed up for military alliances. Russia should not have to wonder how trustworthy the US is being (spoiler: the US is not trustworthy although they are a lot less capricious than the average nation). It is easy to see why they might have felt pressured to invade after the Ukrainian revolution, without needing to resort to "well Putin must just be that evil & crazy!".
        stoltzmann 4y ago
        If Cuba decides to align itself with the USSR, then it has the right to do so. Same as Ukraine has the right to align with the West rather than Russia. >There should be no countries aligned with the US military within a very wide margin of Russia Why, just because Russia wants that, so that it's free to invade it's neighbors? People in Eastern Europe do want to be part of NATO for a simple reason - not to have to worry about their big neighbor deciding that it's time for a "liberation". This is not about aggression, this is about not being invaded.
- KptMarchewa 4y ago
  >We need serious attempts and ongoing discussion about how to stop military escalation. History has shown us that appeasement is the worst possible policy.
  - roenxi 4y ago
    The future will show large nuclear arsenals are the worst policy. It is not the 1930s and Russia is not Germany. The borders of the USSR have retreated over most of our lifetime, Moscow controlled all of Ukraine as recently as 1990 and gave it up more-or-less voluntarily. If the US can invade the middle east and not be called an authoritarian regime, I don't think we need to draw a red line at the Ukraine border against the other nuclear superpower. And we should be negotiating.
    - js8 4y ago
      While I disagree with your other comments, I totally agree with denuclearization. Expanding NATO (founded on nuclear deterrence paradigm) as a reaction to Russia is wrong.
      - phicoh 4y ago
        As we can clearly see now, NATO does not need nuclear deterrence again Russia's conventional weapons. What protects, for example, the Baltic countries is not the threat that the US might take initiative to drop a nuclear bomb on Russia, no it is the vast conventional capabilities of the US. Just supplying a relatively small amount of weapons to Ukraine is enough to destroy most of the Russian army.
        js8 4y ago
        If NATO doesn't need nuclear weapons, one more reason to get rid of them. The truth is number of states that endorse nuclear weapons expands as NATO expands, and I see that as a security risk.
        4y ago
- iSnow 4y ago
  >We need serious attempts and ongoing discussion about how to stop military escalation. Bit late in the day, isn't it? The EU leaders were trying to talk to Putin till their eyes glassed over and Biden was willing to talk to Russia about legit security concerns. Yet, what did that get us? Military escalation. Looking back, maybe the West should have put a couple of tank divisions around Kyiv and Charkiv and tell Putin to better not mess with them.
  - js8 4y ago
    > Biden was willing to talk to Russia about legit security concerns Jeffrey Sachs claimed on Democracy Now that USA refused the diplomatic talks with Russia in November 2021. France, Germany and NATO tried, but apparently Putin felt that US is a key player. Whether true or not, it was wrong for the US to act as if it's just Ukraine's (and Europe's) problem, because it isn't - US has been providing Ukraine with some military support.
    - iSnow 4y ago
      There's a series of videos that document how Macron talked to Putin (including the famous one where Putin cuts him short because he has to train for ice hockey), and Macron clearly says he has the message from Biden that he'd meet Putin. That must have been in February.
- somewhereoutth 4y ago
  > done piracy to Russian yachts which of course is the greater crime. Property rights for the ultra rich above everything else!
gdy 4y ago
"Western Europe just learned a painful lesson that you can't trust Russia. " Russia learnt that it cannot trust West when NATO started expanding into Eastern Europe and ex-USSR not too long after Warsaw pact and the USSR dissolved. Quite strange to say that West 'trusted' Russia after it betrayed Russia.
- wil421 4y ago
  Oh sure, I wonder why Eastern Europe wants to join NATO. Hmmm, I wonder why countries who were on the fence about joining NATO have suddenly fast tracked applications in 2022?
  - gdy 4y ago
    You are justifying an action by the reaction to it. It's like saying that Russia's invasion of Ukraine is justified by the Ukrainian drones and rockets attacking Russian cities [0] and villages near Ukrainian border. [0] https://t.me/zhest_belgorod/16230 https://t.me/zhest_belgorod/16230
    - stoltzmann 4y ago
      Russia has been invading it's neighbors for centuries. Eastern Europeans do remember that. Joining NATO is not only about the conflict today, it's due to pretty much all generations in the area suffering due to their aggressive neighbor further to the east.
      - blub 4y ago
        Nearly every country in Europe has been invading its neighbors for centuries, that’s what normal looks like in Europe. In fact some countries liked invasions so much, that they invaded countries all over the world. Joining NATO is not at all only up to the countries which apply. The US is more or less the game maker, with big countries like Germany, France, the UK etc. also having an important voice. It’s not unexpected that the former Warsaw Pact countries would want to join. It is surprising to see the US being so short-sighted to allow these expansions considering that several of its own diplomats and foreign policy experts were warning against it.
blub 4y ago
There is no redemption for Russia, this is by now probably etched into their brains after Yugoslavia, two NATO expansions, Georgia and Ukraine. The sanctions are also here to stay, so claiming that “getting out of Ukraine now” would make any sense or bring them any benefits is wishful thinking. As far as lessons go, Europe didn’t really learn anything or drew the wrong conclusions based on their approach to China. Instead of staying on its own continent and minding its own business, the EU is playing wannabe-US. Finally, we have Eastern Europe. Which have hammered the point so hard into the brains of Western Europe that they must have forgotten themselves what the point was. Or at least that would be the case given the dependency they have on Russia, sometimes carefully disguised by moralwashing the gas through another country.
- Maakuth 4y ago
  Pray tell, when did Georgia and Ukraine join NATO?
  - rich_sasha 4y ago
    Not GP but i think they are referring to Russian invasions of Georgia (2008) and Ukraine (2014, 2022). Georgia was complicated but from any zoomed out perspective it was clearly a Russian aggression.
tablespoon 4y ago
> What diplomatic off ramp does Russia need? One that saves face, to at least some degree. > There is a simple first step towards redemption and that is get out of Ukraine right now. Better yesterday. Simple for you, because you're not the one losing face For example, here's another "simple first step" for Europe "towards redemption" (in the eyes of the Russians): withdraw all military and financial support for Ukraine, and refuse to allow transit for weapons sent to it. How does that one make you feel? Do you think Europe will take it? It's probably only a little less likely than Russia taking your option.
- wbsss4412 4y ago
  Your analysis is seemingly based in the notion that all viewpoints are equal valid, but an analysis of the war needs to be rooted in what’s right and what’s wrong. Russia is fighting a war of aggression in Ukraine. Do they have interests there? Sure, but that doesn’t give them the right to invade and topple the government. Before you ask, yes the US is extremely guilty of this exact same behavior, it is also wrong. This war started because Putin won’t accept anything less then complete fealty from the leaders of Ukraine/Belarus, and the 2014 revolution that threw out Yanikovich meant that they didn’t have a leader that was 100% on their side in Ukraine.
  - tablespoon 4y ago
    > Your analysis is seemingly based in the notion that all viewpoints are equal valid, No, it's rooted in the notion that Russia has it's own POV, and it's that POV that will determine its actions. The GGP's "simple first step" is nonsense, because it didn't recognize that POV. > but an analysis of the war needs to be rooted in what’s right and what’s wrong. And if someone (like an adversary) doesn't share your views about what’s right and what’s wrong, they'll reject your analysis and any recommendations based on it.
    - wbsss4412 4y ago
      > Your "simple first step" is nonsense What are you talking about? I never said anything about a “simple first step” > appeals to right and wrong are only persuasive for people who are aligned with you one that Look, I’m all for understanding the other side, but don’t take empathy so far that morality has no meaning.
petre 4y ago
Redemption? Even if Putin is toppled, some of his potential replacements are either ultra nationalists (basically Russian nazis) or the commies (Zuganov) who are now both blaming him for not ordering general mobilization. The Russians who do not support the war are a minority. The good thing is that their army is exhaused, ill equipped and their military capacity has diminished. Putin has lost all his credibity with the West, it can't be redeemed. At home he did not deliver a victory. He will be replaced if he doesn't and it's currently not looking good for him. His replacement is probably going to be another rational actor from the FSB, who will be forced to negotiate some kind of ceasefire arragement to ease the sanctions and keep the gas, oil and the money flowing.

by bhaak 4y ago

roenxi 4y ago

There were a bunch of people making a deal about how we'd gone out and done piracy to Russian yachts, legal questions be damned. If there are any options people are not looking for them. There'll be something. > Western Europe just learned a painful lesson that you can't trust Russia. Do you recall what happened to people who trusted the British? A lot of them died. And they were almost the nice Europeans. Trusting the Americans is foolish, trusting the Chinese is insane. The Indians will turn out to be perfidious in time. Everyone is untrustworthy. There should be more serious grappling with why the Russians did this (and Crimea in 2014) than "Putin bad". The last time a president started trying to calm the situation down he was hounded for it - the whole strategy here is mad and stupid. If the West can deal on good terms with China and the Middle East then we can be friends with Russia too. We need serious attempts and ongoing discussion about how to stop military escalation.

junofan 4y ago
> There should be more serious grappling with why the Russians did this (and Crimea in 2014) than "Putin bad" There won’t be. We are being lied to.
jeromegv 4y ago
> There should be more serious grappling with why the Russians did this (and Crimea in 2014) than "Putin bad". Why don't you give us your explanation? It's just very odd to advocate for an appeasement policy when the aggressor keeps wanting more (first Crimea, then tried to take the whole Ukraine by going straight for the capital). It wasn't just Eastern Ukraine with Russian-speaking population, they went straight to the capital. I'd say the west is perfectly fine with ignoring a lot of their principles for the sake of peace and money, China and Middle East are very good examples of it as you just said. The west was even perfectly happy to roll over their principles just to get the gas they needed from Russia. It looks like it's Russia that self destroyed all those economical agreements for the sake of wanting to expand their borders.
- roenxi 4y ago
  - stoltzmann 4y ago
    The US has not been marching NATO towards Russia. It's ex-eastern bloc countries willingly joining the alliance to be protected from Russian aggression. If Russia did not have a long history of invading their neighbors, there would be no need or will to join the alliance.
    - roenxi 4y ago
      If, say, Cuba joined a Russian military alliance of their own free will and started setting up a military installation with a couple of Russian missiles of uncertain providence, would the US tut-tut quietly or would it be a war situation? Because as I recall it was considered a major crisis that nearly doomed us all. And Cuba is further from the US than Ukraine is from Russia. Those countries should have been vetoed out of NATO after considering the look of the situation to Russia. There should be no countries aligned with the US military within a very wide margin of Russia, and the alliance should have stopped expanding north-east when the USSR fell. Militaries deal in present realities, not how voluntarily people signed up for military alliances. Russia should not have to wonder how trustworthy the US is being (spoiler: the US is not trustworthy although they are a lot less capricious than the average nation). It is easy to see why they might have felt pressured to invade after the Ukrainian revolution, without needing to resort to "well Putin must just be that evil & crazy!".
      - stoltzmann 4y ago
        If Cuba decides to align itself with the USSR, then it has the right to do so. Same as Ukraine has the right to align with the West rather than Russia. >There should be no countries aligned with the US military within a very wide margin of Russia Why, just because Russia wants that, so that it's free to invade it's neighbors? People in Eastern Europe do want to be part of NATO for a simple reason - not to have to worry about their big neighbor deciding that it's time for a "liberation". This is not about aggression, this is about not being invaded.
KptMarchewa 4y ago
>We need serious attempts and ongoing discussion about how to stop military escalation. History has shown us that appeasement is the worst possible policy.
- roenxi 4y ago
  The future will show large nuclear arsenals are the worst policy. It is not the 1930s and Russia is not Germany. The borders of the USSR have retreated over most of our lifetime, Moscow controlled all of Ukraine as recently as 1990 and gave it up more-or-less voluntarily. If the US can invade the middle east and not be called an authoritarian regime, I don't think we need to draw a red line at the Ukraine border against the other nuclear superpower. And we should be negotiating.
  - js8 4y ago
    While I disagree with your other comments, I totally agree with denuclearization. Expanding NATO (founded on nuclear deterrence paradigm) as a reaction to Russia is wrong.
    - phicoh 4y ago
      As we can clearly see now, NATO does not need nuclear deterrence again Russia's conventional weapons. What protects, for example, the Baltic countries is not the threat that the US might take initiative to drop a nuclear bomb on Russia, no it is the vast conventional capabilities of the US. Just supplying a relatively small amount of weapons to Ukraine is enough to destroy most of the Russian army.
      - js8 4y ago
        If NATO doesn't need nuclear weapons, one more reason to get rid of them. The truth is number of states that endorse nuclear weapons expands as NATO expands, and I see that as a security risk.
        4y ago
iSnow 4y ago
>We need serious attempts and ongoing discussion about how to stop military escalation. Bit late in the day, isn't it? The EU leaders were trying to talk to Putin till their eyes glassed over and Biden was willing to talk to Russia about legit security concerns. Yet, what did that get us? Military escalation. Looking back, maybe the West should have put a couple of tank divisions around Kyiv and Charkiv and tell Putin to better not mess with them.
- js8 4y ago
  > Biden was willing to talk to Russia about legit security concerns Jeffrey Sachs claimed on Democracy Now that USA refused the diplomatic talks with Russia in November 2021. France, Germany and NATO tried, but apparently Putin felt that US is a key player. Whether true or not, it was wrong for the US to act as if it's just Ukraine's (and Europe's) problem, because it isn't - US has been providing Ukraine with some military support.
  - iSnow 4y ago
    There's a series of videos that document how Macron talked to Putin (including the famous one where Putin cuts him short because he has to train for ice hockey), and Macron clearly says he has the message from Biden that he'd meet Putin. That must have been in February.
somewhereoutth 4y ago
> done piracy to Russian yachts which of course is the greater crime. Property rights for the ultra rich above everything else!

gdy 4y ago

"Western Europe just learned a painful lesson that you can't trust Russia. " Russia learnt that it cannot trust West when NATO started expanding into Eastern Europe and ex-USSR not too long after Warsaw pact and the USSR dissolved. Quite strange to say that West 'trusted' Russia after it betrayed Russia.

wil421 4y ago
Oh sure, I wonder why Eastern Europe wants to join NATO. Hmmm, I wonder why countries who were on the fence about joining NATO have suddenly fast tracked applications in 2022?
- gdy 4y ago
  You are justifying an action by the reaction to it. It's like saying that Russia's invasion of Ukraine is justified by the Ukrainian drones and rockets attacking Russian cities [0] and villages near Ukrainian border. [0] https://t.me/zhest_belgorod/16230 https://t.me/zhest_belgorod/16230
  - stoltzmann 4y ago
    Russia has been invading it's neighbors for centuries. Eastern Europeans do remember that. Joining NATO is not only about the conflict today, it's due to pretty much all generations in the area suffering due to their aggressive neighbor further to the east.
    - blub 4y ago
      Nearly every country in Europe has been invading its neighbors for centuries, that’s what normal looks like in Europe. In fact some countries liked invasions so much, that they invaded countries all over the world. Joining NATO is not at all only up to the countries which apply. The US is more or less the game maker, with big countries like Germany, France, the UK etc. also having an important voice. It’s not unexpected that the former Warsaw Pact countries would want to join. It is surprising to see the US being so short-sighted to allow these expansions considering that several of its own diplomats and foreign policy experts were warning against it.

blub 4y ago

There is no redemption for Russia, this is by now probably etched into their brains after Yugoslavia, two NATO expansions, Georgia and Ukraine. The sanctions are also here to stay, so claiming that “getting out of Ukraine now” would make any sense or bring them any benefits is wishful thinking. As far as lessons go, Europe didn’t really learn anything or drew the wrong conclusions based on their approach to China. Instead of staying on its own continent and minding its own business, the EU is playing wannabe-US. Finally, we have Eastern Europe. Which have hammered the point so hard into the brains of Western Europe that they must have forgotten themselves what the point was. Or at least that would be the case given the dependency they have on Russia, sometimes carefully disguised by moralwashing the gas through another country.

Maakuth 4y ago
Pray tell, when did Georgia and Ukraine join NATO?
- rich_sasha 4y ago
  Not GP but i think they are referring to Russian invasions of Georgia (2008) and Ukraine (2014, 2022). Georgia was complicated but from any zoomed out perspective it was clearly a Russian aggression.

tablespoon 4y ago

> What diplomatic off ramp does Russia need? One that saves face, to at least some degree. > There is a simple first step towards redemption and that is get out of Ukraine right now. Better yesterday. Simple for you, because you're not the one losing face For example, here's another "simple first step" for Europe "towards redemption" (in the eyes of the Russians): withdraw all military and financial support for Ukraine, and refuse to allow transit for weapons sent to it. How does that one make you feel? Do you think Europe will take it? It's probably only a little less likely than Russia taking your option.

wbsss4412 4y ago
Your analysis is seemingly based in the notion that all viewpoints are equal valid, but an analysis of the war needs to be rooted in what’s right and what’s wrong. Russia is fighting a war of aggression in Ukraine. Do they have interests there? Sure, but that doesn’t give them the right to invade and topple the government. Before you ask, yes the US is extremely guilty of this exact same behavior, it is also wrong. This war started because Putin won’t accept anything less then complete fealty from the leaders of Ukraine/Belarus, and the 2014 revolution that threw out Yanikovich meant that they didn’t have a leader that was 100% on their side in Ukraine.
- tablespoon 4y ago
  > Your analysis is seemingly based in the notion that all viewpoints are equal valid, No, it's rooted in the notion that Russia has it's own POV, and it's that POV that will determine its actions. The GGP's "simple first step" is nonsense, because it didn't recognize that POV. > but an analysis of the war needs to be rooted in what’s right and what’s wrong. And if someone (like an adversary) doesn't share your views about what’s right and what’s wrong, they'll reject your analysis and any recommendations based on it.
  - wbsss4412 4y ago
    > Your "simple first step" is nonsense What are you talking about? I never said anything about a “simple first step” > appeals to right and wrong are only persuasive for people who are aligned with you one that Look, I’m all for understanding the other side, but don’t take empathy so far that morality has no meaning.

petre 4y ago

Redemption? Even if Putin is toppled, some of his potential replacements are either ultra nationalists (basically Russian nazis) or the commies (Zuganov) who are now both blaming him for not ordering general mobilization. The Russians who do not support the war are a minority. The good thing is that their army is exhaused, ill equipped and their military capacity has diminished. Putin has lost all his credibity with the West, it can't be redeemed. At home he did not deliver a victory. He will be replaced if he doesn't and it's currently not looking good for him. His replacement is probably going to be another rational actor from the FSB, who will be forced to negotiate some kind of ceasefire arragement to ease the sanctions and keep the gas, oil and the money flowing.