4 ms·

What would you do? Install a favorable dictator? Thanks to warmongering there isn't much of a diplomatic route to peace where we still need it. Petty ulterior m

What would you do? Install a favorable dictator? Thanks to warmongering there isn't much of a diplomatic route to peace where we still need it. Petty ulterior motives held by world 'leaders' have made it hard.

mciancia 2y ago
A ton more sanctions, becoming less dependand on russian oil and gas, killing nordstream. But in 2014, not 2022. Probably would have helped
- jakjak123 2y ago
  Some form of action should have been taken when they invaded Crimea in 2014 and Georgia 2008. But even in retrospect its hard to say what except shutting down Nordstream and stopping investments. I still find it difficult for Europe to accept going to war with Russia over Crimea, but I guess this timeline is worse. Sanctions has limits, like we see with North Korea and Venezuela. The worst part of this timeline is that we guarantee that the only way a autocrat is safe, is when he has nukes.
- ivan_gammel 2y ago
  In 2024 it’s pretty clear that sanctions ag
5e92cb50239222b 2y ago
Well, the EU could have put a ban on selling riot control gear to Putin's forces back in 2012 when he used it to suppress massive pro-democracy protests in Moscow, not in October of 2022 like they actually did. This set the tone for everything that happened afterwards. I said this already under a (now flagged and dead) comment, but it's worth repeating — "your" (not your personally) one-sided propaganda and continuing support for Putin (if indirect) have made "you" lose whatever anti-war and pro-West opposition there was in Russia. I only wish we'd seen how convenient Putin is for "the West" a decade earlier. This was particularly obvious in June 2023 during the short and failed putsch of Wagner PMC. If you care at all, you can dig into my comment history from the beginning of 2022 and see how my own opinion has changed. It's a pretty typical example, I think. https://russiafossiltracker.com https://russiafossiltracker.com
ajuc 2y ago
Accept Ukraine to NATO in 2008 and none of this would have happened. Thank France and Germany for blocking it.
- pjc50 2y ago
  As well as not building either Nordstream, but who can turn down cheap energy?
pas 2y ago
peace unfortunately is made by deterrence. defending the potential victims of aggressors works.
mschuster91 2y ago
> What would you do? Install a favorable dictator? Oh, there's a lot between not doing anything at all and repeating the mistakes from Iranian days: - provide economic / humanitarian aid contingent on progress in democratic values and actually audit where the money goes. This ended being effective around 2010 when China began hitting the global stage though. - supporting countries or democratic, pro-Western parties/groups that are threatened by an aggressor (e.g. every former Soviet state) - when supposed "allies" end up funding our enemies (e.g. Saudi-Arabia, who not just financed Bin Laden and is the main ideological driver in fundamentalist madrasas (religious schools) all over the world, thus being the main contributor to Islamist terrorism), cut them off. Hell the Saudis butchered a journalist (a father of U.S. citizens) in an embassy and we didn't do shit. Instead, we allow Saudi-Arabia and Qatar to host fucking World Cups. What a bunch of bullshit. - aggressive, actually effective sanctions instead of just making the lives of a few oligarchs a tiny bit more difficult - increase our own security posture in terms of military and provide a credible retaliation threat towards any potential aggressor - invest into academic research on other countries. That one got shamefully disbanded after the collapse of the USSR and the shift towards prioritizing STEM over humanities - we now lack the academic capacity for actually understanding other countries or provide actual evidence-backed advice to politicians. Instead we got completely dependent on think tanks and consultancies. - respond in-kind to Russia and China banning Western activities: they effectively force pro-democracy organizations to close shop? Fine, no more Chinese police stations in Western countries. They engage in cyberwarfare? Fine, we cut them off from the Internet. They refuse to allow Western countries fair and equal access to their markets? Fine, we ban investments from China and force-divest existing investments, and raise tariffs on their exports. The last part is the easiest... over decades we believed in "change by trade", we hoped that they would become similar to us culturally. That worked in certain areas - McDonald's and Coca-Cola show that - but politically, we didn't give a slightest interest in both countries getting ever more authoritarian. And now it's biting us in our collective arses.
- 5e92cb50239222b 2y ago
  > supporting countries or democratic, pro-Western parties/groups that are threatened by an aggressor (e.g. every former Soviet state) Every one? I am from one of those states, and most of them are even worse democracy-wise than Russia. The only thing we have over Russia is not going after neighbors' territories, and even that's debatable (see conflicts between Armenia and Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan vs Tajikistan). Your governments do overlook serious human rights violations, though, when it suits them. We had widespread protests in January 2022 that were brutally suppressed by the government, which ended up killing more than 300 protesters (that's according to official figures that are thought to be undercounted). No fucks given by Western propaganda or government talking heads because several European, US, and Canadian companies have massive investments in our oil, gas, and minerals industry. About six months ago Macron visited Astana to beg for uranium fuel after France got kicked off from Niger, and a group of political activists tried to seize the rare moment and did everything they could to meet him for a few minutes and talk about human rights violations in our country. You can probably guess the result of that endeavor. One of the major gas projects (managed by Shell IIRC) ends in 2030, and I have a strong suspicion "human rights violations" will become a permanent theme in our relations right after that moment.
pjc50 2y ago
Much more international response (sanctions) to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_of_Sergei_and_Yulia_Skripal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_of_Sergei_and_Yulia_... in 2018. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-28357880 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-28357880 MH17 shootdown in 2014. and in the UK, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-62068421 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-62068421 "Controversy surrounds that appointment, since it was alleged - first in a Tortoise Media podcast and then in the Sunday Times - that the peerage was granted despite a warning from the security services that it posed a national security risk." People were very happy to overlook Russian misbehavior so long as the money kept coming.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
tomohawk 2y ago
Things I would not do. Basically anything that Joe did, do the opposite. In 2014, when Joe was VP and lead person on Ukraine, I would not have refused to give lethal aid to Ukraine. And when Ukraine used our training to try to take back Crimea, I wouldn't have chastised the Ukraine government for trying to resist Putin. When Putin built up forces on Ukraine's border to restart hostilities in 2021/2022, I would not have cowardly evacuated all US personnel from the country. I would have surged more in to deter. When Putin restarted invasion in 2022, I would not have conditioned lethal aid on not shooting across border, tying Ukraine's hands. Instead, I would have conditioned it on attacking any military or military supporting targets anywhere in the theatre of war. Since Russia has defined the boundaries of this as well within their country, they only have themselves to blame for how deep these weapons would reach into Russia. Then we wouldn't have the ridiculous situation we just had where Putin was able to get his forces ready for the Kharkiv offensive in plain view, but Ukraine was not allowed by Joe to attack them until they actually started crossing the border.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]

mciancia 2y ago

A ton more sanctions, becoming less dependand on russian oil and gas, killing nordstream. But in 2014, not 2022. Probably would have helped

jakjak123 2y ago
Some form of action should have been taken when they invaded Crimea in 2014 and Georgia 2008. But even in retrospect its hard to say what except shutting down Nordstream and stopping investments. I still find it difficult for Europe to accept going to war with Russia over Crimea, but I guess this timeline is worse. Sanctions has limits, like we see with North Korea and Venezuela. The worst part of this timeline is that we guarantee that the only way a autocrat is safe, is when he has nukes.
ivan_gammel 2y ago
In 2024 it’s pretty clear that sanctions ag

5e92cb50239222b 2y ago

Well, the EU could have put a ban on selling riot control gear to Putin's forces back in 2012 when he used it to suppress massive pro-democracy protests in Moscow, not in October of 2022 like they actually did. This set the tone for everything that happened afterwards. I said this already under a (now flagged and dead) comment, but it's worth repeating — "your" (not your personally) one-sided propaganda and continuing support for Putin (if indirect) have made "you" lose whatever anti-war and pro-West opposition there was in Russia. I only wish we'd seen how convenient Putin is for "the West" a decade earlier. This was particularly obvious in June 2023 during the short and failed putsch of Wagner PMC. If you care at all, you can dig into my comment history from the beginning of 2022 and see how my own opinion has changed. It's a pretty typical example, I think. https://russiafossiltracker.com https://russiafossiltracker.com

ajuc 2y ago

Accept Ukraine to NATO in 2008 and none of this would have happened. Thank France and Germany for blocking it.

pjc50 2y ago
As well as not building either Nordstream, but who can turn down cheap energy?

pas 2y ago

peace unfortunately is made by deterrence. defending the potential victims of aggressors works.

mschuster91 2y ago

> What would you do? Install a favorable dictator? Oh, there's a lot between not doing anything at all and repeating the mistakes from Iranian days: - provide economic / humanitarian aid contingent on progress in democratic values and actually audit where the money goes. This ended being effective around 2010 when China began hitting the global stage though. - supporting countries or democratic, pro-Western parties/groups that are threatened by an aggressor (e.g. every former Soviet state) - when supposed "allies" end up funding our enemies (e.g. Saudi-Arabia, who not just financed Bin Laden and is the main ideological driver in fundamentalist madrasas (religious schools) all over the world, thus being the main contributor to Islamist terrorism), cut them off. Hell the Saudis butchered a journalist (a father of U.S. citizens) in an embassy and we didn't do shit. Instead, we allow Saudi-Arabia and Qatar to host fucking World Cups. What a bunch of bullshit. - aggressive, actually effective sanctions instead of just making the lives of a few oligarchs a tiny bit more difficult - increase our own security posture in terms of military and provide a credible retaliation threat towards any potential aggressor - invest into academic research on other countries. That one got shamefully disbanded after the collapse of the USSR and the shift towards prioritizing STEM over humanities - we now lack the academic capacity for actually understanding other countries or provide actual evidence-backed advice to politicians. Instead we got completely dependent on think tanks and consultancies. - respond in-kind to Russia and China banning Western activities: they effectively force pro-democracy organizations to close shop? Fine, no more Chinese police stations in Western countries. They engage in cyberwarfare? Fine, we cut them off from the Internet. They refuse to allow Western countries fair and equal access to their markets? Fine, we ban investments from China and force-divest existing investments, and raise tariffs on their exports. The last part is the easiest... over decades we believed in "change by trade", we hoped that they would become similar to us culturally. That worked in certain areas - McDonald's and Coca-Cola show that - but politically, we didn't give a slightest interest in both countries getting ever more authoritarian. And now it's biting us in our collective arses.

5e92cb50239222b 2y ago
> supporting countries or democratic, pro-Western parties/groups that are threatened by an aggressor (e.g. every former Soviet state) Every one? I am from one of those states, and most of them are even worse democracy-wise than Russia. The only thing we have over Russia is not going after neighbors' territories, and even that's debatable (see conflicts between Armenia and Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan vs Tajikistan). Your governments do overlook serious human rights violations, though, when it suits them. We had widespread protests in January 2022 that were brutally suppressed by the government, which ended up killing more than 300 protesters (that's according to official figures that are thought to be undercounted). No fucks given by Western propaganda or government talking heads because several European, US, and Canadian companies have massive investments in our oil, gas, and minerals industry. About six months ago Macron visited Astana to beg for uranium fuel after France got kicked off from Niger, and a group of political activists tried to seize the rare moment and did everything they could to meet him for a few minutes and talk about human rights violations in our country. You can probably guess the result of that endeavor. One of the major gas projects (managed by Shell IIRC) ends in 2030, and I have a strong suspicion "human rights violations" will become a permanent theme in our relations right after that moment.

pjc50 2y ago

Much more international response (sanctions) to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_of_Sergei_and_Yulia_Skripal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_of_Sergei_and_Yulia_... in 2018. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-28357880 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-28357880 MH17 shootdown in 2014. and in the UK, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-62068421 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-62068421 "Controversy surrounds that appointment, since it was alleged - first in a Tortoise Media podcast and then in the Sunday Times - that the peerage was granted despite a warning from the security services that it posed a national security risk." People were very happy to overlook Russian misbehavior so long as the money kept coming.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

tomohawk 2y ago

Things I would not do. Basically anything that Joe did, do the opposite. In 2014, when Joe was VP and lead person on Ukraine, I would not have refused to give lethal aid to Ukraine. And when Ukraine used our training to try to take back Crimea, I wouldn't have chastised the Ukraine government for trying to resist Putin. When Putin built up forces on Ukraine's border to restart hostilities in 2021/2022, I would not have cowardly evacuated all US personnel from the country. I would have surged more in to deter. When Putin restarted invasion in 2022, I would not have conditioned lethal aid on not shooting across border, tying Ukraine's hands. Instead, I would have conditioned it on attacking any military or military supporting targets anywhere in the theatre of war. Since Russia has defined the boundaries of this as well within their country, they only have themselves to blame for how deep these weapons would reach into Russia. Then we wouldn't have the ridiculous situation we just had where Putin was able to get his forces ready for the Kharkiv offensive in plain view, but Ukraine was not allowed by Joe to attack them until they actually started crossing the border.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]