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> Instead it turns out that this was indeed something that the US was aiming for and they started ramping up the slaughter because they want to destabilise the

by mopsi 2y ago

> Instead it turns out that this was indeed something that the US was aiming for and they started ramping up the slaughter because they want to destabilise the Russians. The US has been the main stabilizing force for Russia in this war, ensuring that Ukraine does not lose while also preventing Russia from disintegrating - driven by the same misguided and exaggerated fears that the US government had when the USSR was collapsing.[1] Had the US wanted to destabilize Russia, it would have had a long list of steps to take to make the city-state of Moscow lose control over its colonized regions, primarily through economic sanctions to prevent Moscow from flooding the rest of the country with oil money to buy loyalties. When the USSR became unable to provide essentials like food and fuel to its population in the early 1990s, every major city and region took matters into its own hands, established local councils to manage essential needs, and outright ignored orders from Moscow until the central government became entirely impotent and ceased to exist in any meaningful way. From this grassroots level, they built a new Russian central government to replace the Soviet one. In the end, the USSR had shrunk to a few office blocks in central Moscow, while the populace had established a new country - the Russian Federation - everywhere around it. The US tried to prevent the USSR's disintegration into self-governed regions then and is repeating the same mistake now by doing everything it can to keep the Russian federal government in control of the entire country. The narratives about the US "destabilizing Russia" are completely disingenuous fiction, hollow accusations with no substance. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_Kiev_speech https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_Kiev_speech

roenxi 2y ago
It is amazing to look back at policy from before the USSR collapsed and see how much more sensible it was. That speech is a good example of how, when the US political class were taking the situation a bit more seriously, they understood that Ukraine was important to Russia's interests and they shouldn't be trying to align it with NATO. Had they maintained that attitude in the intervening period instead of the big push to expand NATO that actually happened then this bloody and tragic land war in Europe would have been avoided. And saying this is stabilising Russia is ridiculous. I may as well go back to motorest and tell him to relax because at worst a US invasion is only going to stabilise Canada. So far the US is the most responsible party [0] for around a million Russian casualties and there are concerning factoids [1] coming out that we had a nuclear near miss. [0] We're being treated to the dark comedy where Russia doesn't even need to negotiate with Ukraine to get the war ended, they went straight to the US. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/10/08/new-bob-woodward-book-takeaways/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/10/08/new-bob-w... - hopefully Woodward is a known liar.
- mopsi 2y ago
  Amazing? Far from it. The Chicken Kiev speech was widely seen as a major failure and embarrassment. Not only by his political opponents in the US, but also by the people of Eastern Europe, who were struggling to break free from Russian-controlled dictatorships that had been forced upon them at the end of the WWII. Instead of continuing to live in the prison camp that Gorbachev was offering to reform (with US support), a hundred million people in Eastern Europe regained freedom of speech, freedom of movement, and other basic human rights within months from Bush instructing them "not to rock the boat". The Chicken Kiev speech was quite a downgrade from Reagan's speech a few years prior, in which he challenged Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin wall and let people live as free human beings. The US and its allies in Western Europe were not carving off parts of the Eastern Bloc and the USSR like some try to depict nowadays, nor did they have any interest in extending mutual defense guarantees to the nations that had just restored their independence. The desire to live again as free people came first and foremost from within. After independence, membership in the European Council, the European Union, and NATO became the holy grails of foreign policy in most newly independent countries to secure permanent freedom and prosperity. The goal was to integrate with the free world as tightly as possible to make it as difficult as possible for Russia to tear them away again. The "big push to expand NATO" that you keep repeating is a disgusting lie. Pick up the memoirs of Vaclav Havel, Aleksander Kwasniewski, Lennart Meri, Vytautas Landsbergis, or any other statesman of the era, and you'll usually find entire chapters dedicated to the immense struggle of entering European cooperation frameworks like the EU and NATO: how nobody wanted to see them there and the incredible lengths they had to go to just to be considered potential candidates. Your entire frame of reference is just wrong. You don't get the basic push-pull factors that have shaped the relations in Europe - what happened, why it happened, and how it happened -, which leads you to blame victims and make excuses for aggressors. In 1938-1940, Hitler and Stalin cooperated and destroyed every single independent country along a line that ran from the Atlantic coast of France to the Ural mountains so far in the east that they mark the border between Europe and Asia. A key to their success was the foolish belief by smaller nations in Wilsonian concepts of international law and neutrality. Not looking out for each other and failing to support nations under attack enabled Hitler and Stalin to pick countries off one-by-one at their convenience. Neutrality was a fundamental mistake that the generation of national leaders active in the 1990s sought to avoid repeating at all cost. Many of them were old enough to have personal recollections of pre-war Europe and its destruction, and as they write in their memoirs, that greatly influenced their attitudes toward European cooperation. The idea that they were somehow forced or coerced into this by the Americans is, first, not true, and, secondly, has no connection to the actual history and motivations that guided people. They were the most passionate group from the start.

by mopsi 2y ago

roenxi 2y ago

It is amazing to look back at policy from before the USSR collapsed and see how much more sensible it was. That speech is a good example of how, when the US political class were taking the situation a bit more seriously, they understood that Ukraine was important to Russia's interests and they shouldn't be trying to align it with NATO. Had they maintained that attitude in the intervening period instead of the big push to expand NATO that actually happened then this bloody and tragic land war in Europe would have been avoided. And saying this is stabilising Russia is ridiculous. I may as well go back to motorest and tell him to relax because at worst a US invasion is only going to stabilise Canada. So far the US is the most responsible party [0] for around a million Russian casualties and there are concerning factoids [1] coming out that we had a nuclear near miss. [0] We're being treated to the dark comedy where Russia doesn't even need to negotiate with Ukraine to get the war ended, they went straight to the US. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/10/08/new-bob-woodward-book-takeaways/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/10/08/new-bob-w... - hopefully Woodward is a known liar.

mopsi 2y ago
Amazing? Far from it. The Chicken Kiev speech was widely seen as a major failure and embarrassment. Not only by his political opponents in the US, but also by the people of Eastern Europe, who were struggling to break free from Russian-controlled dictatorships that had been forced upon them at the end of the WWII. Instead of continuing to live in the prison camp that Gorbachev was offering to reform (with US support), a hundred million people in Eastern Europe regained freedom of speech, freedom of movement, and other basic human rights within months from Bush instructing them "not to rock the boat". The Chicken Kiev speech was quite a downgrade from Reagan's speech a few years prior, in which he challenged Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin wall and let people live as free human beings. The US and its allies in Western Europe were not carving off parts of the Eastern Bloc and the USSR like some try to depict nowadays, nor did they have any interest in extending mutual defense guarantees to the nations that had just restored their independence. The desire to live again as free people came first and foremost from within. After independence, membership in the European Council, the European Union, and NATO became the holy grails of foreign policy in most newly independent countries to secure permanent freedom and prosperity. The goal was to integrate with the free world as tightly as possible to make it as difficult as possible for Russia to tear them away again. The "big push to expand NATO" that you keep repeating is a disgusting lie. Pick up the memoirs of Vaclav Havel, Aleksander Kwasniewski, Lennart Meri, Vytautas Landsbergis, or any other statesman of the era, and you'll usually find entire chapters dedicated to the immense struggle of entering European cooperation frameworks like the EU and NATO: how nobody wanted to see them there and the incredible lengths they had to go to just to be considered potential candidates. Your entire frame of reference is just wrong. You don't get the basic push-pull factors that have shaped the relations in Europe - what happened, why it happened, and how it happened -, which leads you to blame victims and make excuses for aggressors. In 1938-1940, Hitler and Stalin cooperated and destroyed every single independent country along a line that ran from the Atlantic coast of France to the Ural mountains so far in the east that they mark the border between Europe and Asia. A key to their success was the foolish belief by smaller nations in Wilsonian concepts of international law and neutrality. Not looking out for each other and failing to support nations under attack enabled Hitler and Stalin to pick countries off one-by-one at their convenience. Neutrality was a fundamental mistake that the generation of national leaders active in the 1990s sought to avoid repeating at all cost. Many of them were old enough to have personal recollections of pre-war Europe and its destruction, and as they write in their memoirs, that greatly influenced their attitudes toward European cooperation. The idea that they were somehow forced or coerced into this by the Americans is, first, not true, and, secondly, has no connection to the actual history and motivations that guided people. They were the most passionate group from the start.