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On the other hand, we can't tell if the US has a goal or not in the middle east or if destabilising countries is the geostrategy unto itself. People really nee

by roenxi 2mo ago

On the other hand, we can't tell if the US has a goal or not in the middle east or if destabilising countries is the geostrategy unto itself. People really need to dial down the hype, engage with the real world where large countries get to have a sphere of influence and start talking realistically about what behaviour is tolerable. I still haven't heard anyone make a case for why we keep hitting the Russians given what acceptable US foreign policy looks like. One of the two is worse and it isn't the policies written in Cyrillic.

pjc50 2mo ago
> why we keep hitting the Russians 1) "we" (the US) are not hitting the Russians, "we" (Europe including the UK) are providing them with weapons for their self-defence, since it is in our interest to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe happening on the Polish border. I am no longer clear what, if any, assistance the US is providing. It is also very important in this that no NATO or EU forces are engaged directly with Russian forces yet, despite persistent incursions into EU airspace and occasional sabotage operations in Western Europe. The UK is developing special US ITAR-free missiles for this purpose: https://www.thedefensenews.com/UK-Develops-Three-Low-Cost-Long-Range-Cruise-Missile-Prototypes-for-Ukraine-Under-Project-Brakestop/ https://www.thedefensenews.com/UK-Develops-Three-Low-Cost-Lo... 2) "start talking realistically about what behaviour is tolerable": I think we're past the point of pretending that international law applies evenly, and back to Mao's "power comes out of the barrel of a gun". If we go back to a Cold War multipolar world between China, the US, Europe, and Russia, the only one of those which hasn't made public statements threatening European territorial integrity is China. (at this point I would expect India to start asking whether they get to be a world power or not and what they're going to do with that, too)
- roenxi 2mo ago
  > since it is in our interest to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe happening on the Polish border. If your argument is preventing trouble on the Polish border, why is the strategy dumping billions and billions of dollars in weapons into the most corrupt country in Europe, who happens to be on the Polish border? Keeping a conflict worthy of WWII smouldering in the area for more than 4 years now? The sensible thing to do would have been to encourage a Ukrainian surrender early on and send them some food/whatnot in a care package, then fortify the Polish border. This strategy actually employed seems like the most direct way to trigger a humanitarian catastrophe on the Polish border. It looks very destabilising. It is also one of the very few paths that could reasonably see Poland or countries in that general region getting nuked. Can we please be honest about our motivations here? We're all more likely to get what we want. Ideally peace and prosperity.
  - Oranguru 2mo ago
    > We're all more likely to get what we want. Ideally peace and prosperity. As sovereign citizens of their own country, Ukrainians have the right to decide under which flag they want to collectively pursue peace and prosperity. I believe they have made that choice clear through democratic means, something Russians have not experienced in a long time. If Russia is allowed to take Ukraine, it will move on to Poland next, and then to claim the remaining former Soviet states. A line must be drawn somewhere.
    - roenxi 2mo ago
      > As sovereign citizens of their own country, Ukrainians have the right to decide under which flag they want to collectively pursue peace and prosperity. Much like Iran. And yet we took out their leadership just this year (again) because we think they picked the wrong flag. Apparently such behaviour is tolerable. If it is tolerable, we should tolerate the Russians doing it too, even if it is on their own border instead of the other side of the world.
      - ben_w 2mo ago
        > Apparently such behaviour is tolerable. No, it was incredibly stupid for the US to do so, everyone who has done more than a cursory look at the results of wargames and previous interventions knew this. It wasn't even a good idea in Iraq with Saddam Hussein (second time, the first at least was to stop him invading Kuwait), probably not even Afghanistan.
        rbanffy 2mo ago
        > No, it was incredibly stupid for the US to do so, everyone who has done more than a cursory look at the results of wargames and previous interventions knew this And yet there are no sanctions against the US for its obviously reckless interference in other countries.
        ben_w 2mo ago
- Lumich 2mo ago
  [flagged]
  - soco 2mo ago
    [flagged]
  - r2_pilot 2mo ago
    >>« occasional sabotage operations in Western Europe » – You mean like when the US (plus allies) sabotaged the Nord Stream pipeline? When is the last time you refreshed your knowledge about this? It's my current understanding that Ukrainians performed this sabotage.
    - ben_w 2mo ago
      > It's my current understanding that Ukrainians performed this sabotage. I believe there are one or two trials, but they have not yet been found guilty. It would have been crazily irresponsible of them if they are guilty, but then I can't figure out who wouldn't have been crazy to do it. BTW, a quick search suggests that it is a Russian government talking point to blame the USA for this.
      - somenameforme 2mo ago
        Things being a talking point doesn't mean they're untrue. The US is and was the only party that made any logical sense, to say nothing of also being one of only a handful of nations with the technical expertise to do so as well. The US was against the Nord Stream from the beginning because we felt it could deepen ties between Germany and Russia, unilaterally sanctioned companies involved in it, and of course Biden publicly alluded to threats of blowing it up: "If Russia invades ... then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it." "How will you do that, since the project is under Germany's control?" "We will, uh, I promise you, we will, uh, be able to do that *smirking*." [1] With it blown up we're able to make Europe completely dependent upon US gas sold at a high premium. Well, at least that was probably the goal. Technically the attack failed and at least one of the pipelines was/is still viable, but the US probably was hedging their bets because there was no way to anticipate exactly how enthusiastic Europe would be about setting aside their own self interests for the sake of US geopolitics. It also helps ensure less chance of a reconciliation between Russia and Europe which is probably seen as a reasonable way of weakening both. Reading "Rebuilding America's Defense" [2] by the typical names that show up in basically every US presidency, Democrat and Republican alike, is crucial to understanding US geopolitics. And one thing we obsess over is/was the prevention of the emergence of new superpowers. This is even mentioned quite explicitly in the text, "[Deploying US forces to Europe] is especially important in light of the nascent European moves toward an independent defense "identity" and policy; it is important that NATO not be replaced by the European Union, leaving the United States without a voice in European security affairs." [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OS4O8rGRLf8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OS4O8rGRLf8 [2] - https://governamerica.com/documents/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.html https://governamerica.com/documents/RebuildingAmericasDefens...
0dayz 2mo ago
Right, so genocide is better than diplomacy?
cpursley 2mo ago
What do you mean “we can’t tell”? For those who aren’t aware, the war against Iran (direct, they don’t have nukes yet) and Russia (via Ukraine proxy, Russia has nukes) as well as Venezuela (infiltrate their power structure and bribe off) are actually the same war: they are multi front (financial, energy, technical; ranging from soft to kinetic) geopolitical “containment” strategies. The US/UK/EU think tank and others influencing policy have written about it non-stop since forever, it’s not like a grand conspiracy - it’s all out in the public if you lift back the on the surface news narrative. You can literally pull down and read the policy papers, read the transcripts of those (in power and adjacent to power) pushing this “primacy” view of US led hegemony.
- pjc50 2mo ago
  Russia is the odd one out here, in that it was started by Russian incursions as far back as 2014: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_occupation_of_Crimea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_occupation_of_Crimea The think tank argument is very valid though. You can no longer find "Project for the new American Century" online, but they laid out the invasion of Iraq before 9/11 (the pretext) even happened.
  - cpursley 2mo ago
    Gosh, now I wonder why they would have possibly intervened at that particular time. No geopolitical analysts anywhere could have ever predicted the reaction of Russia to the possibility of Sevastopol becoming a NATO Naval base and US forward strike forces and missile base setting up shop just 250 miles away from Moscow...
    - pjc50 2mo ago
      The "buffer zone" argument works in reverse: gee, I wonder why Europe got worried given that annexation of Ukraine would put Russian forces right next to Poland, Slovakia, Hungary (Orban era), Romania, and Moldova (which is already partly occupied in Transnistria).
      - 2mo ago
Lio 2mo ago
> One of the two is worse and it isn't the policies written in Cyrillic. I can't tell if you're a tankie or a bot but Russia is right now conducting an unprovoked war against a democracy with no foreign policy goal other than to destroy Ukraine and seize its assets. Where Russia has been forced out of Ukraine it's left behind war crimes and mass civilian graves. So experience shows, there is no safe surrender for Ukraine, they have to fight until they win. There is no world where Putin's Russia is the good guys. Remember, Putin is the only person with the luxury of stopping the war any time he likes.
- pjc50 2mo ago
  roenxi is a moderately prolific poster who can post reasonably but is clearly also plugged into the rightwing political and news ecosystem resulting in this kind of "rightwing tankie" take. I believe they're actually from one of India/Pakistan/Bangladesh, which would correlate with the timezone of this argument (it's 7am in NY and I would expect most of America to be asleep)
  - selimthegrim 2mo ago
    There are a couple others in here - thriftwy and another who posts often about China but is shadowbanned whose name escapes me atm
  - dismalaf 2mo ago
    Horseshoe theory still undefeated. Both right-wingers who consume certain content as well as left-wingers in the pro-Palestine/Iran camp tend to be sympathetic to the Russian cause, as the Russians and Iranians fund specific influencers/political parties on both sides of the spectrum. Right-wingers in Eastern Europe (who aren't obviously paid by Russia) are way more anti-Russia than the ones in the US.
    - pjc50 2mo ago
      Negative polarization is incredibly powerful. You can see all over the place how "X is bad" leads to people defining themselves as "anti-X" and then supporting the most extreme position against X rather than a moderate one, often leading them into supporting atrocities in the other direction. This is how we get people in the English Green Party (who I would like to support if they could be 10% less nutty fruitcake) ended up posting pro-Iran propaganda. You also do have to keep track of internal factions. We're all, me included, using "country name" in this thread as a synechdoche as if all of a country had a unified political axis of action, when we know that's an oversimplification. This is how we get Israel/Likud and Iran/IGRC who are practically co-evolved to escalate against each other, to which the only reasonable response of third parties is to acknowledge that both are bad and attempt to de-escalate, as in e.g. the Camp David Accords era, before either of those factions came to power. > Right-wingers in Eastern Europe (who aren't obviously paid by Russia) I don't think enough was made of https://newrepublic.com/post/209035/hungary-prime-minister-victor-orban-paying-cpac https://newrepublic.com/post/209035/hungary-prime-minister-v... - the amount of money involved was a significant fraction of the Hungarian budget.
watwut 2mo ago
> why we keep hitting the Russian US was basically supporting Russian invasion in negotiations. What are you on about here. EU is supporting Ukraine in their self defense. Eu also know they are the next if Ukraine falls. USA did the right thing in the beginning, but as Trump gained power, his admiration to autocrats made him switch the sides.
fc417fc802 2mo ago
> I still haven't heard anyone make a case for why we keep hitting the Russians given what acceptable US foreign policy looks like. Somewhat cynically it's entirely to do with which country they attacked. Had they moved on one farther away from mainland europe I doubt we'd have heard nearly as much about it. That said it would still be wrong just as much of US (and yes Chinese) foreign policy is morally wrong. Such should be called out rather than engaging in whataboutism.
- lovich 2mo ago
  We already saw that happened when Russia invaded Georgia in ~2008. Which I’ll also point out to the people in this thread who are incredulous at the idea that Russia would go on to invade another country if Ukraine had folded as fast as they expected, is already proof that they had no real intentions on just Ukraine.
  - roenxi 2mo ago
    [dead]
- roenxi 2mo ago
  That goes to the heart of it though. If we approach this cynically there are some massive downsides - we're destabilising the leadership circle that controls the largest nuclear weapons cache in the world and pushing one of the major resource-rich countries away from Europe towards Asia. The moral arguments for doing that appear to all be rank hypocrisy given what we tolerate of ourselves. So if we go back and accept a certain level of cynicism when asking "why?" what exactly is the upside for us in Ukraine? The downsides seem to be enormous and when pushed for what the actual reasons are the best people have seems flimsy and poorly thought out in relation to the risks. This war could have been approached as though it was the US or China who had instigating it and ended with a call-out as opposed to millions of casualties. The winning strategy in these things seems to me to be much more of the Chinese approach where you sit tight, set up an impressive defensive perimeter and grow your economy until all your opponents bankrupt themselves in stupid wars.

by roenxi 2mo ago

pjc50 2mo ago

> why we keep hitting the Russians 1) "we" (the US) are not hitting the Russians, "we" (Europe including the UK) are providing them with weapons for their self-defence, since it is in our interest to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe happening on the Polish border. I am no longer clear what, if any, assistance the US is providing. It is also very important in this that no NATO or EU forces are engaged directly with Russian forces yet, despite persistent incursions into EU airspace and occasional sabotage operations in Western Europe. The UK is developing special US ITAR-free missiles for this purpose: https://www.thedefensenews.com/UK-Develops-Three-Low-Cost-Long-Range-Cruise-Missile-Prototypes-for-Ukraine-Under-Project-Brakestop/ https://www.thedefensenews.com/UK-Develops-Three-Low-Cost-Lo... 2) "start talking realistically about what behaviour is tolerable": I think we're past the point of pretending that international law applies evenly, and back to Mao's "power comes out of the barrel of a gun". If we go back to a Cold War multipolar world between China, the US, Europe, and Russia, the only one of those which hasn't made public statements threatening European territorial integrity is China. (at this point I would expect India to start asking whether they get to be a world power or not and what they're going to do with that, too)

roenxi 2mo ago
> since it is in our interest to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe happening on the Polish border. If your argument is preventing trouble on the Polish border, why is the strategy dumping billions and billions of dollars in weapons into the most corrupt country in Europe, who happens to be on the Polish border? Keeping a conflict worthy of WWII smouldering in the area for more than 4 years now? The sensible thing to do would have been to encourage a Ukrainian surrender early on and send them some food/whatnot in a care package, then fortify the Polish border. This strategy actually employed seems like the most direct way to trigger a humanitarian catastrophe on the Polish border. It looks very destabilising. It is also one of the very few paths that could reasonably see Poland or countries in that general region getting nuked. Can we please be honest about our motivations here? We're all more likely to get what we want. Ideally peace and prosperity.
- Oranguru 2mo ago
  > We're all more likely to get what we want. Ideally peace and prosperity. As sovereign citizens of their own country, Ukrainians have the right to decide under which flag they want to collectively pursue peace and prosperity. I believe they have made that choice clear through democratic means, something Russians have not experienced in a long time. If Russia is allowed to take Ukraine, it will move on to Poland next, and then to claim the remaining former Soviet states. A line must be drawn somewhere.
  - roenxi 2mo ago
    > As sovereign citizens of their own country, Ukrainians have the right to decide under which flag they want to collectively pursue peace and prosperity. Much like Iran. And yet we took out their leadership just this year (again) because we think they picked the wrong flag. Apparently such behaviour is tolerable. If it is tolerable, we should tolerate the Russians doing it too, even if it is on their own border instead of the other side of the world.
    - ben_w 2mo ago
      > Apparently such behaviour is tolerable. No, it was incredibly stupid for the US to do so, everyone who has done more than a cursory look at the results of wargames and previous interventions knew this. It wasn't even a good idea in Iraq with Saddam Hussein (second time, the first at least was to stop him invading Kuwait), probably not even Afghanistan.
      - rbanffy 2mo ago
        > No, it was incredibly stupid for the US to do so, everyone who has done more than a cursory look at the results of wargames and previous interventions knew this And yet there are no sanctions against the US for its obviously reckless interference in other countries.
        ben_w 2mo ago
Lumich 2mo ago
[flagged]
- soco 2mo ago
  [flagged]
- r2_pilot 2mo ago
  >>« occasional sabotage operations in Western Europe » – You mean like when the US (plus allies) sabotaged the Nord Stream pipeline? When is the last time you refreshed your knowledge about this? It's my current understanding that Ukrainians performed this sabotage.
  - ben_w 2mo ago
    > It's my current understanding that Ukrainians performed this sabotage. I believe there are one or two trials, but they have not yet been found guilty. It would have been crazily irresponsible of them if they are guilty, but then I can't figure out who wouldn't have been crazy to do it. BTW, a quick search suggests that it is a Russian government talking point to blame the USA for this.
    - somenameforme 2mo ago
      Things being a talking point doesn't mean they're untrue. The US is and was the only party that made any logical sense, to say nothing of also being one of only a handful of nations with the technical expertise to do so as well. The US was against the Nord Stream from the beginning because we felt it could deepen ties between Germany and Russia, unilaterally sanctioned companies involved in it, and of course Biden publicly alluded to threats of blowing it up: "If Russia invades ... then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it." "How will you do that, since the project is under Germany's control?" "We will, uh, I promise you, we will, uh, be able to do that *smirking*." [1] With it blown up we're able to make Europe completely dependent upon US gas sold at a high premium. Well, at least that was probably the goal. Technically the attack failed and at least one of the pipelines was/is still viable, but the US probably was hedging their bets because there was no way to anticipate exactly how enthusiastic Europe would be about setting aside their own self interests for the sake of US geopolitics. It also helps ensure less chance of a reconciliation between Russia and Europe which is probably seen as a reasonable way of weakening both. Reading "Rebuilding America's Defense" [2] by the typical names that show up in basically every US presidency, Democrat and Republican alike, is crucial to understanding US geopolitics. And one thing we obsess over is/was the prevention of the emergence of new superpowers. This is even mentioned quite explicitly in the text, "[Deploying US forces to Europe] is especially important in light of the nascent European moves toward an independent defense "identity" and policy; it is important that NATO not be replaced by the European Union, leaving the United States without a voice in European security affairs." [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OS4O8rGRLf8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OS4O8rGRLf8 [2] - https://governamerica.com/documents/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.html https://governamerica.com/documents/RebuildingAmericasDefens...

0dayz 2mo ago

Right, so genocide is better than diplomacy?

cpursley 2mo ago

What do you mean “we can’t tell”? For those who aren’t aware, the war against Iran (direct, they don’t have nukes yet) and Russia (via Ukraine proxy, Russia has nukes) as well as Venezuela (infiltrate their power structure and bribe off) are actually the same war: they are multi front (financial, energy, technical; ranging from soft to kinetic) geopolitical “containment” strategies. The US/UK/EU think tank and others influencing policy have written about it non-stop since forever, it’s not like a grand conspiracy - it’s all out in the public if you lift back the on the surface news narrative. You can literally pull down and read the policy papers, read the transcripts of those (in power and adjacent to power) pushing this “primacy” view of US led hegemony.

pjc50 2mo ago
Russia is the odd one out here, in that it was started by Russian incursions as far back as 2014: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_occupation_of_Crimea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_occupation_of_Crimea The think tank argument is very valid though. You can no longer find "Project for the new American Century" online, but they laid out the invasion of Iraq before 9/11 (the pretext) even happened.
- cpursley 2mo ago
  Gosh, now I wonder why they would have possibly intervened at that particular time. No geopolitical analysts anywhere could have ever predicted the reaction of Russia to the possibility of Sevastopol becoming a NATO Naval base and US forward strike forces and missile base setting up shop just 250 miles away from Moscow...
  - pjc50 2mo ago
    The "buffer zone" argument works in reverse: gee, I wonder why Europe got worried given that annexation of Ukraine would put Russian forces right next to Poland, Slovakia, Hungary (Orban era), Romania, and Moldova (which is already partly occupied in Transnistria).
    - 2mo ago

Lio 2mo ago

> One of the two is worse and it isn't the policies written in Cyrillic. I can't tell if you're a tankie or a bot but Russia is right now conducting an unprovoked war against a democracy with no foreign policy goal other than to destroy Ukraine and seize its assets. Where Russia has been forced out of Ukraine it's left behind war crimes and mass civilian graves. So experience shows, there is no safe surrender for Ukraine, they have to fight until they win. There is no world where Putin's Russia is the good guys. Remember, Putin is the only person with the luxury of stopping the war any time he likes.

pjc50 2mo ago
roenxi is a moderately prolific poster who can post reasonably but is clearly also plugged into the rightwing political and news ecosystem resulting in this kind of "rightwing tankie" take. I believe they're actually from one of India/Pakistan/Bangladesh, which would correlate with the timezone of this argument (it's 7am in NY and I would expect most of America to be asleep)
- selimthegrim 2mo ago
  There are a couple others in here - thriftwy and another who posts often about China but is shadowbanned whose name escapes me atm
- dismalaf 2mo ago
  Horseshoe theory still undefeated. Both right-wingers who consume certain content as well as left-wingers in the pro-Palestine/Iran camp tend to be sympathetic to the Russian cause, as the Russians and Iranians fund specific influencers/political parties on both sides of the spectrum. Right-wingers in Eastern Europe (who aren't obviously paid by Russia) are way more anti-Russia than the ones in the US.
  - pjc50 2mo ago
    Negative polarization is incredibly powerful. You can see all over the place how "X is bad" leads to people defining themselves as "anti-X" and then supporting the most extreme position against X rather than a moderate one, often leading them into supporting atrocities in the other direction. This is how we get people in the English Green Party (who I would like to support if they could be 10% less nutty fruitcake) ended up posting pro-Iran propaganda. You also do have to keep track of internal factions. We're all, me included, using "country name" in this thread as a synechdoche as if all of a country had a unified political axis of action, when we know that's an oversimplification. This is how we get Israel/Likud and Iran/IGRC who are practically co-evolved to escalate against each other, to which the only reasonable response of third parties is to acknowledge that both are bad and attempt to de-escalate, as in e.g. the Camp David Accords era, before either of those factions came to power. > Right-wingers in Eastern Europe (who aren't obviously paid by Russia) I don't think enough was made of https://newrepublic.com/post/209035/hungary-prime-minister-victor-orban-paying-cpac https://newrepublic.com/post/209035/hungary-prime-minister-v... - the amount of money involved was a significant fraction of the Hungarian budget.

watwut 2mo ago

> why we keep hitting the Russian US was basically supporting Russian invasion in negotiations. What are you on about here. EU is supporting Ukraine in their self defense. Eu also know they are the next if Ukraine falls. USA did the right thing in the beginning, but as Trump gained power, his admiration to autocrats made him switch the sides.

fc417fc802 2mo ago

> I still haven't heard anyone make a case for why we keep hitting the Russians given what acceptable US foreign policy looks like. Somewhat cynically it's entirely to do with which country they attacked. Had they moved on one farther away from mainland europe I doubt we'd have heard nearly as much about it. That said it would still be wrong just as much of US (and yes Chinese) foreign policy is morally wrong. Such should be called out rather than engaging in whataboutism.

lovich 2mo ago
We already saw that happened when Russia invaded Georgia in ~2008. Which I’ll also point out to the people in this thread who are incredulous at the idea that Russia would go on to invade another country if Ukraine had folded as fast as they expected, is already proof that they had no real intentions on just Ukraine.
- roenxi 2mo ago
  [dead]
roenxi 2mo ago
That goes to the heart of it though. If we approach this cynically there are some massive downsides - we're destabilising the leadership circle that controls the largest nuclear weapons cache in the world and pushing one of the major resource-rich countries away from Europe towards Asia. The moral arguments for doing that appear to all be rank hypocrisy given what we tolerate of ourselves. So if we go back and accept a certain level of cynicism when asking "why?" what exactly is the upside for us in Ukraine? The downsides seem to be enormous and when pushed for what the actual reasons are the best people have seems flimsy and poorly thought out in relation to the risks. This war could have been approached as though it was the US or China who had instigating it and ended with a call-out as opposed to millions of casualties. The winning strategy in these things seems to me to be much more of the Chinese approach where you sit tight, set up an impressive defensive perimeter and grow your economy until all your opponents bankrupt themselves in stupid wars.