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Россия invades Україна | UPDATE (22 Mar 2024) - Poland: If America is an unreliable ally, then nations must begin building their own nuclear weapons for deterrence


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WWW.THEGUARDIAN.COM

Nato’s treatment of Russia almost guaranteed a chauvinistic reflex. The way forward is to implement the Minsk settlement, says the Guardian columnist Simon Jenkins

 

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The reality is that the west took a calculated gamble in expanding Nato in the 1990s. There was no suggestion of imitating Finland’s careful and pragmatic neutrality towards its Baltic neighbours that lie in Russia’s sphere of influence. Nato had post-Soviet Russia on the floor and simply could not resist the opportunity of kicking the country when it was already down.

 

The way Nato treated Russia almost guaranteed there would be a chauvinist reflex. Moscow’s initial feelers from Boris Yeltsin that it might associate with Nato were rebuffed. Mooted associations with the EU were ridiculed. Everything was done to rub Russia’s nose in its shame. Putin and his present antics were the predictable result.

 

The Russian president has now indicated that he wants the 2015 Minsk II settlement implemented. That settlement is sound. It requires autonomy for Russian-speaking Donbas, an end to Nato expansionism, Russian withdrawal and a reinstatement of Ukraine’s border. Samantha Power, US ambassador to the United Nations at the time of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, remarked that Minsk was the “only viable way out of this deadly conflict”. Subsequent US administrations have supported that position. Yet no one has applied sufficient diplomatic effort to put it in place.

 

Any reasonable observer would see Minsk as a practical and fair way out of this crisis. It has largely been blocked by a Kyiv regime that has long feared Donbas’s pro-Russian sentiment and resisted its “home rule”. Recognise the autonomy of the Donbas region, Putin says, and he will withdraw. He cannot want to keep 100,000 troops mobilised on the Donbas border indefinitely, any more than he can seriously fear a western army storming east across Ukraine.

 

 

 I cannot agree with the part that I italicized, highlighted, and underlined strenuously enough!

 

The "Finlandization" of the former Soviet republics/former Warsaw Pact states would've unquestionably been the best course of action, but NOOOOOOOOOOOO - the West/NATO just had to engage in a fair bit of triumphalism with the inevitable result of the position in which we find ourselves now.

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48 minutes ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:
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WWW.THEGUARDIAN.COM

Nato’s treatment of Russia almost guaranteed a chauvinistic reflex. The way forward is to implement the Minsk settlement, says the Guardian columnist Simon Jenkins

 

 

 I cannot agree with the part that I italicized, highlighted, and underlined strenuously enough!

 

The "Finlandization" of the former Soviet republics/former Warsaw Pact states would've unquestionably been the best course of action, but NOOOOOOOOOOOO - the West/NATO just had to engage in a fair bit of triumphalism with the inevitable result of the position in which we find ourselves now.

 

Yep, NATO took the one course of action (out of a possible three) that was guaranteed to provoke Russia long-term:

  1. Leave Russia alone, and the countries in its orbit
  2. Get closer with Russia and support them, similar to post-WWII Germany/Japan
  3. Leave Russia itself alone, but try and "steal" the countries in its orbit (we have a winner!)
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1 minute ago, mclumber1 said:

But if those countries would rather be allied/aligned with the US, instead of being neutral or a puppet state of Russia, we should have told them to fuck off?

 

Yes.

 

Again, the United States of America has zero strategic interest in those states.  They offer us nothing but a headache.

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39 minutes ago, mclumber1 said:

But if those countries would rather be allied/aligned with the US, instead of being neutral or a puppet state of Russia, we should have told them to fuck off?

 

Yes and no. If they want to be friends, that's great. If they want US military assets stationed there, then they should fuck off. The US and Russia can't risk war.

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Germany isn't too keen on sending weapons to Ukraine:

 

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APNEWS.COM

BERLIN (AP) — Germany’s refusal to join other NATO members in providing weapons to Ukraine has annoyed some allies and raised questions about Berlin’s resolve in standing up to Russia. The issue rose to the fore over the weekend following a report that Berlin had gone so far as to block Estonia from supplying old German howitzers to Kyiv to help defend itself against Russian troops massing near the Ukrainian the border.

 

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Germany’s refusal to join other NATO members in providing weapons to Ukraine has annoyed some allies and raised questions about Berlin’s resolve in standing up to Russia.

 

The issue rose to the fore over the weekend following a report that Berlin had gone so far as to block Estonia from supplying old German howitzers to Kyiv to help defend itself against Russian troops massing near the Ukrainian the border.

 

Germany's stance on arms supplies does “not correspond to the level of our relations and the current security situation," Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said on Twitter.

 

Speaking to reporters Monday in Berlin, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz denied a decision had been made on the howitzers and insisted that his country stands with its NATO and European Union allies in opposing any Russian incursion into Ukraine.

 

“Should this situation occur, we will jointly act," he told reporters. "There would be a high price.”

 

Still, while Germany would continue to provide help to Ukraine, there would be one exception, he said: “We don’t provide any lethal weapons."

 

 

As expected, NATO will gladly contribute to the "Ukrainian Defense GoFundMe", but will (correctly!) NOT expend actual NATO blood:

 

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Officials working with global suppliers to avoid European gas crisis in the event that flow from Russia is cut by Putin

 

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The US has helped prepare for the diversion of natural gas supplies from around the world to Europe in the event that the flow from Russia is cut, in an effort to blunt Vladimir Putin’s most powerful economic weapon.

 

As fears of an invasion of Ukraine have grown, US officials said on Tuesday that they had been negotiating with global suppliers, and they were now confident that Europe would not suffer from a sudden loss of energy for heating in the middle of winter.

 

“To ensure Europe is able to make it through the winter and spring we expect to be prepared to ensure alternative supplies covering a significant majority of the potential shortfall,” a senior official said.

 

The preparation for bulk gas supplies deliveries is part of a campaign by the US and its European allies to show a united and coherent front to Putin in the hope of deterring him from invading Ukraine.

 

 

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The problem I perceive is that the US, Western Europe and Russia have never figured out a way to move beyond the Cold War, even though the Cold War's purpose was completely gone by 1989. We literally have an entire defense industry that is based on the threat of a world conflict that was somewhat real in the 1970s but not so much after. Instead of slowly eliminating it and moving to post-Cold War technologies, we continue to make bigger and better arms that serve that old purpose, forcing pretty much every other actor to do the same thing, even though there's no purpose behind it. What it will eventually lead to is a conflict where some old, hardened generals are going to see the usefulness of using such stuff because someone else thought it would be a deterrence if we field it, and then someone else fielded there, and then as usual, the people with the least to lose will make the decisions for the people who have everything to lose.

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3 hours ago, brucoe said:

The problem I perceive is that the US, Western Europe and Russia have never figured out a way to move beyond the Cold War, even though the Cold War's purpose was completely gone by 1989. We literally have an entire defense industry that is based on the threat of a world conflict that was somewhat real in the 1970s but not so much after. Instead of slowly eliminating it and moving to post-Cold War technologies, we continue to make bigger and better arms that serve that old purpose, forcing pretty much every other actor to do the same thing, even though there's no purpose behind it. What it will eventually lead to is a conflict where some old, hardened generals are going to see the usefulness of using such stuff because someone else thought it would be a deterrence if we field it, and then someone else fielded there, and then as usual, the people with the least to lose will make the decisions for the people who have everything to lose.

 

Some form of that happens in basically every war. WWI is the prime example.

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Excerpt from Matt Taibbi’s on-point takedown of this nonsense, which is fresh out of our same old foreign policy playbook:

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At the moment the Berlin Wall fell the United States had almost limitless political capital with these soon-to-be ex-Soviet territories. We blew it all within a few years. Now that we’re really in trouble in Ukraine, why would we keep to the same playbook that got us here?

 

Our plan with every foreign country that falls into our orbit is the same. We ride in as saviors, throwing loans in all directions to settle debts (often to us), then let it be known the country’s affairs will henceforth be run through our embassy. Since we’re ignorant of history and have long viewed diplomats too in sync with local customs as liabilities, we tend to fill our embassies with people who have limited sense of the individual character of host countries, their languages, or the attitudes of people outside the capital. 

 

Instead of devising individual policies, we go through identical processes of receiving groups of local politicians seeking our backing. We throw our weight behind the courtiers we like best. The winning supplicants are usually Western educated, speak great English, know how to flatter drunk diplomats, and are fluent in neoliberal wonk-speak. 

We back Our Men in Havana to the hilt, no matter how corrupt they may become in their rule, a process we call “democracy promotion.” The cycle always ends the same way, whether we’re talking about Hamid Karzai or Ayad Allawi or Boris Yeltsin. The white hat ally turns out to be either overmatched or a snake, usually the latter, and siphons off Western aid to himself and his cronies in huge quantities while smashing opposition by any means necessary. That brutality and corruption, combined with efforts to implement our structural adjustment policies (read: austerity, and the de-nationalization of natural resources) inevitably results in loss of popular support and/or the rise of opposition movements on the right, the left, or both.

 

Rising discontent in turn inspires further requests from the puppet for security aid, which we happily provide, since that ultimately is the whole point: selling weapons to foreigners to fill those Washington rice bowls. You will soon hear it in the form of increased calls for defense spending amid the Ukraine mess, but we’ve been at it forever.

 

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Do you guys want to freebase some absolute bullshit?

 

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THEHILL.COM

It is 30 years after the end of the Cold War — high time to set aside distrust and start constructing a warm and enduring peace among once and future friends.

 

 

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I propose NATO invite Russia to immediately join its ranks, which, of course, requires it to abide by NATO's charter. This includes Article 1, which requires members to:

“…settle any international dispute in which they may be involved by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered, and to refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force in any manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations.”

 

Once Russia is a NATO member, its fear of encirclement will dissipate. Moreover, it will be obligated to peacefully resolve its conflicts with Ukraine. Indeed, it can help enroll Ukraine into its new club — NATO. Russia should also, over time, be invited to join the European Union (EU). 

 

 

lol

 

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The EU has had its problems, and Brexit represents a tragic mistake. But the EU and NATO have kept the peace in Europe for 80 years. Try finding an 80-year period between 1000 and 1945 without armed conflict among at least two regions comprising the EU's 27 member nations or NATO's 30 member states. 

 

Yes, NATO would have to welcome a member it deeply distrusts. And Russia would need to abide by rules that it would prefer to break. But this is the nature of agreements between adversaries. Both give to get. And as both sides see the value of the agreement, they will take steps to reify it.

 

LOL

 

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Thus, Russia's joining NATO, at NATO's behest, immediately eliminates the two concerns at hand. Russia will, effectively, agree to settle its dispute with Ukraine peacefully, and the current NATO allies will, effectively, agree to a peace treaty with Russia. Indeed, a treaty in which they are sworn to its defense, including its defense against attack by a subset of the alliance.  

 

lmao

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9 minutes ago, b_m_b_m_b_m said:

It would be easier to completely disband nato


Which is exactly what should've happened after December 25, 1991.

 

Like I said before, European security could've been addressed by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe of which the United States and Canada are members.

  • True 1
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32 minutes ago, CayceG said:

Do you guys want to freebase some absolute bullshit?

 

ap_russia_putin.jpg
THEHILL.COM

It is 30 years after the end of the Cold War — high time to set aside distrust and start constructing a warm and enduring peace among once and future friends.

 

 

 

lol

 

 

LOL

 

 

lmao

 

*Laughs in Greek and Turkish.*

  • Haha 2
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