Current Affairs Ukraine

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DualityNSNO said:
This is not about the war itself alone. This is about the propaganda of war, the effects in the minds of people of actual communism, the USSR and its after effects, and why Russian aggression is heaps and bounds more dangerous than many things in Europe.

War is abhorrent but I'm seriously failing to understand your line of thought in this 'wanting to see both sides'. You're seeing them - the Russian people are rioting in Moscow. The Russian media is showing tanks rolling into Ukraine and praising Putin. What more is there to say about this?

What do you think will happen to the people rioting? Why do you think this is the first time this happens? Russia is ruthless, there is a reason people fear them.
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And conversely the actions of the west are seen in the same terms, especially in the middle east.
The point as I've said is the moralising aspect. Most rational people would accept the ruthfulness of the Russian regime but not see the same from the IS or UK or France in regards to Iraq and the opening of shock and awe. Those images, similar to this mornings, were displayed triumphantly, the way you say Russian media is today. 'We' do the same, and we'd do well to recognise that.
 
TN Toffee said:
I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say that it was “normal”. However, like I posted earlier, Japanese civilians had already been observed committing suicide en masse to avoid being captured by American soldiers, and the closer the war got to the home islands, the more fanatical they got. It’s not civilian casualties were somehow going to be avoided by continuing to wage conventional warfare.

I’m not sure what you’re claiming was “sold” to people. A land invasion would have cost (based on estimates during the planning) 500k American soldiers lives and 5M+ Japanese soldiers and civilians lives, as opposed to ~200k civilians killed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There’s no need for a sales pitch, anyone who can do grade school arithmetic should be able to draw a reasonable conclusion.
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All your numbers are hypotheticals.

They could have displayed the power of the bomb in better ways than annihilating two cities. And killing 200,000 inoccent people.
 
magicjuan said:
Point being, and I'm sure there are nukes based in Ukraine, if Ukraine is desperate and they have control it's easy to see that desperation translate onto the battlefield
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en.m.wikipedia.org

Budapest Memorandum - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org en.m.wikipedia.org
The memorandum included security assurances against threats or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan.

As a result, between 1994 and 1996, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine gave up their nuclear weapons. Until then, Ukraine had the world's third-largest nuclear weapons stockpile,[2][3] of which Ukraine had physical, but not operational, control. Russia alone controlled the codes needed to operate the nuclear weapons[4][5] via Russian-controlled electronic Permissive Action Links and the Russian command and control system.[4][5] Formally, these weapons were controlled by the Commonwealth of Independent States.[6]
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Efcjake said:
They have none. They gave them up to Russia as part of an agreement with Russia that saw them agree to respect Ukrainian borders.


It doesn't appear to have been a wise move.
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I don't think they really had much choice in the matter. Even if they refused Russia had the codes and would have had to give them to Ukraine for their government to take control. This was unlikely to happen.
 
Tree13 said:
Whilst completely true, I don't think the democratically-elected government on Ukraine would view that as an especially helpful contribution by NATO, the USA or any other western power.

Boots on the ground is the only way to make Putin even think about blinking at this stage. But most of the NATO countries combined don't possess the military size that the USA does, so if Biden makes it clear he's not interested (as he did so unequivocally this evening) then they will all falter. Which is exactly where we are right now.

The scary thing is that the protection of NATO membership that is the sole card that Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania possess in the face of Putin's aspirations towards the Baltic, now looks very shaky. If Biden feels that domestic US sentiment and petrol prices matter more than Ukrainian freedom and democracy then why would he behave any differently at the next tense moment with Russia?

For balance, Trump was even worse. But surely a better option than Biden could have been put forward by the Democrats. In just a few months Afghani and Ukrainian civilians have paid a terrible price.
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Mate, I am not a Biden fan. However I think the world is walking towards a cliff. As posted earlier, we either continue to appease Putin as with Hitler, or we go to incredible war, the like of which we have never seen.

I really have no solution and am concerned for the future. Not quite "we're doomed I tell ye" but these are worrying times. If Putin gets away with this he won't stop. Baltic States next, then former Eastern Bloc.

Hopefully the economic measures will have effect.
 
magicjuan said:
And conversely the actions of the west are seen in the same terms, especially in the middle east.
The point as I've said is the moralising aspect. Most rational people would accept the ruthfulness of the Russian regime but not see the same from the IS or UK or France in regards to Iraq and the opening of shock and awe. Those images, similar to this mornings, were displayed triumphantly, the way you say Russian media is today. 'We' do the same, and we'd do well to recognise that.
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This is, shockingly, not how what happened in Afghanistan and Iraq is viewed everywhere. Even if it was - for Afghanistan it was, at the beginning, seen as a retaliation - they were chopping people's heads, etc., which got them attacked.

ISIS - similar.

Iraq was a truly shocking one for me personally as I had army family and they were expecting to be deployed, but dodged that. It was also against a tyrannical leader in Gadafi.

I'm not justifying the actions of war above, but retaliation is retaliation at least as a means or reason.

Attacking a nation because you feel like you should own it is something else.
 
Tree13 said:
Whilst completely true, I don't think the democratically-elected government on Ukraine would view that as an especially helpful contribution by NATO, the USA or any other western power.

Boots on the ground is the only way to make Putin even think about blinking at this stage. But most of the NATO countries combined don't possess the military size that the USA does, so if Biden makes it clear he's not interested (as he did so unequivocally this evening) then they will all falter. Which is exactly where we are right now.

The scary thing is that the protection of NATO membership that is the sole card that Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania possess in the face of Putin's aspirations towards the Baltic, now looks very shaky. If Biden feels that domestic US sentiment and petrol prices matter more than Ukrainian freedom and democracy then why would he behave any differently at the next tense moment with Russia?

For balance, Trump was even worse. But surely a better option than Biden could have been put forward by the Democrats. In just a few months Afghani and Ukrainian civilians have paid a terrible price.
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The US and our selfs where so shy in jumping over to Iraq to find all the “weapons of mass destruction”.
 
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