It's OK. Biden said they could have Sudetenland
Russia seems to think it was theirs in the first place
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Russia seems to think it was theirs in the first place
Martin Alvito
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It is not in US or UK interests to sit idly by while a large, powerful state in Europe carves chunks out of a weak state. NATO members broadly don't want to pay for the guns and troops to guarantee security. We don't want those states to have them, because we all know what happens every time European states start having arms races with one another. Our choices are spending to keep the peace over there, or dealing with a more costly problem later once they all decide they have to remilitarize. It's not a hard call.
I don't see how you can suggest that Putin is not a threat when he already went into a sovereign neighbor and carved a chunk out of it, and appears poised to repeat that MO. When Iraq did that in Kuwait, a very broad coalition agreed to invade in order to restore the status quo ante. That won't happen here, because Russia has a genuine military and no one wants WWIII. At the same time, we can't sit back and let him destabilize Eastern Europe for the reasons above.
Doing exactly that has been the official policy of both the United States and Russian governments on many, many occasions.
FrenchDarrenBent
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He's not a threat to NATO-nations. The Soviet Union was but not this Russia. Do you genuinely think he'll invade Estonia? Poland? No way. Everton will have won the league before that happens...
We managed just fine before 2014 didn't we, when Ukraine was basically a Russian puppet state?
It was NEVER in the European (!) interest to poke the bear when the EuroMaidan happened. We couldn't and can't give Ukraine what it wants (independence and border security/NATO-membership), so we shouldn't have intervened or made promises. (note: what Ukrainian-speaking people want, because a significant portion of its population is pro-Russia)
It would've been more sensible to let things take their natural course. Different tactics should've been used to court what was only a fledgling (and mainly urban) democratic movement. Everybody knew Russia would react to these statements about NATO and even EU-membership...
Now 15.000+ people are already dead & probably a lot more incoming, with a possibility of another massive refugee crisis.
Let's hope that changes in the future.
I'm in no way defending a mafia state like Russia, but we, as civilized people, should do everything in our power to prevent wars we can't win/can't fight.
NilSatisOptimum
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Friend or not, fact of the matter France along with Germany will be first to respond with their citizens blood... That's what you call a proper response, boots on the ground.
France takes the lead of NATO’s highest readiness force
France takes the lead of NATO’s highest-readiness military force on Saturday (1 January 2022), for a period of one year. The formation, formally known as NATO’s Very High Readiness Joint Task Force (VJTF), was created in 2014 in response to crises in the Middle East and Russia’s aggression...
Erm…I don’t know where you’re coming from with this?Friend or not, fact of the matter France along with Germany will be first to respond with their citizens blood... That's what you call a proper response, boots on the ground.
France takes the lead of NATO’s highest readiness force
France takes the lead of NATO’s highest-readiness military force on Saturday (1 January 2022), for a period of one year. The formation, formally known as NATO’s Very High Readiness Joint Task Force (VJTF), was created in 2014 in response to crises in the Middle East and Russia’s aggression...www.nato.int
I think it’s already been determined that NATO will NOT put troops into Ukraine to face off against Russia.
The NATO Sec General said this himself only last week.
I read this very quickly and thought it said Sunderland.It's OK. Biden said they could have Sudetenland
Ray Purchase
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Just as we are making progress on BMD.
Martin Alvito
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This is nowhere near as simple as you seem to think.
The long-run security threat to both the US and UK as things stand is going to be China. The best way to contain China is to flip Putin's regime. Install a hostile democratic regime on their northern border, and between Russia and India they'll have too much to worry about to make all that much trouble elsewhere.
It's obvious to Putin and the Chinese that, all else equal, we would prefer to replace them and their regimes. So, they make (uneasy) common cause against us. Putin tries to splinter NATO, and the Chinese cause trouble in Southeast Asia. They try to drive wedges between the US and its allies, and spread the US thin enough on its security commitments to get the US to start abrogating them. In other words, we're back to the early days of the Cold War here in terms of relations, just with more trade taking place between the parties.
Everything that's happening in Ukraine takes place against that background. The US and UK wants functional democratic regimes on Putin's borders to destabilize his rule; he wants to undermine them.
It boils down to this: the US and this Russia are fundamentally enemies, Putin has played various presidents for a fool in this regard for some time, and now that chicken is coming home to roost since he bought substantial time to strengthen and consolidate.
FrenchDarrenBent
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That's a nuanced and realistic ambition: overthrowing Putin & installing a democratic regime... Are you having a laugh? Even if he dies tonight, some other apparatchik will take over. The entire economic elite is behind this system.
If anything has been learned since the nineties is that it's impossible to simply ''install'' a democratic regime. It's not like windows 98. Democracy isn't technical and widely applicable, it's part of a culture. It takes a lot of time (and some economic succes). Rush it and it implodes. Look how fragile it is in states like Hungary and Poland. It needs to be nurtured.
Even if that's the end goal: look at how well it's going (again): A possible unwinnable war in Ukraine & a possible pile of dead bodies stacked as high as an elephant's eye. If Putin wins this, then that's only going to cement his position as world leader and it will make him popular at home. Mission accomplished.
The change in attitude has to come from us (and especially from the US). We should act like the adult nations we pretend to be and work in favour of deescalation, the only ethical thing to do. Let's deal with China when securityproblems (security, not economic troubles in the chinese sea or a sino-japanese dispute about some island) actually arise (if they will arise at all), instead of actively working towards WWIII. I'm not saying we should be naive. We should defend ourselves, but keep it to defending.
Martin Alvito
Player Valuation: £50m
Look, I'm just telling you what the preferences of the US and UK have to be, given the geopolitics. Is it going to happen tomorrow? No. It is, however, clearly what is in the long-term interests of the US and UK. This is why we are a security threat to Putin by our mere existence.
That's a nuanced and realistic ambition: overthrowing Putin & installing a democratic regime... Are you having a laugh? Even if he dies tonight, some other apparatchik will take over. The entire economic elite is behind this system.
If anything has been learned since the nineties is that it's impossible to simply ''install'' a democratic regime. It's not like windows 98. Democracy isn't technical and widely applicable, it's part of a culture. It takes a lot of time (and some economic succes). Rush it and it implodes. Look how fragile it is in states like Hungary and Poland. It needs to be nurtured.
Even if that's the end goal: look at how well it's going (again): A possible unwinnable war in Ukraine & a possible pile of dead bodies stacked as high as an elephant's eye. If Putin wins this, then that's only going to cement his position as world leader and it will make him popular at home. Mission accomplished.
The change in attitude has to come from us (and especially from the US). We should act like the adult nations we pretend to be and work in favour of deescalation, the only ethical thing to do. Let's deal with China when securityproblems (security, not economic troubles in the chinese sea or a sino-japanese dispute about some island) actually arise (if they will arise at all), instead of actively working towards WWIII. I'm not saying we should be naive. We should defend ourselves, but keep it to defending.
In turn, Putin's most preferred outcome is to replace the United States government with an isolationist government or autocratic regime which abrogates NATO. Sound like anyone you know?
We cannot back down because he will not. He can't. He knows, at the end of the day, that the US as constituted cannot guarantee his security no matter what promises we make. We promote certain values which say that everyone has fundamental human rights. This creates domestic political pressure to do something about regimes that don't respect those values.
If we get an opportunity to topple him, in light of those domestic pressures and the geopolitics, we're going to take it. His reply has been actively working towards destabilizing our governments and driving our alliances apart.
There is no true deescalation when both sides fundamentally want regime change. The only remaining option is to draw a clear enough line in the sand to keep both sides fighting to destabilize the other through non-military means. In short, a Second Cold War.
There are words for deescalation in the face of armed aggression. They are words like appeasement and capitulation. Are you seriously suggesting that Biden and Johnson can survive that domestically? There's a reason for Putin's choice to push on this conflict at this time, which seems counterintuitive if what he's really after is the dirt in the immediate term.
What he may really have been after is a look at Biden and NATO's cards. Now that he has everyone spooked, he can move on his impossible set of demands, get something and still come out looking strong, while having laid bare divisions within the EU and NATO.
If he decides to invade, well, it isn't our fault that Putin has chosen a path that is fundamentally incompatible with the post-war order. The mistakes that led to this mess were made long ago, by leaders that should have known better than to trust a former KGB colonel covered as a doofus, which both sides do with the sharpest of cookies.
peteblue
Welcome back Wayne
So, where is the marvellous EU in all of this. We have Germany refusing U.K. flights to bring in defensive arms from the U.K. to Ukraine and Germany refusing to give export licenses to Lithuania to do similar. So once again, we have just the USA and U.K. looking out for Europe while the rest of the EU worries about its gas supplies or argues with itself to determine a common approach. Absolutely disgraceful. The EU is a wonderful bully, until it is faced with actual force…..
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