Armchair General's DonbAss Derailed Discussion Thread (Topics Include History, Traps, and the Ongoing Slavic Civil War plus much much more)
- Thread starter ParadiseLost
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Till Reagan come and stop supporting soviets - evul empire ended in few years.
PsihoKekec
Swashbuckling Accountant
Nope.Soviets hold only becouse they could take western technologies,credits,and sell oil and gas for big money.
Reagan stopped credits and techology transwer,made oil cheap,and - it was enough to crash soviets.
Every other american president could do the same.Soviets lived and genocided,becouse USA supported them from the start.
So? Putin started his reign with blowing 311 russians so he could genocide Czeczenya/200.000KIA/.
We do not live in Middle Earth,when Good and Evil collide,but in 22th century Europe,when big KGB orks attacked people of Rhun in Ukraine.
There is no Good and Evil here,but lesser evil and bigger one.Which you are supporting,becouse for some reason you belive that big orks from KGB would save christian cyvilisation.
Did you actually read the article in question?
Because it absolutely outlines why we have to take those risks into consideration when we decide what sort of end game the West wants out of the Ukraine conflict and what the costs for it might be.
I get that this is not a popular thought to consider for people closer to the frontline, and I understand how Poles feel about Russia; however, what the author points out cannot be dismissed out of hand.
Kiev is not getting control of the LPR/DRP/Crimea back, and Russia is unlikely to accept anything short of formal, written neutrality for Ukraine.
Tippy and the author of that paper make a lot of the same points and they may be bitter pills to swallow, but that does not change the sound logic behind them.
Maybe Kiev will be able to actually achieve a victory and get Russia to withdraw without escalations beyond what we see now. However Putin and Russia will not accept a military humiliation or indefinte economic total war, and we need to be realistic about what sort of deal/agreement can be reached.
That's my point exactly. Its outlining risks, while not outlining how potentially wavering on account of such risks encourages the other side to be more aggressive with nuclear threats, in turn increasing said risk by mere fact that foreign leadership has heard of such a sentiment being taken seriously in the west.
Push the bayonet, withdraw if it strikes something hard, push harder if it strikes something soft. On the surface of it, it makes sense, but deeper inside it utterly ruins the whole logic of MAD based nuclear policy, which is based on ensuring that the enemy believes that if they escalate, so will you.
If only the other side had so many bitter pill dealers...
That's one thing we should keep selling to Russia, but the bastards still don't want to take them.
If they couldn't risk military humiliation they shouldn't have started the war.
Consider what are you and the author suggesting here.
That if some nuclear power declares war, even conventional one, then everyone needs to tiptoe around it as to let it have at minimum a minor victory, because they may go nuclear in case of a humiliation.
Do you think such thinking among western leadership becoming a rumor known to, say, NK or Iranian leadership, will discourage them from threatening and\or using nuclear escalation, or quite the opposite?
Consider this question very carefully.
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Firebat
Well-known member
It was already tried, didn't work.
MAD only comes into play when taking about nuking the homelands of nuclear powers and large alliances like NATO or the CSTO.
Ukraine is not a nuclear power or in such an alliance and Kiev or some Ukie formation getting nuked is not the same as Russia hitting DC, London, or Warsaw.
That's because Russia has kept up with the reality of modern warfare, politics, and all it encompasses, while the West has had that stupid 'end of history/Russia is a paper tiger we can push around or ignore at will' mindset for the past few decades, and the illusion is just now starting to shatter.
We need to not fall into the trap of 'mirror thinking' and assuming that Russian reasoning or actions will share the same fundemental assumptions most of the West operates under.
Said humiliation could be a threat to Putin's personal safety, and he will escalate if the other option is appearing weak to his internal rivals who might try to replace him. We cannot forget Russian domestic politics exist and factor into what sort of outcomes are realistic in this conflict.
Same with continuing economic total war; if the options are letting the Russia economy collapse or escalate with nukes to get people to back off with the sanctions, Russia/Putin will escalate to ensure thier own economic survival. Sanctions are just a new type of seige warfare, and Russia will not accept being 'starved' to the negotiating table, even if they can lean on China to help limit the pain.
This situation already exist with the Nork's, and they just tested a new solid fueled ICBM, so the horse is already out of the barn.
Iran doesn't have nukes yet, and the Mossad seem pretty good at fucking over Iran without needing to call on conventional military assets, so not really worried about them trying it.
Also, the thinking is already there in western leadership, and has been for a while. It's why we are still going to great lengths to not directly engage Russian forces in combat and both sides keep using proxies in multiple areas of the world. We are just now starting to realize a lot of the hype about the 'end of history' and 'Russia is a paper tiger' was just that: hype.
It sounded great for domestic consumption in the West, but doesn't really reflect the reality on the ground.
Russia and Putin view the Ukraine situation vis a vie what they see as NATO expansion and the deal they thought they had about NATO forces not moving further east than the 1989 borders between Clinton and Yeltsin. To them, it's an existential security issue, both of the military and economic type, particularly once those gas reserves in Ukraine were found and because of how the geographic layout of the North European Plain affects Russian security/defense thinking.
Just trying to ignore what Russia says or thinks, and thinking we can dictate to them what their security concerns are/should be indefinitely is not going to work, and thinking it would is one of those post-Cold War delusions the West told itself in the high after our 'victory' when the USSR collapsed.
It was tried, then people made noises about trying to get Ukraine into NATO and the EU, then supported the Maidan; that ended any chance of maintaining that neutrality.
Firebat
Well-known member
It wasn't some "people making noises", it was the policy of Ukrainian President Yushenko, preceded by more than a decade of NATO-Ukraine cooperation.
What would formal, written neutrality matter if it has been disregarded the first time?
And why wouldn't it be disregarded at the first earliest convenience this time?
And why would anyone believe that it wouldn't be disregarded at the first earliest convenience this time?
Floridaman
Well-known member
More importantly than that we also have to worry about what happens if Russia fully aligns with China, chinas main weakness is their lack of resources like fuel which Russia has plenty of. By forcing the two together we wind up producing a significantly stronger problem than we would have dealing with either of them separately.
strunkenwhite
Well-known member
TheRejectionist
TheRejectionist
So basically my countries partecipated into trying to turn a country into another hermit kingdom.
Fuck those parasites in the EU.
I am not joining into the narrative of Russia's bad.
Fuck them.
They acted like dictators and now they expect me to believe them?
Long live Russia!
strunkenwhite
Well-known member
I had heard that the claim of promises was based on willfully misunderstanding discussions that predate 1993 (i.e. Clinton), so I'm extremely interested in your source for this.
Did you watch the video from earlier in the thread, the one that first talked about the Ukrainian oil deposits and how they changed Russia's strategic calculus?
It was mentioned in that video, along with a lot of the other points made in the article I quoted and points Tippy made in his own posts.
We can and should condemn the Russian invasion, but that should not mean playing dumb about or ignoring why it happened and what all lead up to it, going all the way back to the fall of the USSR.
ReggieLedoux
Well-known member
They acted like ditactors, so you're going to support an actual full on dictator? Not really sure I see the logic, other than maybe Contraism I guess. If anything, you support the guy who doesn't control all the media, his own private intelligence and security service and tried to invade another country on rather flimsy reasons.
Have you missed the last 2 weeks of news?
Russia is a old tiger with stiff joints and big teeth that look very dangerous but are rotten inside. It might get a heart attack if it moves too violently.
While a nuclear attack on Ukraine may not trigger a nuclear response from NATO, it may trigger a military response, especially if the wind blows the wrong way, and definitely will provoke a unprecedented political response, and rightfully so.
And yet again we are lucky you are not a western politician. Perish the very thought of backing off on sanctions if Russia uses nukes in Ukraine. Russia needs to be sure that using nukes in Ukraine will make current sanctions look measured, reasonable, and not all that bad. Nevermind all nuclear testing bans will go to hell, and on top of that NATO will except all its members from nuclear non-proliferation treaty regarding creating own nuclear deterrents, will NATO covering them in the transition phase.
The nork example exactly why you are wrong. It was already done to them since decades, and its definitely hurting them more than anyone else.
Of course they aren't trying anything yet as they don't have working nukes yet.
Well hopefully less stupid and cowardly people get elected ASAP then.
This is a highly repeated rumor that exists and is highly repeated purely and specifically for the benefit of Russia. Its a r umor, which is why despite being such a far reaching and indefinite promise, there is no signed document for it. Please stop.
Ukraine: the history behind Russia’s claim that Nato promised not to expand to the east
Russia insists that there was an agreement not to expand Nato eastwards after the end of the USSR. History begs to differ.
theconversation.com
We all know Russian leadership is perfectly capable of making up reasons for more and more landgrabs until they defend themselves into the shape of an empire. But any country whose leaders have some cheeky imagination can do that. There is no reason why Russia's attempts at that should be taken at face value.
Of course we should not ignore it. But not ignoring something someone says is very different from accepting that said someone should be given what they demand.
Sometimes the appropriate response is "don't even fucking think about it", which is different from ignoring it too.
Also, as far as real world vision of what happens when Russia is given a relatively free hand in defining the neutrality of a supposed buffer state, you can check out the state of Belarus.
Long story short, its no neutrality at all.
StormEagle
Well-known member
Putin ain’t ever done anything to me.
Meanwhile, the people telling me he’s Satan incarnate were the ones responsible for a year long lockdown, the greatest transfer of wealth to the elite that the west has ever seen, are currently/again wrecking the economy for lower and middle class people, want to throw my side of the political aisle into the gulag for not agreeing to roll over and shut up, and have made a habit of chemically castrating kids and demonizing anyone that questions it.
Sure, Putin’s bad. He’s a KGB shithead that should make anyone that borders his nation extremely nervous.
But I hate the globalists and the leftists significantly more than I hate the Ruskies. So the mainstream media and establishment politicians that seem to want WW3 can go fight it themselves, cause I certainly ain’t signing up to fight and die for the cause of trans children and ever increasing profits for the stock holding class.
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sillygoose
Well-known member
Not only that, but the people in charge in the US are responsible for the war in the first place; they overthrew the elected government that was friendly to Putin, then were caught in a leaked phone call talking about who to install instead and vulgarly disregarded what the EU thought, and then kept pushing to move their interventions further into Ukraine despite knowing that was a red line for Putin. Why should anyone pay for the mistakes of the US ruling class when they are clearly fucking idiots who are causing the war and the collapse of the world economy as they try to deal with the consequences of their fuck ups?