Ukraine

Halifax2TheMax · January 2022

Will putin on the ritz invade? Should the US and NATO go to war over Ukraine? Does it make a difference if its a "border excursion," like running some tanks over a farmer's field, versus a full-on invasion?

Personally, I'm not sure the US should get involved, being anti-war, but on the other hand, I'm not sure not coming to their defense, in some manner, may result in putin on the ritz, China and North Korea getting emboldened and doing other things as well. For now, and until "it" happens, give diplomacy a chance and see if cooler heads prevail. Guess time will tell.

static111 · January 2022

Halifax2TheMax said:

Will putin on the ritz invade? Should the US and NATO go to war over Ukraine? Does it make a difference if its a "border excursion," like running some tanks over a farmer's field, versus a full-on invasion?

Find out next week on the Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle

Poncier · January 2022

Ledbetterman10 · January 2022

I'm against any sort of U.S. involvement in this. Ukraine has a military. Let them defend whatever area that Russia is after. I think the U.S. getting involved would just encourage China to side with Russia and fight us.

We just got out of a meaningless 20-year war that saw like 5,000 Americans die. I doubt a border war between Russian and Ukraine would be popular with Americans. Yet, there's bipartisan support for intervening if Russia advances. Why is that? Well to quote a girl I worked with back around 2006, when I told her the Iraq War was stupid and we shouldn't be fighting it, she didn't disagree, but she noted that her father works for a defense contractor and that "Christmas has been good" since the war began.

brianlux · January 2022

The whole thing sucks big-time for the Ukraine but I don't see any point into the U.S. getting involved militarily. It's another on e of those situations that could escalate.

Ledbetterman10 said:

I'm against any sort of U.S. involvement in this. Ukraine has a military. Let them defend whatever area that Russia is after. I think the U.S. getting involved would just encourage China to side with Russia and fight us.

We just got out of a meaningless 20-year war that saw like 5,000 Americans die. I doubt a border war between Russian and Ukraine would be popular with Americans. Yet, there's bipartisan support for intervening if Russia advances. Why is that? Well to quote a girl I worked with back around 2006, when I told her the Iraq War was stupid and we shouldn't be fighting it, she didn't disagree, but she noted that her father works for a defense contractor and that "Christmas has been good" since the war began.

I think you answered you own question with the comment the father of the girl you worked with in '06: defense contracts. War is big business. All wars since WWI have been about big business. It's the same old story over and over.

Ledbetterman10 · January 2022

It was a rhetorical question. Of course defense contractors want a new war. And they have lobbyists that wield more influence over politicians than any other lobbyists do.

Meltdown99 · January 2022

You are free too board a flight and pick up a weapon and join the fight…but it’s easier to send poor 18-19-20 year old to fight bullshit wars…

AW124797 · January 2022

Well, as we all know from history: Polls are shit. Time for a new war. It's inevitable.

gimmesometruth27 · January 2022

get your war on, y'all!

hedonist · January 2022

Ukraine is weak!

Meltdown99 · January 2022

Ledbetterman10 said:

It was a rhetorical question. Of course defense contractors want a new war. And they have lobbyists that wield more influence over politicians than any other lobbyists do.

Of course they do and Biden is more than happy to beat the war drum which is easy to do for cowherds like him…

tempo_n_groove · January 2022

I think this is a big deal for the balance of power in the world. Putin is saber rattling but we do need to show a sign of force and make sure Putin and China know that they can't go doing what they want to neighboring countries.

mickeyrat · January 2022

tempo_n_groove said:

I think this is a big deal for the balance of power in the world. Putin is saber rattling but we do need to show a sign of force and make sure Putin and China know that they can't go doing what they want to neighboring countries.

China's border countries should be concerned. but really China has already done their thing militarily.

where China grows influence is economically. Emerging markets. Like the whole of Africa.

tempo_n_groove · January 2022

mickeyrat said:

tempo_n_groove said:

I think this is a big deal for the balance of power in the world. Putin is saber rattling but we do need to show a sign of force and make sure Putin and China know that they can't go doing what they want to neighboring countries.

China's border countries should be concerned. but really China has already done their thing militarily.

where China grows influence is economically. Emerging markets. Like the whole of Africa.

They are also building land to make bases and further eliminating free speech from Hong Kong.

China has been buying up mines that produce rare earths and metals for years now but that doesn't mean that they aren't watching what we do w Russia.

Ledbetterman10 · January 2022

tempo_n_groove said:

I think this is a big deal for the balance of power in the world. Putin is saber rattling but we do need to show a sign of force and make sure Putin and China know that they can't go doing what they want to neighboring countries.

Ah yes, the old "Team America: World Police" stance that has been so beneficial to both us and to countries around the world.

Halifax2TheMax · January 2022

I suppose it depends if you want to live in a world full of autocratic rulers, devoid of democracy, or not? But you also really have to wonder what putin on the ritz has on POOTWH, what was said by putin on the ritz to POOTWH just prior to them walking out to face the press in Helsinki and why POOTWH, the proclaimed lover of America and putting America First would cede Europe to Russia. What's the "why?" I also don't think President Biden is "beating the war drum," as some do. He understands what a land war in Europe would mean. Doing nothing is not an option. NATO has been around since 1949 and if the member states do "nothing," then all security treaties are meaningless. It certainly is a sticky wicket.

From the NYT email blast:

Germany, apart

Donald Trump has made a habit of deriding the U.S. alliance with Western Europe. He described NATO — the American-led alliance with Europe that dates to the 1940s — as “obsolete” and said that Americans were “schmucks” for financing it. He mused about withdrawing the U.S. from NATO and often spoke more positively about Russia than about longtime American allies like Germany and France.

These comments were a radical departure from the policies of every U.S. president, Republican and Democrat, for 75 years. Still, because Trump did not make good on his biggest threats, the tangible effects were not always clear.

Now they are becoming clearer.

Russia has massed about 125,000 troops on its border with Ukraine, threatening an invasion that would be the most substantial ground war in Europe since the end of World War II. To prevent that, President Biden, Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain and several other leaders are trying to present a unified front and tell Russia that it would suffer severe economic consequences. But one crucial country is missing from that united front: Germany.

As Katrin Bennhold, The Times’s Berlin bureau chief, writes:

Denmark is sending fighter jets to Lithuania and a frigate to the Baltic Sea. France has offered to send troops to Romania. Spain is sending a frigate to the Black Sea. President Biden has put thousands of U.S. troops on “high alert.”

And then there is Germany. In recent days Germany — Europe’s largest and richest democracy, strategically situated at the crossroads between East and West — has stood out more for what it will not do than for what it is doing.

Germany’s government, under its new chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has ruled out any arms exports to Ukraine. It is also delaying a shipment of howitzers from Estonia to Ukraine. It may have kept British planes from using German airspace when sending military supplies to Ukraine last week.

Most significantly, the Scholz government has been vague about whether a Russian invasion would lead to the shutdown of an undersea gas pipeline between Germany and Russia. The pipeline, the Nord Stream 2, will become a major source of energy for Germany and a major source of revenue for Russia once it begins operating, likely in the next year. Scholz recently described Nord Stream 2 as a “private-sector project.”

Trumpism in action

The pipeline’s history highlights the long-term consequences of Trump’s hostility to Europe. For years, many U.S. officials opposed Nord Stream 2, understanding that it would solidify ties between Germany and Russia. It is also likely to damage Ukraine’s economy; much of Russia’s natural gas has flowed through Ukraine, which receives fees in exchange.

But Trump showed little interest in building a good relationship with Germany as a way to persuade it to abandon the pipeline. He instead criticized America’s longtime allies in Europe — and treated Russian President Vladimir Putin warmly.

Trump’s hostility to Western Europe, in turn, encouraged Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor at the time, to ponder a future in which the U.S. might be pulling back from NATO. In that scenario, friendly relations with Russia (and China, too) would have advantages, especially because of its importance to European energy supplies.

“By the time Biden took office, the pipeline was nearly complete,” said my colleague Michael Crowley, who covered Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s trip to Germany last week. “Biden calculated that restoring relations with Berlin after the Trump era was far too important to risk with a last-ditch and potentially futile effort to stop the project.”

Instead, Biden waived sanctions — which Congress established starting in 2017 — on companies that worked on the pipeline. It was too late to prevent completion, he decided.

Trump’s European policy is hardly the only reason that the pipeline exists. Discussions about it began before he was president, reflecting decades of close ties between Germany and Russia, as Katrin notes. But Trump’s foreign policy diminished American influence in Europe — and, if anything, sent signals that the U.S. favored closer ties between Russia and Western Europe.

Leaders across much of Eastern Europe are not happy about these developments. Ukraine’s foreign minister has accused Berlin of effectively “encouraging” Russian aggression. A senior Lithuanian official said that Germany was “making a big strategic mistake and putting its reputation at risk.”

Putin, on the other hand, seems thrilled. He has embarked on a campaign to weaken democracies and strengthen autocracies, both in his own region (as in Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus) and elsewhere (through election misinformation campaigns in the U.S. and Western Europe). Despite this aggression, NATO is not unified in confronting him, giving Putin more leeway to act as he chooses.

“He well recognizes that Europe’s main power base is France, Germany and Britain,” Tobias Ellwood, a member of Britain’s Parliament who helps set military policy, told The Washington Post. “If these three countries are united, the rest of Europe follows. If you can sow divisions among these three, then there’s no leadership, there’s no coordination and there’s no unity.”

The divisions even extend to internal U.S. politics. This week, Tom Malinowski, a Democrat who represents New Jersey in the House, tweeted: “My office is now getting calls from folks who say they watch Tucker Carlson and are upset that we’re not siding with Russia in its threats to invade Ukraine, and who want me to support Russia’s ‘reasonable’ positions.”

It’s still possible that Germany will do more to discourage an invasion than it has so far. Scholz said recently that Russia would suffer “high costs” if it invades. Yet Putin is savvy enough to understand the difference between a unified, clear European effort to prevent an invasion and a muddled one. Germany has chosen a muddle so far.

It’s a sign that Trump has succeeded at one of his foreign-policy goals: creating distance between the U.S. and at least some parts of NATO.

More on Ukraine:

• The Biden administration is working to increase Europe’s oil and gas supplies in case Russia cuts off shipments.

• Ukraine’s leaders are playing down the threat of an invasion. It might be an effort to avoid provoking Putin.

• Biden said the U.S. was willing to levy personal sanctions against Putin. Here’s the latest.

Meltdown99 · January 2022

Europe should learn to defend themselves and quit relying on kids from North America for your freedom.

tempo_n_groove · January 2022

Ledbetterman10 said:

tempo_n_groove said:

I think this is a big deal for the balance of power in the world. Putin is saber rattling but we do need to show a sign of force and make sure Putin and China know that they can't go doing what they want to neighboring countries.

Ah yes, the old "Team America: World Police" stance that has been so beneficial to both us and to countries around the world.

If you want leaders like Putin and Xi Jinping to extend their tentacles then I am not sure what to tell you. I wouldn't mind the USA to be the bully here.

Meltdown99 · January 2022

How many foreign military basis does Russia and China have? How many does the US have? And the west created China by moving so much manufacturing to China …

Ledbetterman10 · January 2022

tempo_n_groove said:

Ledbetterman10 said:

tempo_n_groove said:

I think this is a big deal for the balance of power in the world. Putin is saber rattling but we do need to show a sign of force and make sure Putin and China know that they can't go doing what they want to neighboring countries.

Ah yes, the old "Team America: World Police" stance that has been so beneficial to both us and to countries around the world.

If you want leaders like Putin and Xi Jinping to extend their tentacles then I am not sure what to tell you. I wouldn't mind the USA to be the bully here.

It's not that I necessarily "want" it. But we're going send soldiers to die in defense of the Ukrainian border? Think back to WW2 when Germany took over almost all of Europe, and we didn't do shit about it until the Japanese attacked us.

I'd leave it up to Ukraine to defend itself. You say you wouldn't mind the USA being the bully. We might end up being the ones bullied over there. And by "we," I mean our troops. And by "bullied," I mean killed....in defense of the fucking Ukraine.

Meltdown99 · January 2022

Ledbetterman10 said:

tempo_n_groove said:

Ledbetterman10 said:

tempo_n_groove said:

I think this is a big deal for the balance of power in the world. Putin is saber rattling but we do need to show a sign of force and make sure Putin and China know that they can't go doing what they want to neighboring countries.

Ah yes, the old "Team America: World Police" stance that has been so beneficial to both us and to countries around the world.

If you want leaders like Putin and Xi Jinping to extend their tentacles then I am not sure what to tell you. I wouldn't mind the USA to be the bully here.

It's not that I necessarily "want" it. But we're going send soldiers to die in defense of the Ukrainian border? Think back to WW2 when Germany took over almost all of Europe, and we didn't do shit about it until the Japanese attacked us.

I'd leave it up to Ukraine to defend itself. You say you wouldn't mind the USA being the bully. We might end up being the ones bullied over there. And by "we," I mean our troops. And by "bullied," I mean killed....in defense of the fucking Ukraine.

If you go to war with Russia there will be plenty of young people coming home in body bags. The Russian military is just a tad better than anything the US has seen since Viet Nam…and it may end badly for the west…

Ukraine

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