It is tragic. If the Ukrainians had abided by the Minsk 2014 accords and not used them in an attempt arm up the Ukraine to fight the Russians. The suffering and spending needs to stop.
Ukraine should unconditionally surrender and the country should be partitioned along ethnic and linguistic lines. Financially compensate the few who want to leave for their property.
I expect that in January the RF will push hard on multiple fronts and NATO will lamely respond in May. Logistics win wars and NATO is far behind.
The escalation that is occurring reminds me of Vietnam. Zelensky = Diem
My, my. We do have a long running disagreement on the whole history here, the history being covered by Professor Timothy Snyder in his fall class at Yale, broadcast via videos on YouTube now up to 24 or so lectures, and I'm two behind.
For now, and I hope to respond in greater depth, let me again emphasize for readers and politicians in the West not to count the Russian determination out...what I read from Western sources today, sometimes quoting intercepts from the troops themselves, the Russian demoralization would seem to be on the order of the great routs and retreats after the German invasion of June, 1941, retreats which stopped only in December of that year in the suburbs just outside Moscow itself, and not until in a different theatre, when Stalin issued a no retreat order to stand at Stalingrad on the banks of the Volga in July of 1942...
There are too many unknowns about Russia's interior resources and the levels which Iran and North Korea are willing to resupply them...and as you point out, and which I have criticized all along, the U.S. and NATO want this war on the "cheap," and that is already a pipe dream.
To win it Ukraine will need the weapons currently being denied, and depending on the state of Russian push back, eventually boots on the ground and planes in the air from the U.S. and NATO. I am willing to face that the risks that implies, and have written so even before Russians crossed Ukraine's 1991 borders.
I write for Ukraine by presenting the worst case for planning purposes, not the optimistic drivel which is so self serving for a West that has forgotten how to fight, or what a real tyrant looks like.
If I wrote the way I do but lived in Russian, I'd be beaten, poisoned, exiled, dead or in a penal colony. Not to toot my own horn here - it doesn't take too much to experience that fate.
And to Larry Summers and his sidekick J. Bradford DeLong ("Slouching Towards Utopia"), Neoliberal Commerce does not solve all lives most pressing problems. Nor relations between states.
Russians irrespective of our poor intelligence seem to be doing quite well. Cost of living and inflation are favorable, they don't have much debt to the Collective West and the country seems to be solidifying around Putin.
There is no going back to the bizarre borders of 1991. Crimea has belonged to Russia since Catherine. They paid for it in fact.
More importantly, if we had the men and material to fight, we could have that debate. But the peacemakers are gone. If you question US intervention in Ukraine, you are labelled a Putin puppet and get no air time. Recent polls suggest 50 percent of the country doesn't support US intervention there. I am not clear what our strategic interest is. Lets remember the most important thing, we don't have the industry to be the arsenal of democracy. Our MIC is unable to respond. Our weapons our fragile and ineffective. Our Patriot system could stop Houthi drones and wouldn't stop Russian attacks even if they could be deployed in sufficient amounts. Russia has effectively sunk Ukraine into darkness. Winter is here. We can only "win it" with tactical nuclear weapons. We may do that yet given the saber rattling in recent months.
I think it is much more likely that Russia will, if it faces more defeats on the Southern and Eastern fronts, dip into some form of unconventional weapon, China's caution seemingly having chastised them not to casually brandish the mushroom cloud. I would think most of the US feels missile and drone warfare targeting civilians is "unconventional" as well as a violation of human rights, to state it clearly. And there are other weapons short of nuclear that can be very horrific, such as the thermobaric ones.
I followed, just before and into the earliest stages of the war, the attack on Kyiv in Feb.-March 2022 Professor Mearsheimer's view of post Soviet Russia and their reaction to NATO's expansion, and the semi-pledges to Ukraine which left that nation hanging in a legal limbo as far as NATO's military shield went. But Mearsheimer is too doctrinaire in the sense of balance of power politics, all power and no moral dimension, and in that view, now matter how Putin treated dissidents, at home or abroad, murdering them one way or another, the US was threatening Moscow in an existential way while ignoring the real US existential threat, China.
I was sympathetic up to a point - those 120,000 troops massed on the Ukraine borders turned me around and have never regretted writing that the US, Britain, France and Poland should have sent troops before the invasion to the inside of Ukraine to make things clear...no apologies, no regrets.
But my longer and later reaction to Mearsheimer is that whatever spheres of interest means in terms of "justice" to Putin, no former satellite of the USSR wants to embrace Russia even in pure economic terms - except Germany - because there is no trust based on historical memory. And dissenters can read their fate in any number of notorious incidents of prison and far worse.
And as to events inside Ukraine, 2000 and onward, I invite readers to listen to visiting lecturer Marci Shore, lecture (Class) 20 in Snyder's course at Yale, 54 minutes long. I have felt, having listened to the late Professor Stephen F. Cohen's takes on this period in obscure late night radio broadcasts, that the best way for an American to understand what was going inside Ukraine 2000-2014 was the struggle inside the territory of Kansas in the decade before our Civil War - Bloody Kansas where the South via Missouri Slave holders infiltrees flooding the territory wanted their new slave state to vote for, and abolitionists, including John Brown wanted a Free Soil Kansas, no slavery allowed...both Russian and US intelligence agencies and operatives were active in Ukraine, pushing East or West...Shore's lecture, which certainly can be disputed, is a clear account which states that the majority of Ukrainians wanted to go West, not East and Moscow for their economic and political futures. And were shot down in large numbers for protesting along those lines in the disputes over who was duly elected and whether they want life with Putin or life with the Euro-zone.
I am not sure what defeats you are speaking of. Russian forces have captured Marinka and are slowly but surely taking Bakhmut.
The neocon plans to dismember Russia are failing. The Russians won't negotiate with the West given Merkel's admission of deception about Minsk 2014 in Der Spiegel.
The Banderite Nazi Ukrainians hate the Russians and now the feeling is mutual. There will be NO negotiated peace. Like in marriage, sometimes divorce is the best option. Let the Banderites join Poland etc. and let the East go with the Russian Federation. But they won't. 80 percent of Ukrainian GDP is now under Russian control. How will we launder money when we only have a rump state left over from what used to be Ukraine.
India and China are happy to have Russian fossil fuels. The collective West wants to freeze, let them. They won't even fire up their nuclear power plants. Industrial and political suicide the the Green Communists of the Collective West.
The far right Nazi of the Ukraine make the Special Military Operation by the Russian Federation critical. Here are some references for the readers of this blog.
Forbes - Ukraine Deradicalized Its Extremist Troops. Now They Might Be Preparing A Counteroffensive:
It is tragic. If the Ukrainians had abided by the Minsk 2014 accords and not used them in an attempt arm up the Ukraine to fight the Russians. The suffering and spending needs to stop.
Ukraine should unconditionally surrender and the country should be partitioned along ethnic and linguistic lines. Financially compensate the few who want to leave for their property.
I expect that in January the RF will push hard on multiple fronts and NATO will lamely respond in May. Logistics win wars and NATO is far behind.
The escalation that is occurring reminds me of Vietnam. Zelensky = Diem
My, my. We do have a long running disagreement on the whole history here, the history being covered by Professor Timothy Snyder in his fall class at Yale, broadcast via videos on YouTube now up to 24 or so lectures, and I'm two behind.
For now, and I hope to respond in greater depth, let me again emphasize for readers and politicians in the West not to count the Russian determination out...what I read from Western sources today, sometimes quoting intercepts from the troops themselves, the Russian demoralization would seem to be on the order of the great routs and retreats after the German invasion of June, 1941, retreats which stopped only in December of that year in the suburbs just outside Moscow itself, and not until in a different theatre, when Stalin issued a no retreat order to stand at Stalingrad on the banks of the Volga in July of 1942...
There are too many unknowns about Russia's interior resources and the levels which Iran and North Korea are willing to resupply them...and as you point out, and which I have criticized all along, the U.S. and NATO want this war on the "cheap," and that is already a pipe dream.
To win it Ukraine will need the weapons currently being denied, and depending on the state of Russian push back, eventually boots on the ground and planes in the air from the U.S. and NATO. I am willing to face that the risks that implies, and have written so even before Russians crossed Ukraine's 1991 borders.
I write for Ukraine by presenting the worst case for planning purposes, not the optimistic drivel which is so self serving for a West that has forgotten how to fight, or what a real tyrant looks like.
If I wrote the way I do but lived in Russian, I'd be beaten, poisoned, exiled, dead or in a penal colony. Not to toot my own horn here - it doesn't take too much to experience that fate.
And to Larry Summers and his sidekick J. Bradford DeLong ("Slouching Towards Utopia"), Neoliberal Commerce does not solve all lives most pressing problems. Nor relations between states.
Russians irrespective of our poor intelligence seem to be doing quite well. Cost of living and inflation are favorable, they don't have much debt to the Collective West and the country seems to be solidifying around Putin.
There is no going back to the bizarre borders of 1991. Crimea has belonged to Russia since Catherine. They paid for it in fact.
More importantly, if we had the men and material to fight, we could have that debate. But the peacemakers are gone. If you question US intervention in Ukraine, you are labelled a Putin puppet and get no air time. Recent polls suggest 50 percent of the country doesn't support US intervention there. I am not clear what our strategic interest is. Lets remember the most important thing, we don't have the industry to be the arsenal of democracy. Our MIC is unable to respond. Our weapons our fragile and ineffective. Our Patriot system could stop Houthi drones and wouldn't stop Russian attacks even if they could be deployed in sufficient amounts. Russia has effectively sunk Ukraine into darkness. Winter is here. We can only "win it" with tactical nuclear weapons. We may do that yet given the saber rattling in recent months.
I think it is much more likely that Russia will, if it faces more defeats on the Southern and Eastern fronts, dip into some form of unconventional weapon, China's caution seemingly having chastised them not to casually brandish the mushroom cloud. I would think most of the US feels missile and drone warfare targeting civilians is "unconventional" as well as a violation of human rights, to state it clearly. And there are other weapons short of nuclear that can be very horrific, such as the thermobaric ones.
I followed, just before and into the earliest stages of the war, the attack on Kyiv in Feb.-March 2022 Professor Mearsheimer's view of post Soviet Russia and their reaction to NATO's expansion, and the semi-pledges to Ukraine which left that nation hanging in a legal limbo as far as NATO's military shield went. But Mearsheimer is too doctrinaire in the sense of balance of power politics, all power and no moral dimension, and in that view, now matter how Putin treated dissidents, at home or abroad, murdering them one way or another, the US was threatening Moscow in an existential way while ignoring the real US existential threat, China.
I was sympathetic up to a point - those 120,000 troops massed on the Ukraine borders turned me around and have never regretted writing that the US, Britain, France and Poland should have sent troops before the invasion to the inside of Ukraine to make things clear...no apologies, no regrets.
But my longer and later reaction to Mearsheimer is that whatever spheres of interest means in terms of "justice" to Putin, no former satellite of the USSR wants to embrace Russia even in pure economic terms - except Germany - because there is no trust based on historical memory. And dissenters can read their fate in any number of notorious incidents of prison and far worse.
And as to events inside Ukraine, 2000 and onward, I invite readers to listen to visiting lecturer Marci Shore, lecture (Class) 20 in Snyder's course at Yale, 54 minutes long. I have felt, having listened to the late Professor Stephen F. Cohen's takes on this period in obscure late night radio broadcasts, that the best way for an American to understand what was going inside Ukraine 2000-2014 was the struggle inside the territory of Kansas in the decade before our Civil War - Bloody Kansas where the South via Missouri Slave holders infiltrees flooding the territory wanted their new slave state to vote for, and abolitionists, including John Brown wanted a Free Soil Kansas, no slavery allowed...both Russian and US intelligence agencies and operatives were active in Ukraine, pushing East or West...Shore's lecture, which certainly can be disputed, is a clear account which states that the majority of Ukrainians wanted to go West, not East and Moscow for their economic and political futures. And were shot down in large numbers for protesting along those lines in the disputes over who was duly elected and whether they want life with Putin or life with the Euro-zone.
Here is the lecture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gg_CLI3xY58
If you want good quality understanding of the military issues in the country formally known as the Ukraine, I would suggest this you tube channel
https://www.youtube.com/c/TheNewAtlas?app=desktop
I am not sure what defeats you are speaking of. Russian forces have captured Marinka and are slowly but surely taking Bakhmut.
The neocon plans to dismember Russia are failing. The Russians won't negotiate with the West given Merkel's admission of deception about Minsk 2014 in Der Spiegel.
The Banderite Nazi Ukrainians hate the Russians and now the feeling is mutual. There will be NO negotiated peace. Like in marriage, sometimes divorce is the best option. Let the Banderites join Poland etc. and let the East go with the Russian Federation. But they won't. 80 percent of Ukrainian GDP is now under Russian control. How will we launder money when we only have a rump state left over from what used to be Ukraine.
India and China are happy to have Russian fossil fuels. The collective West wants to freeze, let them. They won't even fire up their nuclear power plants. Industrial and political suicide the the Green Communists of the Collective West.
The far right Nazi of the Ukraine make the Special Military Operation by the Russian Federation critical. Here are some references for the readers of this blog.
Forbes - Ukraine Deradicalized Its Extremist Troops. Now They Might Be Preparing A Counteroffensive:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe...
The Hill - Congress bans arms to Ukraine militia linked to neo-Nazis:
https://thehill.com/policy/defense/38...
Years of the Western (BBC) Media Admitting to Extremism Among Azov Military Units:
BBC - Outside Source, March 23, 2022:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode...
BBC - TORCH-LIT MARCH IN KIEV BY UKRAINE'S RIGHT-WING SVOBODA PARTY - BBC NEWS (2014):
https://youtu.be/tHhGEiwCHZE
BBC - Neo-Nazi threat in new Ukraine: NEWSNIGHT (2014):
https://youtu.be/5SBo0akeDMY
BBC - Ukraine conflict: 'White power' warrior from Sweden (2014):
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe...
BBC - Ukraine underplays role of far right in conflict (2014):
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe...
BBC - Ukraine's most-feared volunteers - BBC News (2015):
https://youtu.be/qe-q1DFbYwo
BBC - The far-right group threatening to overthrow Ukraine's government - Newsnight (2015):
https://youtu.be/sEKQsnRGv7s
BBC - Ukraine: On patrol with the far-right National Militia - BBC Newsnight (2018):
https://youtu.be/hE6b4ao8gAQ
BBC - Ukraine coat of arms in UK anti-terror list furore (2020):
https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trendi...
BBC - Behind Belarusian 'far-right mercenary' claims (2021):
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe...
Al Jazeera - Ukrainian fighters grease bullets against Chechens with pig fat (2022):
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/2...
The Hill - The reality of neo-Nazis in Ukraine is far from Kremlin propaganda (2017):
https://thehill.com/opinion/internati...