@shallow-blue saidOutside of your childish, as usual, false claims that I have any fondness for Putin, that statement is accurate. And we should take those statements seriously.
Your buddy Putin is the only one who has actively threatened to toss nukes around.
@phranny saidPutin sure has taken a long time to start his master plan of "reunit[ing] the former Soviet Union by using military force to control now sovereign nations".
Even Fox News clearly understands Putin wants to reunite the former Soviet Union by using military force to control now sovereign nations. Putin has stated that disolving the Soviet Union was a huge mistake. I believe he saw an authoritarian ally in Trump. Putin has long wanted to weaken NATO and Trump too is not fond of NATO.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/putin-soviet-union-next-move
It's true he has stated that dissolving the USSR was a mistake and that he wants to weaken NATO. Neither requires military invasions of Eastern Europe including NATO countries.
@no1marauder he has invaded Ukraine. He has no plans to stop. Only the strength and will of Western countries led by the U.S. will stop him. Trump and the stance of the current GOP has emboldened Putin.
@no1marauder saidI was unaware they stopped negotiations. I thought they keep asking Russia to stop the invasion and get out and Russia keeps refusing. What would you like negotiations to look like?
A simple question:
What do those who support the present policy of virtually unlimited aid to Ukraine without any effort at negotiations think is the most likely endgame of this war?
@no1marauder if the US and NATO allies keep up the pressure with both sanctions and supporting Ukraine, Russia might be held back from gobbling up former USSR satellite countries. We go back to a Cold War environment and, hopefully, refocus internationally on reducing carbon emissions.
@phranny saidThat sounds soooooooooooooooooooooo tough. Here's another assessment:
@no1marauder he has invaded Ukraine. He has no plans to stop. Only the strength and will of Western countries led by the U.S. will stop him. Trump and the stance of the current GOP has emboldened Putin.
"n an NPR report about the danger of nuclear war over Ukraine, Matthew Bunn, a nuclear weapons expert at Harvard University, estimated the chance of Russia using a nuclear weapon at 10 to 20 percent.
How have we gone from ruling out direct U.S. and NATO involvement in the war to U.S. involvement in all aspects of the war except for the bleeding and dying, with an estimated 10 to 20 percent chance of nuclear war? Bunn made that estimate shortly before the sabotage of the Kerch Strait Bridge to Crimea. What odds will he project a few months from now if both sides keep matching each other's escalations with further escalation?
Yet that is what the intensifying Western role in Ukraine now explicitly aims to achieve. This leaves U.S. and NATO policy, and thus our very existence, hanging by a thin thread: the hope that Putin is bluffing, despite explicit warnings that he is not. CIA Director William Burns, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines and the director of the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency), Lt. Gen. Scott Berrier, have all warned that we should not take this danger lightly.
The danger of relentless escalation toward Armageddon is what both sides faced throughout the Cold War, which is why, after the wake-up call of the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, dangerous brinkmanship gave way to a framework of nuclear arms control agreements and safeguard mechanisms to prevent proxy wars and military alliances spiraling into a world-ending nuclear war. Even with those safeguards in place, there were still many close calls — but without them, we would probably not be here to write about it.
Today, the situation is made more dangerous by the dismantling of those nuclear arms treaties and safeguards. It is also exacerbated, whether either side intends it or not, by the 12 to 1 imbalance between U.S. and Russian military spending, which leaves Russia with more limited conventional military options and a greater reliance on nuclear ones.
But there have always been alternatives to the relentless escalation of this war by both sides that has brought us to this pass. In April, Western officials took a fateful step when they persuaded Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to abandon Turkish- and Israeli-brokered negotiations with Russia that had produced a promising 15-point framework for a ceasefire, a Russian withdrawal and a neutral future for Ukraine.
That agreement would have required Western countries to provide security guarantees to Ukraine, but they refused to be party to it and instead promised Ukraine military support for a long war to seek a decisive defeat Russia and recovery of essentially all the territory Ukraine has lost since 2014.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin declared that the West's goal in the war was now to "weaken" Russia to the point that it would no longer have the military power to invade Ukraine again. But if the U.S. and its allies ever came close to achieving that goal, Russia would surely see such a total military defeat as putting "the very existence of the state under threat," triggering the use of nuclear weapons under its publicly stated nuclear doctrine. "
https://www.salon.com/2022/10/17/joe-bidens-broken-promise-to-avoid-with-could-lead-to-armageddon/
Does this "strength and will" extend to engaging in a nuclear exchange with Russia because of acceptance of another dubious "domino theory"?
@zahlanzi saidAnother person who doesn't know what a "negotiation" is. It isn't just insisting someone else do what you want them to.
I was unaware they stopped negotiations. I thought they keep asking Russia to stop the invasion and get out and Russia keeps refusing. What would you like negotiations to look like?
There were serious negotiations in March and April that Ukraine at the insistence of Western leaders like Boris Johnson shut down. https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2022/09/02/diplomacy-watch-why-did-the-west-stop-a-peace-deal-in-ukraine/
@no1marauder saidPutin will never stop with Ukraine. UK Prime Minister Chamberlain tried appeasing Hitler. Look how that ended.
That sounds soooooooooooooooooooooo tough. Here's another assessment:
"n an NPR report about the danger of nuclear war over Ukraine, Matthew Bunn, a nuclear weapons expert at Harvard University, estimated the chance of Russia using a nuclear weapon at 10 to 20 percent.
How have we gone from ruling out direct U.S. and NATO involvement in the war to U.S. involvement ...[text shortened]... engaging in a nuclear exchange with Russia because of acceptance of another dubious "domino theory"?
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@no1marauder saidAnd you're still pretending that it's NATO who has the finger poised on the button.
Outside of your childish, as usual, false claims that I have any fondness for Putin, that statement is accurate. And we should take those statements seriously.
Childish?
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@no1marauder saidIf we stop supplying Ukraine: the entire obliteration of Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, the Baltic countries, Poland, and possibly more.
A simple question:
What do those who support the present policy of virtually unlimited aid to Ukraine without any effort at negotiations think is the most likely endgame of this war?
If we stand up to your bully paymaster Putin: the survival of the East European and Caucasian countries, and maybe, if they choose so, a new, civilised Russia.
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@no1marauder saidThe Domino theory your referring too was usually referring to the people of the country itself falling to an evil political theory ( communism ) so needed saving from itself even if meant killing huge numbers of them.
The argument is the same: IF Country X is allowed to fall to Evil Group A, Evil Group A will also seize Countries Y, Z, AA, etc. etc. etc.
It's called the "Domino Theory".
This scenario is very different, it’s about one relatively smaller country after another falling to a relatively larger expansionist state.
More akin to the situation with Germany in Central and Eastern Europe in the 1930s than Communism in Asia in the 50s, 60s and 70s.
But nice try with the Nam guilt trip.
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@no1marauder saidOh, you saw it coming.
Ohhhhhhhhh, never saw that one coming.
You just stick your head in the sand and go "Putin will stop Putin will stop Putin will stop".
You do see it coming that Putin will never stop. At no border whatsoever. You just deny that you see it coming.
@no1marauder said"Another person who doesn't know what a "negotiation" is. It isn't just insisting someone else do what you want them to."
Another person who doesn't know what a "negotiation" is. It isn't just insisting someone else do what you want them to.
There were serious negotiations in March and April that Ukraine at the insistence of Western leaders like Boris Johnson shut down. https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2022/09/02/diplomacy-watch-why-did-the-west-stop-a-peace-deal-in-ukraine/
It was a sarcasm. I want to see if you state clearly and without pussyfooting that you consider "negotiating" that Ukraine agree to Russia's demands on not seeking NATO membership and any territorial claims they currently have all for the grand prize of territorial (whatever would remain of it) guarantees from Russia (a country that just invaded it and gleefuly committed war crimes while at it) and Western powers (who, rightfully i must concede, demonstrated they can do nothing except provide some shiny toys and some sanctions in case of another invasion)
I want to see if you adhere to the GOP style of "negotiating", where one party takes an unacceptable stance and then cries the others don't meet them in the middle